I never believed I would ever tell this, but this is what happened in May, 1979 to October 1980. I lived in small south central Ohio town, and being a new dad and a caring husband I wanted my wife to be happy. When my wife found the perfect little house just on the edge of town, I said okay.
Within days, my wife complained about someone looking in the back window most nights. I blamed it on moving and being alone at night as I work at day and went to school in in the evenings. This went on for a while, and I started to think my wife had a little bit of a problem.
I had always been an avid outdoorsman and as good hunter as any. I at first never saw any signs of anything around my house that caught my eye. As the time went on, my wife became more and more convinced that someone was outside looking through the window.
One Saturday mourning in late December I got up early and thought I might go for doughnuts. We had a one-car garage and the wife always parked her car there. So I grabbed her keys to make the the trip as it had snowed the night before.
I stepped into the garage and got in the car. As I started it up, I instinctively looked in the mirror. At first I blinked my eyes to make sure I wasn't seeing things, then I looked over my shoulder I saw two large black eyes looking back at me.
My blood ran cold. I revved the car and shot out of the garage. When the car stopped, I was looking for what was there. Nothing -- until I looked on the roof of the garage. There were large footprints going over the top of the roof.
I sat there thinking, What was that? I pulled back in and ran into the house. I was out of breath when I grabbed my grandfather's 3030 off the wall and loaded it for only the second time in my life. I knew whatever that was, a .22 or a shotgun wasn't going to bother it.
Waiting for good daylight, like any man who knew how to track, I called my best friend and hunting buddy and he came straight over. When He looked at the footprints on my garage roof, he knew it was no joke.
At 7:30 in the morning we went behind my house and was astounded by the size of the tracks. We stood there looking at each other. As my friend pulled out his Thompson mag pistol he said, "We ll find 'em."
Throughout the morning we followed the tracks until we came to a clearing. There on the next road over was a little house, and the tracks led right up to the back door. Walking around the little house, I knocked with no answer. Feeling we had solved the mystery, we walked to the end of the road and called my father for a ride home.
When my dad came and picked us up, we told him what happened. He said that the man that lived at the little house worked at a local tire shop. My father said he was a quiet man and very good at what he did; he came from Germany before WW2.
In the summer of 1980, my friend and I happened to go to the tire shop to see about an alignment for his car and to look into the eyes of this guy. We got what we came for and more. Looking at each other, we knew he knew us more than we knew him.
In October of 1980, my friend called and said, "I'm coming over. We are going for a ride." As we were going I said, "Okay, what's going on?"
He said, "You'll see."
When we drove down that road I said, "I know where you're going." He stopped me in mid-sentence and said, "He died. Wait till you see this."
We got to the house and a Deputy Sheriff was standing outside -- a guy we knew. He said, "Hey, you guys want to see something?"
My friend said, "Yeah, man."
As we we went into that house, the smell was that of many wet dogs. (I know because I have raised and trained dogs all my life.) The front of the house looked normal, but the back room was something I'll never forget. The walls were lined with three-sixteenth plate carbon steel and had deep scratches all over. On one wall there was a huge log chain bolted through the next wall. At that moment I looked at my friend and said, "No way!"
"Way," he said.
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