The Thing at Beach 6

It was just past sundown when Betty Jean Klem and Anita Halfley found themselves stranded at the edge of Beach 6’s parking lot, their car sunk deep into the sand. With them were Halfley’s two young daughters—Sandra, age two, and baby Sara, just six months old. The lake breeze had settled into stillness, and the woods beyond the beach grew darker by the minute.

That’s when Betty saw it.

A shape—tall, upright, and hulking—emerged near the car. She described it later as gorilla-like, nearly six feet in height, but unlike any animal she’d ever seen. It was dark, indistinct, and moved with a sluggish, unnatural gait. When she slammed her hand on the horn, the creature retreated into the brush without haste, swallowed by the shadows.

The sound of the horn brought nearby officers racing back. They found Betty in a state of panic, trembling and incoherent. Later, they discovered fresh scratches on the car—long, deliberate marks that hadn’t been there before. Both women swore to it.

One officer dismissed the idea of a raccoon or bear. “There are no bears out here,” he said. “I don’t know what it was.”

Speculation swirled. Some whispered it was no beast at all, but the ghost of Joe Root—the eccentric hermit who once roamed the peninsula, speaking to gulls and living off the land. Others pointed to a strange coincidence: the creature’s description matched one printed in Newsweek nearly a year earlier, in an article about unexplained sightings.

Was it a monster? A spirit? A visitor from somewhere else?

Whatever it was, it left behind more than scratches. It left a story that still lingers in the sand and silence of Beach 6.