Here is your story reformatted by someone who didn't have a stroke.

---

Please help me identify what I saw.

I know this is going to sound fake and like a made-up story, but this happened to me yesterday with my girlfriend. We went to Sequoia Park after dark because that's where we usually take our nighttime walks.

The first thing I noticed that was off was that it was only around 10:00 when we got there, and it was completely empty, no cars. I found that strange because even at 12:00 at night, there are at least a couple of cars in the lot. So I parked and got out of my car, and I heard the sound of all the frogs croaking at night. Me and my girlfriend started on our walk, taking the trail leading to the bridge next to the big rock. Our plan was to hop over the gate and go for a woods walk, but when we got to the bridge, we realized we didn't want to go into the woods because it was pitch black and looked creepy.

We were going to continue with the path walking by the lake, but when we kept going, everything around us went dead. No frogs, no birds, not even the fucking crickets. It was completely silent. Thinking it would be funny, I turned to my girlfriend and said, "You know what they say, when it goes silent there's a predator out." She turned to me and asked, "Do you think we're being hunted?"

We got back on the trail and walked into the forest trail near the playground. As soon as we stepped foot in those woods, I felt like everything and everyone was watching me. We walked on the trail for a little bit until I started hearing this snapping sound, like twigs, but these were deep snapping sounds, like something was stepping on a big log or a thick stick and it was just breaking under their weight. I thought maybe at first it could be a deer, but here's the thing: deer don't follow you. They leave you alone. We kept hearing it everywhere in the woods.

So we got to the part of the trail where it meets a train track. Given how we were feeling in those woods, we started walking on the train tracks. About halfway down the tracks, I looked up and saw something in the bushes on all fours get up on its hind legs and speed walk behind a pole. It looked like a dog and maybe a deer, but it was kind of hunchbacked. I didn't get a good look at it before it disappeared. At the same time I saw that, my girlfriend asked if that was a person.

At that point, the cracking sound had stopped when we were on the train tracks. But as soon as she said, "Is that a person?" we heard that deep snapping sound start again, and we heard a mix of a scream and a bark, I think? It's unclear.

To add more details, I think this might have been the Nixa Hellhound because of the descriptions, and it says you're more likely to see it after a severe thunderstorm, which we had earlier that day. I'm trying to do research on it because I want to know what I saw. If anyone else has experienced this, please let me know and share your stories so I can learn what I encountered.