It was late in the year, and I was a 16-year-old son of a coal miner and an avid deer hunter.

My father showed me an old wagon trail that cuts around the top of the mountain, leading up a couple of miles to an old farmhouse

where the deer hunting was likely to be good. To get up there, even on my four-wheeler, I'd had to

clear the road of small trees. There wasn't much left of the old farmhouse beyond its stone chimney

and foundation, but I worked hard to clear a path out behind

where three or four apple trees stood in a field along with a few other small trees. Back behind that

field I'd found a really nice deer trail, so I hung my tree stand there and I left. Deer season was still a week away. A week later I was excited to make

the two-hour trip up to the old farm house on my four-wheeler because of all the good sign I'd

seen when I was up there before. It was a foggy morning, the kind of heavy fog that soaks in

your clothes.

It was so dense I had to turn my headlights off to see.

Once I got up there I left my four-wheeler at the farmhouse and I began my trek out to

the deer stand to begin the day.

I was halfway to the stand when I heard something walking in the wood line that ran down the edge of the field.

That fog was really setting the kind of slasher movie atmosphere that would put anybody on edge.

My vision was extremely limited, so I took a few more steps, and then I stopped. Whatever it was,

took about three or four more steps. I really didn't know what to think about that, so I just moved on.

40 yards from my stand, I stopped again. I heard four or five more footsteps before it stopped too. Between the dense fog and

my dim flashlight, I couldn't see much, but I could definitely hear it. I knew something was out there,

so I quickly climbed up into my deer stand and not a minute too soon. I could hear footsteps coming directly at me as I climbed up the tree.

I was 30 feet off the ground when I heard it directly below. I felt the thud against the tree,

followed by another that made me think it was going to climb up after me. I was trying to get my flashlight out of my pocket, and I was fumbling with it when I dropped

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