This happened back in February of 1996. I'm a police officer here in Duluth, been on the force about twelve years at that point. I work mostly day shift, but that week I'd been covering some evening shifts because we were short-staffed. Wasn't happy about it, if I'm being honest. My kids had been asking me all week to help them build a snowman. We'd gotten hit with about eight inches the weekend before, perfect packing snow. So that Saturday afternoon, I finally got around to it. Me, my two boys, seven and nine at the time, we spent a good hour out there rolling snow, getting it just right. Built this big guy, must've been six feet tall. Used coal for the eyes, carrot for the nose, the whole deal. My youngest found this old top hat in the garage, and we stuck that on there too. The kids were proud of it. Took pictures and everything.
That night, must've been around two thirty in the morning, I woke up. Not sure why. You know that feeling when something just pulls you out of sleep? My wife was still asleep next to me. The house was quiet, just the furnace running. I got up to use the bathroom, and on my way back I looked out the bedroom window. We've got a big backyard, faces north toward the tree line. There's a streetlight two houses down that gives off enough glow that you can see pretty well at night, even without the moon. I could see our snowman right where we'd left it. And standing next to it was something else. Another figure, about the same height. At first I thought maybe one of the neighborhood kids had built a second snowman as a joke, you know, gave ours a friend. But then I realized it was moving.
This thing was walking around the snowman we'd made. Circling it, like it was examining it. And here's the thing, it looked like a snowman itself. White, rounded body, that same three-section structure. But it was moving on its own, no person inside or anything like that. I stood there watching it for maybe thirty seconds. It would tilt forward, like it was leaning in to look at our snowman's face, then step back. The movements were deliberate. Curious. Like it was trying to figure out what this thing in my yard was. I could see details even from the second floor. The surface had this texture to it, rough and crystalline, catching the light from the street. Where the coal eyes were on our snowman, this thing had dark spots too, but they looked wet. Reflective. And when it turned its head, and it did turn its head, I could see those spots move with it.
[ Story continues in the full game... ]