Two Teens Flee Arizona Storm Drain After Sudden Dread and a Glimpse of a High, Retreating Arm

SNOWFLAKE, ARIZ. — A Reddit user posting to r/Humanoidencounters describes a frightening night in a storm drain behind a Walmart in Snowflake, near Taylor, Arizona. The author, who gives his age as 17, says he is not claiming the event was paranormal and does not know what he and his 16-year-old friend saw.

According to the post, the pair had spent the evening larking about in the store, throwing hoops at a bike rack and swapping a hat and a hoodie to avoid recognition after an employee noticed them. They then entered the drains, which the friend had visited before and which, the author says, were a known hangout. Conditions were mundane: less than an inch of water, no debris, and the boys eating blueberries as they walked.

Deeper in, the author writes, both were gripped by a strong sense that they must leave at once. Nothing identifiable had appeared. The feeling grew as they hurried back, and the author says he began to pray. Turning the flashlight behind them, he reports seeing what looked like an arm, perhaps four to five feet off the ground. He saw no face or body, and says it slid backward out of the beam, fast and without sound.

The two ran, the author says, and he fell near the tunnel's mouth before they cleared a fence into the parking lot. The dread eased near a Circle K but returned on the drive home, he writes, with tingling and near-panic. He phoned his mother, confessed the outing, then flagged down his father's car. He reports being grounded for two weeks. His friend later told him he had felt the same dread and had been about to suggest praying.

The author offers his own mundane explanation: a person may have been hiding in the drain. He adds that he cannot account for the height or movement of what he saw, nor the early dread, and notes that the graffiti ended past a certain point. He acknowledges that entering storm drains is unsafe, and asks readers for similar accounts and reasonable explanations.