I live in Alaska and during this time of year it is extremely cold outside. Tonight it is a tolerable 19 degrees Farenheit and the moon is hanging full and bright in a dark, clear sky. Some nights are far colder. The nights are always the worst. The temperature can drop drastically from lets say zero degrees to a mind numbing twenty degrees below zero when the sun goes down. I live in Anchorage, so it honestly isn't even as cold here as a few more miles north in Fairbanks or even farther like Nome where the temperatures commonly drop far lower than that. My Father works in Kotzebue where the temperature was literally 60 degrees below zero last winter and it hung in there for while. When I say the nights are the worst it is because of this. It is dark and so god awful cold that if you're outside in it even for a few moments and standing still, frightening images of your frozen stiff body creep into your mind. "What if I got stuck out here?" you can't help but think."What if the car broke down and I was alone on the highway until someone happened to drive by and see me?" you wonder."What if no one came?"
My Seventeen year old son rides his bike everywhere he goes. I have to beg him to let me drop him off if he needs to go somewhere during this time of year. He is at the age where he is invincible in his mind.
Last month he rode his bike a few blocks away to visit a friend. It was an extremely cold night even though he was bundled up in arctic gear up to his eyebrows. It grew late and he knew he had to get home before I skinned him.
He climbed on his bike and began to pedal through our quiet neighborhood towards home. Suddenly from "all around him" he says, he heard a sound that he can only describe as a type of scream. It was so loud that he was sure that whatever the sound was coming from was extremely close to him but he couldn't exactly pinpoint where it was coming from. It was a horrible gutteral type sound as if something "were dying". The hair stood up on his neck and he froze to the spot in absolute terror. The scream stopped and all was dead quiet. All he could hear was his own ragged breath and the beating of his heart. He looked around him and again the scream sounded, but this time it was even more horrible sounding and louder than before. He said that at first he thought that maybe it was a bear in some type of agonizing pain, but he knew no bears would be in the middle of our city during hibernation period. Then he wondered if it was a dying human who had crawled into the bushes near where he was and was sounding some type of ungodly death knell. He became extremely frightened as the sound seemed to grow louder and more insistent. He said that it seemed like whatever was making the sound was making it expressly for him to hear. He began to hear within the scream what he insists was a growl or a type of gnarling sound...like "werewolves make in the movies" he said, but "not like a real wolf or dog at all". He became suddenly full of more adrenaline than he had ever felt before and tore the street up with his bike as he flew towards home. The whole while he could hear the screaming as if it were actually following him. Then, when he came within a block of home, the sound stopped. He tore home and nearly peed his pants trying to get the key into the lock and into the house. He burst through the door and began to pour out his story. Now, my son is about the most easy going kid on this planet. He is truly the epitome of "kicked back". Things just do not rile him up. But this did. I have never seen him like that.
Of course I sought to ease his mind and asked a hundred and one questions. "was it a dog, an injured dog? an injured cat or two cats going at it?" (anyone who has heard cats fighting or having sex knows exactly what sound I am talking about) "Was it a drunk in the bushes crying as he was freezing to death? had someone been hit by a car? was it a hurt moose or a Bull moose looking for a mate?" (moose are quite commonly hanging around in Anchorage during the winter because they come down from the mountains in search of food) He was adamant that it couldn't have possibly been any of those things. He could not describe it well. He couldn't make the sound at all himself and said that he didn't believe any human or animal could make that sound. It made his skin crawl he said. He normally comes home and goes to bed quite shortly thereafter, but on this night he was wide awake and couldn't stop thinking about this sound. I actually got in our car and drove to the area that he was in when he heard the sound and I turned off the car. It was dead quiet, but I must say it was somewhat creepy. It was so cold. so spooky out there. The Northern Lights (Aroura Borealis) were bright in the sky, swirling in intoxicating patterns. (it seems like the colder the night air, the clearer and more showy the light show) I remembered the old stories that I learned from some of my Tlinget Indian (pronounced KLINK-ET or sometimes CLING-GET) friends about the lights at one time being seen as evil and portending doom. Tlinget indians are actually from southeast Alaska, where I am originally from and rarely get to see the lights like we do this far north. I remebered stories of the Kushtaka that I learned from my little Tlinget friends when I was a girl and how they (Kushtaka) would announce their arrival with an unearthly scream. My four oldest children are half Tlinget indian. (my first husband was Tlinget) "What did my son hear?" I thought to myself as I drove back home having heard nothing at all myself.
According to Tlinget Legend, The kushtaka harvest the souls of unprotected humans,These victims must spend eternity in semibestial form, slipping between the earthly and spiritual worlds, stealing more souls.
Could it have been a Banshee? Who knows. All I know is my son has added the experience to the list of the scariest things that have ever happened to him.
My Seventeen year old son rides his bike everywhere he goes. I have to beg him to let me drop him off if he needs to go somewhere during this time of year. He is at the age where he is invincible in his mind.
Last month he rode his bike a few blocks away to visit a friend. It was an extremely cold night even though he was bundled up in arctic gear up to his eyebrows. It grew late and he knew he had to get home before I skinned him.
He climbed on his bike and began to pedal through our quiet neighborhood towards home. Suddenly from "all around him" he says, he heard a sound that he can only describe as a type of scream. It was so loud that he was sure that whatever the sound was coming from was extremely close to him but he couldn't exactly pinpoint where it was coming from. It was a horrible gutteral type sound as if something "were dying". The hair stood up on his neck and he froze to the spot in absolute terror. The scream stopped and all was dead quiet. All he could hear was his own ragged breath and the beating of his heart. He looked around him and again the scream sounded, but this time it was even more horrible sounding and louder than before. He said that at first he thought that maybe it was a bear in some type of agonizing pain, but he knew no bears would be in the middle of our city during hibernation period. Then he wondered if it was a dying human who had crawled into the bushes near where he was and was sounding some type of ungodly death knell. He became extremely frightened as the sound seemed to grow louder and more insistent. He said that it seemed like whatever was making the sound was making it expressly for him to hear. He began to hear within the scream what he insists was a growl or a type of gnarling sound...like "werewolves make in the movies" he said, but "not like a real wolf or dog at all". He became suddenly full of more adrenaline than he had ever felt before and tore the street up with his bike as he flew towards home. The whole while he could hear the screaming as if it were actually following him. Then, when he came within a block of home, the sound stopped. He tore home and nearly peed his pants trying to get the key into the lock and into the house. He burst through the door and began to pour out his story. Now, my son is about the most easy going kid on this planet. He is truly the epitome of "kicked back". Things just do not rile him up. But this did. I have never seen him like that.
Of course I sought to ease his mind and asked a hundred and one questions. "was it a dog, an injured dog? an injured cat or two cats going at it?" (anyone who has heard cats fighting or having sex knows exactly what sound I am talking about) "Was it a drunk in the bushes crying as he was freezing to death? had someone been hit by a car? was it a hurt moose or a Bull moose looking for a mate?" (moose are quite commonly hanging around in Anchorage during the winter because they come down from the mountains in search of food) He was adamant that it couldn't have possibly been any of those things. He could not describe it well. He couldn't make the sound at all himself and said that he didn't believe any human or animal could make that sound. It made his skin crawl he said. He normally comes home and goes to bed quite shortly thereafter, but on this night he was wide awake and couldn't stop thinking about this sound. I actually got in our car and drove to the area that he was in when he heard the sound and I turned off the car. It was dead quiet, but I must say it was somewhat creepy. It was so cold. so spooky out there. The Northern Lights (Aroura Borealis) were bright in the sky, swirling in intoxicating patterns. (it seems like the colder the night air, the clearer and more showy the light show) I remembered the old stories that I learned from some of my Tlinget Indian (pronounced KLINK-ET or sometimes CLING-GET) friends about the lights at one time being seen as evil and portending doom. Tlinget indians are actually from southeast Alaska, where I am originally from and rarely get to see the lights like we do this far north. I remebered stories of the Kushtaka that I learned from my little Tlinget friends when I was a girl and how they (Kushtaka) would announce their arrival with an unearthly scream. My four oldest children are half Tlinget indian. (my first husband was Tlinget) "What did my son hear?" I thought to myself as I drove back home having heard nothing at all myself.
According to Tlinget Legend, The kushtaka harvest the souls of unprotected humans,These victims must spend eternity in semibestial form, slipping between the earthly and spiritual worlds, stealing more souls.
Could it have been a Banshee? Who knows. All I know is my son has added the experience to the list of the scariest things that have ever happened to him.
