The Night Grabbers
By Cole Herrold
Now, this case, I must stress, is a bit of
a testimonial. This is an incident that occurred to me in the summer of 2017,
and it has been with me for a while. For those who don't know, I, aside from
writing as complete as possible articles on old cases, do fieldwork in
investigating claims and areas said to be home to cryptids, aliens, and ghosts.
Over the course of my time investigating such cases, I’ve had several strange
occurrences. While following up a Bigfoot encounter in Bald Eagle State Park, I
heard a strange set of bipedal footprints that stopped when I looked in the
direction of the noise and started when I looked away. I've, while
investigating haunted locations, recorded several possible EVPs and had strange
sensations when encountering allegedly haunted objects. Yet of all the
encounters over the years that I've experienced, this is perhaps the most unsettling.
This encounter is one that I had not talked about openly for a long time simply
because one of believability and two because it honestly bothers me. I,
however, recently opened up and talked about it openly for the first time, and
upon talking about the experience, I felt that I had to have some sort of
written account of the incident.
Most people know about the beginning of
this incident, but the follow-up is something that I have kept private even to
my family. I was a delivery driver at the time of this, and I was driving down
Snydertown Road on the outskirts of Sunbury, Pennsylvania. I have a tendency as
I drive to look out into the woods and fields when I drive because I love
nature, and I always hope to see an animal like a turkey or fox. As I was doing
this, I looked to my left, where there was a telephone line, and my attention
was drawn to a strange object hovering above. The object was small; I would
estimate something about the size of an ottoman. It was a pulsing object of
white light. The best way to describe it was like a strobe, but there was some
form behind it that was noticeable. My initial thought was maybe it was a down
line or some sort of electrical discharge but being as this was still day, I
could see the area clearly and noted that there were no downed lines. My next
thought was maybe this was ball lightning, but from what I knew about ball
lightning, it tended to form close to the ground, and none seemed to, at least
to my knowledge, pulse-like the object I saw. I continued to drive because I
was in the middle of a delivery, and while perplexed, I decided I'd continue
with the delivery and id come back to check the area on my way back. The drive
to the delivery and back to the location took about 5 minutes, and upon
returning to the location, the object was gone. I slowed my car down and looked
for any further evidence of the object but could find nothing, and while looking,
I could see that the light would not have been reflected or come from some home
or similar structure. Realizing that there was nothing more I could do at this
given time, I returned to the store and went on working.
That night I woke up at around 2:00 in the
morning and noted that my arm was stretched up above my body. I sleep on a futon,
and I have woken up and found myself sitting and laying in all sorts of
positions, but this time it was different. I lifted my head up and noticed that
my arm was attached to something dark in color. As I stared at this, I looked
up and noticed what was attached to my arm. There were three dark black
figures. The figures were about 3-4ft tall, and they had heads the shape of
peanuts and wiry thin bodies. There were no noticeable facial features as I
stared at the beings. All three beings had their arms extended and had grabbed
my arm at the exact same point. I could not move initially, and they too did
not move, but eventually, as I got a full realization at just what I was
seeing, the trio vanished. This was exceptionally odd because they seemed so
physical in their form. They were not like shadow men or ghostly, but they
seemed to simply disappear. As if they realized I was aware of them. I stared
in utter disbelief and managed to put my arm down and, almost in an
uncharacteristic response, proceeded to go straight back to sleep.
The following day I woke up having thought
it was a dream, but upon looking down at my arm, I found a large black and blue
mark in the area where the beings grabbed me. I was still reeling from what I
had just experienced the day and night prior. I, as a researcher, felt completely
unnerved. It's one thing to be interested in the unknown; it's something
completely different when it happens to you. In Fortean research, there's an
idea that if you open yourself up to the phenomena, it becomes aware of you,
and this is a terrifying prospect. During this time frame, I did not pick up a
book or watch a tv show on the paranormal for fear of a possible recurrence. As
I thought hard about this incident, I began to wonder whether this was
something psychological in origin. I personally am an avid believer in the
plausibility of a lot of Fortean phenomena, and this branches over into general
acceptance that this is a normal and real phenomenon. Yet the Keelian aspects
that I alluded to I do not think are plausible. The universality that all
phenomena are the same to me just seemed to be an easy out at best or a lack of
critical thinking at worst, and that with the ideas I was treading on, it was
very selfish as if I was putting myself into the center of this world. It's
from this that I took a step back and attempted to think about it from a more skeptical
and open view.
My first thought was that there was
nothing clearly that could explain the object seen earlier that day, and so I
do believe it is unexplained and fits the initial criteria of a UFO. I’ve gone
to that location countless times, and I have never found a rational answer to
the object. I’ve told the UFO account many times because it was so unique. The
beings I've come to call the Night Grabbers, however, I have come to think we're
probably an example of Sleep Paralysis. I’ve never had an incident of sleep
paralysis before or after this account, but a lot of what I experienced that
night was very similar to sleep paralysis. The fact that this occurred while lying
in bed, waking up and seeing a strange figure, and that at first, I had no
control of my limbs was very similar to what is normally described with sleep
paralysis. Now the reason I think this occurred was because of my initial UFO
sighting; it would be easy to say that this was a failed abduction attempt or
something similar but its also possible that my mind created this scenario in a
dreamlike state because of the fact that the UFO was so prevalent in my thoughts
that day.
Now, of course, to give the devil his due,
I will say that there is the possibility that what I experienced was something
Fortean there are a lot of similarities to what I experienced and to what
others have over the years, and it does not only fit the traditional
extraterrestrial encounters but also a phenomenon that is known as bedtime
visitors these entities are also often associated with sleep paralysis even
though the entities I possibly encountered do not match the shadow man, Hatman,
grinning men that are frequently reported but countless other types are also
said to occur and are known as other bedtime visitors. The same goes for
faeries, as faerie abduction is something that has been reported from time to
time, and in many ways, how the creatures behaved and grabbed seemed more
unskilled than what one would think of something that's used to interacting or
possibly taking humans. Even though I feel what I experienced was not something
unknown, and in a way, this comforts me, I also have to accept the possibility
that what I experienced could very well have been something of this caliber.
So this is the end of my account. I have
no clear idea of what happened that day. I'm sure what I experienced in regard
to the Night Grabbers was simply an example of sleep paralysis, but as for the
UFO, that was something else. I saw it during the day; it was a pulsing orb; it
seemed to have some sort of physical form behind the pulsing that I could tell
was there but could not exactly make out what it was made of. The relation
between the two clearly is anyone's guess, and its something I deal with every
day as I often wake up in the middle of the night expecting to see these beings
again if they were real, but they never returned, which at times is even eerier
as it makes me wonder was this a one-off encounter that I experienced in
actuality or was it my only time having sleep paralysis. I have no idea. I
guess the end purpose of this is to have some official record of this
experience as well as if someone else experienced this specific type of entity
or had a similar experience, some kind of corroboration not only of mine but
their experience as well. So if there's anyone else out there who had an
experience like this, definitely comment or let me know.
Quick Facts:
Species/Potential Species: unknown
Location: Sunbury, Northumberland County,
Pennsylvania
Sighted: Late Summer 2017
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