A lot of spooky things can happen when you’re driving alone at night. Sometimes, these things are hard to explain—almost as though they’re supernatural.
Often, stories of this nature go viral on the internet. Frequently, people will pass around videos that they claim show ghosts or otherworldly figures. That’s not surprising given that around a third of Americans say they’ve had an encounter with a ghost.
One supernatural incident recently went viral. And it’s having even the most ardent skeptics scratching their heads. Here’s how it all went down.
What Happened To This North Carolina Man?
In a video posted to YouTube by Carolina Case Files, the host, Rusty, plays what he claims is a 911 call from Aug. 31, 2021. The call was placed at 11:03pm.
During the call, the caller says he’s encountered something incredibly bizarre.
“I’m driving on 210. I just crossed the Black River. And I thought I saw a guy standing on the side of the road bleeding,” he states.
In a subsequent interview, the man, identified only as T, noted that he was driving by a history battlefield in the area. The man who he saw, T says, appeared to be bleeding from his head while wearing “an old Civil War uniform.”
After driving past the man and looking for a place to pull over and stop, T heard a loud thud from the bed of his truck. Upon turning around, he caught a look at what had landed in his vehicle. He began to scream, “That’s not human! That’s not human!”
“I didn’t realize until afterwards that I had said, ‘That’s not human’ on the call, because it was just the first thing I started screaming, because I was terrified,” T says in the later interview. “I didn’t have my firearm with me, nothing. All I had was a woodsplitting axe.”
Things Get Weirder
If you thought this story couldn’t get any stranger, you’d be wrong.
After seeing the creature in his truck, T says he came to a screeching halt. He estimated that his car went from going 80 miles per hour to around 35. This caused whatever was in the back of his truck to flip over it and land on the road.
“And all I see is this just this super scrawny long body just fly over my truck in a ball, rolling,” T recalls. “As I’m swerving to the left, I see it stand up. And it is easily taller than that truck. I’m 5′ 10”. The truck is about 2 inches taller than I am. And this thing was easily, like, maybe 7 feet. And, as I pass it, I look in my mirror, and I see it bolt to the left into the woods.”
While T isn’t sure what he saw, he says that it did not appear fully human.
“It looked like somebody took a normal human and stretched them out, starting with the limbs,” he says. “Abnormally long legs and arms. And it just took off into the woods.”
After examining his truck, he saw that the thing had scratched the top of his vehicle—a fact he says was corroborated by officers at the time. However, officers were not able to identify what he saw at the time, whether it was a human or something else.
Social Media Reacts
The sharing of this story on social media spurred all sorts of reactions. Multiple users on TikTok made videos recounting the incident, which inspired commenters to share their own opinions about what exactly happened.
“Everyone walking amongst us is not 100% human,” declared a commenter.
“I live here in North Carolina , I can definitely say North Carolina is a hotspot for UFOs and the paranormal,” stated another.
“Theses movies don’t be lying we ain’t the only ppl in the world,” offered a third.
@sweaty_bhz What was it??? #northcarolina #truestory #911call #fyp #cryptid
Did This Really Happen?
BroBible could not independently verify this story. The presenter, Rusty Martin Sr., is an actor. The sheriff featured in the video is real and is employed in Pender County, North Carolina.
Additionally, this isn’t the first time that this specific story has gone around the internet. A Facebook post from December 2024 lays out a very similar tale to the one shared by T. This adds some credibility to the idea that something did happen to T around this time, even if there’s a different explanation for what actually occurred.
Via email, Rusty, the host of the Carolina Case Files, insisted that he, the sheriff, and the story are both real, and that the team is working on a follow-up to the story.
“One of the main things that we want to address when we do the follow-up is this: T desperately does not want any media attention,” he told BroBible. “Let me explain. ‘T’ DID NOT search us out, produce pictures, a copy of the 911 call, etc…. and beg us to produce his story. Quite the opposite!”
He continued by stating that T had largely tried to move on from the incident and that the group “basically had to grovel on our knees over multiple phone conversations to get to a point where he would allow us to interview him.”
So What Really Occurred?
As far as what Rusty thinks happened, he’s not sure.
“I don’t know what he saw that night, but whatever it was, it shook him to the core,” Rusty recalled. “I could still see it in his eyes as I watched him re-tell the events of that evening. Clearly, the event was something that he had attempted to forget over the last 4 years.
Other internet users have theories about what this creature could be, ranging from a normal animal in the area to a ghost to a cryptid like Bigfoot. However, at the end of the day, no one can know exactly what happened.
As Sheriff Butler puts it at the end of the Carolina Case Files video, “I’m afraid it’s probably just one of those things in this world that we may not ever know the answer to.”
BroBible reached out to Sheriff Butler via email and to the TikTokers via TikTok comment and direct message.