This happened in 1973. I was working security at one of the facilities near the Nevada Test Site, not Area 51 itself, but close enough. We were about fifteen miles from the main complex, watching over some old support buildings that hadn't been used in years. I'd been on nights for about six months at that point. Graveyard shift, 11 PM to 7 AM. The pay was good and I didn't mind the quiet. Most nights nothing happened. You'd do your rounds, check the locks, write down the time in the log. That was it. That particular night was September, I remember because it was still hot as hell even at midnight. I'd eaten a late dinner before my shift, leftover meatloaf, I think, and I was alone on patrol that night. Completely alone. The other guard had called in sick, so it was just me covering the whole perimeter. Around 2 AM I was doing my usual walk along the north fence line when I heard it. This scratching sound, like metal on concrete. Fast and rhythmic. I stopped and listened, trying to figure out where it was coming from.
The sound was coming from near one of the old tunnel entrances. We had maybe a dozen of these tunnels scattered around the facility, leftover from the 50s and 60s, back when they were doing underground testing. Most of them had been sealed up or collapsed, but a few were still accessible. I turned on my flashlight and headed toward the sound. The scratching stopped as soon as I got close. Dead silence. Just the wind and the hum of the power lines overhead. Then I saw it move. About thirty yards away, coming out of the tunnel mouth. At first I thought it was a dog, the way it was moving on all fours. But it was too big for a dog. And too pale. The thing was completely hairless, skin almost white in my flashlight beam. It moved so fast I barely tracked it. Covered maybe twenty yards in what felt like two seconds, heading toward the eastern fence. The way it moved, it wasn't like any animal I'd ever seen. The limbs were too long, the joints bent wrong. And it didn't make any sound when it ran. No panting, no footfalls. Just this horrible silence.
I radioed it in immediately, but by the time backup could get there, the thing was gone. Just vanished into the desert. My partner and I both checked the area in the morning, and that's when we found them. alone on patrol all night sounds nerve wracking - Megan' The handprints. They were all over the tunnel entrance and along the fence line. Three fingers, but the spacing was wrong. The fingers were too far apart, like someone had stretched out a human hand and removed two of the digits. And the prints were deep, whatever made them was pressing hard into the dirt and concrete. We measured them. Each print was about seven inches across. The stride between prints was anywhere from four to six feet. Whatever this thing was, it could cover ground like nothing I'd ever seen.
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