The Ridge Road Monster

by Cole Herrold

There's been a phenomenon gaining recognition in the past few years of strange humanoid creatures that appear to be emaciated in form and extremely unnerving. Many Fortean researchers have been collecting and cataloging such accounts, but most researchers really don't have a category in which to put them in aside of organization in a physical sense. They are often viewed as something supernatural, beasts that have no connection to earthly evolution or normal biology. They are often viewed as supernatural entities because of this reason, even though there is in most cases nothing directly supernatural about them. The reason it appears that this is the case is that they are often described as very humanlike in form, which pushes these creatures into a realm most people have never even thought of and, in doing so, making them extremely terrifying.  There are tons of cases in which these creatures are seen wandering wooded sections of the world, mostly in the United States and Canada. One such regionalized case of such a creature is found in a desolate area known as Ridge Road in Pennsylvania.

It was in the 1960s when an area known as Ridge Road in Blair County was a hotbed of strange occurrences. These occurrences were the result of an enigmatic entity that stalked around several homes and woodlands on this stretch of road. The accounts filled the hearts of those who encountered them with terror for generations to come. The bulk of which was thrust upon the Steele family. John and Martha Steele, their son David and their four other children lived in the wooded section of Ridge Road on Blair County. For those who are not familiar with the area Blair County while home to such large cities as Altoona, is intensely encapsulated by woodland. Shadows seem to flicker in and out of the woodlands even during the day, giving the woods a sense of isolation every single time one enters into the tree-lined sections of forests. John was a hard worker in part because he and his family were subsistence farmers and hunters. They had a large garden that stretched across their land, and from it, the family's fruits and vegetables took life throughout the changing season and to add a little more flavor to their meals, John would take his rifle out into the thick green darkness and hunt the game of the land —filling his family with the tender flesh of turkey, pheasant, deer, and anything else he could bag.

As with anyone who lived off the land, John was familiar with the local flora and fauna that are supposed to dwell in this harsh environment. It was in these times in the woods that the father would find solace from the business of raising five children and working the soil. The woods were not the virgin forests though that his ancestors had at one point wandered through, and the ridge was divvied up with cornfields and farmlands, and the once universal forest was attempting to fight back and reclaim its glory. The woods are a magical place to hunters partly because of this eternal struggle and the simplicity of it all, for after we all disappear, it will surely cover the land we once claimed ours. While hunting for John was a year-round necessity, as any hunter will tell you, there is nothing like the first day of buck season. There's a sort of skill to it aside from the serenity that sitting in the woods gives. Even for those who are normally not morning, people are eager to wake before the rise of the sun and head gun in hand into the shadow-shrouded woods. And so, it was on the first day of buck season that John went out into the blue filtered world, gun in hand, ready to score the big one.

The weather was frigid, and the wind beat against his face as the warming light of the sun had yet to defrost the cold blanket of winter’s night. There was a slight dusting of snow on the ground, and John could hear the crunch of his feet while the slight glow from the snow helped illuminate his path to a tree he had staked out weeks before. There was plenty of signs that this was an excellent spot to sit and wait for a deer. A game trail was near the spot, and the telltale signs of buck rubs and deer scrapes were littered here and there, showing that the cervine quarry had indeed frequented the area. He, as quietly as he could, proceeded to climb up the tree, his bright red jacket and coveralls his only protection from the arctic blast on high. Sitting on a particularly strong branch, he sat and waited, scanning the area with just his eyes.

Time passed slowly, and the sun soon began to show its orange hues, slowly illuminating the area. It was from his perch he could see around the dense woodland around him. The sun warmed his icy skin, and it was in this warm glow he attempted to remove the chill that ran down his spine and froze his bones. The warmth would not last, however, as the clouds began to whisply amass above his head. The darkening gray unleashing not a torrential downpour but a slight drizzle which once more began to freeze the woodsman. The woods were surprisingly quiet. There was no chittering of chipmunks, squeaking of mice, or chirping of birds. The only sounds that resonated in the forest were the sound of the rain hitting the slowly melting leaf-littered floor, the sound of the wind, and the squeaking of trees and rustling of leaves. This unearthly silence would be broken, however, by the artillery fire of rifles and shotguns that boomed and echoed throughout the area as some of his other peers were having more luck than he was.

The day passed, and afternoon came. John was discouraged and tired, the feeling many unsuccessful hunters have felt. His stomach rumbled from the wait in the tree as he had hoped to of been back and home with his prize before nightfall. Staring up at the sky, he had decided to return home before the darkness touched the land. So, the unlucky hunter began the slow and careful descent down the tree with his rifle slung to his back; he slowly crept down the trunk of the tree, making sure not to step on weak or young branches, and after a short duration stepped onto the ground. John once more adjusted his rifle and proceeded to take the long walk back to his home. The sky slowly darkened, and it had begun to reach twilight as he got about halfway from his home. He was walking down the path that led to his home, and the sky was just getting darker. He quickened his pace the sound of his heavy boots clunking on the rocks and crunching the leaves below them. He was getting even closer to his home when he saw something moving ahead of him. He stopped and, squinting his eyes, attempted to make out the strange form that swayed in the encroaching darkness.

He stared and realized that the form in front of him was a person. "I can see I'm not the only hunter with no luck today," he thought as he stared at this person that seemed to be empty-handed as whoever it was, was not dragging a deer behind him/her. John squinted some more and soon realized something peculiar about the figure it was not wearing the mandatory orange or red vest that hunters have to wear when out for buck season. "Maybe it's a hiker who doesn't realize the season is in session," he thought, concerned. He began to yell up to the person to see if he needed help and what he was doing out during an extremely dangerous time of the year. He waited, but there was just silence; the figure made no response back to him. Thinking, "maybe he's ignoring me or simply did not hear me," John continued to move towards the figure but soon stopped and stared once again. He called out to the figure once again, and once more, the figure did not respond. He stared at this moving form and soon noticed something even more strange the person was extremely tall and thin, and his proportions seemed off. This was extenuated by the figure's strange gait, which moved like a stick figure or like a bag of bones. The way the creature walked was not in the fluid motion as a person but almost as though every step hurt. The jerky motions were giving it a Silly Symphonies "Skeleton Dance" type quality to it. "Maybe he's hurt, and he's just trying to get out of the woods," he thought. Yet what happened next was something that would show that this was not the case.

The darkness of the canopy of trees was opened just above the figure, and it was in that moment that John's jaw dropped. John could see that whatever this figure was, it was not a man; the unearthly image was not clothed in anything and instead was covered in a sickly gray skin that stretched across its wiry frame. It was in that small amount of light that he could estimate that whatever this skeletal beast was, it was 7ft tall, and its arms reached beyond its knees giving it a diseased ape-like quality to it. The creature turned, and it was in that moment that John's blood froze in his veins. The creature's face was a skull covered in that same sickly gray skin as the rest of its body but there staring at him were two large glowing red eyes that seemed to glow in the darkness. A large skeletal mouth was attached to the face, but this was almost unnoticeable as his attention was drawn to the bright glowing orbs the creature called its eyes.

The two stared at each other, both unmoving. John slowly grabbed his rifle from his shoulder as the creature's red eyeballs continued to unblinkingly stare at the hunter. John stood in the middle of the road staring at the creature for an unthinkably long time. John waited for the moment he surely would come when this creature would run at him to render his flesh asunder. Yet instead, the creature turned away from John and proceeded down the path a little further until it left the path and stepped near a large sinkhole. The creature stood directly into the sinkhole and raised its head to the sky, where it then unleashed a hideous, horrendous howl into the night sky. The mournful wail seemed to echo in the night sky and sent electric chills up and down his back. Then as if things couldn't get more bizarre, the beast began to slowly descend into the hole, almost as if being pulled down on an elevator or trapdoor. The creature's gigantic form slowly dipping down into the muddy pit until only its bright glowing eyes were all John could see, but even these too would disappear down the dirt entrance, and soon all evidence and whisp of the creature were gone.

Needless to say, when the creature was finally out of sight, John made like Meatloaf and got out of there like a bat out of hell. He ran all the way home, stumbling over rocks and slipping down the dirt path until he was running down his yard, stomping up his steps, and slamming the door behind him. His wife in the kitchen at the time saw the disgruntled state of her husband and noticed him shaking as he double bolted the back door. He sat down at the kitchen table, attempting to regain his composure as he continued to shake and quiver. In broken speech, he told his wife of his encounter with the creature. She stared wide-eyed as her husband told the tale of the bizarre skeletal gray beast. The two stayed up all night scanning the woods from their bedroom, searching for whatever he had seen. This went on for some time, and John never once told anyone else about his encounter with the strange gray humanoid. Yet this would not be the last time the family would encounter this monstrous form.

It was nine years later, and John had all but forgotten about his haunting encounter. The years of paranoia had slowly weaned, and life on his property seemed to of returned to normal. He expanded some of his ventures to help aid the family more, and his most current one was being the local dogcatcher. On his property, he had set up several kennels in which any strays or problematic animals in the area would be kept until a suitable home or option was available for them since he loved working with the animals but was always distressed at the thought of euthanizing them. Yet all this was a lot of work, especially with the hunting and farming they already had to do to survive, and so the job of feeding and watering the canine companions twice a day was given to their youngest son David. In the kennels, John made he also kept his family pets their German Shepherd named Bingo and two hunting dogs. David loved taking care of the dogs but hated crossing the road where the kennels were located on the property. The woods were an eerie dark shadow-shrouded place and a place he would try to only go during the daylight hours when the shadows weren't quite so long. Yet even then, he felt as though he was being watched by some unknown source.

It was growing late one night when the dogs in the kennels began to cause an uproar. They howled, bayed, and barked and caused such a racket that John sought to find David. He had asked David if he had fed the dogs, and David straining to remember whether or not he had or not, came to remember that he had put that chore aside to finish some others. His father, irritated by this, sent the young boy out into the pitch black to hurry and finish the job before it got any later. David ran to the site with a large back of feed and bucket of water and went from one kennel to the next, filling the dog bowls and trying to get the chore done as fast as possible so that he could return to the warmth and light of his home. The only type of illumination he had was an old rusty pole light which shone a narrow yellow cone of visibility on the area.

As he went down the line, he soon noticed that the dogs were no longer barking or braying and instead began to lie down, and some started to whimper and whine as though something was bothering them even more than the lack of food and water that brought David into the inky black into the first place. He stepped closer to Bingo, who was towards the end of the line. He was the only one of the dogs who had not returned to their dog boxes. Bingo was growling and barking uncontrollably and was staring back towards where the light was. David moved his eyes, hesitant to turn around. As he started to turn, he noticed that the light was not shining as brightly as it had before, as if some great shadow had blanketed it out. His eyes were soon followed by his body, and as he turned, he saw a sight that he would never forget and would plague his nightmares for years. There standing under the light was a tall, dark slender form. The creature's long arms swung down to its knees and stared at the boy and dogs with a pair of bright glowing red eyes. The figure was so emaciated that it seemed as though the bones were protruding from it, which were tightly covered by gray skin. The boy stared in absolute horror and unleashed a god-awful scream running full tilt back towards the house and in a similar manner as his own father those nine years earlier slammed the door and locked it.

The boy, through tears and gasps of terror and fear, began to explain what he had seen out there and was worried not only of the monster that lurked outside but also of his father, whom he believed would send him once more into the maelstrom to finish the chore he left unfinished. But his parents staring down and listening to their son, began to hug him and comfort him as best they could and had no intentions of sending him back out that night. It was in that moment that John sat David down and began to tell for the first time since those nine years earlier the tale of his own encounter with the Ridge Road Monster.
The family never saw the creature again, but they would never venture out after dark and, even during the day, would rather drive than walk. While they would never see the creature again, the presence of it was still there on the farm and the surrounding woodlands of Ridge Road. The creature's mournful cries could be heard frequently at night, and other people living along the ridge would also claim to see the beast and even allegedly photograph it but as far as we know to this day, the photograph is lost. Farmers in more recent times would claim to see the creature several times, watching them work in the field from its secluded woodland home. Yet further information on these additional encounters is slim.

While there are no other official accounts of this creature, at least that I was able to come across. As stated earlier, accounts of creatures of a similar description have been gaining some commonality in the modern-day. Now skeptics of this kind of phenomenon have often pinpointed these sightings as extensions of modern folklore, particularly when comparing the descriptions of creatures like the Crawlers to online myths and cyber-folklore sharing sites such as those specializing in Creepypastas and SCPs. Creatures from these sites, such as the Rake, Slenderman, or the Shy Guy AKA SCP 096, all have appearances that are extremely similar to this, alluded to the recent phenomenon.

Those of a more esoteric mindset, however, have been arguing that these creatures are, in fact, tulpas or thought forms based on the ever-growing belief in them due to the fallacy through the collective belief that everything on the internet is correct or authentic. Since tales involving the rake, for example, are often written as eyewitness testimony or as second or third-hand testimony giving it a classic urban legend style. It is with this idea of acceptance of these stories from a group of individuals that they essentially will these creatures into existence. This could explain the reason that flaps of sightings of these creatures are on the rise and that they are slowly working their way into Fortean literature as an authentic phenomenon. There's just one problem with this hypothesis, and that is that sightings of similar creatures predate online accounts of such creatures.

The most famous gigantic humanoid type of figure is the infamous Wendigo. In Native American legends, stories, and accounts, the Wendigo is a specific spirit in their culture that possesses individuals with extensions of itself. The result is that the possessed slowly becomes a Wendigo in the physical world that is filled with an incessant hunger for human flesh. The physical variation of the Wendigo is often described as a humanoid type of creature that seems extremely sickly and appears to be starving regardless of how much it eats. The Wendigo, in some cases, has ice that surrounds its spine and more commonly around its heart. Wendigos can reach incredible heights, often appearing as giants in the frozen landscapes they call home. There are many variations in Wendigo legend and encounters, and some can firmly be placed in Bigfoot territory, but the spirit connected variety is a totally different breed of cat. The Wendigo as a case is extremely complex, and at times downright confusing phenomenon there are several newspaper sources describing people who have committed cannibalistic actions and were claimed by tribes of the area and themselves to be a Wendigo, then there are sources describing folktales with talking animals that feature Wendigos, and bizarre supernatural battles written about where it's on a spiritual kind of plane. Then there is, of course, the almost God head type behavior of the spiritual aspect, which is comparable to Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit, seeing as they are three beings but the same being. Wendigo’s sort of follows this logic as well, for there is the ultimate spirit wendigo that breaks itself off essentially to possess people where it's a fight for control over the body much like classic demonic possession, and a physical change occurs in the host resulting in a cannibalistic man who overtime transforms into the physical creature which is also a Wendigo.

While a firm believer in the existence of this phenomenon, whether it be a psychological one due to the harsh environment from which these tales and accounts originate or from a potentially supernatural one where such possession does occur. I never viewed outside of the sasquatch variety of Wendigos as Cryptids. Cryptids, by definition, are animals yet to be discovered by science. They are often strongly hinted at to be of flesh and blood, and with the Wendigo, this really does not fit the bill. Wendigo is a spirit and belongs more in a study of Demonology or some other esoteric subject; even with the host transformation, we know that the origin of the creature was a human, so there's no real differentiation of species it really belongs elsewhere than in the halls of Cryptozoology where a lot of people have placed it. A lot of the descriptions we even see where people try to argue that this could be some sort of cervine humanoid or something akin to that is not accurate in Native American culture and something many scholars believe to be a western influence.

With that said, there could be something similar appearance-wise that could occur from a biological standpoint. The biological idea for this is something we see in several species of fish and amphibians that live in caves. They lose pigmentation due to a lack of melanin and adapt to living in the dark. Now, this idea is not a new one films featuring similar creatures such as the underground horror classic The Descent or the H. P. Lovecraft story “The Beast in the Cave” or H. G. Well’s Morlocks from The Time Machine features the idea of either an individual or race of humans essentially adapting to their environment and changing because of this. A lot of their appearances in these stories do match what many eyewitnesses see when they encounter these creatures. In fact, the Ridge Road Monster is not far off aside from the size of how these creatures are often portrayed, and the fact that John saw this creature descend into a hole in the ground could push this hypothesis to being a more plausible answer. Now, this hypothesis is based entirely on the idea that a relative species to us evolved or co-evolved to live in cave systems resulting in the Gollum-like creatures we occasionally see on the surface. However, rarely are these creatures encountered in caves but rather in forests at or near nighttime. Now this timeframe of sightings would lend credence to something either nocturnal or something that cannot handle the harsh rays of the sun, but all this is speculation. While there is tons of fossil evidence of early ancestors of Homo living in caves as shelter, there is no evidence to support the cave system dwelling hominid idea.

The Idea of a subterranean humanoid is commonly described in film and literature.

While I firmly am a flesh and blood guy, I am open to alternative ideas when the other possibilities fall short. While the cave system dwelling, the hominid hypothesis is not impossible, there are some other features about this creature that seem to hint at something otherworldly, namely the red eyes and skeletal frame. Glowing red eyes is common in Fortean phenomenon from Mothman to Bigfoot to hellhounds. There are countless cases of strange creatures and entities with this property. While Albinism does give bright red eyes in the animal world, it does not create the glowing effect that is so commonly reported. Eyeshine is a feature that some have argued could explain this effect, but with a creature that is, for all intents and purposes, a hominid, this is unless it evolved to develop that feature unlike us, impossible. This creature's eyes are basically like the monster from the tiny door in the classic Tales from the Darkside episode "Inside the Closet."  It's a bizarre quality and something that does not occur naturally, as far as we know. The creature's skintight frame, which might be advantageous for an underground environment when trying to get through small crevices, is paradoxed by its gigantic stature, which seems unadvantageous for a cave lifestyle. Which, of course, seems to hint towards a more supernatural origin.

The glowing or natural red-eye phenomenon is something outside albinism a rarity in the animal kingdom and associated all the time with the macabre.

In Patty A. Wilson’s book Monsters in Pennsylvania, where the account of this creature originated from, she talks about how famed British paranormal investigator Elliott O'Donnell encountered an extremely similar entity in the Hudson Valley in the early portion of the 1900s. She also describes how in South America, similar creatures are reported, which are believed to be environmental spirits. These creatures could potentially be related to the spiritual Wendigo then since the Wendigo is associated with snow and ice -primal forces of nature. There's also the chance these creatures could simply be some other supernatural entity totally opposite of the Wendigo, and this is just a common form these supernatural entities tend to take.

Another possibility still attached to the spectral plane is that this entity is not of Native American tradition but a demonic force. Demons are often depicted as creatures in a multitude of forms, many with a variety of disturbing features that would fit in some cases what is being reported here. The fact that John seemed perturbed by the entity before totally seeing it is often something connected with negative energies as allegedly they feed on fear and distress. This also goes for John Keel's ultraterrestrials which could be another possibility for what we are seeing since this creature seems to deliberately instill fear, at least in David's and his canine companion’s case.

There's a lot about this case that's bizarre. There are elements that imply a biological creature, but then there are those features like the eyes and size and build that seems so bizarre that it appears almost as though it would have to be supernatural. We are left, as with most cases, with more questions than answers and some of the more ambiguous elements of the encounters, such as how the creature descended into the hole in John's encounter, muddy whether this is something supernatural or something biological. I'm open to both ideas with this case, but unfortunately, finding out any more information from John or his wife will be impossible, for, at the time of Monsters in Pennsylvania's conception, they had both unfortunately passed away. So, clearing up any ambiguity is impossible, thus leaving us still pondering on one of the most bizarre mysteries in the history of Pennsylvania.

Quick Facts:

Species/Potential Species: Hominid? Supernatural entity?

Location: Ridge Road, Blair County, Pennsylvania

Sighted: 1960s-1970s

Works Cited:

Monsters of Pennsylvania: Mysterious Creatures in the Keystone State by Patty A. Wilson

Wendigo Lore: Monsters, Myths, and Madness by Chad Lewis and Kevin Lee Nelson