Grafton Monster

The Grafton Monster is tall. It's estimated between seven feet on the conservative end, nine on the high. Broad through the shoulders and chest, maybe four feet across at the widest point. Witnesses estimate the weight at several hundred pounds, though no one has gotten close enough to be sure. The skin is the part nobody forgets. Pale to the point of being chalk-white. Smooth. Some accounts compare it to a seal, others to something wet that's never seen daylight. In headlights it doesn't reflect right, it catches the light flat, like a wall. The head is missing. Witnesses describe eyes set low in the chest or upper torso, with no neck and no skull above them. A few accounts mention a mouth in the same region. Most witnesses don't get a clear look at the face, because there isn't one to find. The body moves quietly for something that size. The Grafton Monster is not announced by footfalls. When it is announced at all, it is announced by a low whistling sound that does not come from where the creature is standing.

“I'd worked the late shift and got out around eleven. Drove home the way I always drove home. Went down Yates, along the river. I came around a bend and my headlights hit something white in the clearing on the right. I thought it was a boulder at first. Big one. White rock half on the grass, half in the road. I was already letting off the gas to swing around it when I realized that I'd driven this road my whole life. There ain't no boulder there and never had been. I looked again. Sure wasn't a rock. It was standing up. Maybe nine feet tall. White all over, like a seal in the wet. And where the head should've been there was nothing. Just shoulders, and then more body, and somewhere down in the chest I could swear there were eyes. I high tailed it home. Got two friends, came back inside of an hour with flashlights. The clearing was empty. The grass was pressed down where I'd seen it standing. We walked out toward the river and somewhere off in the dark we heard a whistling sound. Not a person whistling a tune. A low note, held. We didn't go looking for it. We went home.”