I just want to start that I’ve always been fascinated with nature. I love being out in the woods and seeing and hearing the various animals that live out there, it’s just so peaceful.

Every chance I get, I go hiking in the various parks and nature preserves in my home state of New Jersey and some parts of eastern Pennsylvania as a way to unwind after the workweek.

A few months ago however, I had an experience while hiking around Merrill Creek Reservoir that makes no sense. Nobody knows what happened to me because I’m afraid if I did tell anyone what happened, they would have me committed to a mental hospital.

I’ve tried keeping my experience a secret, but I feel like I’m slowly going mad thinking about what happened, so I decided to post my experience on this site to get this off my chest and maybe get some closure.

Now, here’s my story. It was a hot day in July, I arrived at Merrill Creek Reservoir around 10:15 in the morning. I stepped out of my aging, but reliable pickup truck and smelled the fresh air, relieved to be out in nature after a long, stressful week of work.

I set out into the woods and started hiking, it was absolutely beautiful. The sun shone brightly through the trees and as I walked the trails, I saw all kinds of wildlife on my hike. Frogs, squirrels, chipmunks, robins, geese, herons and even a bald eagle.

Two hours into my hike, I had to take a leak, so I walked off the trail so I could relieve myself. After I finished, I noticed the entrance to a cave on the side of a hill ten feet away from me. This peaked my curiosity as neither the trail map nor Merrill Creek’s website mention this cave.

I walked closer to it in order to get a better look. The entrance to the cave looked big enough for me to be able to walk through it while crouching. I should have turned around and walked back to the trail, oh god! How I wished I had just turned around! But curiosity got the better of me and I ventured into the cave.

Now I should tell you, I didn’t take a lot with me on my hike, especially to be exploring a cave. All I had on me were my keys, my wallet, a small flashlight that was powered by a AAA battery, a pocket knife with a three inch blade, a satchel that had a granola bar and two bottles of water in it and my phone which had poor reception out in the woods. If I had gotten stuck in that cave, I would have been fucked!

I walked around in that cave for ten minutes when the walls suddenly got narrow, I looked through the opening with my flashlight and saw that the walls on the other side got wider and turned towards the left. Against my better judgment, I exhaled as much air as I could and was able to squeeze through the opening.

I then rounded the corner and noticed the skeleton of some kind of animal on the cave floor. I looked closer at it and at first, thought it was the skeleton of some large bird, but then I noticed something wasn’t right. The skeleton had a long tail and instead of having a beak, the skull had a snout with razor sharp teeth. It was then I had a realization, I was looking at the skeleton of a dromaeosaurus!

Now I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking that I found a fossil of a dromaeosaurus. But no, that’s not what I found. Fossils are formed when a plant or animal dies and quickly gets buried under sediment and they’re remains turn into stone over millions of years. This dromaeosaurus looked like it had died at least three months ago.

I suddenly became excited at the thought that I possibly found a cave system unexplored by man and that this cave could possibly be home to non avian dinosaurs that survived the K-T extinction. With this thought, I ventured further into the cave.

My excitement grew when I saw light at the end of the tunnel. When I exited the cave, the first thing I noticed was how different the trees looked. They looked like trees you would see in the Amazon rainforest instead of rural New Jersey. The next thing I noticed was the lack of grass on the forest floor and how there were large ferns and other plants I’ve never seen before.

Then I took notice to the sounds around me. The sounds of insects were prevalent, but instead of bird calls, there were bellows, grunts and what sounded like a loud roar off in the distance. I then heard some sounds around twenty feet away from me and headed toward the direction that they came from.

I walked over to this large bush and decided to peek through it with caution to see what was making the sounds and what I saw was amazing. There was a clearing and in the middle of it was a herd of large, duck billed reptiles that had small, half moon shaped crests on top of they’re heads walking on four legs and occasionally standing on they’re hind legs in order to reach the vegetation on the trees. I couldn’t believe my eyes, I was looking at a herd of edmontosaurus! Creatures that haven’t been seen in sixty five million years!

Suddenly, there was what sounded like the flapping of wings. Not from a bird, but from what sounded like a cicada, but amplified a hundred times. The herd of edmontosaurus then looked up towards the sky, cried out and ran off into the forest.

It was then that the creature that had frightened the edmontosaurus herd landed in the middle of the clearing and what I saw terrified me to my core. It was a giant yellow insect the size of a dump truck. It looked like a cross between a cricket and a cockroach and it appeared to have what looked like a pteranodon in its mouth.

I watched in horror as it began eating the still living pterosaur. I could hear a sickening crunch every time it chewed on the poor reptile before swallowing it whole. I began trying to quietly sneak away, but just like a cliche horror movie, I accidentally stepped on a twig, producing a loud snap. I looked in the direction of the giant insect and to my horror, it had turned its head in my direction and started crawling towards me!

I began running back in the direction of the cave when suddenly, I heard the god awful sound of that creature’s wings. The giant insect then landed directly in front of me, it was even more hideous up close. It had two massive black eyes and a gaping mouth filled with sharp teeth that looked like row’s of kitchen knives.

I stood frozen in fear as this thing began feeling me with its antennas. Looking into its eyes was like staring into a black hole. I had to think of something quick or I would become this creature’s next meal. Just as it lunged towards me, I pulled out my pocket knife and plunged the blade as hard as I could into it’s left eye. It let out an ear piercing shriek as it pulled it’s head back, taking my knife with it.

While the insect was thrashing its head around trying to get my knife out of it’s eye, I ran past it back in the direction of the cave. Let me tell you, I couldn’t get back into that cave fast enough. In my haste to escape that bug from Hell, I forgot about the dromaeosaurus skeleton on the cave floor and tripped over it, scraping my knees in the process. I quickly got back up and made it back to the spot where the walls narrowed.

I quickly exhaled as much as I could and began squeezing my way through. I wasn’t as careful this time however and managed to tear my shirt and cut my arms and legs on the cave walls. I managed to get through the passage and ran out of that god forsaken cave. When I exited, I looked at my surroundings.

I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the trees looked normal, the forest floor was covered in grass and didn’t see any dinosaurs or that demonic insect. I wasn’t in the mood to continue hiking, so I began walking back towards my truck so I could just go home.

When I got home, my mom gasped when she saw all the cuts, bruises and my ripped up shirt. She asked me what happened and I lied and said I was walking down a steep hill and that I lost my footing and fell. I couldn’t tell her the truth, she would have thought I had gone crazy.

She began lecturing me like how all mothers do about how I needed to be more careful and all that stuff but I didn’t pay attention, the same thoughts kept repeating in my mind. What the fuck did I experience? Did that cave lead to some hidden part of the world where dinosaurs and giant insects lived that no man had discovered before? Was it a time portal that lead back to the Cretaceous period? Was it a wormhole to some alternate universe? I had to get answers!

The first thing I did was research insects that lived during the Cretaceous period. I looked and looked but couldn’t find anything even remotely resembling the creature I saw. How could a creature that big not be in the fossil record?

two weeks later, I mustered up the courage to go back to Merrill Creek and go to that cave so I could get some answers. My plan was to squeeze back through that narrow opening and photograph the dromaeosaurus skeleton, maybe even take it’s skull so I could have proof about my experience and maybe some scientists could find out what the deal with that cave was.

But when I went back, I was left with more questions. When I got to the hill where I found the cave, it wasn’t anywhere to be seen! I looked all around that hill couldn’t find the entrance to the cave. Its like it never existed!

That’s not the weirdest part however. As I was looking around that hill, I tripped over something. When I looked to see what had tripped me, a shiver went down my spine! I had dislodged a rock from the ground and in the rock, there was what looked like a fossilized pocket knife!