Cryptids in Kansas - Tall, Thin Creatures in the Woods

This is a report from one of our readers of a creature he saw in the woods that still gives him the creeps. It really doesn't fit into other catagories, so it has it's own. I did change the name of the road due to privacy issues for the landowner. If you find yourself down a dark and spooky road....keep your eyes open.

The Thing on Unknown Lane

A few years ago, on my twentieth birthday, I was out driving around late at night with two close friends. The three of us love to visit creepy places, but that night we had no intention of finding ourselves anywhere spooky.

That didn’t exactly go to plan.

We found ourselves in rural Wabaunsee County, just north of the Wabaunsee/Lyon County line, at an intersection. I looked to my left and saw a road, one of those good-ol’ fashioned Kansas minimum maintenance roads. It looked rocky as hell, and the trees completely encased the road, making it look like a tunnel. It was pitch-dark, not even the moonlight could penetrate through the canopy of trees. So, naturally, we took a left and found ourselves on what a simple road-sign identified as “Unknown Lane”.

We continued to drive up that road, which became more and more rocky with each passing foot until it felt as if we were off-roading. Huge rocks, a steep incline up the side of a hill, and a sharp drop-off waiting for us if I drifted too far to the right. We drove for a few minutes in silence, just taking in the feeling of near-crushing darkness around us. Finally, we emerged into a clearing, and to our right, I immediately saw a decrepit house, small, two stories high, with a look as if it had been unoccupied for decades. The road suddenly ended just in front of the house, and as we parked, we started to notice that we had stumbled into what appeared to be an abandoned ranch. In the darkness, I could make out the house, a few smaller outbuildings, an old camper trailer, and an ancient rusted farm truck. Seems like a great setting for a horror movie, right?

What are three people with no sense of self-preservation to do when faced with a creepy abandoned ranch? You guessed it, we parked, shut off the Jeep, and stepped out into the icy January night. Almost immediately, something felt wrong. At first it was the classic “I’m being watched” feeling, but as I stepped further away from my vehicle, it legitimately felt as if I was being beckoned into the shadows. I’ve felt uncomfortable in haunted places before, but this was different. It was a sort of “f*ck around and find out feeling”, and I most certainly did not want to f*ck around, nor did I want to find out. My friends clearly felt the same, and we all made an about-face and got back into the Jeep pretty quickly. As we drove off back down that dark, winding road, the ranch left us a parting gift.

THUNK

Yep, something straight-up slammed into the driver’s side door. No clue what it could have been, but it was loud enough to startle the three of us. We completed the remainder of our journey with wide eyes and pounding chests. The rest of the night, that place was all we talked about. We never saw or heard anything other than that bang on my door, yet the literal air in that place felt oppressive. I wanted to go back.

I mentioned the place to a coworker the next day, and she was immediately interested, and we decided to make the drive up there after we finished our shift that day. By the time we arrived at the road late that evening, it was dark, and the moonlight reflected off the fresh snow on the ground. I pulled the Jeep back past the house and began to turn around so that we could be ready to go if needed. As I turned, my headlights swept across the trees that surrounded the property, and that was when I saw something that still gives me chills to this day.

There in the beam of my headlights, about 50 feet ahead of us, was something upright, very tall, extremely thin, and grayish, running through the trees at a speed that no human would be able to go, given the terrain. My coworker and I only saw it for a split second before it disappeared back into the trees, out of our sight. It was too tall, too thin, and too fast to be a human, a deer, or any other kind of animal I can think of. As soon as we saw it, the feeling in the air changed to one of pure terror. We felt as if we were no longer at the top of the food chain, as if we were in the presence of something much, much more powerful than ourselves. Something beyond our understanding.

I’ve worked as an Army medic, a police officer, and an EMT. I’ve seen some pretty horrific stuff, yet I can say for sure that this was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. I’m still hesitant to go back there to this day, and I still don’t know exactly what it was that I saw.

Here’s what I do know-

That area of the Flint Hills was long inhabited by the native Kansa tribes hundreds of years ago, before the expansion of settler territory drove them from their home. Battles between natives and settlers took place in these areas as well. The land that ranch sits on is rife with history, some undoubtedly tragic. Who knows what type of spiritual energies may still reside there.

What’s my advice to anybody going to a place like this? Respect the history. Respect the land. Remember that long, long ago, somebody called that land home, somebody’s spirits owned the ground and the sky.

Don’t take that lightly.

-SR