It has been said that the Night Crier is a myth, something to scare naughty children. I'm here to say that it's real and that I saw it with my own two eyes.
It was back when I was still in Virginia. My family and I lived in the green hills, and had our own little house tucked away behind the trees. It was a nice life, being there. But most nights I would listen and hear something off in the distance. It sounded like a wolf at first or maybe even a coyote, but the longer you listened, the more the sound changed. It went from being a howl to a lonesome cry. It reminded me of a person trying to be a wolf or some type of animal.
The first time I heard it, I was really little. Maybe five or six years old.
"That's the Night Crier." My momma would say.
I asked her what it was. She said, "The Night Crier is a man that's lost his body. His head rolls through the hills, crying because he can't find his body. And his body is out there trying to find a head to replace the one it lost. If he finds you, he'll take your head and you'll become the next Night Crier."
Even then I was a smart kid. I knew that there was no such thing as headless bodies running around. Still, the story scared me. My friends had heard the story too. Apparently, it was something of a legend around those parts.
My one friend would play pranks on me all the time. He would even go so far as to pull his shirt over his head and pretend to be the body of the Night Crier searching for his missing head. This went on for weeks. It was funny at first, but then, over time, he started showing up at my house really late at night, trying to scare me and my family. We chased him off several times, but this one night, things were different.
This time he showed up at my window and scared me nearly half to death. I was angry, so I ran outside and started chasing him through the woods.
If you don't know much about the Virginian hills, they're covered in thick stands of trees. Anything can happen in those woods, and anything can hide in them--especially at night. But I didn't think about that. I was just focused on finding my friend and making him stop.
I don't know how long I chased him into the woods. We must have run for miles. We were deep in the woods when I finally heard it.
"Oooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh."
It was that long, lonesome cry that sounded like an animal at first but slowly became more human. It sent shivers down my spine. I could tell it was still far away, but as I listened, the sound seemed to be getting louder. I could still hear my friend running ahead of me. He had only stopped once, and I took that chance to take a break. Now he was running in full sprint. He seemed faster than before. I didn't know my friend could run that fast! I was starting to slow down, but he wasn't.
Long about a mile later, I completely lost him.
The sound of the crying was getting louder. I hadn't realized how close it had gotten, but now the sound was coming from somewhere much closer. With my flashlight in hand, I started running back home.
I thought the sound would go away, but it didn't. It was following me, getting louder and louder. I ran faster.
That's when I heard footsteps racing towards me. I knew it was my friend. Now he was really trying to scare me. I ran even faster. Just when I was about to get back home, the footsteps were right behind me. I turned my flashlight to see my friend.
His face met me. It was cut up from running into branches and the eyes seemed dull. He stared off into the distance without saying a word. But then, I saw his neck and noticed the blood.
The body underneath wasn't my friend's. I ran screaming back to the house.
Allthat night, I could hear the long low cry of a severed head searching for a newbody. The body of my friend. I don't go in those woods anymore, and my familyhas long since left those hills, but if you were to go there and venture intothose woods on dark nights, you might find a head without a body, or worse, a bodylooking for a head.