Wondrous Wraith of Willow Creek

Willow Creek is nestled just two miles from Brooksville, Kentucky. According to a report made in the Atlanta Daily Constitution on the 4th of November, 1868 - a 'wonderful phenomenon' made its presence known here, much to the hysterical excitement of the local residents.

A Sulfurous Centaur

'Fire Centaur' by JupiterWaits on DeviantArt

It was October 10th of 1868 when an unnamed 'prominent tobacco merchant' was confronted by the outlandish apparition in question. He lived in Brooksville, and was returning home along a darkened country road in the southern portion of Bracken County after a long day buying up tobacco crops. Running late and thus presumably in quite a rush, his swift course was suddenly halted when he beheld 'a most frightful object' stood in the middle of the road before him. He described it as walking upright and reaching a height of 6ft, and as having a 'very pale' face like that of a man - with flames licking down over its shoulders like a hellish mockery of human hair. Its eyes were 'of sulfurous blue' and appeared to be constantly changing in size, one moment being as large as tin cups and the next being almost nonexistent.
Its 'deadly pale' arms once again resembled those of a human, and in one hand it carried a torch while in the other it held a sword of roughly 4ft in length. Its lower half was that of a horse with 'well proportioned' legs tipped with equine hooves. In place of a tail, it had a 3ft-long mass of flames - and its breath was also described as 'a solid sheet of fire, which vibrated with the heaving of its breast, like the pendulum of a clock'. The fiery fiend - apparently the most frightful thing that the witness had ever seen - walked off to the side of the road and vanished into the darkness.
Immediately motivated to give chase to the weird wonder, the witness put spurs to his horse and galloped towards the area to which he had seen the entity disappear. Roughly 200 yards later he had reached the summit of the hill - but had not yet managed to apprehend the infernal apparition. However, as soon as he looked back in the direction he had come, he caught sight of the creature 'in the same spot where he had first beheld it'. Presumably somewhat peeved and utterly bewildered at this point, the merchant stopped his horse to observe the anomalous happening. The creature, perhaps upon realising that it was being watched, crossed over to the left side of the road whereupon it scaled a fence and commenced running at full tilt towards the witness.
Horrified, he beat a hasty retreat from the apparition and made a beeline towards the nearest town - where he told some of the citizens about what he had seen. Presumably all eager to track down a bona fide monster, said citizens almost immediately formed a mob and 'started out to see the strange visitant'. When they got to the location at which the creature had been observed - some of them were able to clearly see the entity while it seemed completely invisible to others. The creature was seen on the fence, running rapidly backwards and forwards. It passed the witnesses at a distance of 'a quarter of a mile'. I do not pretend to know what this latter segment of the description means - I have no idea as to what the entity's movements were supposed to be at this point...
At about 23:00pm, the monstrous creature vanished and was not to be seen again that night. However, since then it would apparently manifest every night at the same time - being 'on hand' like clockwork. Nervous excitement was said to be mounting in the little Bracken County community as of the source's publication. It is, sadly, unclear what became of the spectre due to the event still being ongoing when the source was written.

Source
'Humanoid Encounters' by Albert Rosales