From James

"Cliff,

I've never had any first hand experience with a seedeater, but please hear me out. I've developed a theory of the origins of seedeaters. I only have the content from your blog to work with, but I don't think seedeaters are born or hatched. I think they are created. This would explain why there hasn't been a child-sized seedeater seen.

I'm going to start by talking about the post entitled "From Jean." I am also going to assume that the disappearance of Craig was indeed the work of a seedeater. Due to knowledge of previous blog posts, I am aware that seedeaters' diets consist at least partially of... well... children. I found the disappearance of Craig to be quite odd. What was the seedeater's motive? What reason did it have to take Craig? After three days of searching, the only signs of Craig to be found was his glasses and jacket. There was no half-eaten corpse laying around somewhere.

My theory is the seedeaters take people and somehow change them into new seedeaters. After discussing my theory with a friend, we came up with some sort of fungal or bacterial infection which could cause mutation. The infection could cause the new seedeater's flesh to rot, which would explain both the smell commonly described as garbage or rotting meat. This would also explain their rag-faced appearance. If their flesh was rotting, they'd need some way to prevent themselves from completely falling apart; which could be accomplished by stitching rags (or pieces of their own flesh) together. Abductions happen in the world every day. Not all of them are explained. Some unexplained disappearances could be the work of seedeaters.

Now you may be thinking, "If seedeaters can change anybody into a seedeater, why aren't there more of them?" I think that the process of changing someone into a seedeater could be very dangerous to the seedeater which does the changing. A seedeater would probably not take someone until the seedeater was already towards the end of its lifespan in an act of self-preservation. If the process of changing a human into a seedeater resulted in a very high chance of seedeater death, then this would result in a very small increase of total seedeaters in the world over a long period of time since on rare occasion a seedeater could survive the process of changing another and go on to change a second human.

Now like I said, I've never seen a seedeater, and I hope I don't. I only have the information you've provided me with, but I thought you might be interested in my theory. Just something to think about."

This is an interesting theory. In this, there may be more than one and they may operate similar to the classic "werewolf" image. Very interesting indeed.

MOV_11352

From Martin

From Martin:

"Hello Cliff.

My name is Martin, and I live in Sweden. I read your blog the other day, and was quite surprised that others have seen - no, experienced - the same thing as me.
It was an early morning in August about 8 years ago (I'm 17 now). I was an early bird when I was younger, so waking up that early was nothing extraordinary. I grew up in a pretty remote place, and since there aren't any predators up here (hunted almost to extinction) my parents didn't mind me strolling about the forest nearby as long as I didn't go to far and without them nearby. Anyway, this particular morning, I was bored. Nothing on the television, my parents weren't awake and I couldn't go back to sleep. Instead, I went outside.

I dressed and opened the door, walking in the direction of the woods. I kept on going , passing the line of tall pine trees, and soon I was in the part of the woods that I usually played in. It's dense with lots of underbrush, but I liked playing or just walking about. As I walked down the path going through the forest. Suddenly, about 10 metres to the left of the path, I saw someone sitting in a tall tree, on a branch about halfway up. It was a... I don't know how to describe it. It had long, weird arms and something like a snout, with a mask covering its face. It was dark, and I couldn't see very clearly, but I remember it raising its left arm, but it didn't bend like it should. It was also bobbing its head, almost like a bobblehead doll. There was also some kind of smell, as if it was carrying around a rotting animal or something. I turned and ran away, as I was scared to death.

This all happened very quickly, I doubt I stared at it for more than 10 seconds before running away. I ran inside, locked the door and went back to bed. I told my parents about it, but as always, they just dismissed it as a bad dream."

-- This brings up the discovery that there are either multiple Seed Eaters or it affects more than one area.

Slight Update

I've currently been moving from the city to another town. I've been completely exhausted by the whole ordeal. I've almost entirely been responsible for the move myself. I don't want to get into too many details, but essentially, there was an issue that came up with my parents and I've gone to live with my grandparents.

So, I apologize to some people whose testimonies were submitted, but never put up onto the site. I promise that they'll be posted soon.

Regards,
Cliff

From Jean

From Jean:

"Hello, my name is Jean Laboide. I just found your blog and am immensely relieved to find that what I saw wasn’t just a figment of my imagination, or some sort of potent long lasting hallucination. Back during spring break, in 1988, me and seven room mates + others from emerson college were making our way up to montreal. On the way up, one of our buddies had a major epileptic attack and we split the group, so two (myself and Craig Johnson) of us could stay with him until his family could come for him and the rest would get to the hotel before we lost our reservations. We couldn’t make it in time so we stopped at a hotel near the border, in a town called Jonesboro in Maine. The hotel we were staying at was called the blue berry patch motel. The rooms were all filled up, so the guy gave us a discount and keys to a cabin in a wooden thicket. We went to sleep quickly, but halfway through the night I heard craig get up. I rolled over back to bed, but he shook me awake and asked me if he’d come with me to use the crapper in the main building, since it was a dark walk and pretty long. We left, and I saw him to the main building but walked back to the cabin. On the walk back, was where I saw it. The thicket of woods wasn’t very big, but it was really really dense. I was walking along the path when I heard something rustle in the underbrush. I looked up, and saw this dark guy staring at me from the limb of one of the trees. It smelled like garbage left out in the heat for a few days, when it starts getting maggots all over the bag. It really creeped me out, so I ran back to the cottage and grabbed a bread knife and just sat there, waiting.

When I woke up the next morning, craig wasn’t back yet. I tried the main building, but after hours of searching called in the sheriffs department. When I described the guy in the tree, with the split face, and black hair, the local authority started acting oddly. They started a manhunt along with the fire department and brought in some people from the local towns, but all they ended up finding after three days was his jacket and a pair of aviators.

A few things stood out for me when they did the search. Everyone had a firearm, no dogs were brought in, and they never announced a manhunt in the newspaper. They used signal flares too, you could see them shooting them off every couple of hours. They even got rid of the paperwork for everything, the hotels shut down, and the police don’t have any record that I was ever interviewed.

I don’t know what to do. I was afraid to email you, because of what they’ve been saying, that talking about it invokes it, brings it back. For a while I had nightmares. I used to see that thing, staring at me through dark windows, or along the highway, just crouching in trees. It went away when I moved to the city, but I refuse to leave Boston anymore. I don’t drive on the highway, I always think that the car’ll break down and I’ll end up trapped, with that thing circling me in the woods. I fly everywhere now.

Please, do I still have anything to fear? I still have nights where I wake up from nightmares with that thing. Do I really need to keep barring the windows, in case I see it peering in at me?

If it’ll help, I made some sketches of the thing. My therapist said I should try to vent my fears through art, but I gave up on it a few years ago. I might’ve saved a few in storage, so I’ll try to dig them out."

- As a note, Jean, I am unsure myself whether or not you have anything to fear. Some days, I am convinced that these are all coincidences, other days, I am not.

More MLIC

I apologize for the last post, and for the lack of posts in a while. I've just been so short on news, I've been jumping at every chance I can get to post something relatively interesting.

However, I just checked Facebook for the first time in a long time, and I found someone had posted this:

http://mylifeiscreepy.com/view/Demonology/181

Jake and Patricia's Scrapbook

So guess what I received in the mail this morning? It's Jake and Patricia's scrapbook.



The last image is the picture I scanned. On the back, it has the word "Morgan" written on it.

Sleeping

Since last Tuesday, I've experienced issues sleeping. Initially, it was out of a sort of creeping fear, the type you get after watching a horror movie. Then, it progressed into full-on insomnia. I've only managed to sleep in small increments of time. Say, three to four hours on and off. My doctor diagnosed me with having insomnia and prescribed sleeping pills as of Saturday. I've been using them and found myself in a worse situation.
I've been waking up nearly every day since Saturday with an inability to move. It's like I'm awake, but I'm not. My eyelids are open and I see my bedroom, but I can't move. I can close my eyes, then reopen them, but my room suddenly becomes warped and horrible. It's like somebody turning down the colour knob on an old TV while simultaneously twisting the brightness knob to slowly creep to blackness. Everything seems to dissolve, then I shut my eyes and open them again. Everything's normal again and then is soon proceeds to do the same thing until I'm in total darkness once more.
And every time I look in my window, I see it. The Seed Eater stands there, with its ragface pressing against the glass, hissing like a corrupted scuba mask. I only catch quick glimpses of it before it all fades to nothingness.
I've done some research and concluded that this is either sleep paralysis or I'm experiencing frequent night terrors. It's terrifying. I haven't had night terrors since I was a little kid. Not like this.

From Unknown

What follows is an email that I haven't been too keen on sharing. I received it on Tuesday and was unsure on posting it. I did, however, reach the decision on updating the site with it. I feel you all have the right to know this info as well as me. The details are somewhat disturbing, but do provide insight into what exactly I've gotten myself into. Please be warned that it may upset you.

From Unknown:

"cliff, i know that there are certain things you may not understand yet, but i can provide answers to your fascination with the rag-faced man. maybe it's because you're only in your late teens that you haven't picked up on it yet, or maybe you live a bit too far away from the area to know of the happenings. despite this, i feel guilty in denying you the truth, regardless of what the prescribed ordinances say.
we can't know exactly when it began, but we know that it's cycle. the hunt doesn't stop for anyone. the rag-face goes after children. for a while, we didn't know why it chose them instead of adults. initially, we supposed that it was perhaps the general strength of adults could overpower it. after all, it is rather frail and bony. then, we began to wonder why it never attacked the old folks home. in fact, it completely avoided that building for all anyone knew. we eventually came to the conclusion that it needs children, preferably before they reach puberty. this assumption was reached by my colleague, richard. his comments werent well received by most of us. it seemed too soon to be discussing that after the recent arrest of a child molester in our neighbourhood. nevertheless, richard's assumption seemed to hold true for any known piece of information regarding the rag-faced man. most of the children had given their testimonies dating back to when they were in the age range of six to twelve years old, a few older and a few younger.
then we set up the ordinances. richard's father had a collection of writings about the rag-faced man stuffed inside of a trunk that he gave to richard before he died. inside, we were able to analyze the testimonies and information to construct a list of seven. these seven rules were never to be broken under any circumstances. the wording we chose was meant to dodge the curses of summoning the creature. our ordinances fit through loopholes in the already set out laws. copies of it were distributed to everyone and we all swore an oath, as we knew it would ensure the safety of our community and the communities surrounding ours.
that was thirty seven years ago.
the rag-face needs children to meet some type of dietary requirement. the younger, the better. on countless occasions, richard threw a fit over mothers leaving baby carriages unattended in the morgan playground that backed onto the woods (which was once known to be its hunting ground). he managed to scare women to tears, educating young women over eighteen about the dangers of being a mother in our community. he made them swear oaths as well, with the local police involved in patrolling its known hunting grounds for mothers not watching their children. if the mothers werent being responsible, then someone had to look out for the kids. this resulted in a spike in crime in our community and the police couldn't handle patrolling the area anymore. eventually, morgan park was abandoned. it sat there, derelict for years until a few years back.
two kids, one of them was named brady, the other ben, went to the old park (presumably to vandalize it, or so we suspected) in the nineties. that area was deemed unsafe and richard made sure that mothers warned their children about that area. we even did our best to set up blockades around the park, but nobody guarded them. the kids just hopped the fence and then they were in. then, around five o clock that night, my neighbours reported screaming from the park. the police, fire department and ambulances came. it was quite the scene. also making a scene was richard, who heavily complained that all the sirens would upset the creature. he thought it would kill us all in our beds. eventually, brady came out into the open, shaking the chainlink fence and holding a baseball bat. both he and the bat were covered in blood and a glutinous mud-coloured liquid. There were so many slashes on his face. i couldn't tell whose blood was whose. i can still remember his mother screaming and ben's mother demanding to know where her son had gone. brady was too shaken to be able to tell. there wasn't a gate on the fence, so the fire crew had to coax him to climb the fence. His hands were so badly cut that his screams must have reached for miles as he climbed the ten foot fence and fell to the ground on the our side of it. to this day, he's the only one we've ever known to have escaped. ben's body was never found. later that same night, morgan park was firebombed by several townsfolk. it certainly wasn't commissioned by me, but i've suspected richard's involvement. it doesn't really matter anyway. it's been ten years.
of course, brady was put into isolation, like a prison. it felt wrong to incarcerate the boy, but if he wasn't, then by our knowledge, he'd be hunted down. brady's still in the basement of the safest place we know possible: the old folk's home. he has security on him 24/7. i dont know how much of our town's budget we put into that, but it must have been a huge chunk. the mayor himself decided the funding, even though richard labeled brady as a curse. our mayor's about as scared as any of us, but not nearly as frightened as richard seems to be. this paranoia kills our town.
I have to warn you, cliff. youre altering the hunt. dont try to fight this thing. i don't know what you think youre trying to do, but youre coaxing an attack out of it. your site could potentially be dangerous for anyone involved with it. dont alter the hunt. stop posting experiences."

Attached to the email was a digital photo of the sheet of ordinances. It was the same as that I had been emailed (minus the bloody writing). Whoever sent me the email forgot to include a name, and their email is one of those "do not reply" type. The email address itself is a random jumble of letters, and they haven't responded to any of my further queries.

From Christina

From Christina:

"My brother and I have always been close, so it came as a surprise when I received this email from him. He's going through Alcoholic's Anonymous, and part of his treatment is confession for things. He's confessed a lot to me, things I wouldn't want to know about, but, as family, I support him and wish to help him. Last night, I got a new email from him that was different than his confessions of crimes or wrong doing. It was a story from his childhood. After discussing it with a friend, they pointed me to your email, and told me you run a blog about people having similar occurrences. If you do happen to use this on the blog in any way, please do not include my email. You're free to use the image attached as well, just again, do not include my email.
/////////
When I was in my mid to late teens (Can't remember exactly when. Wanna say 16 or 17) me and a few friends went camping out in the Everglades with one of the guy's older brothers (two of them, 20-25ish). We were off the beaten path, but still within the designated camping area, and had a small BBQ grill - the portable half-dome ones you typically use for camping. We were cooking hotdogs and burgers as the sun went down, or were going to, but one of us forgot the charcoal in the car, so me and my friend Will made the 10 min walk back to the car to get it while everyone waited back where we had set up camp.

We heard rustling all around, but that's normal. We had been out here before and had gotten used to seeing small animals running about and messing around in bushes. We joked about it, saying the Skunk Ape (a south-Florida version of Bigfoot, sorta.) was coming to get us, but, continued to the car. Everything was uneventful until we got the charcoal and started heading back.

There was a tree, a pretty old one with no leaves. It looked like it had been struck by lightning at one point. Normally animals didn't go near it, save for a few birds who might perch themselves atop it's old withered branches. Well, that wasn't the case that night. We saw something that we thought may have been a couger or something up in it. But as we got closer, we realized it was no cat.

It seemed to be about six to seven feet tall, thin - almost malnourished looking - had wild, matted hair, very long and slender arms that it bent at odd angles, moving them around almost like a 'raver' would 'dance'. It's face was hidden by what looked like a stitched leather or sack 'bag'. It had one eye hole, the other was stitched shut. We were curious and thought it was just a guy fucking around, so we got closer. When we did, we could smell this horrible stench. It was sweet but nasty like rotting fruit, along with a slight metallic scent (Best way to describe it would be that it was like the way blood tastes, but this was a smell.) Will gagged and said we should just keep going. So. We did.

I don't think it noticed us - at first - because we just passed with out incident. At the camp, we didn't talk about it to everyone else, we just ate, joked, set up our tents and slept.

At about 3am, I woke up having to take a piss, so, I got out of my tent, forgetting about the 'man' in the tree, and went out to the edge of our campsite, to another tree, where I releived my self.
Once done, I turned back to return to my tent, when I saw the 'man' stalking around near by. It looked like it had a duck or goose or something in one of it's odd arms and it moved around slow and calculated. Through the light of the lamp we had in the center of our area, I could see it looking directly at me, walk forward a few steps, then bound off in the other direction.

The next morning, Will asked me if I was pulling a prank on him, saying that he saw the masked man come up to his tent when he got up to piss.

I haven't been camping there since. And neither of us have ever brought the subject up to eachother again.

I'll include a sketch of what I remember, though it won't be great quality, I'm no artist.
\\\\\\\\\\"

From Sarah (possibly related) - Redux

The friend of mine mentioned earlier has found another entry from Sarah on MyLifeIsCreepy.com

"Last night was the same as every night for the last week. That ragfaced man had his face pressed against my window while I was sleeping. Dad's a paranoid freak who set up security cameras in our yard, after that burglar last year. I checked through the tapes, but nothing's ever there, only the camera pointing directly at my window while I'm sleeping. Fifty hours of me, naked in bed, all on tape..."

Again, only POSSIBLY related.

Ordinanaces?

A friend of mine sent this to me over Twitter last night. An anon over at /x/ posted this image, threatening to break what they called the "Seed Eater Code". I could only assume that the message referred to this image posted. Within lie seven rules or "ordinances":

"1. There is to be no recollection of its hunt, for it is its fuel and provocation.

2. There is to be no interruption of its hunt lest the hunt be turned upon the interrupter.

3. There is to be no attempt at avoidance of the determined hunting.

4. There is to be no scrutiny of its victims, their vanishings or their demise.

5. There is to be no graphical representations which imply its actuality or intentions.

6. There is to be no collective of evidence for its actuality or intentions excluding this set of prudently expressed ordinances.

7. There is to be no intended confrontation.

THE BREACH OF ANY ORDINANCES SPECIFIED ABOVE WILL, WITHOUT REASONABLE DOUBT, ALTER THE COURSE OF ITS HUNT. THIS PRESENTS A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER TO THE BREACHER. THE HUNT SHALL NOT BE DISRUPTED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. IT IS TO BE MADE CLEAR THAT THERE IS NO METHOD OF PERMANENT EVASION. IT IS ALSO TO BE MADE CLEAR THAT THERE ARE NO EXCEPTIONS TO THESE ORDINANCES OUTLINED IN THIS DOCUMENT."

Within the thread, someone posted my email address and commanded people to send me messages to alert me that this website is somehow altering the supposed hunt.

4chan is something to be taken with a grain of salt, especially /x/. This could either be a scare tactic or someone legitimately believes that these specifically structured rules can warn people of proper decorum regarding the Seed Eater.

However, it does leave something of interest for us to ponder - the words written upon the page: "IT EATS THEM"


On a different note: my laptop seems to be running perfectly fine. I'm unsure on when my main computer will be available once more, though.

From Sarah (possibly related)

A friend of mine (who wishes to remain unnamed) scavenged this from the website MyLifeIsCreepy.Com

"Today, during my walk home from school, I saw that stupid thing again staring at me from the edge of the forest. It has that raggy anteater bird mask and the nasty hair and it smells like decaying roadkill. Nobody else believes me when I tell them that this rag thing keeps following me through the day, not even my mom. It's been going on for the past week now. MLIC"

Please note that this is only POSSIBLY related.

YouTube Update 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9vTtV2mwfU

HUGE News/Bad News

I can't say I'm not disappointed, but this is rather crushing news:

Jake and Patricia suffered a flood over the weekend in which their belongings residing in their basement were damaged and/or destroyed. Their scrapbook, which they were planning on sending to me via post, was among the boxes that were drenched in the flood.

However, to compensate, Jake managed to find this more recent image on his old hard drive. This is the first photo of the Seed Eater/Ragface that I've received:



The image is slightly blurry, but the unmistakable form of our Seed Eater is seen in the right half of the image. I don't know when the photo was taken, but I can gather that it either came from a video or was a poor digital photo, possibly taken with a camera phone.

From what I can examine, it either seems to be wearing a hood or has long black hair. Strangely, it reminds me of a sort of aardvark or anteater. I don't have a source on where the picture was taken, other than Winnipeg, Canada. The exact location within the city still baffles me, but also disturbs me. It disturbs me that this thing isn't just within my country or province, but my own city. Jake never specified where or when exactly the photo was taken. I hope it wasn't too recent - I want this thing to stay as far away from me as possible.

A SIDE NOTE: I had to make a copy of the image by copying and pasting the image itself into a new document and re-saving it. I had to delete the original file since it seemed to be infected with a virus. I don't think it was Jake's fault. It completely crippled my main computer, and now I'm resorting to using my laptop. The file was briefly on this laptop as well, so I'm unsure if this too is infected. This copy of the photo, however, should be completely safe to view and download.

I'll post more updates later.

And a huge thank-you to Jake for the picture.

From Jake and Patricia

From Jake and Patricia:

"Dear Clifford Howry,

My name is Jake. My wife Patricia and I have been scouting for details for a long time, but finally someone else has surfaced – you. It's unbelievable how long we've been looking for someone else like us, but now we have at last.

Since 1986, my wife and I have been collecting data on Ragface, whom your acquaintance Barbara has affectionately nicknamed Seedeater. Together, we have pieced together a scrapbook over the years. Inside, we collected our own series of testimonies and photographs, sketches and so forth. Since then, our interest has died down slightly, but I was ecstatic when I came across your website. It definitely excites me that someone new has discovered Ragface’s fable, and continues to delve into its source.

What I really am trying to get across to you is the idea of a collaboration. I'm interested in perhaps lending you our scrapbook. The internet is a huge medium that didn't truly exist when Patricia and I were collecting data. Now, you can spread the word and the awareness regarding Ragface (or Seedeater). If you are interested, please reply with your mail details so that we can send this package on its way.

Sincerely,
Jake"

Facebook Page

I created a Facebook Page for the blog:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Seed-Eater-Experiences/115772521779578

From Hugh

From Hugh:

“Hey Clifford,

My friend Nolan Toal sent me your website, and I quickly recalled something my eight year old son, Trey, told me. About a year ago, Trey was going down to the nearby creek to catch frogs. He came back only a few minutes later. I asked him why and he said there was a “scary bird man” standing across the footbridge. He said the man's face was “stretchy and with no eyes” and that he wanted to take him into the woods. I continued asking him if he could remember any other details about the man, because I was planning on calling the police and giving them a description, but Trey kept on saying that the man's face was all wrong. I gave whatever details I could to the police, but they told be that they couldn't run a description on the man because it was too vague.

When Nolan told me to check this site out, I thought of this incident. I'm not entirely sure if its related or not.

Sincerely,
Hugh Kingdom”

From Nolan (pictures)

A few days ago, I updated my Twitter with a status reading "I reminded Nolan a week ago about the drawings he did. He says he found them when he was helping his father move. He's mailing them to me..." Above are the two images that was drawn by Nolan as a child, which he found. The first, gives us what I can assume is a child's rendering of the face of the Seed Eater.

He apologized for the scribblings on the pages. He believes his father may have inadvertently used them as scrap paper for finances.

Twitter Account

I set up a Twitter account yesterday, for those who want to follow the updates on the Seed Eater Experiences blog:

http://twitter.com/CliffHowry

Also, a reminder to send any testimonies, images, or videos to: cliffhowry@gmail.com

From Dominick

From Dominick:

“The weirdest thing I've ever seen in my life was when I went on a camping trip for school. It was when I was in grade 7, so I guess that would make it 2003. My friend Andy and I snuck off during the bonfire. We started to take a piss on a couple trees at edge of the forest. Andy got spooked because he saw somebody watching him inside the forest. I thought he was talking about a counselor in the woods so I zipped up my jeans and hurt myself while I did it. I was distracted because I saw what he was talking about. I thought it was just a deer or something. It came closer to me with its arms bent at a funny angle. Its face had a long nose that was covered in like a cloth. It only had one eye and it was empty. It was grabbing the air like there was something there but there wasn't. I ran back in to where Andy went. He was sitting down at the bonfire acting like nothing happened. I wanted to talk to him about it later but he didn't want to bring it up again. He thought it would get him trouble. Later he said that he didn't see anything. He only wanted to get away before someone noticed. But I know he saw it.

I haven't talked to Andy since I graduated two years ago.”

From Nolan

From Nolan: 

“My family lived in a rural community in south-eastern Manitoba for most of my childhood. When I was ten, during the 80s, my older brother Shawn reluctantly took me to the corner store to buy me candy. It was getting dark and my parents didn't trust me alone yet. When we got there, the shop owner's son, who was there as a cashier, started talking with Shawn about something. They were both around the same age, for all I knew, they could have been talking about girls which I really didn't care for at the time. I wandered up and down the aisles, and I remember being captivated by a video game magazine at the end of the far aisle. When I got back to the front counter, I couldn't find Shawn anywhere, so I went outside and still couldn't find him. I crept around the outside of the store and into the dense shrubs and trees that the shop backed onto. Something immediately caught my attention: a man-like figure bobbing its head up and down in the upper branches of a tree. It was grunting and in the fading sunlight, it almost looked like it was dancing or eating something. I started to back away, but it suddenly dropped out of the tree and stood in front of me. It smelled horrible, like a garbage can full of rotten food. When it stepped out of the shadows, I saw its face. It was kind of raggedy looking, but shrunken and stitched. It made me think of Frankenstein's monster with like a sack or something draped over its face and it brethed [sic] through a tube for a snout or beak. I turned away and ran. I think Shawn saw it too, because when he saw me, he ran as well. When we got back home, I think he told our mom and dad, and so I never mentioned it.

I made drawings of it several times during the months that followed. If I can find them, I’ll send them too you. I hope it helps.”

From Barbara

From Barbara:

"In 1961, my friends and I were about eleven years old. We were camping with my father down by the old brook just outside of town the day after a horrible storm had hit. It was inside of a large forest made up of mostly evergreens in western Ontario. My little sister, Marsha had gone off exploring, she was only six. My friends and I were right behind her before one of my friends got the leg of her overalls caught in a fallen branch that looked like it came off of a lightning-struck tree. It cut her leg open pretty badly and she started crying, but I knew that if my sister kept going, she'd get lost. I told my other friends to go back to the camp site and get my father to help them. Meanwhile, I chased after Marsha. I called her name and I didn't know where she had gone to. I was eventually getting desperate and I could hear my dad and the other girls shouting my name. I even heard my brother looking for me and calling me, but they were all far behind. I remember turning around to tell them I was okay, then I tripped backwards and fell into a puddle. I was soaking wet, and when I stood up, my nose was suddenly filled with this nauseating stench. It was like the dead porcupine my Uncle Jim had found under his porch in the summer of '59. It was sickly sweet, but salty like sweat. Suddenly, I felt Marsha grappling my dripping wet hand. She said something that sounded like “suhdeeder” – almost like “sedate”, except with an “e” sound instead of the “a” sound and an “r” at the end. She kept repeating it, and I didn't know what it meant. It sounded like baby-talk to me. I can remember asking her what she was saying and she pointed towards a dark cluster of trees just beyond the puddle. I heard a slow rattling noise and between the trees stood this dark figure. It had a something like a beak, but I couldn't tell if it was part of its face or a mask. It was gripping the tree bark with its long, winding fingers. It cocked its head to the side and began twisting its long limbs in a sort of dance-like manner as they hung from its shoulders. I screamed, turned around and ran with Marsha back to the camp site. We never told our father what we saw.

Marsha recently passed away due to heart problems. I never talked to her about the incident since. I only specifically remembered it as of late from finding a diary entry from that camping trip. Though, I can still sometimes make out the face of the thing in the woods during my nightmares. I think it's one of those sights that personify childhood fears of boogeymen. In the diary, I called it the “seed eater”, which I guess, is the best way of translating Marsha's babbling. I wonder if it ever came back in her nightmares too."