Thanksgiving 1987. As usual, my large, extended family gathered at my aunt’s house to celebrate the holiday together. There were too many adults around, so we kids headed outside to play. The narrow tract of woods behind the house was disappearing to a new housing development, but we headed out anyway. And that’s when the strange began…

We heard a woman screaming and crying. Being curious kids, we continued toward the noises. Didn’t occur to us to go back and tell our parents…yet.

There had been snow a few days before, and there was still a light cover of snow in the shadows of the trees. Lots of footprints. Then we saw what looked like a blood trail. Bloody fabric. The screams and cries continued. The woods, which were usually a narrow 20-30 feet and 100 yards long, now felt like a full-blown forest. We could no longer see the edges. A feeling of wrongness enveloped us. We turned around. Ran. Ran back the way we’d come, full minutes away from the noises and the blood. Finally things started to look normal. There was the backyard. Our parents. We went inside and told them what had happened. What we had seen. What we had heard. A couple of the dads went out to the woods and walked it front to back. After all, it was only 100 yards long. No signs of anything we’d seen or heard. Everything normal.

There were nine of us outside that day. We all heard it. We all saw it. It was almost 40 years ago now. And every once in a while, one of us will bring it up. Talk to the others about it. We all still remember it the same way. The weirdness, the big forest, the screams, the blood. We speak softly of it amongst ourselves, to confirm that we all know. It never happened again. The woods are gone now.

We still don’t know what happened that day.