The story was told by Donald Baldwin, a Virginia resident.
“This is a story about an unusual creature that I saw. I'm not sure if this applies to the so-called cryptids (mysterious animals like yeti, chupacabra, etc.), but none the less.
I was then only 11 years old and I often liked to run to the pond and catch fish there. The pond was behind the townhouse complexes my family lived in in Alexandria, Virginia. The pond itself was not very large and also not deep, maximum one and a half meters.
On that day, the weather was beautiful and sunny, and as usual I came to the pond. I was there alone, my friends for various reasons could not go out for a walk, and taking advantage of this, I decided to look for turtles and frogs for my home aquarium without hindrance. There were many stone boulders in the pond at the edge of the water and I climbed there for a while and turned over the stones.
A little tired, I sat down on a stone and then something caught my attention, some movement in the very middle of the pond. What he saw well looked like a large trunk of an elephant, it climbed out of the water and rose above the water. And then, I was ready to swear, I saw eyes on that trunk.
The next minute this “trunk”, cutting through the water, moved towards me with great speed.
I was as terrified as an 11 year old child can be. Everything I held in my hands, I instantly threw it away and rushed away from the pond as fast as I could. There was a small section of forest between the pond and the houses, and I quickly reached it, ran through it, ran without slowing down between the houses, ran up the stairs to our door and nearly ripped the door out of its hinges when I tore it.
I have no idea why I had such a strong desire to run away from there as far as possible, because I didn’t even know what kind of creature it was and whether it could run. I was just so scared that I had a bit of a panic. I could have been safe just by running to the forest, but I didn't stop until I reached home.
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Later I thought about what I saw. It really looked like an elephant trunk. And there were no teeth, no claws, no limbs and no body I saw either. Why was I instantly enveloped in such intense fear? I couldn't explain it.
The only creatures with a trunk I know of are an elephant and an anteater. But the elephant would not fit there, in the middle of the pond is only 5 feet (152 cm) deep. I also did not hear that someone in these places had an elephant or that a circus came to us or that an elephant escaped from somewhere.
And one more important detail. Before I saw the trunk emerging from the water, I was on the shore for about 30 minutes, no elephant would have survived so much time under water, even if it was there and was hiding from the heat, lying at the very bottom.
Also, this trunk acted as if it had emerged from the water, it saw me and rushed towards me with a specific purpose. And before that, he turned a little, as if looking around (and maybe I was right when it seemed to me that I saw his eyes?) And after that he rushed to me. He wanted to attack me or was he acting out of curiosity?
Tormented by many questions, I forced myself to return to that pond later, but I did not see anything particularly there. Then I also continued to go there and fish and everything was normal and usual, as if there had never been any trunk there."
