A rendition of the creature in the culvert, on that night.

ROCKFORD — On a recent Spring night, one of the few warm ones Rockford has experienced, after a rainy day, a small group of friends decided to bust their cabin fever and go to John’s Pizza on 11th street. The group decided they need to walk off their indulgence, and decided to hit nearby Churchill Park, or at least the open areas to the West of it around 13th street. They had the place to themselves, and sauntered around. They remarked about the new-ish skate park far off in the distance, and how times had changed since they had been their last.One of them walked to the edge of the Keith Creek ravine culvert there, and thought it looked like it was worth climbing down into, despite the fact it was gushing with water from the previous days’ rain.After a long night out, none of their cell phones’ batteries were in any condition to be used for the flashlight, but one member of the group had a small, but relatively powerful LED light on his keychain, barely enough to see where to step in front of them. They climbed down and ventured into the culvert canal several yards.One of them saw a disturbing site ahead: a cat’s corpse.At the time, they didn’t know it was dead, and they all decided they should help the cat, if there was still time.As they approached the still body, it became clear that the poor cat was not merely dead, but it had been mutilated.As they recoiled and felt sympathy, they talked among themselves. Then they heard a scurrying and splashing far ahead.The flashlight darted up at the source of the sound, just outside of a culvert under the 12th street bridge.They saw a creature hunched over. The first thing they noticed about it was the eyes glowed. The thing remained stick still, among debris and garbage in the concrete creek. They noticed more about it: gaunt and gray with a “human-ish” face (no protruding ears or nose), slick and hairless, and long teeth that they could see in the light almost as clearly as the eyes.They thought that getting out of there would be a good idea. Then the creature called out before they moved to leave. It was animalistic, guttural, but instead of a growl, it called the name of one of the group members, (who we will refer to as J from here on out to protect his identity). The other two spun around to see the group member whose name the creature appeared to utter. He was frozen. As they looked back at the creature. It called again. The same name. And it stood up on two legs, albeit in a hunched-over manner.The group decided to high-tail it out of there.As they climbed the ravine walls, they heard the name one more time, and splashing as the creature started making its way toward them. They didn’t look back.They made it back to their car in record time. They could see their car, several yards away, in the light of a street lamp.In front of the car, they saw a dog. Huge. Dark, sable fur. Looking at them. Eyes also glowing in the light.They found themselves in a standoff with the dog for what seemed like an eternity. The dog eventually sauntered off. And leapt into the culvert ravine, in the dark distance.Our investigators went out to that culvert. We found no evidence, directly of a culvert crawler. But, regrettably, we did find the mutilated cat.One member of the group, and we'll refer to her as K, a devout Jehovah's Witness, wasn't as sold as the others on the itinerary as the rest of the group seemed to be.“I just wanted to have a nice night out with my high school friends, many of whom I hadn't seen in a while, and dinner was really nice. John's has the best pizza in Rockford. I don't drink, but they had what seemed like a reasonable amount of cocktails. Then they wanted to drive over to Churchill Park, where we spent a lot of our youth, but along the way they had in mind to stop at some sites which, in retrospect, didn't seem to be random at all.“We stopped at the lot where The Pump Handle Inn used to sit, and they passed around a flask of something, but I abstained. They said the energy there was wonky. They asked me if I could feel all the negative energy that had accumulated there, especially at the end when so many damaged, forsaken, and downright wicked people were living in those rooms that were later found unfit for habitation. I don't see human nature that way, and I honestly didn't feel anything but the warm breeze, which was nice because summer had been very slow in coming this year. Not that it didn’t get cold again the next day.“Then they wanted to go by the huge building that was Rockford Standard Furniture because it's such a fixture in the history of our neighborhood. They had a couple more swigs, and M, who has always been the unvoted leader of our group, wanted to break in and just "feel the energy." I talked him out of that, and we decided to go over to Churchill Park, where I had hoped we'd just relax and spend the rest of the evening talking about what we'd been doing since school.”That didn't happen.“Things got weird as soon as we got to the park. M and the others wanted to hit the culvert ravine thing immediately, the way we always used to, but it really smelled in there. It was wet and unpleasant, but they seemed drawn to it. It was dark down there, and all of our cells were on fumes, so we didn’t want to risk using the lights. Luckily, M had a dinky light on his keychain. I hadn't felt anything at our other stops than was unusual, but I immediately started to feel uneasy in the culvert. From experience I knew so many animals could be scurrying around our ankles, and I just couldn't see anything.“Then we all saw it at the same time. What looked like a house cat that had been ripped apart. I almost gagged. Then I started crying. It was fully dark now, and about twenty yards in front of us I thought I heard a guttural voice growl out J's name. He seemed to freeze for a moment, but then looked like he was going to go forward into the darkness, but we told him we were terrified, and he relented. The thing stood up! We grabbed J and got out of there finally.“We headed back to the car, but sitting in front of it was a huge dog just staring at us intently. Luckily, the dog eventually walked away.“Even though I knew our neighborhood wasn't the best in town growing up, I always felt safe there. I knew a lot of seedy and dangerous people lived in the motels and used them for all kinds of nefarious and unwholesome activities, but now that those building have been condemned and flattened, where did all those people go? M speculated as he dropped me off that maybe they never really left."Stay safe out there.