; Phantoms and Monsters: Pulse of the Paranormal

Thursday, August 09, 2018

'The Rancher': Bizarre Encounter


The following bizarre account was recently submitted to 'Humanoid Encounters' at Reddit by user HYSTheRancher:

Hi, I've never posted here. I'm not sure where to begin, but I feel I need to relay this story in a public place in case something happens to me. I have left information as a precaution that my brother may find if I were to go missing. Honestly, I am really perplexed by this whole thing as I consider myself a big skeptic of things like this and I tried to write off this meeting I had with this very strange person about 12 years ago. Because of something else that has happened a couple of days ago which I believe to be related to this guy, I feel the need to revisit the possibility of this being more than just an oddity.

To put into perspective why I believe this man to be related to what just happened to me recently I need to explain a bit about my background and the first time I believe I encountered things associated with this guy. I am southern and almost 30 now, the incident related to this man who I call The Rancher happened when I was 18 working my first real job. It was the fall of 2007 when I met this guy, but I believe I may have come into contact with these things which I now heavily associate with him when I was 10 years old.

I lived in Tennessee for the first part of my childhood, there is a very small town outside of Knoxville a couple of hours where my Grandfather had a farm. We'd visit semi-regularly and I would get to go and see the cows and chickens he raised. We would pay him for meat sometimes when he was going to slaughter one of the cows and freeze it for meals for months. They also had corn and other crops there that he would harvest. His main source of income though was a retirement from the Military, and he had several sheds and workshops where he would fix discarded appliances and vehicles and sell it.

The first incident in question was during the summer of 1998 on his farm, I was actually out playing with one of their border collies while my Grandad was out in the field feeding the cattle. The farm is in the hills as this area is part of the Smoky Mountains, and the farm was quite large, I don't know how large off the top of my head but large enough that it had big fields a smaller area for crops and his property encompassed a very large portion of the surrounding wooded areas. Me and the dog, who was name Sweetie wondered up into the wooded area a bit during the time he was feeding the cattle.

I was alone except for Sweetie when this occurred and I was so young at the time that the memory was and still is to some extent a bit fuzzy. But the important part is still very clear. During this particular excursion into those woods me and Sweetie came across what I can only describe as a large tree with a hole beneath it. As we came up on this hole I looked down into it and I couldn't see the bottom, and it was pitch black. For the longest time I thought that this was just my imagination playing tricks on me, but I believe what I saw then was real now. My head started almost buzzing and I felt my hair stand on end. I started shaking but I couldn't look away from it, I felt like if I started to run I would die. It's really hard to describe the sensation but I would call it an impending sense of dread.

There were eyes looking back at me from this hole, but I couldn't see the body at first. Then I saw what looked like a smile and a very small body of this humanoid looking thing. It's body was entirely black, like freshly laid asphalt. It was unnaturally black, I mean it was like looking into the absence of light. The only light portions were the eyes and eventually the mouth, it kind of smiled at me. And I felt like I was going to die looking at it, but I couldn't run away. After that it's like I can't remember exactly what happened and my next memory is me walking back for dinner. I should also tell you that we could not find Sweetie after that. I felt so bad because I really loved that dog.

I didn't tell anyone what I saw because I didn't want them to think I was crazy, or demon possessed or something. My family is very religious, I am not anymore since my teens but I was raised as a very fundamentalist Christian so as a young boy I was very much convinced that Satan and demons were real. And over time this memory kind of faded and I ended up thinking I either dreamed this or I was simply remembering wrong.

Fast forward to 2007. I was 18 almost 19 and it was the fall of that year, I was working at my first real job while attending college for computer science. Keep in mind by this time I was totally irreligious, I did not believe in anything supernatural, extraterrestrial, or anything remotely paranormal. I was an avid reader of prominent atheists such as Richard Dawkins. My job was at a book store, it is a chain of book stores which I think are mostly regional to the south. At this point we had moved to Alabama and had been living in that state for almost 9 years.

I had actually just gotten a promotion to work at the stores joint coffee shop as a Barista, but I also still sometimes worked the register or did stocking. The first time I encountered this man that I refer to as The Rancher I was actually working the front cash register. I often worked the late shift there, which was from 4 to 12. We would start closing around 11:30 though and I did most of that by myself as it was usually just me and one of the assistant managers and a barista for the coffee shop there that late.

It was around 11:00 pm, and this guy comes in, and I immediately got this strange feeling about this guy. The reason I call this guy The Rancher is that he was dressed like cowboy straight out of a Western film or even a rodeo. I had family in Texas so I had been to rodeos before and I mean this guy was just very strange to be walking into a bookstore at 11:00 pm decked out in snake skin cowboy boots a cowboy hat and western looking clothes. I thought at first he was just a tourist or something and went back to reading. I read books in the evenings because we didn't get alot of people buying books that late we mostly stayed open because there were lots of groups that liked our coffee shop and I guess they made money off it being open in the evenings.

This guy walked to the back at some point for about a good 20 minutes, then when I was about to make a closing announcement like I usually do at 11:30, he came up to the counter with 4 books. I thought the selection was a very strange mix of material, one of them was a physics book, one was an auto-motives manual, one was something on new age religion, and the other was about martial arts. I honestly don't remember the specific titles because what really stuck out about that event was the guy, I could barely look away from him while I was helping him check out.

I started getting this feeling that something about this guy's body was like fake. His skin was extremely pale, not out of the realm of possibility but very unusual, he was the whitest man I've ever seen without being an obvious albino or something. The other thing was his eyes, they were beady like they almost looked like glass eyeballs, like maybe he was wearing contacts, but it was really hard to tell exactly why they looked that way. He smiled at me as well the entire time, and it was more than just a friendly grin, it almost felt like a sexual flirtation or something. At the end when I had finished ringing him up and bagging his books, I realized he hadn't said anything to me and I had been making my usual niceties I liked to think of as customer service. But at the end, he stopped for a minute and stared at me before leaving, and asked "What did you say your name was?"

I thought this was really bizarre at the time, because number one I had a name tag on, and number two I had never told him my name during the conversation at all. But for some reason he acted like I did and he had just forgot. I told him my name and he said "Oh what a nice name that is, I'll have to ask for you if I return here". At this point I just thought this guy was hitting on me or something. He was really creepy, and I just wanted him to leave as soon as possible. Thankfully he did leave.

Unfortunately I would see him one more time about 3 weeks later. It was late again, a little after 10 PM, and this time I was actually working in the coffee shop. I was making coffee drinks for a group of students that came in to do a study group or club or something there pretty often, and when I turned around to start giving them their order I realized The Rancher guy was back there behind them. He was in the same cowboy like attire, and he was standing very still and just looking up in my direction with that same weird smile (it almost seemed forced). I felt this weird sense of dread, and I was reminded of the memory from my childhood because it was the only other time I had ever had that type of sensation before.

The students left and he came up and ordered, and he said he wanted a bottle of milk from our mini-fridge, I got it for him and he paid. I watched as he stood there opened it and started drinking it, then he paused and said "Hmmm it's good but missing something". He drank half the bottle and I watched him go over to our cafe area where we had creamer sitting out for people's coffee, he proceeded to pour creamer into the bottle until it was nearly full again then resume drinking and he drank the entire thing in one continuous gulp without breathing.

He left to go into the store where the book racks are. I was hoping he had left by the time I took my evening break not long after and I made myself a drink and went to sit at one of the tables on our adjoined patio area. This was at 11:00 PM, because I always took my evening break then when I worked in the coffee shop. I was sitting there reading my book and trying to enjoy my drink after that unnerving experience, and then I heard our patio door open and it was The Rancher guy again. I realized I was cornered, and he sat down at my table directly across from me, he sat motionless but had that weird smile still and he took off his hat and put it on the table. That is when I realized this guy was also bald, and his scalp looked very strange like it had never had hair at all. It almost looked like rubber it was very odd.

I asked if I could help him find something, thinking maybe he was just being creepy and trying to hit on me again or something. He said my name rather calmly, and then the conversation got very strange and specific. He said "I am actually here because you are one of my tasked individuals. I don't really know why you're on my list for this area but you are. And I like you so I'm going to be frank with you. I am not entirely human." He paused at this point. And I had that feeling of dread again even more than before, and I was like crawling out of my skin at this point.

I actually panicked and got up, and as I did he said my address and I froze and realized this guy knew where I lived and who I was or something. He said "Sit down, you're making this difficult." Then he told me "I'm not going to hurt you, that's not my job. My job is to simply keep track of individuals I've been tasked with, that is all. And I need to ask you a few questions to make sure there are not going to be any problems." He started smiling again and it was like a forced smile it looked fake and he looked so strange but I sat down because this guy had threatened me at my home and I didn't know what else to do other than see what he wanted with me and maybe get more info on the guy so I could call the police after he left.

He said, "I'm actually from a certain organization that manages many things here on this planet, and I am what you would call a liaison between your kind and them. I am partially them, but mostly one of you and so I am tasked with direct prolonged communications with your type." He proceeded to ask me some questions about whether or not I had ever seen anything out of the ordinary, and who I might have told about it. Obviously he meant other than him, because I remarked he's freaking me out and asked if this was some kind of prank. I finally told him about my memory from when I was a kid and told him that I hadn't told anyone about it at all. He remarked that would likely be the reason I was on his list.

He also asked me a few other questions seemingly unrelated, he asked me what I was studying in school and where I thought I might work after I graduated. He seemed interested if I was considering military contractor work, and also asked about some of my family member's military service. In between each question he paused for like a good 20 or 30 seconds. I asked him what he was doing after the third time this happened, and he said he was scanning my possible timelines for confirmation. He told me his kind could actually see different different spectrums than us and that he was having this conversation with multiple versions of myself, he was making sure none of them were going to become problematic for him because he hated having to return.

After several questions he gave that smile and said all done. He got up and said, people weren't likely to believe me but that I should not talk about the small black creatures I encountered, or I could meet with someone else from his organization with a different designation and it may not end as nicely for me.

After this I didn't see The Rancher guy again, and I tried to forget the event as best I could. I actually went to therapy for this though I didn't give the therapist specific details about this encounter. She helped me greatly and I was able to finish school. I work as a software engineer now, and I've not had any strange occurrences for 12 years. This year I adopted a Dachshund puppy, he's very sweet. He's about 7 months old now and we like to play outside in the afternoons. A couple of days ago, I was on my porch relaxing when I heard him growling. I have never heard him growl before at anything, he's barked before but never growled. I rushed over to see what was wrong because I thought maybe he found a wild animal or something. He was growling at the gap beneath my wooden deck. I looked under there moving him to the side, and I saw a small dark figure and eyes. I grabbed my pup and ran back upstairs and inside and locked all of the doors.

I am very upset and anxious over this and have been losing a lot of sleep, I had an exterminator come out and he said he couldn't find anything even after I begged him to look the whole area over twice and told him I thought maybe mice or something were under my deck. He found nothing. That is why I am posting this story anonymously but also in a public forum so there is record. I am extremely afraid that I might be visited by that bizarre man or someone associated with him and if for some reason I go missing I have set an automated delivery message to go to my brother if I am absent for more than a month.

God Speed, I hope none of you have ever encountered this guy or any of his people.

After several questions / comments to the post, the user posted this follow-up:

A short follow up to this to answer a few questions of some of the replies. The small creatures were less than a foot tall, if I had to guess maybe 8 or 9 inches. Their bodies were the color of crude oil, I mean it was like looking into a black hole. Their eyes were bright, but I can't exactly tell you what color they were, it's really weird it was like their eyes were mechanical almost and had like darting lights inside them. Their shape was very odd, it was like almost eggplant shaped, I mean that their torsos were wide and their heads were small and they had small thin arms and legs, the neck was strange it's like they didn't have one like the body curved up into the head in one continues curve. They also had mouths that were very strange, I remember thinking they look like human mouths but they didn't move like human mouths. It's like they moved on the surface of their body with no or very little muscle movement.

I almost got the sense that this thing's "face" was not actually real and that it was like making me see that... it's partially why I felt so upset looking at it. It looked like it was peering into my mind. And the first time when I was little there were definitely buzzing sensations. It was not a seizure, I'm almost certain because I have never experienced seizures during any other portion of my life. No one has ever witnessed me having such an attack or episode of any kind. The other reason is because I was in therapy for several years after my encounter with The Rancher guy, and was treated for anxiety. The psychiatrist I ended up seeing said I had a form of PTSD, and they did subject me to testing. They ruled out several things including mood disorders and seizure disorders. I was eventually able to cope with therapy and didn't have to permanently stay on anxiety medications. Honestly meeting that guy was the worst thing that ever happened to me, and the reason I wanted to finally tell my story here is because I am so extremely terrified of him and whatever his people may be.

As for the Rancher guy, I got the distinct sense that he was serious when he said he wasn't entirely human but mostly human. He said rather specifically he was more human than some others in his "organization", and that is why he had the job that he did. Mostly he seemed be rather matter of fact about the whole thing, but he definitely was withholding stuff, I asked him questions of why he was doing this and things like that and what he wanted. He didn't answer most of my questions, it seemed like the stuff he did tell me was to keep me calm and on that patio talking to him until he was finished with whatever he needed from me. He asked me about 3 specific topics: What I had seen or experienced that was unusual. Which of my family members were in the military and what their military service had entailed, there are several but I am not going to go into detail because I don't want to accidentally identify them here. The last was the strangest to me, he said where do you think you will be working when you graduate and what do you hope to work on? And he specifically wanted to know if I was considering contractor work of any kind.

During these periods he would stop for a good 30 or so seconds before continuing. He would shut his eyes, and I could see them moving under his eyelids but it was really strange looking and they were moving rather fast in differently directions. And I was getting very unnerved during these periods because I kept looking at him and the more I looked at him the more I felt like he looked fake or like something other than human. He was human looking enough to make people not really give it a second thought, but when I was up close talking to him for that extended period of time it was very unnerving because I almost felt like his face wasn't real and his scalp looked like rubber or plastic. That's when I asked him what he was doing, and he rather calmly explained that he was "scanning my timelines" and "speaking to different versions of myself", and that his kind could see "spectrums" that we could not. It was like a semi-explanation, it was not a normal conversation at all. It was not even like a conversation you might have on a plane with someone sitting next to you. I felt like I was being interrogated but he also did not say very much other than asking the questions and giving the few brief explanations when I started feeling panicked.

As for how long we talked, I'm not entirely sure to be honest I never thought about it. I know that I was able to close up after but I left as quickly as possible and told my manager that I was feeling very nauseous and ill and asked if I could leave a bit early after I closed the cafe. I also asked him if he had seen that guy, and he asked "The Ok Corral guy?". I said yes, and he said "Yeah that guy was asking me about a book I had never heard of and couldn't find in our system, something called The Lexicon of Time. He said it was some thing from the 60s and he had been trying to find a copy for years." This was really strange because we were not that kind of book store, we were like a chain store that carried books from publishers not like a specialty or rare book store. The manager told him we didn't have it and the guy said nothing and walked off, and he had this weird feeling about him so he kept looking up at him to make sure he wasn't trying to steal stuff, that was until he came over to the bar. He clearly didn't see him talking to me, because he asked if that weirdo left.

We had weird figures come in there sometimes, we had a woman yelling about Jesus and the apocalypse in our store about a month prior. She was bipolar it turns out and we called paramedics and had her trespassed. That is also part of the reason I just tried to right this off for so long as him just being another weirdo customer. If anyone has ever seen someone like this man, or these black creatures before please post here. If there is any information about how to get rid of these things or keep them from following me I would really like to know because I feel like I'm crawling out of my skin. I looked under the porch this evening with a giant mag-lite I bought on the way home. I can't see anything there unusual. For now I am not letting my dog out in the yard without me and will be taking him for more walks. I seriously hope these things don't return whatever they are.

NOTE: Actually, I believe the experiencer, because I have heard and read similar encounters during the years I have researched these events. Some would say that this encounter was a parallel to MIB incidents. I'm not sure that is the case...though I do feel that this hybrid being was bio-engineered for a specific purpose. I'd be interested in your thoughts. Lon

Appalachian Case Study: UFO Sightings, Alien Encounters and Unexplained Phenomena

Phantoms & Monsters: Unexplained Encounters

Raechels Eyes: The Strange But True Case of a Human-Alien Hybrid

Meet the Hybrids: The Lives and Missions of ET Ambassadors on Earth

Alien Underground Bases – Blue Planet Project 8

Lon's Suggested Reading List - Books & Films / DVDs