Werewolf on Hallowed Ground

The woman stood bolt upright from the pews as the minister walked past her, and let out an ungodly scream. Her head and body started to contort to a hideous shape as her scream transitioned into a hideous, growling roar. Without any physical transition sequence visible, the woman's body suddenly morphed into that of a monstrous creature with a canine face, deer-like hooves and a muscular form covered in grey hair. Its roaring continued for several minutes, and everyone sat there in terrified silence before they all started to pray.

## The Church Grim

Twenty-three years later, in April of 2015, Ken and Sara (pseudonyms) spoke to cryptozoological investigator Linda Godfrey to recount their story of something harrowing which they had witnessed (along with hundreds of others) in a quaint Midwestern Baptist church during a Sunday worship service. This church was located just near the edge of a small town, and surrounded by a flat area with rivers and a small lake. The extraordinary story was researched extensively by Godfrey, but the witnesses only allowed their story to be published under the condition of having strict anonymity provided to them. The couple were in their sixties, and Godfrey described them as being extremely credible, having interviewed them several times and thoroughly investigated every aspect of their story - chasing up and successfully retrieving any verifiable details. Ken was a Vietnam veteran who had worked in the construction industry for many years, while Sara was a housewife who had been working part-time as a maintenance person for the church at the time - the very site where she would eventually come face-to-face with the unknown and quite possibly demonic. This forsaken church seemingly no longer exists, and the land on which it once stood has changed owners many times since the incident.

Now, we go to that fateful Sunday morning in 1992. It was a strange-feeling day according to Sara - and a '*big-boned*' middle-aged woman who was relatively new to the church (having been in attendance for less than a month) wandered into the room and sat quite close to Sara and her family on the front row of the pews, just about 10ft away from them. They had a good view of her among the other approximately 225 churchgoers because of the way in which the pews were arranged in a semicircular formation. The minister was on the stage at the front of the church giving a sermon, standing just about 20ft away from where the woman was sat. Ken found that his eyes were continually drawn to the woman, and that she seemed to have a '*very strange grayness*' about her - he could just sense that there was something very odd about her. Sara was feeling the same strange pull to the mysterious woman as her partner, and she described her as having dark hair and '*very ordinary*' features. She was wearing black slacks and a white shirt, and seemed to be fidgeting quite a lot.

   The minister finished up his sermon and left the podium, walking through the congregation past the strange woman to go and sit with his wife and family. He grabbed his Bible and papers before stepping off the stage and heading towards the woman - seemingly triggering her to suddenly stand bolt upright and let out a '*bloodcurdling*' scream. She contorted her head and body in a grotesque (but undescribed) fashion before suddenly changing into a wolf-like creature. Ken described the beast as somehow coming out of the woman. He went on to describe it as a bipedal creature with legs he compared to the Greek god Pan. It stank of sulphur, and its hideous roars and screams echoed out across the entire church. Sara went into more detail with her description of the bizarre scene before her, specifying that the transformation of the woman into the monster had been instantaneous and without any sort of visible metamorphosis. The woman's clothes had seemingly completely vanished, seeing as there was no sign of any of the garments she had previously had on on the body of the monster. She represented the face of the creature as not actually being that of a wolf and as instead resembling a baboon's. Its eyes were solid black in colour, and its teeth had grown four inches. The thing's grey-furred body was '*massively built*', tapering down to a thin waist before going back out into muscular thighs. The bottom parts of the legs were thinner, and ended in cloven hooves of about five to six inches in size.

As the minister walked past her - presumably in the moments before her transformation - the monster which emerged from her put its claws up while keeping its elbows at its waist and dropped its head to face the ground before turning it from side to side. Its hands were raised up and its fingers were curved, according to Sara. Ken got the impression that the thing was truly evil - and said that it seemed very angry, but also to be in a '*protective stance*'. Interestingly, he compared the fangs of the creature to that of a Vietnamese deer (presumably something like a muntjac). The beast's roaring lasted for several minutes. The entire congregation was paralysed with terror - just sitting there before starting to feverishly pray. Ken said that he thinks the entity would've turned violent if it weren't for the church setting. Sara's daughter asked her what it was, to which she told her not to look at it and that it was just a woman '*having an epileptic fit*'. The eighteen-year-old daughter immediately called this out to be obviously false, and asked if her mother thought she was stupid.

The minister was the first to react to the monster, stopping walking and putting out his hand before confidently saying '*Satan, you have no authority here*'. To this, the beast started growling and panting as if it was deciding whether to fight or flee - and using this bought time, an usher named Tom came up behind it and grabbed it to take it down onto a pew. Four other ushers rushed to the scene and helped Tom hold the entity down, and there was an '*enormous scream*' as the monster vanished just as quickly as it had appeared. Tom was left in the pew with the woman - restored to her normal, clothed appearance - almost in his lap. The group of ushers were then able to drag the woman off into aanother room while she looked '*dazed*'. The congregation started to mutter amongst themselves, wanting to know if others had just seen what they had. Sara felt that people were seriously shaken (as anyone would be) and that they were somewhat reluctant to talk about what had happened. No-one ever mentioned it from then on, perhaps wanting to protect the reputation of their church.

As soon as she could, however, Sara ran out of the church, going to her car and bursting into tears. Her children were greatly affected, with one of them shaking and despondent - just wanting to leave. Ken was able to ask the pastor if he had just seen what he thought he had, to which the answer was affirmative. Apparently, the minister told Tom not to '*ever touch one of those again!*' The woman would be kept in the church until the elders considered her to no longer be an immediate danger - giving her some sort '*treatment*' before she was apparently taken away to another place where people would be able to examine her. The minister and his elders seemed to believe that they had just successfully exorcised a demonic entity from the woman. Godfrey asked Ken if he knew where the woman had been taken, but unfortunately he did not. He also added that most of the ushers who had assisted in the capture of the monster were now either very elderly or deceased.

## Moonset

The entire incident had apparently been caught on video camera thanks to the church's usual practice of taping services - but when Ken inquired as to if he could view the tape, he was told that the church no longer had it. He was told that it no longer existed in the church's hands - whether they had given it to someone else or destroyed it going unanswered. The manifestation of the ghastly critter had seemingly been 'recorded' in a very different way, however, seeing as poltergeist activity started to plague the church. Sara's most frightening example of this poltergeist activity came when she was alone during her regular cleaning hours at the church. She found a butcher knife lying on the floor of the church library, and so she picked it up and put it on a shelf, lying flat. However, when she returned a while later, she found that it was now lying balanced on its back edge so that its sharp side was facing upwards. There had been nobody in the library who could've moved it.

Ken said that he never wanted to see anything like the church creature again in his life, and he said that the only comparison he could draw to it was between the bizarre hairy humanoid cryptids he had encountered during his deployment in Vietnam. His company encountered creatures they called '*rock apes*' that he described as resembling 4-5ft tall baboons which would hurl heavy rocks at them. They would apparently run on all fours and then get up on two legs to throw rocks. These rock apes are recognised cryptids, and are known as Batutut ('*forest people*') in Vietnamese culture. Ken says that he has no idea what he saw that day in the church, and that the only conclusion he can come to is that it was '*a demon of some sort*'. He believes that it was possessing the woman and that perhaps its monstrous manifestation was a show of power. Ken and Sara also told Godfrey that they had seen strange lights in the forests around the area.

The woman presumably left town after the harrowing incident, seeing as neither Ken nor Sara heard from her ever again. The congregation itself also disbanded a short while after the event, and the pastor skipped town as well. Godfrey did manage to contact the pastor, but he quickly shut her down saying that he would never discuss his formal pastoral duties - which is apparently standard practice for ministers. Ken and Sara also managed to get back in touch with some of the people who had been there when the werewolf had made its appearance, but when they asked them what they remembered they were simply given disappointing answers such as '*what happens in church stays in church*'. Most of the congregation weren't in a good position to have seen the creature anyway, thanks to how the pews were arranged. This view would've been further lessened by the tight knot of ushers that swiftly surrounded the critter when it appeared.

Godfrey was stumped by this case, and presented the skeptical hypothesis that perhaps this manifestation could've been a mass hallucination produced by religious fervour - but then dismisses this as unlikely both due to the congregation not being in a state of much excitement at the time, only waiting for their pastor to sit down, and because the phenomenon of mass hallucination has not been proven to exist in the first place. Although one may be compelled to dismiss this case because of the extreme nature of what allegedly happened, it seems to be rather difficult to find any facts in the couple's story which can be conclusively falsified.