Prowler

An Example of a Known Unknown

Prowler.
In 2004, my Mom went to Magnolia. Don, the Belligerant Eunich, was in the VA for an extended stay.I was left in charge....and noticed nothing amiss...
untill Mom got home and called me.
The sliding door, which noone ever used, was unlocked and open about 4 inches.
I employed my inherent Indian Tracking Skills, and determined that someone had been there....crushed plants,etc.
Backtrack 5 years:Neighbor, "Tiger", before he actually moved next door, had goats, but no well.
We, being kind, strung a hose from our well to his fenceline.
Fine and dandy.
We were building a pumphouse around the well, for the approaching winter....
Tiger left the water running on several occassions...damaging the pump...
So I cut him off.
Hard winter....lights and a heater on the pump apparatus, as the house wasn't finished....hard freeze, and the lights/heater get turned off.
Smallish bootprint in the dirt around the pump.(Tiger is a smallish dude...with the attitude that goes with being a Small Man.)
We lay in wait many nights....nothing.
Finished pumphouse, and locked it up.
2 years later, Tiger moves in.Next door.
One night, Mom hears her dogs going crazy....like they have something trapped.
She goes out, 3 am , to find them w/ something cornered under a trailer.
As she calls them off, Tiger's little dog is there...then Tiger, himself, in a bathrobe, calls her name from the shadows...says he's after his dog...collects it and leaves.
Over the years, various tools disappear, and we went through 200# of hamburger awfully quick....but never made the connection.
Fast foreward to the sliding door.
Obvious that "someone" has been in the house.
We start noticing things....even footprints.
The friendly cats (out of 50 wild ones) are found dead....eviscerated.
Coke cans appear in stramge places.
We deploy baby monitors outside, to listen....all manner of strange noises.
We deploy little infra red cameras...again, anomalies...
Sherrif is not interested.
Don is still gone, so we move in with mom...she's freaking out.
I have guns, begin patrolling at odd hours (I was working nights ata cafe, got home around 11pm).
One night, I'm sitting there with mom, drinking beer after work, litening to the monitors.
Gunshot! Sounds like a shotgun.
I run out, trail of footprints in the grass...leading to the gulley.
I'm there, with the barking dogs, the Q-Beam, and the .357.
no way they had time to get past the tall grass in the gulley...So I empty the gun into the likely patches of brush.
Reload, and empty it again.
Nothing.
Next day, I'm out there....and find where a person was laying.
Footprints, even.Missed the fucker by 2 feet! The Stones on that guy!
Sherriff is not interested.(?)
Out feeding one afternoon, boys playing in Mom's yard, I see Tiger....observing us from his fence....in the bushes...with a rifle.
Only saw him 2 more times...
We escalated...put up motionlights and cameras...(cops said that was a deer with a flashlight in the goatbarn...)
I knew he had nightvision scope on his 22....so we got a night vision monacle.
I, the cripple, am laying in wait, under a tractor, w/ a 4-10, when I see what I interpret to be a cigarette cherry, thru the NV.
In the woods.
Then I see the IR beam, sweeping.
I fire....and realise that I am outmatched...he has the Tactical Advantage.
We suspect that he is watching us during the day, from his brush.
Traps we set are defeated.
We begin surveillance...see when he leaves, set traps then.
Don's drunken, crazy war buddy comes to stay, after hearing of all this.
We're in the house, listeing...when there is a shot.We rush out, guns at hand, and find more dew trails....cops see them too...but do nothing.
Next day, we find a shotgun shell,12ga, in the area where the shot came from.
Don gets home a coupla days later, and while briefing him, I produce the spent shell.
He says that he had let Tiger "borrow" a 12 ga, years before.
He calls his house, his son is home from college, and brings the gun back....same type of shells.

This went on for years.
Fucker always had the jump...Tactical Advantage.
He could watch us, but we couldn't see into his place to watch him.
This was escalating at the same time that I was beginning to be cripple....my legs were going.
I quit my job...for both of these reasons.
Dead goats, strange wire, strange little knives and screwdrivers....doorknobs attacked, like someone was trying to get in....cameras sabotaged...trails threough the bushes along the common fence line....cigarette butts (Tiger's brand) in all manner of places.
He apparently had a baby monitor...mom and I both had phone calls with recordings from inside our houses.
Then, one November, Mom and Don were in Magnolia, again.
I got up at 5 to go let the animals out....
The new chicken house was no more.
Burnt to the ground, along with 8 guinneas, and 75 chickens...
The sherriff poo-poohed the cut extension cord.

One day, patrolling the fenceline, I smelled Ammonia....near a little building not 100' from the fence, on Tiger's place.
Meth.
Turns out that the sherriff was implicated in the local Meth Trade, as well....
At this time, however, Mom was losing her mind...due to all this.
She's seeing him everywhere...esp. on the tapes from the camera.
She says he's employing "holograms" and ropes and pulleys...that he's on her roof...in the trees...
I can see no evidence, nothing on the tapes, being rigorously objective.
Don turns against her.
It's "all in her head", etc.
I knew that I had seen enough...I was convinced that Tiger was sneaking around doing strange things....
But even footprints, and jimmied doors were not enough for the cops....or for Don.
Mom's psychosis, understandable as it was, didn't help.
At one point, I smelled something behind my house.
Upon investigation, there appeared to be a small bucket of dog shit. (I had no dogs).
Mom stopped sleeping.
I stopped sleeping.
Hyperawareness.
Me and Wife actually saw the little fucker, crossing the front field in broad daylight, one day.
I got the gun, and went up there.
Ground too hard for prints....but there he was, on his side of the fence, watching me.
I suspected that our houses, and phones, were bugged.(easier to do than I had thought)
It was like he Knew when we were gonna try something surprising.
So...I couldn't sleep. any way.
I'd give mom the code word (which we ca\hanged often) so she wouldn't shoot me...and I'd slip out a window, and go on random walkabouts.
On a few occasions, there was a shot....and not from Tiger's direction.
So I'd hop in the truck, open all our gates and cruise all the fencelines, shooting up the brush with a 12 ga.
>00Buck.
Fucker called the cops on me!
(We lived way out in the middle of nowhere...he was our closest neighbor...next closest was a mile away)
I was reading Casteneda's Don Juan....and decided to try Magic.
I mean, why the hell not?!
So I go sit on the fencerow...and focus till m head hurt.
Visualised entering Tiger's house,finding his bed, and him.
I mentally went inside him, visualising the tinyest detail of anatomy...I squeezed his heart....poke holes in his brain....
I did this many times...
I couldn't sleep, anyway...and I could never actually catch him.

A year ago, Mom's in Magnolia....and Don loses his head.
I am the root of all his problems(!).
(related elsewhere).
We end up moving out.
Now mom has 2 enemies, Tiger and her Husband.
I hear through the grapevine recently, that Tiger has "aggressive Altzheimer's" and can no longer be left alone.
I am shocked by this news.
Did I do that?!
Is it an explanation for all the surreality?!
For almost 5 years, I have been hyperaware, and thought of as crazy...
I mean, why would anyone do the things we were accusing Tiger of doing?
Cops figgured it was me, or Mom, herself....I am a long haired Hippie (ergo a Dope Fiend), and me and Mom are strange ducks...Liberals, artists, etc....
Don hasn't helped...befriending the Sherriff, slandering me, telling them Mom is crazy as a latrine rat....

My Reason, my Rigorous Skepticism, says: either it was Tiger, or it was something Paranormal.
There are no other explanations....I have been over it a million times.