The Chicken Killer

It started out about 20 years ago. I was living with my parents in South Jersey just west of the Pine Barrens. Its a rural area and there was a corn field across the street and about 2 miles of woods in the back. We had neighbors that lived close by... about 200 yards or so away. At the time, they had several goats and sheep, a few ducks and a handful of chickens. We were all sitting on their back porch one night when the most terrifying scream came from the woods. It sounded kinda like a cat in pain, maybe a small child. It was surreal and none of us have ever heard a scream like that. I was scared. We all were. Many people heard the noise that summer and I even heard it one morning while I was waiting for the bus. I spent every night staring at the window, not sleeping, and jumping to each gust of wind. My parents blamed it on an owl although no one ever saw an owl in those woods. Great story to calm a nervous son. That was the beginning of a strange series of events.

One day, while playing man hunt in the woods behind my neighbors house, I jumped over a pile of logs and almost landed on a dead goat. There was no sign of blood or any reason why it was dead yet alone outside of the fence. Did an owl kill it? A few days later, we noticed that some of the chickens were missing. About 300 feet into the woods, we found a pile of feathers. We walked another few hundred feet and saw another pile. No chickens, just feathers. Almost as if someone or something plucked and skinned them right there. Over the next few months, more goats and chickens went missing. Of course, there was no explanation and I was even more terrified than before. Thats when we dubbed "it" the Chicken Killer. I even made a shirt in printmaking class in honor of this thing. It had a layer of trees, a black background, and an evil face in the darkness. We had to add some text to the design so I screened on "Chicken Killer... Dont Look Behind You." That came from the late nights spent at my neighbors house. When it was time to go home, I would sprint as fast as I could across the field and never looked back.

Years passed by and nothing was ever said or done about it. I picked up a copy of Weird NJ -  magazine dedicated to strange happenings in the armpit of the nation - and I ran across an article written by the girl who used to live up the street. She recalled an encounter she had with a strange creature one winter night. It was 1 AM and she was driving home from work. There are no street lights and there is a long stretch of woods before you reach the few neighboring houses. About a quarter of a mile from my parents house, she saw something on the side of the road. At first, she though it was a deer but when she got closer she realized it was nothing she has ever seen before. She described it as having red eyes, grey rat-like fur, a half horse/half human looking head, and a long skinny tail. It stood crunched over on its hind legs which were much longer than the front. She slowed down to make sure she was not hallucinating and confirmed her worst fears. It looked directly at her and leaped into the woods. That was her version of the story. My brothers and mom laughed it off, but I believed. By that time, I was already living in Philadelphia and didnt visit that often. The times I did visit, I never went outside after dark unless I was running to the car. Imagine that... a 20 yr old sprinting from the front door to the car. To this day, my younger brother still parks on the sidewalk when he comes home late.

About 3 years after that, we were joking about the article in Weird NJ with my good friend Dave. Dave lived on the same street but far enough away that he did not experience the Chicken Killer when we were kids. He asks what the article said and before I finished the first sentence he tells us that he saw something a couple years back. I wanted an unobstructed version so I asked him to tell us what he saw first. Basically, he described the same exact thing she did. The girl up the street and Dave had no relations and there is no way they could have made this up. We now have 2 witnesses both recalling a sighting of this beast. 

That was about 6 years ago. All of these things happened and there was never an explanation. I just pushed it to the back of my mind and did my best to not bring it up. I never saw anything except a dead goat and a few piles of chicken feathers.... until last summer. My parents rent a beach house for the week every summer and I was home for the family fun time. I had to work in Philly one morning so I decided to stay at my mom's to save some driving time in the morning. I hadnt seen my friends from home in a while so I invited them over. 5 of us were standing on the front lawn talking when we heard something running across the rocks on the driveway. We turned to see something run past the bushes towards the back of the house. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we only saw the back end of it. It was definitely running on its back 2 legs. It was grey in color with short wirey hair. It was hunched over and had a long, thin rat-like tail. The back had to be about 4 feet off of the ground.

"Holy shit" is all you could hear. We looked at each other and ran into the house, locked all the doors and windows and made sure we all saw the same thing. We spent the next few hours searching the internet for a similar creature. The closest thing we could find was the Chupacabra and an animal called a kangaroo cat. I pleaded for my friends to stay the night but they finally left around 3 AM. You can call it the Jersey Devil, the Chucacabra, or the Chicken Killer... but whatever it is, we all saw it and its living in South Jersey. After all of those years living in fear, I have convinced myself it doesnt kill humans and it actually seemed more scared of us than we were of it. I will just stick to the concrete jungle where I feel more comfortable walking down shady alleys than in my own backyard. When I go home now, I sleep well. But I will never stop running in the dark and I will NEVER look behind me.