This event happened to me three years ago. It was the first week in August and my husband, two young sons, and I were camping along
the Missouri river at the Lake Oahe reservoir in La Plant, South Dakota. At the point where we camped there was a road the ran down
the hill and terminated in the lake. This road ran on underwater to an old town that used to be the agency for the
Cheyenne River Sioux reservation, and was flooded out by the Army Corps of Engineers when they created the reservoir in the 1950's.
The town is now under thirty feet of water -- including many of the graves.
Anyway, as I said we were camping there for four nights. On the evening of the third night, I had had a particularly difficult time
getting my boys to sleep. By the time they were completely asleep ( my husband was too by this time) it was quite late, the middle
of the night to be exact.
The further down the road I got the more nervous I became, and when I reached my destination I decided that this was going to be the
fastest bathroom break I ever took! There was a clump of choakcherry bushes right next to the latrine, and softly at first then with
increasing volume I began to hear the sound of voices coming from the bushes.
Well, I was scared so I rushed back over to the road and began to walk back up toward our camp. I had gone no more than five feet when
there was a hard thud behind me. It sounded like someone jumping down from a height on to the road, which made no sense because we
were in the middle of the open, treeless, plains! I about jumped out of my skin and began (out of instinct) to turn and see what was
behind me.
Suddenly, a thought went through my head that I did NOT want to see what was behind me and I did not turn around. I continued
walking up the road but the whole way I could feel the presence of the thing behind me. I could hear its footsteps as though they
were almost on top of me. The closer I got to my tent, the more terrified I became, and it seemed to me that this thing wanted me to
turn around and see it; but fear of what might happen to me if I looked kept my eyes facing forward.
Then as soon as I reached the campsite the thing was gone. I hurried into my tent where I spent the whole night huddled awake in my
sleeping bag. I will never again go out at night like that while we camp. I don't know what that thing was but my guess is that it
has something to do with the flooded-out town and graves. At any rate I never want to experience it again!
