Cryptomundo
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Weird Winged Things

Back in 2001, I spent some time in a small West Texas town just outside of the city of Lubbock called Littlefield. And while there – and specifically after word got around the area that I worked as a writer of books on the worlds of UFOs, the paranormal, and all things monstrous – something weird and memorable happened.

It was around 10.00 a.m. on one particular winter’s morning and there was a knock at the door. It was an elderly couple, related to the guy who lived next door, and who had suggested to them that they speak with me. I invited them in and they explained that they had an unusual story they were looking to tell, and that concerned events that had occurred back in the mid-1940s, when they were teenagers.

According to the account, the first incident occurred in the early months of 1946 at an old, large house that, until the early 1960s, had existed on the edge of town, and where two aged and eccentric sisters lived in absolute seclusion.

Supposedly, on one occasion in the dead of night (when else?), a group of local kids playing in the area and scaring themselves stupid by walking around the old, dark building witnessed two, eight-foot-tall, humanoid creatures climb stealthily out of the building’s cellar.

Not only were the creatures eight-foot-tall; they were also gray of skin, had large, leathery wings, and glowing red eyes. In other words, they weren’t local folk. I think! In fact, they sounded like something straight out of Jeepers Creepers or The Mothman Prophecies.

The monstrous pair apparently turned sharply as they surfaced from their underground lair and stared intently at the kids, then broke into a hopping-style run, opened their immense wings and soared majestically into the starlit sky. One interesting observation was that the limbs of the creatures looked almost hollow against the background of the full moon that loomed overhead.

Perhaps even weirder was the fact that as the kids exited the area at what was an unsurprisingly high speed, two of them caught sight of the elderly sisters, grinning maniacally at them out of a downstairs window of the house.

The couple also informed me that a similar creature, if not one of the original two, was seen several months later, standing in the middle of a stretch of highway in nearby Levelland, by a terrified motorist in the early hours of the morning while issuing a woeful and eerie moan.

That, in essence, was the weird account. Of course, all towns and villages – whether in America, Britain, Germany, Australia, Russia, or indeed anywhere – have their own, unique folk tales and legends, and perhaps this was merely Littlefield’s.

I had no idea if it was genuine, a combination of fact and fiction, or simply the very tallest of tales to try and determine how gullible I might be. Well, I told the pair in no uncertain terms that while their revelations were very interesting, I would like to speak, personally, with those allegedly involved and get their views and comments on the affair. That, I wasn’t at all surprised to learn, was destined to lead me down a pathway to absolutely nowhere.

The two quickly claimed that the key witnesses in the tale had all gone to their graves at surprisingly young ages – all supposedly killed in a variety of seemingly unlikely, and horrific, accidents. I nodded, as my mind became filled with deep suspicions that someone was trying to well and truly play me.

Indeed, the story never went any further at all. No-one else ever came forward to offer any similar testimony on the matter, and the whole thing simply evaporated.

My views today on this curious caper are that maybe – just maybe – my elderly informants were not lying, and had genuinely heard such a story years before. After all, who amongst us hasn’t heard a few odd urban legends and folk tales in their time? Not many, I’m sure!

But, hearing such a story is a very far cry from being able to prove it, vindicate it, or even provide a firsthand witness. For that reason, ten years on, I consider the story of the winged monsters of Littlefield to be interesting, but probably steeped in folklore and not much else – if indeed anything else.