The Finger

The Swamp Road Chronicles^®

"The Finger"

The experience I’m about to relate to you are absolutely real in every regard. I have tried to be as accurate and precise in my descriptions of the events that befell my fiancée and myself as I possibly can be.

I’m a professional medical statistician, I have a doctorate and I have a very no-nonsense world view; there is no room in my profession for non-scientific thinking, so I have not used my real name in this posting. My colleagues would run me out of the business if I were connected to this. Having said all of that, as God is my witness, every word of this is true!

We had driven from Pickerington to Granville to view the 2014 July 4^th fireworks, but it had begun a rain in buckets so we were driving back to Pickerington as it was starting to get dark. My fiancée (let’s call her Jane) saw the sign for Swamp Road and said “Let’s go down that road! Maybe we will see the ghost!” I assured her that we would see no ghost because ghosts don’t exist, but if she wanted to, so I told her that we could go that way if she really wanted to; it wasn’t out of the way at all, so I turned south onto Swamp Road. Little was I to know that in a few minutes my entire world view and maybe even my sanity would be called into question.

After we have driven about half a mile on Swamp Road I noticed, about 100 yard ahead, something crawling across the center of the road. I thought I knew what it was and became really excited. About 8 years ago I have been at a state park called Cedar Bog; I was talking to one of the park rangers when he saw something crawling across the footpath about 30 yards away and excitedly said “Excuse me a minute” and went rushing down the path. I followed him to see what it was all about. When he got to the spot where he had seen something crawling it was already gone. He told me that it was an Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake; they were rare and he had hoped to get a good look at it, but it was too quick, or he was too slow.

I thought that I was seeing another such snake and I wanted to see it before it got away. I could not have been more wrong. Jane and I jumped out of the car and ran up to where it was making its way toward the road edge. It wasn’t a snake, it was something much more horrible and terrifying; it was a FINGER!

It was a finger crawling across Swamp Road! A finger! I know, believe me, that this sounds like I’m crazy or I was having delusions or I was under the influence of some sort of drug, but I swear to you it was a finger! Not a human finger, but a finger of something human-like. It had a green tinted skin with a sort of reptilian texture. It had a long totally black nail that looked like the toenail of a very large dog. The finger was at least twice the size of a man’s finger and at the place where the finger was apparently once attached to a hand there were strings of tendons and veins dragging across the asphalt surface of the road.

Jane screamed, “My God! What is it?” This thing had no eyes, no legs, no mouth, it was obviously a finger. A finger from what, I don’t know. I imagine that if there were Witches such as you see in story books that have green complexions and long black nails, then that finger could have come from one of them, but it would have to be eight feet tall or more to have a finger of that size.

I have also wondered if there had ever been a dragon-like creature, it could have had talons that would look like that.

I image that anyone reading this would wonder why I didn’t try to catch it in a jar or something, but I can assure you that if you had seen that thing you would not have wanted to get near it at all! It was horrible how it would move itself across the asphalt; it would raise its long black nail high into the air and strike it downward into the blacktop with a strong, decisive stab, then it would pull itself forward with that long black nail impaled into the road.

Absolutely methodically, rhythmically it continued its trek across the blacktop. I sensed an absolute determination to reach its goal, whatever or wherever that may have been.

I’ve had a few months to think about that night and I have come to believe that that finger was trying to get back to the hand it was wrenched from. Its path of travel pointed it straight toward Pickerington and at the rate it was traveling it should be just about there right now. If it continues on in that direction it will eventually arrive at the Gulf of Mexico a few years from now. Perhaps at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, or in the deserts of Texas it will find its rightful place. What happens then, we’ll have to wait and see.

As submitted by Anonymous, April 17, 2020 Pickerington, Ohio

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