Spiritual Warfare Sunday: My Supernatural Encounters. Bonus Monday Post!
Surprise! A Spiritual Warfare Sunday episode on a Monday. I wish I could say this is unique, but I have accidentally forgotten to post before and sent it in on a Monday rather than Sunday once before. Regardless, what is special about this is that it is a much more casual and personal post than my usual. As you can see, my language is a lot less flowery, articulate, and measured than I usually type. That’s because today’s post is all about my own personal supernatural encounters, rather than a systematic look at deep theological topics. I will not be articulating spiritual truths or ideas behind my experiences; rather, I will be telling you what I experienced, as I experienced it. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the stories.
Encounter 1: The Haunted Woods and Disappearing Man
The town I was raised in is a suburban town located on the banks of the Mississippi River. Running along the river banks are walking paths, alternating between rocky embankments and wooded areas. One particular river trail leads to a dead end, curving away from the river for about a mile before looping back. It does this because there is a barge terminal where sand and gravel are loaded from a local worksite. Between the end of the path and the barge terminal are the Haunted Woods. It’s a small strip of woods, maybe about 3/4 of a mile wide from the path to the inlet. Mostly swamps with dense undergrowth and trees. There was a small dirt trail, beginning on the paved path and diving into the dense wood that led into the Haunted Woods. You could tell when you crossed the boundary. Walk from the paved path about 35 feet down the dirt trail and you arrive at two trees fallen together, creating an archway. Beyond that arch, things got strange.
It was never officially called “The Haunted Woods.” Rather, that is the name I gave it after a series of weird things happened to me and my friends. A friend of mine was exploring the woods alone and saw a strange-looking art piece made of twigs and twine. She thought it was creepy looking, so she took a picture of it. Later, she showed us her photos from her exploration of the woods, and the picture of the art piece was corrupted. She had a Samsung phone, less than 2 years old at the time, and that was the only photo that didn’t load and came across as a corrupted file. Now, I’m no digital expert, but I’m hard pressed to know why only one photo out of thirty on a new phone would be corrupted. We went back to the woods the following day so she could show it to me and our other friends, but it was gone.
She wasn’t the only one to have a weird encounter in the woods. Several of my friends and I were in those woods, exploring, when one of my friends began to get really nervous. The feeling only grew for him until he made us stop and told us we needed to leave now. We obliged, wondering what his problem was. That night, he and one other friend who had come along both experienced night terrors and sleep paralysis, something they stated had never happened to them before. My friend refused to ever return to those woods, saying something evil was in there and it had followed us home.
For me personally, I watched someone disappear in those woods. I was exploring the woods alone and had reached the far side, near where the inlet for barges began. I was enjoying a view of the ships and the Mississippi River when I heard a noise behind me. I looked back and saw a tall, well-dressed African American man about twenty feet away. He was wearing a blazer, hat, and slacks, which was strange considering where we were and the summer heat and humidity. He looked at me, smiled a very wide and very disconcerting grin, then turned and walked behind a tree and vanished. The tree wasn’t one you could hide behind; it was a young sapling that a large man could completely wrap his hand around. On YouTube, there is a horror short called “The Hidebehind” that gives a great visual representation of what I saw, except my experience was almost six years before the video was released. The man had simply walked behind the tree and vanished, as if he had stepped through a door no one else could see. I am not ashamed to admit I ran out of those woods faster than I had ever run in my life up to that point.
I don’t know what is in those woods, but from researching it, nothing tragic or bad has ever happened in that area. But something evil has claimed that small chunk of woods as its own.
Experience 2: The Inhuman Girl
The fact that this story took place in broad daylight, in such a mundane setting, is one of the reasons this encounter has stuck with me for so long, because it makes no logical sense to me.
This happened roughly seven years ago. I was going to Target to buy groceries at the Target nearest my home at the time. While walking through the store, I walked past a random girl. She was average height, slim build, pale skin, dressed like any normal young 20s woman would be. Before I could walk past her, I felt an overwhelming sense of terror and dread.
Imagine you are walking through the woods alone at night, it’s pitch black, you have no supplies, you’re a mile from safety, then you suddenly hear something large begin to growl a deep, angry growl not far off the path you’re walking on.
That is the only reasonable way I can describe the feeling that this woman gave me. Every instinct I had was screaming that I was in danger, I could not fight this threat, and I needed to get as far away as possible as fast as possible. I left the store, got in my car, and drove across town to another store on the opposite side of the city. In my professional life, I’ve worked in private security, been on ambulances in the bad side of town, and both taken and taught self-defense and martial arts for over a decade. I’m also quite tall and quite large, which helped when working private security. There is no reason I should have been afraid, no reason that, even if this girl attacked me, I simply could not have lifted her off her feet and thrown he halfway down the aisle. But that fear and terror was so strong, so overwhelming, so all-consuming that I knew this was a predator and I was in serious danger.
To this day, I don’t know the reason behind that strange encounter. Maybe my brain had a momentary malfunction. Maybe I encountered something that only looked human. I truly don’t know, and I hope I never find out.
I’ll leave it off here. I have more stories I could share, but I don’t want to steal post material away from my future self. I encourage you, email us at Sky Creative Industry and let us know about your own supernatural encounters, or encounters others have told you happened to them. Like I said before, if you don’t have a story of your own, I guarantee you know someone who does. We’d love to hear them.