High Strangeness
Unidentified lights in the sky; weird humanoid figures; these dusty roads hide many dark secrets.
The strange activity is concentrated around The Ranch. That is the Epicentre. This is where the bizarre phenomena emanates from. The nearest city is 100 miles away. The Ranch suffers from an ancient curse placed on it by the Djangoweed. Tribe members believe the Ranch is in the path of the Walker. From 1950 to 1987 the Ranch was owned by a mysterious family who fled the property in 3rd December 1987. No member of this family has ever been traced since that date.
The Ranch was then left unattended for ten years until 1997 when it was purchased my Jerry and Jean Sherling. Along with their two children, the couple believed they had found their dream home. The remote property was bordered to the north by a high ridge, which overlooked its sprawling green pastures, wild thickets of woodland, and its flowing creek to the south. The entire estate exuded an almost tranquil beauty that was not lost on the Sherling family.
Jerry was a high-end cattle-breeder and he hoped that the Ranch would provide the space, privacy and security, to take his hobby and livelihood to the next level. He had bought the ranch for an extremely favourable price; far less than it was worth when he signed the paperwork. He accepted the deeds with an exited, disbelieving, look in his eyes. What he now held in the palm of his hand was his ambition, his prospects, his dream. He could not have known that the land he had just purchased would almost destroy him, not just financially, but also psychologically.
When they had first viewed the property, Jerry and Jean had found the main homestead in a state of disrepair, which of course they had anticipated given the length of time it had remained empty. What they did not expect to find, however, was the sheer amount of dead-bolts securing the home, not just on the front and back doors, but in the interior door and windows to. At the front and rear entrances they also found heavy-duty chains attached to huge metal rungs, which were embedded into the walls. It didn’t take a genius to work out that these had been used to chain large, powerful, guard-dogs in place.
Although slightly unsettled by these peculiarities, Jerry and Jean dismissed them, believing that the elderly couple who owned the ranch before them had been paranoid and over-protective. They had seemed rather eccentric, after all; in the real-estate contract they had inserted a number of unusual clauses. For example, the Sherlings were not permitted to dig on the land without prior approval from the previous owners. These irregularities were overlooked by the new owners but somewhere in the back of Jerry’s mind, he could not help wondering what had spooked them to the point of installing this level of security. In time, of course, he would come to understand that this idyllic, stunning acreage was haunting in more ways than just its serene beauty. And, in fact, the weirdness began almost straight away.
On the first day of moving in the Sherling family were unloading their truck in front of their new home when they spotted something on the far side of the pasture to the south.
As it closed the distance they could see it was a wolf, and it was loping gracefully towards them in a series of S-turns. This immediately set Jerry on guard, but it wasn’t just the presence of a wolf that concerned him. Scaling it against distant fence-post and bushes, he could see that this animal was at least three times the size of an average wolf.
The wolf’s behaviour was oddly disarming: it seemed nonchalant, friendly even, rather than aggressive, slowing down and stopping about 50 yards away. It sniffed the air and gazed at the family with intelligent, piercing blue eyes, before continuing on, casually padding towards them without a care in the world. It seemed entirely tame. It wagged its tail as it approached. Jerry’s father, who had been helping unload the truck, bravely reached out to stroke the huge beast.
Sherling senior stood over six-feet tall, and even although he was a big man, the wolf’s head easily came up to the top of his shoulder. It quickly became clear that, despite the wolf’s intimidating size and appearance, it meant no harm. The rest of the family relaxed and walked over to great their strange visitor.
“Maybe it’s someone’s pet?” Jerry ventured, glancing nervously at the corral about 70 feet to his left and wondering if it had been wise to move some of his herd onto the ranch so soon. Inside of the pen stood four of his breeding cows and as many calves. They were all clearly troubled by the wolf’s presence except for one curious youngster which was sticking its neck out between the metal bars, watching the scene unfold. Almost as Jerry had realised the danger the wolf had bounded across the short distance and now had it’s huge jaws clamped around the calf’s head.
The young cow bleated and thrashed wildly as the wolf tried to drag it out of the pen. Jerry grabbed an axe-handle from the back of his truck and rushed over, beating the huge animal’s flanks, and kicking at its hind legs, but the wolf paid no attention and refused to let go.
“Get my Magnum!” he shouted. His son ran across to the truck, grabbed a .357 from the cabin and handed it to his father.
Jerry quickly fired a shot at the wolf’s abdomen, which rang out across the empty pasture, but … it had no effect. The huge animal did not react in any way. It did not stagger or yelp, it did not even flinch, it simply continued to ravage the poor calf.
In his desperation, Terry fired again. Still the gun had no effect. After a third shot, however, the wolf slowly released its grip and backed off about ten feet. The rancher could not believe his eyes. Very few animals could have survived three shots from a .357 Magnum at point-blank range, but this wolf was somehow not even wounded; there was no blood anywhere on its coat.
Finally he took a fourth shot right at the animal’s heart and the wolf retreated another thirty feet. There was something completely unnerving about how it just stood there with an unconcerned look, contemplating whether to attack the calf a second time.
Jerry sensed this and shouted at his son to get his rifle from the house, which he did within a matter of seconds. The wolf remained perfectly still as he took aim with the heavier firearm and he almost felt sorry for the poor beast. A deafening shot echoed across the wilderness as he pulled the trigger and in that moment he knew he had hit his target. But instead of collapsing to the ground in a heap, as it should have done, the wolf simply withdrew another two yards and stood looking at an increasingly unsettled Jerry.
He quickly took another shot and this time a chunk of flesh detached from the animal but even this did not put it down. The wolf took a last unhurried look at the calf, then turned and headed back in the direction it came from.
Jerry was dumbfounded. He knew he could not allow a large predator to remain on his land, if he intended to breed cattle, so he called to his teenage son and the two of them proceeded to go after it. They must have followed the wolf for about half an hour, catching glimpses of it as it ran to the south between patches of cottonwoods and other trees.
The tracks led them through a copse of Russian Olives, the other side of which was the creek, and emerging from the trees, they found themselves on a wide-open mud bank. They could clearly see the wolf’s paw-prints and immediately began to follow them but the tracks abruptly stopped about 40 yards from the water’s edge.
Jerry and his son could not believe their eyes. They were standing in a wide-open expanse of sodden mud, yet the paw-prints ended right in the middle of the bank. The wolf would have needed to have leaped an impossible 40 to 50 yards in either direction to avoid leaving any more tracks. It had seemingly vanished into thin air.
Returning to the homestead, Jerry happened to pick up the piece of flesh that had detached from the animal. He noted that, rather than being fresh and covered in blood, it looked and smelled rotten as though it had been left out in the sun for a few days. In quiet contemplation, he turned his head south and looked over the pasture towards the horizon, wondering what on earth had just happened.
That was the first day.
The night is my world
Before the morning comes, the story's told
I never stop myself to wonder why
I live among the creatures of the night
I haven't got the will to try and fight
So I guess I'll just believe it
I'm living in the forest of my dream
I know the night is not as it would seem
I must believe in something
So I'll make myself believe it
The next few weeks were relatively normal, except for a few strange occurrences which happened around the homestead, all targeted towards Jean. She didn’t report any of these things to her husband at first as she genuinely thought she was losing her mind. For instance, she would come home from shopping, unpack the groceries and put them away and then leave the room to attend to something else. Moments later, she would return to the kitchen and find the groceries all back in the bags as if she’d never unpacked them.
In other occurrences, she would go to have her customary morning shower. Locking the door behind her, she would place her towel and hairbrush on the side. When she finished, she’d step out of the shower only to find her towel and hairbrush missing; they would disappear. A few hours later she would find them in a random location elsewhere in the house.
Things continued like this for sometime and Jean was getting increasingly worried about her memory. That was until Jerry came in one evening demanding who had taken his post-digger. He’d been using it to repair a fence in the pasture and had turned away for a few moments. When he turned back it had gone. Jean explained that she and the children had been in the house all evening and so they helped him to search for it. However, it was nowhere to be seen. A few weeks later it was found hanging in a tree at the other side of the ranch, 75 feet off the ground, which was odd considering this piece of equipment weighed over 70 pounds.
By this time, the Sherlings were beginning to suspect that something was not quite right about the property they had bought.
A nephew comes to stay. Jerry takes the youngster on a tour of the Ranch.
About a week before they re-discovered the post-digger a nephew came to stay with them and Jerry decided to take the youngster on a tour of the Ranch. His son accompanied them and it was well after sunset when they decided to return to the homestead.
A few hundred yards ahead Jerry noticed a set of headlights moving along a distant fence-line, well within the boundaries of his property. He had seen these lights before and assumed someone had taken a wrong turn off the road to the east, but now, seeing them again, he suspected that these people, whoever they were, were hunting on his land without permission.
Jerry decided that he would confront them and immediately began marching in their direction, but as he picked up the pace, the lights began to move away from him. His brisk walk turned into a jog and, as the boys followed suit, he began to wonder why there was no engine sound.
They had gotten to within 100 yards when the lights suddenly lifted off the ground and floated over some distant treetops. Jerry and the boys stopped dead in their tracks, shocked by what they were seeing. The lights silently continued on their course before disappearing out of sight.
During the Autumn, these lights became a frequent occurrence, especially when Jerry began transporting his prize Simmental and Angus cattle onto the Ranch. The activity seemed to escalate with the arrival of his high-end livestock and this is when things started to turn serious.
As the winter months rolled in, severe snow storms battered the region and Jerry found himself out at all hours rounding up cattle that had wandered too far astray.
One late evening he was out on horseback, searching for one of his prize Angus cows, that had been missing for almost 24 hours. He had covered the whole ranch, except for a dense area of woodland to the southwest, which he was now heading towards. As he approached the large outcropping of trees he was relieved to see the unmistakable impressions of hoof prints in the deep snow and he now knew it was only a matter of time before he located the animal.
From the spacing he could determine that she had been running at full tilt as she had entered the tree-line. This was odd behaviour for a cow, especially during a snow-storm, unless she had been running from something, but what? Although it was unlikely for a predator to be hunting during this weather, it wasn’t impossible, but he could see only one set of tracks. He followed the hoof-prints into the trees and soon reached a wide clearing. The tracks continued into the open space and then they stopped dead. The cow was nowhere to be seen. A cold chill ran down his spine as he recalled how the wolf’s tracks had stopped in a similar fashion, as if the animal had disappeared or had been sucked up into the air. He searched for a while longer but began to lose hope. In the end, he turned back to the homestead with a heavy heart.
The only thing Jerry loved more than his cattle was his family and to lose a cow or bull was not only financially devastating, it was also heart-breaking. He had a profound sense of pride in the breeding and rearing of each of his animals.
Over the course of the winter four more prize cows would disappear in a similar fashion.
Jerry began to spend many nights outdoors, sticking to the shadows, and creeping around his property like a spectre, trying to get the drop on who was taking his cattle. Unfortunately for him, whoever, or whatever, was taking his cattle always seemed to be two steps ahead.
The lights seen on his land were now commonplace, but he could only ever view them from a distance, never up close. No matter how silently he tried to creep towards him, they would simply move away as if they knew he was there.
But then, In the early hours of one morning, after yet another fruitless night, he was making his way back to the homestead when a movement in the periphery of his vision suddenly caught his attention. To his utter shock he saw a black mass hovering above the ground about 100 yards to his left, silhouetted against the pale white snow. Immediately he hunkered down, and quietly observed the strange object as it moved across the land.
To his eyes, it looked like a slightly smaller, snub-nosed version of the F117 Nighthawk. However, he knew it could not have been an F117 because this thing was completely quiet as it floated about 20 feet off the ground, defying gravity. Coloured lights shone from it’s hull, flitting over the snow as if it was searching for something.
The strange activity is concentrated around The Ranch. That is the Epicentre. This is where the bizarre phenomena emanates from. The nearest city is 100 miles away. The Ranch suffers from an ancient curse placed on it by the Djangoweed. Tribe members believe the Ranch is in the path of the Walker. From 1950 to 1987 the Ranch was owned by a mysterious family who fled the property in 3rd December 1987. No member of this family has ever been traced since that date.
The Ranch was then left unattended for ten years until 1997 when it was purchased my Jerry and Jean Sherling. Along with their two children, the couple believed they had found their dream home. The remote property was bordered to the north by a high ridge, which overlooked its sprawling green pastures, wild thickets of woodland, and its flowing creek to the south. The entire estate exuded an almost tranquil beauty that was not lost on the Sherling family.
Jerry was a high-end cattle-breeder and he hoped that the Ranch would provide the space, privacy and security, to take his hobby and livelihood to the next level. He had bought the ranch for an extremely favourable price; far less than it was worth when he signed the paperwork. He accepted the deeds with an exited, disbelieving, look in his eyes. What he now held in the palm of his hand was his ambition, his prospects, his dream. He could not have known that the land he had just purchased would almost destroy him, not just financially, but also psychologically.
When they had first viewed the property, Jerry and Jean had found the main homestead in a state of disrepair, which of course they had anticipated given the length of time it had remained empty. What they did not expect to find, however, was the sheer amount of dead-bolts securing the home, not just on the front and back doors, but in the interior door and windows to. At the front and rear entrances they also found heavy-duty chains attached to huge metal rungs, which were embedded into the walls. It didn’t take a genius to work out that these had been used to chain large, powerful, guard-dogs in place.
Although slightly unsettled by these peculiarities, Jerry and Jean dismissed them, believing that the elderly couple who owned the ranch before them had been paranoid and over-protective. They had seemed rather eccentric, after all; in the real-estate contract they had inserted a number of unusual clauses. For example, the Sherlings were not permitted to dig on the land without prior approval from the previous owners. These irregularities were overlooked by the new owners but somewhere in the back of Jerry’s mind, he could not help wondering what had spooked them to the point of installing this level of security. In time, of course, he would come to understand that this idyllic, stunning acreage was haunting in more ways than just its serene beauty. And, in fact, the weirdness began almost straight away.
On the first day of moving in the Sherling family were unloading their truck in front of their new home when they spotted something on the far side of the pasture to the south.
As it closed the distance they could see it was a wolf, and it was loping gracefully towards them in a series of S-turns. This immediately set Jerry on guard, but it wasn’t just the presence of a wolf that concerned him. Scaling it against distant fence-post and bushes, he could see that this animal was at least three times the size of an average wolf.
The wolf’s behaviour was oddly disarming: it seemed nonchalant, friendly even, rather than aggressive, slowing down and stopping about 50 yards away. It sniffed the air and gazed at the family with intelligent, piercing blue eyes, before continuing on, casually padding towards them without a care in the world. It seemed entirely tame. It wagged its tail as it approached. Jerry’s father, who had been helping unload the truck, bravely reached out to stroke the huge beast.
Sherling senior stood over six-feet tall, and even although he was a big man, the wolf’s head easily came up to the top of his shoulder. It quickly became clear that, despite the wolf’s intimidating size and appearance, it meant no harm. The rest of the family relaxed and walked over to great their strange visitor.
“Maybe it’s someone’s pet?” Jerry ventured, glancing nervously at the corral about 70 feet to his left and wondering if it had been wise to move some of his herd onto the ranch so soon. Inside of the pen stood four of his breeding cows and as many calves. They were all clearly troubled by the wolf’s presence except for one curious youngster which was sticking its neck out between the metal bars, watching the scene unfold. Almost as Jerry had realised the danger the wolf had bounded across the short distance and now had it’s huge jaws clamped around the calf’s head.
The young cow bleated and thrashed wildly as the wolf tried to drag it out of the pen. Jerry grabbed an axe-handle from the back of his truck and rushed over, beating the huge animal’s flanks, and kicking at its hind legs, but the wolf paid no attention and refused to let go.
“Get my Magnum!” he shouted. His son ran across to the truck, grabbed a .357 from the cabin and handed it to his father.
Jerry quickly fired a shot at the wolf’s abdomen, which rang out across the empty pasture, but … it had no effect. The huge animal did not react in any way. It did not stagger or yelp, it did not even flinch, it simply continued to ravage the poor calf.
In his desperation, Terry fired again. Still the gun had no effect. After a third shot, however, the wolf slowly released its grip and backed off about ten feet. The rancher could not believe his eyes. Very few animals could have survived three shots from a .357 Magnum at point-blank range, but this wolf was somehow not even wounded; there was no blood anywhere on its coat.
Finally he took a fourth shot right at the animal’s heart and the wolf retreated another thirty feet. There was something completely unnerving about how it just stood there with an unconcerned look, contemplating whether to attack the calf a second time.
Jerry sensed this and shouted at his son to get his rifle from the house, which he did within a matter of seconds. The wolf remained perfectly still as he took aim with the heavier firearm and he almost felt sorry for the poor beast. A deafening shot echoed across the wilderness as he pulled the trigger and in that moment he knew he had hit his target. But instead of collapsing to the ground in a heap, as it should have done, the wolf simply withdrew another two yards and stood looking at an increasingly unsettled Jerry.
He quickly took another shot and this time a chunk of flesh detached from the animal but even this did not put it down. The wolf took a last unhurried look at the calf, then turned and headed back in the direction it came from.
Jerry was dumbfounded. He knew he could not allow a large predator to remain on his land, if he intended to breed cattle, so he called to his teenage son and the two of them proceeded to go after it. They must have followed the wolf for about half an hour, catching glimpses of it as it ran to the south between patches of cottonwoods and other trees.
The tracks led them through a copse of Russian Olives, the other side of which was the creek, and emerging from the trees, they found themselves on a wide-open mud bank. They could clearly see the wolf’s paw-prints and immediately began to follow them but the tracks abruptly stopped about 40 yards from the water’s edge.
Jerry and his son could not believe their eyes. They were standing in a wide-open expanse of sodden mud, yet the paw-prints ended right in the middle of the bank. The wolf would have needed to have leaped an impossible 40 to 50 yards in either direction to avoid leaving any more tracks. It had seemingly vanished into thin air.
Returning to the homestead, Jerry happened to pick up the piece of flesh that had detached from the animal. He noted that, rather than being fresh and covered in blood, it looked and smelled rotten as though it had been left out in the sun for a few days. In quiet contemplation, he turned his head south and looked over the pasture towards the horizon, wondering what on earth had just happened.
That was the first day.
The night is my world
Before the morning comes, the story's told
I never stop myself to wonder why
I live among the creatures of the night
I haven't got the will to try and fight
So I guess I'll just believe it
I'm living in the forest of my dream
I know the night is not as it would seem
I must believe in something
So I'll make myself believe it
The next few weeks were relatively normal, except for a few strange occurrences which happened around the homestead, all targeted towards Jean. She didn’t report any of these things to her husband at first as she genuinely thought she was losing her mind. For instance, she would come home from shopping, unpack the groceries and put them away and then leave the room to attend to something else. Moments later, she would return to the kitchen and find the groceries all back in the bags as if she’d never unpacked them.
In other occurrences, she would go to have her customary morning shower. Locking the door behind her, she would place her towel and hairbrush on the side. When she finished, she’d step out of the shower only to find her towel and hairbrush missing; they would disappear. A few hours later she would find them in a random location elsewhere in the house.
Things continued like this for sometime and Jean was getting increasingly worried about her memory. That was until Jerry came in one evening demanding who had taken his post-digger. He’d been using it to repair a fence in the pasture and had turned away for a few moments. When he turned back it had gone. Jean explained that she and the children had been in the house all evening and so they helped him to search for it. However, it was nowhere to be seen. A few weeks later it was found hanging in a tree at the other side of the ranch, 75 feet off the ground, which was odd considering this piece of equipment weighed over 70 pounds.
By this time, the Sherlings were beginning to suspect that something was not quite right about the property they had bought.
A nephew comes to stay. Jerry takes the youngster on a tour of the Ranch.
About a week before they re-discovered the post-digger a nephew came to stay with them and Jerry decided to take the youngster on a tour of the Ranch. His son accompanied them and it was well after sunset when they decided to return to the homestead.
A few hundred yards ahead Jerry noticed a set of headlights moving along a distant fence-line, well within the boundaries of his property. He had seen these lights before and assumed someone had taken a wrong turn off the road to the east, but now, seeing them again, he suspected that these people, whoever they were, were hunting on his land without permission.
Jerry decided that he would confront them and immediately began marching in their direction, but as he picked up the pace, the lights began to move away from him. His brisk walk turned into a jog and, as the boys followed suit, he began to wonder why there was no engine sound.
They had gotten to within 100 yards when the lights suddenly lifted off the ground and floated over some distant treetops. Jerry and the boys stopped dead in their tracks, shocked by what they were seeing. The lights silently continued on their course before disappearing out of sight.
During the Autumn, these lights became a frequent occurrence, especially when Jerry began transporting his prize Simmental and Angus cattle onto the Ranch. The activity seemed to escalate with the arrival of his high-end livestock and this is when things started to turn serious.
As the winter months rolled in, severe snow storms battered the region and Jerry found himself out at all hours rounding up cattle that had wandered too far astray.
One late evening he was out on horseback, searching for one of his prize Angus cows, that had been missing for almost 24 hours. He had covered the whole ranch, except for a dense area of woodland to the southwest, which he was now heading towards. As he approached the large outcropping of trees he was relieved to see the unmistakable impressions of hoof prints in the deep snow and he now knew it was only a matter of time before he located the animal.
From the spacing he could determine that she had been running at full tilt as she had entered the tree-line. This was odd behaviour for a cow, especially during a snow-storm, unless she had been running from something, but what? Although it was unlikely for a predator to be hunting during this weather, it wasn’t impossible, but he could see only one set of tracks. He followed the hoof-prints into the trees and soon reached a wide clearing. The tracks continued into the open space and then they stopped dead. The cow was nowhere to be seen. A cold chill ran down his spine as he recalled how the wolf’s tracks had stopped in a similar fashion, as if the animal had disappeared or had been sucked up into the air. He searched for a while longer but began to lose hope. In the end, he turned back to the homestead with a heavy heart.
The only thing Jerry loved more than his cattle was his family and to lose a cow or bull was not only financially devastating, it was also heart-breaking. He had a profound sense of pride in the breeding and rearing of each of his animals.
Over the course of the winter four more prize cows would disappear in a similar fashion.
Jerry began to spend many nights outdoors, sticking to the shadows, and creeping around his property like a spectre, trying to get the drop on who was taking his cattle. Unfortunately for him, whoever, or whatever, was taking his cattle always seemed to be two steps ahead.
The lights seen on his land were now commonplace, but he could only ever view them from a distance, never up close. No matter how silently he tried to creep towards him, they would simply move away as if they knew he was there.
But then, In the early hours of one morning, after yet another fruitless night, he was making his way back to the homestead when a movement in the periphery of his vision suddenly caught his attention. To his utter shock he saw a black mass hovering above the ground about 100 yards to his left, silhouetted against the pale white snow. Immediately he hunkered down, and quietly observed the strange object as it moved across the land.
To his eyes, it looked like a slightly smaller, snub-nosed version of the F117 Nighthawk. However, he knew it could not have been an F117 because this thing was completely quiet as it floated about 20 feet off the ground, defying gravity. Coloured lights shone from it’s hull, flitting over the snow as if it was searching for something.
