The Cornfield Incident
Case File: The Cornfield Creature - ████████████, Illinois, USA
The silence was deafening.
I stood up in a row of corn that towered over my head. I didn't move. I didn't breathe. I listened.
As much as I tried to control my panic, my hairs stood up and my arms filled with goosebumps. I wanted to run. Yet that same terror paralyzed me. Any sound I made would attract its attention, and that was what I wanted to avoid at all cost.
I opened my eyes as wide as I could, as if prying them open wider and wider would allow me to see through the thick darkness of the night, or manifest the power of x-ray vision to see through the thick wall of corn stalks that surrounded me.
But there was no light. Not one faint glow of moonlight. Not one tiny twinkle of starlight. Only claustrophobic darkness, and the wall of silhouetted corn obscuring my view in every direction.
And dead silence.
I thought back to the interviews we had conducted earlier that day. More than a dozen people claimed they had encountered something in the fields outside this rural Illinois town at night. A few of them compared it to the so-called Ohio Grassman. To be honest, I didn’t believe them. That’s why I came out here alone.
My attention honed in on a sudden rustling about four meters in front of me. It sounded like a large creature.
Slowly, without making a sound, I pointed my full spectrum camera straight ahead, toward the noise. I squinted into the pinkish/purple display (a result of a CMOS chip modified to capture infrared and ultraviolet light). Then I wondered if this thing could see IR or UV light.
There was stillness among the tall, pale cornstalks. Then there was movement about a meter to my left. There was no option to remain still and silent. I had heard too many reports of violence from whatever these creatures were. It was time to run.
I bolted. I ran as fast as I could. The stalks of corn battered my face and arms as I plowed through them. I did not look back. I did not stop.
When I broke free from the corn, I ran faster than I ever have, adrenaline kicking in causing time to slow, my vision especially acute, and my thoughts halted.
I ran so fast that nothing would stop me. I hoped nothing would stop me. I finally caught sight of my car parked on the side of the road. It was a relief to see it — just seconds left before I was there.
But it also gave me an extra jolt of anxiety. Reaching my car would mean I'd have to stop — if even briefly to open the door, hop in, and start the engine. Those precious seconds would give whatever gave chase the opportunity to reach me, possibly before I even got into the car.
I reached down, fumbling to grab ahold of my keys thrashing about on a carabiner attached to my belt. I managed to hit the button to unlock the door. The lights blinked on, flashing. Safety within reach. But also broadcasting my position.
I nearly slammed my body into the car, allowing it to bring me to a full stop, and quickly yanked the door open and pulled myself in. I slammed the lock button while I jammed my foot on the break pedal and pushed the ignition button harder than I ever have in my entire life. The car started.
I realized at that point that nothing had slammed into the car behind me. I pointed my camera out the driver's side window to see if I had been followed. My hands were shaking from the exertion. I gasped for breath. The windows were already fogging up.
There was nothing that I could see outside my car, only an empty field and a mostly undisturbed border where the grass grew tall.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I shifted into drive, but kept my foot on the break. I wanted to see whatever it was that was in the field with me just then. I wanted to capture it on camera. I wanted to bring back video evidence.
But there was nothing. I thought about getting back out of the car. But I sat there a few more seconds, catching my breath, and working up the courage to open the door and step back into the night.
I tried to convince myself I had just been spooked by something small. A coyote, perhaps. Then it pushed on the back of the car.
I spun around and peered through my camera. The car lurched forward. I spun around, then instinct took over and I pushed the gas pedal. I sped off down the road about 30 meters, and then stopped. I turned my camera back to where my car had been, flicked on the big IR/UV light, but there was nothing there.
I dialed Lourdes on my phone. When I heard her groggy answer, I glanced at the clock — it was 2:14 AM.
"I just had an encounter!" I said, still breathless.
"You did!" she replied, suddenly sounding wide awake. "Just now?"
"Yes," I said. "I'll send you coordinates."
"I'll be right there," she said.
Paul was the first on the scene. It was a huge relief to see his car headlights come up behind me. He hopped out of the car, giving me a boost of bravery to do the same.
"Dude, your car!" he exclaimed as he crouched at my back bumper, inspecting the damage. "It did this?"
I leaned in and snapped some photos. "It moved my car — about one and a half meter!"
"And no pics?" he asked.
"I didn't see anything!" I said. I had watched and rewatched the video on my phone at the moment my car was pushed forward.
"So...aliens?," Paul said, already scanning the field and the sky above us.
Just then, Lourdes arrived. Claire had ridden with her.
"I'm not jumping to wild theories about aliens or..."
"Bigfoot," Paul said excitedly, turning his attention back toward me.
"Shit," Lourdes said, looking at my car.
"I never saw it," I said. "Not even a glimpse. It was maybe a meter away from me in the field."
"By the looks of it, whatever was in that field with you would have to have been huge to wreck the back end of your car like this," Paul said. "Or at least strong."
I turned toward the corn field. "Something big is out there," I said, "and it tried to make contact with me."