Was walking around my childhood neighborhood around dusk with my friend and his dad. I was around 12 years old at the time. This was in the suburbs but it was an old neighborhood and was very wooded.

We walked around the back side of the neighborhood where this abandoned old mansion was. The property had been overgrown since before I was born and it was so wooded that you couldn’t see the house from the road. Apparently the old man who owned the mansion built this large man-made pond in the front of the property for his wife. It was near the road side of the property.

As we were almost past the mansion, I suddenly got this ominous feeling and whipped my head around to scan the trees. At the far side of the pond I saw something that was disappearing behind a tree. It “walked” upright like a person, but it had the back legs of an alligator and a long, round tail. I wouldn’t come to find out until years later when I saw one in person, but the tail looked and moved just like a kangaroo tail.

I was at first fascinated by what I was seeing, then felt overcome with fear. I told my friend and my dad that I thought I saw something and that we had better get home before dark.

No idea what it was, but over the following years when I would walk by that property, I’d always stop and try to see if I could spot it again. Though I never could look for long before getting creeped out.