Appalachian Woman Moves Into a House in the Woods. It Ended With Her Jumping Out of the Window to Escape.

There are many unexplained sightings and strange encounters surrounding Appalachia. Savana (@itssavanadarling) from TikTok, who lives in Appalachia, shared a story from one of her followers. Like Savana, the woman from the anonymous submission is also from the area, and what she’s seen in the woods made her jump out of her rental home’s window.

Initially, the woman was hesitant to tell the story to Savana—not because she’s embarrassed, but because she would like to believe that this incident never happened at all. Unlike some submissions wherein people move to Appalachia and then experience something strange, the woman in question has been living in the area since she was five years old. She was going through a divorce and had to move out and sell the home she had with her ex-husband because it had been too expensive for her to upkeep.

The divorcee decided to move into a rental house. It was affordable, but the catch was that the house was in the woods. As she described, “it was away from anyone and anything.” The nearest store to her would be a 45-minute drive away.

Rent is cheap because something else is living with her

“When I moved in, I immediately could feel a heaviness, almost as if whatever was in that house did not want me to be there,” the woman recalled. She added that the house had been vacant for a few years before she moved in, which made it smell musty. The woman opened the windows to aerate the house and then started unpacking.

While putting the plates in the cabinet, she heard a scratching sound. When she turned around to face the sound, the back door of the house flew open and slammed shut. The incident spooked her, so she ran to lock the door.

She realized that it would be impossible for the door to easily fly open, as she had locked both the front and back doors beforehand.

Because of the initial incident, she bought cameras from Walmart for security. However, the cameras were not working despite her best efforts to set them up. She thought the security cameras were faulty, so she swapped them for another batch—they wouldn’t work all the same.

She would later realize that she didn’t need to install security cameras to see the creature that swung her doors open.

Best friend to the rescue

One night, when she was taking the trash out after dinner, she heard a twig snap at the woodline next to her house. She thought it was just an animal until her eyes focused on the direction of the sound.

She saw a 7-foot-tall figure with the head of an animal, a skull, and antlers. It wasn’t an animal. Rather, it only resembled one.

Naturally, she ran back to her house, screaming for dear life. She called her best friend, who only lived an hour away. Without having to ask, her best friend chose to drive and pick her up. In the space between, she sat in the closet, hiding, with her best friend on the other end of the line.

When her best friend finally arrived, she fell silent. She said, “You’re going to have to climb out the window.” She told the woman that there are five animal-like figures with antlers standing around her house.

Because the figures were not near her bedroom window, the woman had no other way to flee. Understanding that there was no other way, the woman finally jumped out of the window as quietly as she could and ran to her best friend’s car. Thankfully, the figures did not pursue the car—instead, they were strangely focused on the doors and windows of the house.

The woman finally moved out, and her best friend’s brother and husband packed her things. She would never go back to the house in the woods. Although she broke her lease, the owners didn’t ask her to pay the rest of it—this made her suspect that the owners knew something was wrong with the house.

The real hero of the story is clearly her best friend. It’s difficult to imagine what would have happened to her without her best friend driving to save her.

An myth in Appalachia

The woman never classified the creature in her story, but there are several possibilities. In Eastern Europe, a creature with the body of a human and the deer-like head of an animal is what’s known as a leshy. These forest spirits are tall as trees and play tricks on people.

But North American Indigenous tribes who live in Appalachia would likely call those creatures wendigo. Unlike the playful leshy, the wendigo feasts on human flesh. The wendigo are also known to possess their victims, driving them to commit cannibalistic and other violent crimes.

All in all, it’s not a friendly spirit—and what makes the situation worse is that Savana was telling the story while living in Appalachia herself.

(featured image: Anna Belousova, Wolrider YURTSEVEN, Pedro Figueras)

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