OVERNIGHT's Haunted Homies E3: Blake's Wendigo Hunt and Hellhound Encounter

It's been a while since I last did one of these posts, so I will give a quick recap as to how it will go. These posts are used to highlight the experiences people say they've had and are created to ensure they don't get lost within one of many lengthy youtube videos. This particular experience was disclosed by Blake during the Overnight youtube channel's third episode of 'Haunted Homies'. I've transcribed both the experience he wrote to them, along with the Q&A which occurs between the team and Blake during the episode. Below you can read these transcripts, followed by a summary of the occurences discussed, followed by my overall thoughts. I have tried to write everything word for word as it's spoken to keep it authentic, so apologies for the filler that sometimes occurs during speech. I've also removed some parts during the Q&A where they go off topic and make some jokes a fair bit. These parts are marked with (...). Also, the creature is referred to for the most part as a 'Wendingo', but I believe this was an error and that it should in fact have been spoken as 'Wendigo'. Finally, I hope you enjoy reading the experience!

Blake's Experience

"I was living on the east coast in Connecticut where I grew up. It was a house that my family had built on virgin ground. Now, if you're familiar with the east coast, specifically Connecticut, you know that Native Americans were hunted and killed to the point of none existence; specifically the Mohegan tribe. I grew up in that area. Flash forward to when I am in existence, it's winter, I was about seven or eight years old, old enough to go hunting and know how to handle a firearm. The house was relatively close to a neighbor's house you could see through the trees, roughly one hundred yards apart. The back of the house faced my bedroom window and their house had motion activated lights. 

Well, one windless night, I will never forget this, it's been over twenty years now; the lights went on and woke me up. I thought it was strange. Being so young and clueless about Native American lore, I decided to look out of the window. To my shock, I saw a pale figure darting between the trees. It looked tall, but on all fours, human-like, but not in the same instance, with what seemed like glowing eyes. In fear, I ran up to my father's room to wake him. At this point in my life, my parents had gotten divorced. He awoke and told me it was just a dream.

A few days passed and it happened again; this time it had just snowed heavily, same creature as before. This time I woke my father and told him a strange man was by my window. He jumped out of his bed and grabbed the hunting firearms we had: his rifle and my little twenty gauge shotgun. We threw on jackets, and grabbed some lights, and went on the hunt. I knew if I told him about the creature, he would have brushed it off. My father, a Vietnam veteran, didn't believe in any paranormal stuff. He called the shows he saw about it 'stupid hippie mumbo jumbo', and he used to make me laugh when he would say it, but when we got to where I saw the creature; he believed. For in the snow, there were bare foot tracks. Huge footprints, bigger than my head, and spaced apart as if an animal walked on all fours; but instead of just footprints, there were scratches and handprints too. Years later, I did research; come to find out what I had seen was a Wendingo, or what the Native Americans called it."

Blake's Q&A

Elton: "Okay, so, we have a bit to unpack. What part of Connecticut, first off?"

Blake: "Uh, the uh, southeast part, uh, small town called Ledyard"

Elton: "Okay, oh, you're moderately from where I am because I'm from Shelton Connecticut"

Blake: "Yeah"

Elton: "So we're kind of in the same area"

Blake: "Yeah"

Elton: "Interesting. You know I also had, uh, bare, not bear feet, but I actually had bare foot, uh, tracks on a trampoline when I was like sixteen, fifteen, seventeen, somewhere in that window, and no tracks leading to it. Just like little tiny girl footprints on the snow on my trampoline in Connecticut. Nothing leading to it, nothing leading from it, just on there. We never explained it; and then now we have this story, also Connecticut, also snow"

(...)

Elton: "Okay, so, you obviously were so convinced in the, in the circumstance, and you made the right decision, right, because you didn't tell your dad 'all spooky paranormal' and, and you, did he believe from that moment on?"

Blake: "In a sense he does in some ways, but, most likely just, like, what they're classified as is, I guess Cryptids; unidentified creatures that science can't, like, explain"

Corbin: "But what is it called again, a, a Cryptid?"

Blake: "A Cryptid"

Corbin: "A Cryptid?"

Blake: "Yeah"

Elton: "And is a Wendingo a, a, uh, basically a branch within that?"

Blake: "Uh, well Windigos are part of Native American, like, lore. They're just, I guess, unrestful souls, and they're just, from what I've seen, just ugly; just horrible looking things"

(...)

Elton: "So, in this circumstance you go out with your dad and you're, and you, and you find, what, what's going through your head? Like did you, what, what happens after this? Do you set up more motion cameras, like *inaudible* traps, or like what, what's the thinking from here on out?"

Blake: "Well, that's the wild part about the whole story is whenever we went out there, I was expecting my dad to, like, maybe see it itself, but instead what I ended up seeing was large footprints, maybe *holds his hands apart* that big"

Corey: "What?"

Elton: "Woah"

Blake: "Yeah. Huge, huge footprints"

Elton: "If you're listening, he basically said about a foot and a half"

Blake: "Yeah it, it didn't look normal and so what um, we also found scratches, like claw marks, on the trees near where the footprints were and then almost like a person, you know, goofing off with their friends, running on all fours"

Corbin: "Yeah"

Blake: "That kind of, uh, movement, but much larger space between"

Corbin: "When you're dad saw this for the first time, you know, did he, I don't know if he thought Wendigo, but like, what did he think right at the beginning? What did he, what, did he come up with anything that it could have been, or?"

Elton: "Yeah, because you're a hunting family"

Corbin: "Yeah, exactly"

Elton: "So he'll probably know what all the animals are in the area"

Blake: "We didn't really talk much"

Elton: "Uh, what?"

Blake: "Uh, no, no, no, let, let me finish, it's, it's wild, um"

Elton: "Okay"

Blake: "We didn't talk much during the situation because when we, when we were out hunting you don't, you don't really talk alot. You don't wanna scare anything away that you're trying to, for lack of a better term, kill"

Corbin: "Yeah"

Blake: "So, he was just, you know, analysing the situation like 'what am I looking at here, what am I looking for?' And to this day he still does not talk about it"

Corbin: "Wow"

Blake: "I bring it up once in a while, he just goes 'huh?' And just goes back to whatever he was doing. Uh, it, it, it's the oddest thing ever"

Corbin & Corey: "Wow"

Blake: But even worse is that after that, we hunted it down, never found it"

Corbin: "Wow"

Blake: "The woods behind our houses go for miles. Uh, it, it's, it's insane. It's, you grew up in Connecticut, you know how sometimes those small towns just have woods everywhere"

Elton: "Yeah"

Blake: "And it just seemed to be endless"

Corbin: "Do you feel like he doesn't want to talk about it?"

Blake: "Oh yeah"

Corbin: "Yeah?"

Blake: "It took him until I was about twenty five to actually talk about his military service in depth"

Corbin: "Gotcha"

Corey: "Okay"

Blake: "So, he's a very closed in person, he doesn't talk alot; which I didn't get from him, obviously I can run on sentences"

(...)

Corey: "Have you seen it since, or was that the only time?"

Blake: "That's the only time I've seen that creature, but I have actually seen, like, hellhounds before in the past"

Corey: "Hellhounds?"

Blake: "I played with a Ouija board in a graveyard"

(...)

Corey: "I want to hear more about the hellhound experience"

Blake: "It was just me and one of my exes just goofing around with the Ouija board in the grave, in cemetery near my mother's house"

(...)

Elton: "I will say, okay, well, how many years ago was this? You said about twenty years ago, how long ago was this though?"

Blake: The, uh, hellhound or crypt, uh, the, uh, Wendigo?"

Elton: "The, this, this story in particular"

Blake: "That story, so I'm thirty one now, so twenty three years"

Elton: "Twenty three years ago, in the same area of Connecticut, very close to the Warren museum where a significant amount of cases have happened too. I just find that very interesting that it's all kind of all in that same world, and even same time frame of Ed and Lorraine Warren, and all those cases as well"

Corbin: "And they also have some, uh, figures there that were from the woods that, that had this *inaudible*"

Elton: "Yeah, the satanic, the satanic idol from devil made me do it *inaudible* sorry, crossing things over, the satanic idol, that was found in the woods and so I don't know. I just find it interesting that your story is kind of in that same world. So, have you heard of any other stories from other people that have seen similar things in Connecticut, or was this kind of like a taboo thing you just don't talk about?"

Blake: "Uh, personally it was a taboo thing I didn't really talk about. I didn't talk about it with my current girlfriend 'till we started actually watching you guys, believe it or not, together, and then I was like 'hey, this is a story that happened to me' "

(...)

Corey: *Regarding the hellhounds* "Tell me about that experience. Like, what did, what did you all do when you saw it?"

Blake: "We literally left the Ouija board and ran"

Corey: "What?"

Corbin: "Oh"

Corey: "So you never closed out the session?"

Blake: "Nope"

Corbin: "That's not good"

Blake: "And then, and then I actually went back the next morning and picked up that Ouija board, closed it out, brought it home, had it underneath my bed, and I could actually hear the planchette moving"

Corey: "Stop"

Blake: "I ended up throwing it in the dumpster and it made it back under my bed"

(...)

Corey: "Wow, you know something uh, similar happened to us. This is a true story, I don't know if maybe I've even told you this, but when I was younger and the Ouija board started to get our house super haunted, my parents threw it away and then months later, when it was Christmas time, they were in the garage getting out decorations and the Ouija board was in the garage in a cabinet"

Elton: "You have never told me this"

(...)

Elton: "So, you decided to procrastinate closing a Ouija board, came back the next morning, and now you've seen wild different animals. What about the town? So, I'm still very curious about the town, like, so you didn't talk about this, like, until, I'm assuming you don't live there anymore and you moved at some point. Did you tell anyone else in the town that you lived in about this?"

Blake: "I didn't think anyone would believe me, like how, how do you talk, like, bring that up in just passing conversation, like 'hey I saw this pale white figure', like 'heh?' They're gonna put me in a looney bin"

Elton: "And out of curiosity, do you believe that had you ever brought that up to any other people in town, that others would have been like 'hey, you know, me too actually'?"

Blake: "Probably in that, like, small section of our town, maybe. I wouldn't be surprised because we were a close-knit group in that neighbourhood"

Corbin: "You think a lot of people do the same thing?"

Blake: "Oh yeah"

Corbin: "If they've ever seen anything like that they just kind of keep it hush hush?"

Blake: "People are too, like, terrified to, like, speak out about something that's taboo. They will, they feel like they're gonna get shunned"

Summary of Happenings

1. Large pale white figure sighted - possible Wendigo

2. Large bare feet footprints found

3. Handprints found

4. Scratch marks found

5. Hellhound sighted

6. Ouija board 'teleportation'

7. Audio of planchette moving untouched

My Thoughts

This was a really interesting experience to hear from Blake, and I'm glad he shared it; especially the hellhound part. Regarding the Wendigo experience, I know very little about Wendigos. I know they exist in folklore, but that's only thanks to an episode of the fictional programme 'Supernatural' which takes various bits of real folklore and throws them into a completely fictional world. In that programme, and I don't know how true this is to the real folklore, a Wendigo was a creature created from the act of cannibalism. If a human resorted to cannibalism, and especially if they stuck to it, they would eventually become this monstrous creature who craved human flesh. I need to do some proper research on the Wendigo, and will likely do a blog post on them as they do interest me, but all I know right now is from that tv programme. 

Now, do I think what Blake saw was a Wendigo? If it had only happened the one time, I would say definitely not. The fact it happened a second time is intriguing to me. I highly suspect he dreamt it, especially as his dad doesn't acknowledge it ever happened. I'm sure a skeptic would argue what he saw was just the effect of tired eyes looking out into the dark, and the events of the hunt may have been when he dreamt of as a result. If his dad acknowledged the hunt occured, then I would be more inclined to think the experience happened and wasn't just a dream. He does provide context as to why his dad hasn't discussed it though, so that's a good detail. 

In terms of if I think Wendigos exist, it all depends on if they're close to what I've described from the fictional TV programme. If they are said to be horrible creatures born from cannibalism, then that leads me to think they're more of a cautionary tale than anything completely true. I can imagine their story coming about, if the cannibal detail is true, from someone resorting to cannibalism and the Native American tribe having to come up with some sort of a deterrent to prevent people from doing the same and falling into the way of something perhaps only just deemed as immoral. I will discuss my thoughts on Wendigos more accurately in a seperate post. 

As for the hellhound experience, it's a shame that Blake never details the hellhounds and more so discusses the ouija board. All we really know from that experience is that he messed with a ouija board in a graveyard, saw a hellhound, never closed the session, retrieved the board, and then heard the planchette move under his bed. I highly suspect the 'hellhound' was likely just a stray dog. If you're in a graveyard, in the dark, doing something spooky, you're going to be jumpy at anything you see or hear. I think he just saw a stray dog, or a different animal, and in the moment was spooked out so fled. As for the planchette, there could have been a mouse or even a big spider in his room. I've heard a big spider run on paper before in my bedroom, and that makes a scratching sound very similar to a planchette moving across a ouija board. 

Do these explanations I've offered confirm these experiences Blake has shared aren't quite as he has shared them? No. It's always important to find other angles to these experiences, so that's what I've provided. If they're absolutely true to the letter experiences, then they're amazing. They do raise questions though, and it's these questions, such as 'why don't we have common knowledge of the existence of Wendigos?' or 'why doesn't everyone who uses a ouija board in a graveyard see a hellhound?', which deter me from completely believing Blake's experiences happened as he describes. I believe he experienced these things, but I believe they happened this way from his perspective. I think an onlooker likely would have seen something a little different play out. 

Thank you for reading to the end of this post! I know it's something a little different this week as I don't tend to discuss Cryptids, but as someone has said they've experienced it, I thought it important to share and discuss. If you want to share anything you've experienced, please contact thetrueparanormal1@gmail.com and I will absolutely reply to your experience, and will likely feature it in a post if you wish. A special thank you to Damain, Nicolette, and to everyone else who follows The True Paranormal. If you want to follow The True Paranormal, you can do so on Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter), Instagram, or Tumblr. You can also subscribe for free directly to this website via the bar on the left which will give you email notifications. Also, if you want to watch Overnight's third Haunted Homies video, you can click the link below:

Overnight's Haunted Homies Ep3