This is an email, the person didn't tell me whether I could use her name, so I won't.

But here's what she writes, I can tell you it's a woman, because she has a woman name.

In November of 1983, my dad and his friend John decided they wanted both our families

to spend Thanksgiving together in the mountains.

I was 15 years old that year, my two brothers were 13 and 11, and my sister was only three.

The other family, I'll call them the Smiths, had four boys, ages 15, 14, 13, and 11.

We had rented two cabins, one for each family in Mentona, Alabama, and we all drove up from

Birmingham the evening before Thanksgiving day.

I think we're in a state part, but I don't really know for sure.

The next day we all gathered at the family's cabin to cook and hang out together.

I remember the sound of football games, so somebody must have had a radio.

The cabins didn't have TVs, the dads were smoking a turkey and a goose, and some other

stuff outside and a smoker they'd brought with them.

We ate our Thanksgiving meal around 4.30 as the sun was beginning to set.

The meal lasted a few hours, followed by a few more hours of conversation.

I think there might have been more football on the radio.

Eight o'clock we began hearing a very loud, howl or scream combination just outside the

back of the cabin.

It had simultaneous high and low pitches and tones within the same screen.

It's not a sound a human vocal cord could recreate, not that any of us thought this

could be a human, and the boys all concluded that it was a bear.

I knew what bear sounded like from my elementary school days of watching after school specials

...