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.
