The Giant Cockroach – Part 2

Author’s note: This is the second in a two-part series about Jenice H.’s knowledge of and encounters with intelligent insects.

The old motel sat like a row of Army barracks on the side of a grassy hill in California City, Calif., about halfway between Bakersfield and Barstow.

Jenice H. of San Antonio, Texas, was traveling to Los Angeles from Las Vegas in the late 1990s when she stopped at the motel for the night – a night that burned itself into her memory.

“It was good and cheap just for one night’s stay,” Jenice said. “But I never went back there again, it was so horrendous.”

The motel had a big cockroach problem.

Late in the evening, as Jenice sat inside her room watching VH1, someone knocked on the door. She approached the door and pulled it open as far as the chain would let her. She wasn’t prepared for what was in the hall.

“A human voice behind that door had asked if I could hand him some bed linen,” she said. “I never saw his features, but in the slight crack of the door I could see a long upturned giant cockroach cleaning it’s legs frenetically.”

When the creature, Jenice marks at about six and a half feet tall, saw her through the crack in the door, it spat something brown toward her. She screamed.

“Why?” the creature asked, but Jenice didn’t answer. She threw open the door and ran down the hall, past a motel employee crumpled on the floor.

“That poor girl in the hallway all slumped up must have been in shock from what I had seen, too,” Jenice said.

As Jenice neared the door, the great cockroach thundering close behind, it grabbed her.

“It was frightening,” she said. “It grabbed onto my cotton dress and I couldn’t get away from its doubled-barbed hands on my wrists.”

The thing’s antenna brushed against Jenice’s face, her vision grew cloudy and she thought she might faint.

“Then I remembered a Chuck Norris movie and I dropped to my buns on the floor and kicked its ankles out from under it with my tennis shoes,” Jenice said. “Then I kicked it in the face.”

Jenice got up and ran but felt the creature closing on her as she threw open the door at the end of the hallway and slammed it shut on one of the creature’s antenna.*

“You never heard such a loud high-pitched scream come out of living matter as I did,” she said. “You wouldn’t believe how loud these giant upright walking cockroaches could shriek.”

Then Jenice ran blindly into the night and ran into an old man walking his small dog, a corgi. The injured cockroach pounded through the motel door in pursuit of Jenice, followed by another one.

“He saw it too and was taken aback,” Jenice said.

Then the corgi, a Welsh breed that reaches a maximum of 27 pounds, attacked the first creature.

“(The creature) screamed again and deftly bent around to bite the little dog in the neck with its pincers,” she said. “(The dog) bled out and died right there.”

A young man who had seen the giant cockroaches chasing Jenice called the police on a pay telephone next to the motel and seconds later two police cars screamed into view.

“Then out of the right; these two giant roaches were hitting maybe 55 mph speeding up the hill,” she said.

The police got off a few shots as the creatures jumped a fence and disappeared into a fogbank Jenice said came suddenly – a black fogbank that did not look natural.

Jenice is convinced what she experienced – the giant roaches, the fogbank, the creatures’ disappearance – was extraterrestrial, and someone is trying to cover it up.

“I know those cops who got there at twilight had caught them on tape on top of those hood-mounted dash cameras on their squad cars,” she said. “If the government is hiding the pictures from us, we have a right to know.”

Discussions with a former teacher in her neighborhood brought forth the conclusion these extraterrestrial cockroaches may have either stumbled on a “viable grease food source,” or are here to feed on something bigger – us.

“Bugs multiply real fast,” Jenice said. “People I talked to had said they’d seen things flitting behind trees at KOA California campsites. What if they’re breeding?”

*Jenice saw the young man who telephoned the police retrieve the broken antenna. She said he has red hair and is probably now in his 30s. If you are reading this blog, please contact me.

Copyright 2010 by Jason Offutt

Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”

Jason’s newest book on the paranormal, “What Lurks Beyond: The Paranormal in Your Backyard,” is available at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.