Back when I was a kid, my parents took all of us children to a nearby state park for an educational outing. And boy did we get an education. We pulled over and parked on the side of a wooded area. All of us got out, we were clowning around and making tons of noises, typical kids picking on each other stuff. We walked about a hundred feet from the car when we saw it. A dog had come out of the woods. It was growling and foaming at the mouth. I've never heard anything like these growls, and I've heard a lot of dogs growl. This was something that hit you right in the spine and turned your knees to water. He was limping, emaciated, and missing huge chunks of fur. It started towards us slow, still making that godawful sound. My father, without breaking eye contact with the dog, softly told us to walk back to the car, calmly and quietly. It followed us. When we got to about twenty feet from the car, it charged us. We all got in safe and not five seconds later it slammed into the car door on my mother's side. We drove as quick as we could to a ranger station, they were shocked and immediately a couple of them went out. They killed it. Much later in life I asked my father what had happened. The dog was someone's pet who had either been abandoned or run away. From its condition the rangers figured it had been on its own for maybe six weeks, starving in the woods, and it came across something with rabies.
That's probably the closest I've ever come to stark terror.
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