It Looked Like A Cat With No Skin Or Ears

After their friend moved to an old house near the border of New York by the Berkshires in late May of 1998 - a forum user going by the name of '*Overandunder*' used to often go and visit him, and he always used to be in a good mood. However, one day '*about four months later*', they went to visit him and instead found him terrified. At first he refused to say what he had seen, saying that they wouldn't believe it - but he divulged a bizarre incident after they pestered him about it '*for a while*'.

## The Incident

Eventually, he came clean and said that he had seen '*something sitting on his stairway*' in his two-storey house. He had stumbled upon the enigmatic entity while going for a drink at '*around 3:00 am*' - and because it was so dark all he could make out of the thing was its shadowy figure. Despite this, he could still see its '*glowing*' eyes. The forum-user didn't believe the twisted tale at first, and so decided to stay for the night. They didn't encounter any anomalous animals that night - and the phenomenon seemed to cease for a few weeks. The friend was back to his normal state.

Come November, the forum user and a few of their other friends decided to plan a camping trip. Because it was in the Berkshires, they decided that the previously-paranormally-infested house '*would be a great area to prepare*'. Along with some of their friends, the forum user decided to stay the night at the house. They woke up at '*around 12:30*' to go use the upstairs bathroom. They got to the staircase before they saw it. Displayed in the moonlight, there was a ghastly apparition sitting right in front of them.

They described it as resembling '*a cat with no skin or ears*' and a really long tail and glowing eyes. It was apparently much larger than a cat, and it just sat there staring at the witness. The witness '*screamed like a six-year-old girl and ran back into the room*' where they obviously woke everyone else up. Everyone asked them what had happened - and they told them '*there was a freak animal in the house*'. Nobody believed them except the person who had previously seen the shadowy creature.

The next morning, the entire group combed the house in search of the feline freak, armed to the teeth with '*brooms, mop sticks, and kitchen knives*'. As seems inevitable in these sorts of stories, '*there was no animal*'. At first, Overandunder thought that it must've been a rat, but they've never seen a rat of that size before or since in that area. The entity was sitting '*just like a cat*'. Although they haven't been to their friend's house for a while, they still call him sometimes - and he says that he still sometimes catches sight of the creature in the same place.

## More Than One Way to Skin a Cat

From a skeptical point of view, I would argue that this creature could've been a wounded and mangey opossum, because that could account for the long tail and the size being above that of a rat. It could appear to have no ears due to a wound or birth defect, and opossums certainly have eyeshine, which might be triggered by the light of the moon under which the creature was illuminated. Then again, how would it have gotten out of the house so quickly? The fact that it seems to continually manifest, as the forum user said that other users of the website could come and visit the location of the incident, suggests that the monstrous moggy was more likely a zooform entity of some kind.

## Source

https://web.archive.org/web/20150924164430/http://paranormal.about.com/library/blstory\_february06\_23.htm