Overview and Evidence[]
The Beckley Beast was a shadowy entity reportedly sighted by a Beckley, West Virginia resident going only by the name of 'Raven'. Her account, as well as those of her sibling and friends, were first published as NCS Case File #83 on the cryptozoological blog National Cryptid Society on March 9, 2019. Reportedly sighted numerous times by Raven's family and friends over the course of the past 17 or so years, the creature has left a large impact on them.
All witnesses, namely Raven, her younger brother, and their friends, have described the creature in a consistent manner. All witnesses depicted the entity as tall but not abnormally so, definitely over six and a half feet tall. Its form seemed to be near perfect black in color, reflecting almost no light (admittedly a potentially dubious detail, given how poor human night vision is). The creature allegedly possessed numerous sharp dagger-like teeth rather than the differentiated teeth common to most mammals. The most interesting feature of its anatomy was its quartet of glowing yellow eyes, which appeared to either have matching yellow pupils or lack them altogether.
Raven has claimed that nearby trees have been slashed by the apparent creature, and her brothers have both reported sounds in the nearby forest alternatively described as roars or screams. However, neither photos of the scratch marks nor audio recordings of said vocalizations have been provided by Raven to back up her claims. It is possible that the account is simply a hoax, but it is possible that Raven and her friends simply misidentified known animals. While no large animals of this caliber actually possess four eyes, more fantastical details such as that could be chalked up to overactive imagination. The large mammal native to West Virginia is the American black bear, whose black color could definitely explain the sightings. Bear eyes do indeed possess a reflective layer called the tapetum lucidum like those of cats, so they do reflect lights and could thus be said to 'glow in the dark'.[1] Another possibility would be a smaller animal with reflective eyes, such as an opossum or raccoon, sitting up on a tree branch, causing it to appear taller such as in the case of the Flatwoods Monster.
Alleged Sightings[]
First-Person Accounts[]
For years, there has been something stalking the woods surrounding the area where I grew up, and it does not like that it has been noticed. The first encounter was actually not by me, but by my younger brother sometime around 2001-2002.
My mother received a phone call from my grandmother around 8:00 one summer evening, asking her to come down and pick my brother up. Grandma lived just a minute’s walk down the dirt road from our house, easily within view from the front porch, so asking my mom to come down and get my brother personally was odd.
When Mom brought my brother home, he was in tears. He claimed he saw a creature while he was playing in the yard space between my aunt’s and grandparent’s properties. He said it was black with yellow eyes, taller than our dad (who is 6’4), and was smiling at him with sharp teeth. It was days before he slept normally again.
Mom and Grandma chalked it up to him seeing a bear that had wandered up from the woods and the rest was either his imagination or the bear had been baring its teeth at him. I did too, for a time, until I hit age 15 a few years later.
I told the story to a friend of mine that was staying over one weekend. She was intrigued and, being silly teenagers, we decided to venture out towards the woods after dark.
We approached the edge of the woods that bordered my grandparents’ property, but I lost my nerve thanks to a bad feeling in my gut and decided not to go any further. My friend left me behind and headed down the hill to a small clearing while I remained by some chestnut trees.
I sat there for a few minutes, singing quietly to myself to calm my nerves, when I looked over at the nearby brush and noticed a crouched black form with four yellow eyes staring back at me. I scrambled to my feet and called for my friend, who ran my way from her position in the clearing. She slipped on some mud and fell right in front of the creature, distracting it for only a second before its eyes returned to me.
I pointed at the eyes and asked her if she was seeing what I saw, not believing my own eyes. She confirmed that she did, and like a fool, I reached down for a fallen tree branch and took a step towards the thing.
It roared at us unlike any other thing I’ve ever heard in my life. We turned tail and ran as fast as we could back to my house and didn’t dare to see if it had followed.
We returned the next day to find gashes in some of the surrounding trees, like huge claws had torn into them. There was no other sign of the thing we had seen.
Afterwards, the entire experience felt like a hazy nightmare for both of us. And so, fool teenagers that we were, we continued to venture out after dark whenever my friend came to visit, hoping for another glimpse of the creature. We told no one of our first encounter for fear of being written off as my younger brother had been. I avoided telling my brother especially because I didn’t want to scare him or make him think I was teasing him.
We spotted it several more times after that over some years, usually from afar since we tried keeping a safe distance from the woods after that first time. There were many times I swear I could feel its presence outside after dark, usually when the weather was warm. It always lurked in the shadows, always out of reach of any light, noticeable only by those yellow eyes.
The most troubling thing of all was that the creature seemed to follow me wherever I went. Several occasions occurred when my friend and I encountered it while I was visiting her house across town. Another time, I could have sworn I felt its presence while we were visiting family in South Carolina (this was later confirmed by my brother). On several occasions while at my friend’s house, we saw its eyes from the treeline, glaring at us.
I tried again to approach it s few times, but always was unable to get very close for fear of my own personal safety. I never could see more to its form aside from the eyes. It was always just like they floated there in the dark.
The last sighting I had of the creature personally was in November of 2011, when I came home after seeing a midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. It was close to 3:00 in the morning when I came home that night. I stopped in the kitchen to get something to drink before bed when I saw it from the dining room window; the best view of it that I’d ever gotten in all my years of dealing with it.
It was just outside the fence around our yard, standing in front of my dad’s truck, just a short ways from the front door. It towered above the vehicle, but that may have been because it was standing on a spot where the land slopes right in front of where it was parked. I couldn’t see any other defining features in the darkness. To me, it was just a hulking, humanoid figure that was almost as black as the night around it. But that was all of its body that I could see–just a tall, abyssal form. Its eyes pierced me through the window.
It was only a few seconds that we stared at each other, and yet at the same time, it somehow felt like hours. And then it ran out of sight towards the woods, faster than anything I’d ever seen. It wasn’t until after it was gone that I realized it was so close to where I had parked when I came home (next to Dad’s truck). If it was already at the fence by the time I had gotten inside the house, then it must have already been close by when I pulled up. I felt sick when the realization came to me, and I kept looking outside to see if I could spot where it had gone.
Minutes after that, my dad came into the room, getting ready to leave for work (he always left around 3:30 AM back then). He asked me what I was doing, and I could only tell him that I saw something weird outside since I figured he’d think I was crazy if I told him the truth.
I watched him go down to his truck to leave for work just in case. Nothing happened.
Four years later, in 2015, I moved out of my parents home and away from the woods to a more populated part of town. As a result, I’ve thankfully not had any experiences where I’m currently living, but things still persist back home.
Both of my brothers say they’ve started hearing roars/screams in the night coming from the woods. The one that first saw the thing all those years ago swears that it’s the creature. Our younger brother claims to have seen it recently, in February 2019, but given my experiences, it is odd for it to be around this time of year.
I’ve tried to research creatures that fit the description of what lurks around my parents’ home, but nothing ever turns up about yellow eyed creatures. I’m posting this here in hopes that others with similar experiences might come forward and allow me to narrow down just what this thing is exactly. It’s been haunting us for years, and right now, it doesn’t look like it will be letting up any time soon. [sic][2]Sources[]
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