SC EP:883 The Spider Crawl

Tonight I will be speaking to John. John writes “I am a Registered Nurse at the hospital here in town. My encounter happened on approximately November 17, 2020.

As Covid was in full swing many of us had to take our turns working on the Covid unit. My home unit had high risk patients so I was being swabbed twice a week to try and prevent Covid from coming onto that floor. Prior to leaving work on Tuesday morning, the 17th, I was swabbed for Covid prior to going home with the plan to come back to work that evening at 7 PM. As I was ready to leave for work that evening I received a phone call from the hospital. I was told I could not come to work because my Covid swab from that morning came back positive and I would need to quarantine for the next 7 days. My problem was that my Father-in-law, who would be considered high risk if he contracted the virus, was staying at our home during that time. My wife and he were not in the house when I found out I had the virus so I formulated a plan and called her. The plan was that I would get out of the house and go quarantine at our cabin at Rough River Lake, KY. She brought my Father-in-law home and met me in the parking lot at the grocery store. I waited out in the parking lot in my pickup while she went in and bought enough groceries to last me during my quarantine and came out to my pickup and she put the groceries in my tool box so we had no contact.

The next morning, my wife and Father-in-law went and got tested and were negative- thank goodness because I would have been the one to have given it to them and I did not want to have harmed them. The Drive from Owensboro to the lake was about 56 miles and it was really dark that night. I remember seeing only a sliver of the moon earlier, but by 9 pm or so when I made my drive it was just really dark with no moonlight that I could see. On the way up to the lake I had the radio off (it is usually on) as I was deep in thought about the whole situation. As I drove on I came to realize that my biggest fear would be laid to rest one way or the other in the morning when my wife and Father-in-law would be tested for the virus. I then thought about how I could actually make the most of the quarantine by calling people I hadn’t spoken to in a while and working on my book which I was working on at the time and has been published since.

The route I take to the lake once I get through Owensboro is Highway 54 east for roughly 25 miles. When I got through the small town of Fordsville, I turned left to go North on 261. This is an 11 mile stretch to get to a junction called McQuady where I would turn right on 105 south to take the rest of the way to the lake. Ten miles in on the aforementioned 11 mile stretch is where I had my encounter. I had been deep in thought coming through the dark, wooded area. I came to an area that had a row of trees along the road to the left coming off a ravine. When I passed the end of that there was a second ravine with trees about 30 yards back that came to an end roughly 100 yards farther than the closer ravine. What initially caught my attention was the yellowish/white eye shine of a deer off to the right side of the road. I started to slow up as this really nice white tail buck walked right onto the road in front of me and just stopped in the middle of the road. He was not looking at me and paid no attention to me coming toward him! He was gazing to the left side of the road toward the end of the second tree row/ravine I mentioned. As I got within about 20 yards of this deer and had almost come to a stop, I looked over toward where the deer was watching. You know how your car headlights cast light off to the left and right of the vehicle?

Well, in that cast off light I picked up what I would describe as very large orange eye shine, about 4 feet off the ground near the end of this stand of trees. It was coming from the back side of the trees around the tip or end of the tree stand, so It was facing me at about 9 o’clock position when I picked up the eye shine. I can only describe that I saw a dark creature, moving like a spider but about 4 feet off the ground, with a large head with eyes almost as large as silver dollars around 6 or 7 inches apart that shined orange. When I looked back at the deer standing on the road before me, it suddenly took off in the direction it was facing into open field. I then saw this spider creature turn toward the running deer and started to quickly move toward it. That’s when I about dropped a biscuit as this thing rose up onto 2 feet in fluid motion to take flight after the deer! I rolled my window down to see if I could smell anything which I did not, but I heard in the trees to the right side of the road, where the deer had initially come, what sounded like a large branch breaking, so I hit the gas and got the heck out of there.

I feel that there was a creature on the right side of the road in the woods that pushed this deer toward another creature at an ambush point and I came along at the wrong time. As fast as this thing took off, in an open field, I have no doubt it would catch up to the buck.”