Random Creepypasta 3 (Creepy Creatures Pt. I)

So I have a similar description with a different outcome: I was trying to sleep in my room back when I was younger and lived with my folks. I must have been maybe 17 or 18. I opened my eyes while rolling over to get comfortable and I see a black figure just outside my door (who I thought was my stepfather in the dark) with his hands up by his chest making "scary finger" motions at me like you might do sarcastically after a scary story, or a witch might do when casting a spell - just moving fingers wildly in my direction. I should note that this figure had no defined shape. It looked like squiggles that moved in a vague shape and I chalked it up to the lack of light and my stepfather. Well, I look over and say "What the hell are you doing?" thinking it was a really stupid, creepy thing to do at night. Well in that moment it vanished. Just gone. It was at that moment my heart sank and I became PETRIFIED with fear. One of the few moments I was scared out of my mind and couldn't comprehend what I just saw. EDIT: Thanks for the suggestions about sleep paralysis / hypnagogia. I've had it before and still get it now and then, this was not it. Although I have written off quite a few other "things" that were easily attributed to this.
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My stepmother tells this story still until this day. She's about 10 years old sometime in the late 1950s. At the time her father was in the Air Force and was stationed somewhere in the United Kingdom, but I am not sure where.

So she's living in this very old house somewhere on base, and had been living there for about 3 months when the "event" happens. Leading up to this, there was apparently nothing unusual about the place that she'd been living. It just seemed like a neat old house to both her and her parents.

So one day she has a friend over to her house--the daughter of another US serviceman living in the UK. Apparently at some point, being 10 year old girls, they thought it would be loads of fun to go into my step-grandparents bedroom and have a pillow fight on the bed. So during the fight my stepmom whacks her friend in the face with a pillow, and the gum her friend is chewing flies out of her mouth and lands on the floor.

Both my stepmom and her friend claim to have had a good look at what happened next. The gum that my stepmom's friend has been chewing lands on the floor about a foot from the side of the bed. A soon as it lands, they both get what my stepmom describes as the chills... they start shivering. Then before either could do or say anything, they both see what my stepmom describes as a black hand (literally black, not a black *person's* hand), that is very dark and very solid come slowly out from under the bed grab the chewed up wad of gum, then disappear very fast back under the bed.

At this point both my stepmom and her friend are paralyzed with fear. My stepmom's friend begins to sob and they just sit there on the bed for what my stepmom said "seemed like an hour to a 10 year old."

When my stepmom finally works up the courage to move, she decides that she's going to look under the bed. Being too afraid to look under the bed from the side from which the hand appeared, she goes to the other end of the bed to look. She looks, and sees nothing. No hand, no gum. Just the empty space under the bed.

To make a long story short she tells her mom the story, but her mom thinks she's making it up and gets pretty pissed. I guess though that in the weeks after this event, other strange shit started to happen in the house. Nobody saw anything after this, but they'd hear strange noises at night, and apparently stuff like dishes would seem to have been moved during the night. About 2 months after the one and only sighting of the black hand my step-grandpa's duty station changes and he ships back to the United States.

That's the only time my stepmom claims she saw anything like it.

So do I believe her story? Well she takes it pretty seriously and I honestly think that she believes her memory is genuine. Then again, she was 10 years old, and this happened in 1957, so it's legitimate to question how closely her memory approximates reality.
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When I was 13 I had just come home from school. There was a big storm outside and rain was pouring down. It was around 3 or 4 pm and it was still pretty bright out despite the storm clouds. I was making myself a sandwich when a bolt of lightning struck the ground about half a block away from my house. The boom was loud but immediately following the boom was a human like screech that gave me shivers. I looked out the window through the rain and could see some kind of animal crawl from a yard to a jeep that was nearby. I thought "oh crap did a dog just get hit by that bolt?!" So I went up to the window to get a closer look and saw a big orange red furry thing crawl under the car. It looked like an orangutan. Seriously it was big and moved like an ape. I saw its arm grasping the side of the jeep as it crawled under. I took a minute to think about what I just saw and then decided to go try to get a closer look. So I went outside and slowly walked up to the jeep. When I got to the jeep I looked under and saw a glimpse of something orange disappear into a storm drain that the jeep was parked next to. I noped the fuck out of there. I still have no clue what it was. It screeched like a dying coyote but looked like a giant orangutan. Sewer Apes!
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I walk on train tracks near my property for walnuts and at times I pick up deer skeletons to make bone meal. One day this year I was walking and I got this heart stopping fear that surged through me which stopped me in my tracks. I stopped right away to see what could have caused that sort of response. I didn't see it at first, but ahead of me sitting next to the tracks was an extremely thin but tall humanoid creature. It had its back partially towards me but it was doing something with its arm. I stepped as quietly as possible off the tracks and into a drainage ditch so I could back out without being seen...when I did I saw it was poking at a dead deer with sickeningly long fingers. I've got no idea what it was, but I got the hell out of there...I've decided it was a hallucination...because if it wasn't, I would be selling my home and moving far away. Any ideas?
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Let me first say I have only told this to 3 people in my life for fear of me being crazy. Almost 5 years ago I was fishing at my grandma's pasture (she owns a few hundred acres in the south central Kansas area). Where I was fishing there is a small dam and waterfall in a fairly wooded area. It was just getting dark I had walked the creek and my vehicle was a good mile away. I was almost finished when I hooked a decent bass I brought it in and as I was throwing him back when something caught my eye across the creek stood a creature. It stood only 4 ft tall at the max it was grey pale almost looked sickly. The best way I can describe it was like a hairless cat head and skin but like a skinny human like body. The creature was looking directly at me like I fucked up and I shouldn't be seeing him. His head rocked side to side almost like it was dancing. I slowly went to reach for my bait knife making sure not to take my eyes off it. I did feel threatened by what ever this was. I get my knife in hand and it lets out a sound that I have never heard before and hope to never hear again it was loud and extremely high pitched and took off into the woods. I have never seen that again but other people have told me about lights they see down there but I didn't share my story for fear of ridicule. I now carry a gun with me when I fish. Thanks for reading I know 90 percent of ppl won't believe this but I know what I saw and it scared the shit out of me.
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Frankly, I do not expect this to be believed. But I’m going to tell it anyway, simply because its been weighing upon my mind lately. I ran into Flash last weekend, who was back in town, and he spoke to me about it.

Knowledge of the physical environment is essential to an LEO in Patrol. It is one reason why seniority counts for a great deal in this line of work-the longer you work a given jurisdiction, the better you know it. And locals who become police officers quickly learn that growing up in an area does not mean you truly know it.

Part of it, is that an LEO, unlike most people, has no perception of private or personal space. We can go anywhere, given correct circumstances. And because of that, a great deal of ‘idle time’ or ‘routine patrol’ is spent exploring. Can you get a patrol car through the gap in this fence? Where does that track lead? Is there a way to get from this parking lot to another? If you walk this easement or power-line access, what will you see?

This is essential, because at some point this knowledge can mean shaving thirty seconds off a response time, or catching a fleeing subject.

In every police jurisdiction of any size, in my experience, there is always at least one strange place. Not the spots you take rookies and play Find the Mud Hole, or the crime scenes you use to scare Explorers, but the real thing. The places that nobody talks about much. The places you don’t find out about until you have to go there. The places you go to only if you have to.

We have a place that is sometimes called the Patch. Its about thirty-five acres of very broken ground covered in scrub oak on the edge of town, completely isolated from everywhere else, out beyond an old brick plant that now makes clay pots. Nothing, as far as I can tell, have ever been built there, nor is it really good for anything. Its at the base of the tall ridge that currently marks the west boundary of our burg, cut by numerous gullies, and whose red-clay soil is about useless from growing anything.

The City seized it for taxes back in 1932 from a land company; it was listed as ‘waste land’ (no commercial use) back then.

Its really a strange place. I’ve been on search teams across it six times in eleven years, and every time I’ve been on it, it creeps me out. It gave me the willies when I first explored it shortly after being cut loose on my own; you can’t get a car very deep into it, and frankly, a short walk on foot into it gave me such a bad feeling I never went back without a reason. It wasn’t until about eighteen months later that I learned that I was not alone in my reaction to the place.

One factual thing that bothers me about the place, is that I get lost in it. I have, since I was old enough to think about such things, an unerring instinct about the direction north. I can always find it. Night time, snowstorms, forest, whatever; give me a few seconds to concentrate, and I know which direction north is. Even the desert, which screws many people up, never bothered me. And the Army taught me land nav to a fine degree; I’ve run compass courses with multiple dog-legs and hit my target location every time, even on featureless terrtain such at Fort Hood, where one bit of scrub is identical to every other bit.

But every time I’ve been in the Patch, I’ve gotten turned around. In broad daylight, with a ridgeline a quarter-mile away that is only a couple degrees off a true north-south axis. After the first search, I started taking a compass with me.

Near the center of the Patch is a structure we call the Playhouse. Its a building made out of sheets of old galvanized tin nailed to thick posts and four-by fours, with a dirt floor. We call it the Playhouse because there is absolutely no rationale for its positioning or design; firstly, you can’t get a vehicle larger than an ATV or dirt bike to it due to washouts and gullies; maybe a jacked-up 4×4 if it was dry and you really did not care about your paint job.

Secondly, because the place is big (about 3000 square feet, as near as we can tell), but has no purpose. There’s no animal pens near it, nothing; just a wood framework with tin nailed to it, no tar on the roof-seams, no doors (but several door-way sized openings), no windows at all. Inside its split into at least a dozen ‘rooms’ by either more tin sheets, or partitions made out of old packing crates from the railroad. Some of the rooms are completely isolated from the exterior walls.

There is no logic or reason to how the rooms are laid out; several have openings that are barely 3′ high. It reminds you of how kids put together a fort or treehouse.

Except that this one has cut-down telephone poles for roof supports set several feet into the ground. Whatever else you can say about it, someone built it to last.

There no junk or litter about the PH, and no graffitti; while its not very obvious, its been there since before the City seized the place, and with all the generations of kids, you would expect some beer-drinking, ghost-hunting, or general spray-can antics.

Nor is there any sign of animals taking advantage of the shelter, nor have I seen any bird’s nests, although hornet’s nests and mud daubers are present.

And it smells odd. That’s all I can say about it: it smells different than what I think it should. This has been commented on by others, as well. No specific odor. Just odd.

And flashlights fail in it. Yes, flashlights fail everywhere, but flashlights seem to fail a lot more in it than anywhere else. $70 Streamlight Stingers that are City-issue and have reliable rechargeable batteries go abruptly dead in there. And not in the usual fashion, the light going yellow for twenty minutes, getting dimmer and dimmer until they just fade away; rather, going from hard white light to dead in a minute’s span. When you carry the same light every day for years, you know its battery in detail. Yet many of us have been caught by an unexpected dead battery in the Playhouse.

Some time in the past, we were searching for a missing girl. It was likely that she had been carried off by a recent high water after massive cloud burst (10″ in ten hours), but foul play was also a possibility, for reasons best unrelated. A search was mounted. I was tasked with taking two officers and checking the area around the old brick plant and the Patch.

I had two veteran officers, both entry team members and well-known to me; call them MD and Flash. They readily accepted my suggestion that we change into tactical gear in order to protect our uniforms from the brush; to be frank, I was less concerned with the brush, than for having an excuse to bring my MP-5 along. I wasn’t alone in that, as unbidden, both Flash & MD got their shotguns out of the arms room. Flash had a 14″ pump, and MD a Benneli semi-auto.

We searched the Patch first; and although all three of us were carefully keeping track of where we were in a place we had all been in before, we managed to get well and truly turned around twice in the space of ninety minutes.

It took us a lot longer than it should have to search the area, because frankly, we weren’t splitting up. At all. Anywhere else, we would have been twenty to thirty feet apart walking on line. Here, we stuck together. We had been on other search teams which had gotten got hopelessly jumbled and separated in the Patch before.

It was late afternoon when we went to the Playhouse. The sky was completely overcast, the color of lead. The ground was muddy, everything was wet, and there was a cold breeze out of the north. To say it was a miserable day was an understatement.

We circled the Playhouse, looking for footprints, and found nothing. However, drainage was such that it was possible that they could have been washed away, so a search was necessary.

Inside, there were no gaps in the ceiling to speak of, and very few in the walls; the gray daylight hardly made its presence known through what gaps there were, although the dull light through nail holes made you think (unpleasantly) of animal eyes in the night.

I led the way in. Twenty feet in a portable metal detector (a wand type used to check for weapons) that Flash was carrying suddenly started beeping, and did not stop until he pulled the battery pack; he swore it had been turned off the whole time he had been out. Later, at the PD, it worked perfectly.

We were clearing the place like a hostile building, rather than a search; we had not talked about it, but all three of us were on edge. Very much so. The place smelled very wrong; not a smell of anything in particular, just not the way such a place should smell. I can’t explain it any way better than that.

I was on one knee checking out a closet sized-’room’ when abruptly the light on my MP-5 died, going from white & bright to dead in a couple seconds. Flash took point and MD center while I tagged along and switched batteries (I had a couple full-charged spares on me, as well as two more flashlights and some cylumes).

A minute or so later Flash’s light died the same way, and he dropped to the rear to change out, while MD and I moved up a place. We stopped at that point, and we heard something. Flash muttered ‘What was that?’ and we all listened carefully.

It was coming from ahead and to our right; we did not speak at the time, of course, but later, we never agreed on what it sounded like. To me, it had sounded like a sick cat might sound as it whimpers.

We moved forward towards the noise, and came to a largeish room which had the exterior wall on one side. MD made entry, and at that exact moment his flashlight died. He immediately side-stepped and dropped to one knee; I moved in and past him along the wall as Flash slid along the wall on the opposite side of the ‘doorway’.

Flash was to the left of the ‘doorway’, MD was right, kneeling, and I was about two feet to MD’s right . The room was about twenty by eleven, with us at the narrow side.

And something moved in the far right corner. Flash hit it with his light a second before I did; I remember MD yelling, and then both fired.

To this day, I swear I saw a big dark dog, I mean large, 150+lbs, bull mastiff-sized, in Flash’s light, moving fast.

I fired, three-round burst, and then kept firing as MD and Flash pounded away. Both went empty and yelled that they were withdrawing (team procedure), and I fired to cover them as I backed out last.

After the first burst, I couldn’t see much for the muzzle flash, so I just ripped up the corner with three-round bursts. I fired off the full thirty-round mag.

In retrospect, I can not explain why I fired thirty rounds at a dog. There was no valid reason to simply hose it down; nor for Flash and MD to blaze away like we had. Nerves, is the only explanation I can offer. All I can say is that that encounter was quite simply the most stressful incident I have ever had, bar none.

In the second room, we reloaded, and MD switched out batteries. Then we re-entered the long room.

There was no dog. No body. No blood. Zip.

None of us described what we saw the same way. Flash was extremely reluctant to describe what he saw at all.

But there are a couple facts: all three saw a target ‘in motion’. Despite the fact that we all perceived it as being in motion, we all saw it in a corner, and never shifted our point of aim, despite the fact that we all trained regularly on moving targets, MD & Flash were hunters (I shoot lots of moving varmints), I served in military actions, and both Flash and I had been in fatal police shootings.

And we had twelve 12 gauge 3″ magnum hulls and 30 expended 9mm brass. Thirty bullets and 108 000 pellets were fired at a specific area, in this case an area consisting of a dirt floor and tin walls. All three of us were classified as expert shots.

No matter how closely we, nor the two investigators who came out later, looked, we could find no hits on the floor, and only 23 projectile penetrations in the tin walls. Out of 138 projectiles fired (000 pellets are 0.36″ in diameter steel balls; 9mm bullets are roughly 0.38), 105 remain unaccounted for. The 23 holes we found were concentrated in the target corner; 9 to the left, 14 to the right of the corner, with the two groups 22″ apart at the closest.

As if something solid between the two groups had soaked up the missing rounds.

The dept wrote the incident off as an ‘accidental discharge’.

The girl was eventually found elsewhere.

Flash, MD, and I never really talked about the incident except indirectly. All three admitted having felt more stress than before or since.

None of the three of us have been to the Patch since. Both MD and Flash have moved on to other agencies for unrelated reasons.

One of the creepier things from later on: when we tried to explain the whole matter (and a firefight is not a joking matter to the police, no matter that no one got hurt), the administration members we were dealing with, who have been LEOs here for 40+ and 30+ years respectively, nodded, asked few questions, and let the matter drop.

That's all there is to it.
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About 7 years ago I was driving through NYS on 17M ....As I was passing a wooded area I saw this thing walking upright into the trees. It had legs as long as my whole body and sorta slouched but was still at least 7 or 8 feet tall. It was a dark brown in color, almost like it was made of wood. It looked like wood. As soon as I saw it I was overwhelmed with emotion and cried. It was the most involuntary cry I've ever had, and still when I think about this thing I saw, even right now, I cry. Like a knot in my through, can't fight the tears cry. It's the only time I have ever seen anything that I can't explain, or that I expect people to NOT believe me. I think about it a lot, and recently saw a Facebook post from Earth is Scary and it brought back all these weird feelings about seeing this thing. I have referred to it as 'that stickman i saw' but could never find more than a few cartoons for stickmen. I don't know the point of my post but if anyone can share if they have seen something similar or heard of something....it has been haunting me for years. What surprises me is that if I think about this creature, even all this time later - I'll cry. Why cry? It wasn't sad, or dead, or scary even....
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The context: On a 41 foot sailboat in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, with about 7 other men, doing a shake-down/ test cruise, planned to be out for about 12 hours. Mid 1980's, not as reliable weather prediction resources. We get caught in a tropical storm, winds gusting into the 50 mph range, just this short of a weak hurricane. We had just barely rigged storm hawsers and storm sails because the one fellow onboard who was the best sailor sensed the storm was almost on us, otherwise we would have died. During the storm itself, I expected to die at any time. In fact we made a "Securite, securite...." call on the radio (if you have time at sea you know what I'm talking about, if not, it's not that important).
For what seemed like 15 minutes, we were in a maelstrom, no visibility, but then it passed. We would live! This was at about 3pm, and although there was cloud cover of course, the ambient light was such that you could see 2 miles or so in any direction. If you're familiar with the sea, you know that such storms, particularly in shallower depths near land masses, dredge a lot of things of the sea floor. The sighting: We're all on deck, working lines, checking damage, etc. and the bay around us is choppy and churning and foaming. Old timey sailors often used the saying "the sea is confused."
I look about 15 feet of the starboard side and something swims to the surface, breaks the surface, looks at us, then submerges again. It was like a thin man, with humanoid shape, arms articulated like a man, a human head, but its skin was covered in scales like a snake. It looked at us, blinked its weird, heavy-lidded eyes, then dove back under.
So maybe you need to know a few things about me at that moment. No drugs, no alcohol, no injuries. I was elated because I was glad to be alive, but my senses in that situation were sharpened, not dulled. I had, at that time, about 6 years experience on ships and fishing boats, and had seen squid, octopi, flying fish, sharks, skates, etc. all around the world. I was not the type of guy to see a patch of seaweed and call it a sea monster. I made an instant decision that I was not going to say anything. What could I say? "I just saw a strange creature, take my word for it!" The men on this boat were all mechanics and engineers and professionals. Why get a reputation as a flake? At the time it was important for each of us to get "D" skipper or OOD qualifications, and saying something like that would be frowned upon.
And as I stood there in my life vest, soaking wet, hooked onto the steel lifeline, glad to be alive, one of the other sailors, a USN Captain J_______ S________, with over 30 years experience in the surface navy, piped up and said, "I just saw a brown thing pop up on the surface! It looked like a lizard man, with a scaly face. It blinked at us with these big eyes and then went back under!"
"Yeah, I saw it too," I said.
No one else said that they had seen it.
Then we sailed back to the pier later that day and didn't speak of it again.
Coda: A) Everything I've written above is the truth. B) This is the internet. For all you know I may be a dog, a brain floating in a jar making up stories, or a landlubber who's never even been to the beach. C) No I don't have pictures, and if I did wouldn't people say they were faked? D) I am well aware that a momentary glimpse of something on the surface of the sea is notoriously unreliable, and the mind and eye and the imagination play tricks on people, even in the best of times. E) If you have read all of this, thank for your time and for the invitation to share my experience.
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I was going to make a throwaway but what the hell, I'll take the risk of looking like a totally insane person. No one is going to believe me anyway. This happened when I was 19. I'm 32 now. I graduated high school and got my first apartment. Nice town. Lived by myself other than my cat. Snowball. (Don't laugh, I named her when I was 8 years old.) A few details before we get started.
I've never been a fan of cat boxes. Worst part of being a cat owner, shoveling tiny shit, with a tiny shovel, every day. So I got one of those motion activated self scooping deals. Left it on the back patio, ran the cord inside to power it, and left the back sliding door open big enough for her to get in and out. 5-6 inches. The patio was one of those 8x8 cement floored types, surrounded by a 5 foot tall wooden fence. If you looked out from my bedroom door, you'd be facing right at the sliding door with hanging blinds, living room in between, kitchen that was off to the right.
So I'm playing some 56k Counterstrike at the computer in my room with my back facing the door. It's about midnight/1 am. I hear Snowball start to make one of those awful cat growling/Rrrrr noises in the back of her throat. I'm pretty locked in to the game so I tell her to knock it off, not looking at her. She keeps doing it. I tell her to shut up, I'm irritated because I'm doing well in the round. She gets loud. This is enough to break me from my gaming zone-out and I realize this is not normal. I get up from my computer to see her standing in the doorway facing out, her back to me. She is in full on Halloween cat mode. Hair sticking straight out, her back is completely arched, she looks TENSE. I'd never seen her that way. She is still just going crazy. "RRRROOOOOOOOOWWWRRRR." I look out into the living room where she is facing. Nothing is amiss. There is nothing there. I look down at her to say something to the effect of "What's the matter?" She makes this insane sound. Like a combination of a hiss/growl/spit and she starts to take a few steps backwards.
That is when a tiny creature runs out of the fucking kitchen. On two legs, wearing a tattered piece of cloth or a bag, it looked like a little cloak. It's maybe a foot/foot and a half tall. It's a real life fucking jump scare. The cat jumps backwards about 3 feet in the air, I jump. I glance down at her as she does this but quickly look back up. I hear her land with a crash behind me and run. I am fixated on the thing. It is moving but it's like time has slowed down. I am watching these things happen but everything is so fast. It runs out the back door through the blinds with a crash at speeds that don't even seem natural. The blinds are swinging. My heart is pounding. I stand there dumbfounded. What the hell did I just see?
I'm staring at the back patio door, at the swinging blinds. I'm not moving. My eyes start to notice that something is wrong. All the blinds are softly swinging except the two closest to the opening. I see they're making an inverted V. I look at them and follow them down to the very bottom and between them I see it. It's head is poking through the blinds staring at me. It has yellow eyes, and a face that I can only describe as bestial. Grey, greenish, blackish skin. At this point a singular loud thought fills my mind. "YOU AREN'T SUPPOSED TO SEE THIS." And at the conclusion of that thought. Every one of the hanging blinds shoots upward and outward.
I jump again and my heart tries to blast out of my chest like I'm fucking Cape Canaveral. Some of the blinds are hitting the ceiling. A few fall off. It's a loud racket. The rest are swinging all over the place. I look at the place where its face was and it's gone. I beeline for the kitchen. Refrigerator door is open. I open a drawer and grab the biggest knife I see. I am shaking. Adrenaline like I have never experienced before. I rush to the sliding door and slam it shut.
It won't close. I open it a bit and slam it back shut. Still won't close. WHAT THE FUCK.
I am completely stupid. The cat box cord. I crouch down, brandishing this knife like a complete idiot looking out the glass door waiting for this thing to launch at my face. I'm shaking. I reach across myself with my left hand to the power plug on the wall to the right as I stare out, waiting to stab anything that approaches. I fumble to get it unplugged, my hands won't do anything right. I finally get the cord unplugged and I open the door real quick to throw the cord outside. I throw it like a spaz and it hits the wall and the side of the door and falls down. Still inside. Fuck.
I pick it up and try again this time it lands outside. I hear a scratching sound and my eyes dart up. I see two tiny awful fucking hands holding on to the fence. Clawed, gnarly... HUMANOID hands. This fucking thing climbed down feet first, hanging from the fence. It would have been slightly comical if it wasn't so fucking terrifying. The hands let go and I hear it land in the bushes outside the fence and I hear fast footsteps as it runs off. I slam the door shut and lock it.
This is completely true.
I've heard it all. It was a raccoon. It was a cat with the mange trapped in a paper bag. It was not either of those things.
After the event I started researching like a mad man. Closest thing I found was in a book I found at the library called "Faeries" which is like an artbook featuring all the different types of Irish folk creatures.
I don't live in Ireland. I live in the US on the west coast.
You don't believe this story and I don't blame you. It sounds ridiculous. You probably shouldn't believe it. I absolutely hate /r/nosleep. I think it's stupid. I hate bullshit paranormal stories. Believe it or not, I am a skeptic. I believe all people that have experienced something strange or believe in the paranormal should be a skeptic. I enjoy debunking paranormal videos and pictures. I want the truth. Was I hallucinating? It's entirely possible I had an extreme and sudden hallucination. It's not unheard of. This event had a huge impact on my life and completely affected the way I view the world, the paranormal, religion. Everything. shrug EDIT: wrong wordings and spellers
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This happened to me in mid-August, 2015. I live with my a girlfriend in a two-story townhouse in Woodbridge, Virginia with a set of noisy stairs. On this afternoon I had a most bizarre experience I have yet to put good explanation to.
I was downstairs making a late breakfast for myself and my girlfriend, who slept in that day.
It was maybe a little past 1 p.m. and I had just finished cooking eggs and oatmeal. As I plated the food, I saw out of the corner of my eye my girlfriend enter the kitchen. She stared and said nothing, and I asked her if she was hungry and she nodded.
We sat and ate and I talked to her about how the car was making a funny noise, and about what a lazy day it was, and other things, but she just seemed to stay quiet and listen and eat.
When we finished, we both walked into the kitchen and placed our dishes in the sink, and I went ahead of her and walked out of the kitchen into the living room between where the kitchen and the stairs that lead up are.
I stopped for a second, knowing her eyes were on me from behind. And I had a bone-chilling moment when I heard my girlfriend's voice call out from the top of the stairs asking about her breakfast. I turned around in a flash and saw no one there. The hairs on my neck stood. I walked around the whole downstairs area a few times to affirm my eyes
I went upstairs with a noticeable look of shock and looked at my girlfriend suspiciously. She had genuinely asked where her food was and I had trouble explaining to her what I just saw.
She swears that she hadn't been downstairs yet at all that day, and doesn't remember us talking about the car or anything.
What was so freaky about it was how we all knew how noisy our stairs were. The sounds of weight on wood are very evident in our home. And I was standing between her/it and the stairs.
I'm only 29 years old, so I don't believe it was a senior moment, but it was truly terrifying. Seeing your own double is one thing... seeing and hearing and feeding and conversing with something you think is someone you love is a completely different and sobering experience.
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I had a mimic incident once.
Back when I was a kid in a house I came to know as having many unexplained issues...
I was running around downstairs like the hyper kid I was. My older sister was babysitting me and was understandably sick of my shit, and told me (to get me to try and run out my energy already), race you to the dining room.
Mind you, I was much faster than she was and already had a few feet head start as I was in the doorway to the hall, and she was sitting on the couch.
I bolted a few feet to the dining room, and bam...I see her sitting silently in the far corner chair...whatever it was looked like my sister, was silent, and started beckoning me with her finger.
I felt and just knew something was off so I called out her name and she said what....from the living room. I said...where are you and she confirmed the living room.
I booked it back to the living room where my sister actually was and proceeded to freak out. When I convinced her to check it was gone. No way in hell I imagined it.
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When I was six, I lived with my dad in a small house on the edge of a very tiny town. Our house was at the very end of the street and right behind it was the forest. We were used to critters coming down out of the woods, but one night something strange came out and I still don't know what it was.

It was a summer night. I was home by myself (yes, home alone at six years old). The side door was open and I could see out into the carport from the living room where I was. The light in the carport was on and I could see everything out there clearly, so I know it wasn't a trick of the light. I was just goofing around in the living room when I smelled this horrible, godawful smell. I looked around the room first and didn't see anything. Then I looked out the door to the carport and froze.

It was dog-like, but it was huge. Way bigger than any dog, almost as big as a horse. It wasn't shaped quite like a dog; there were small, unsettling differences. Its fur was matted and crusty. It had huge black eyes and its long, long tongue was hanging grossly out the side of its mouth. It was walking slowly through the carport and damn, it stank. Terribly. Like it was dead or it had been rolling around in dead things.

I just sat petrified, staring at it. It stopped for a moment and looked in the door at me. I swear it looked like it was laughing at me. Then it calmly walked away. Of course, by the time I found the courage to get up and close the door, it was long gone.

My dad did not believe me. He thought I just saw a big stray dog and my imagination made up the rest. Maybe. That could be; I did have a great, active imagination as a kid. But I still swear it was real and just the way I described. It was not a dog.
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After hearing story after story of strange encounters with strange men dressed in black suits, I wanted to tell a story from my childhood that to this day I have been unable to explain. This took place in 2001 when I was 8 years old.
It was summer and I was on a field trip with my town's community center's daycare program. We were at the New York State Museum in Albany, NY. I was in a group with maybe 2 or 3 other kids and one of the daycare workers for a chaperone. We got there in the morning and were told we could roam around the museum with our group until either 12 or 1 when we had to meet back up with everyone for lunch on the 3rd floor.
Our group walked around, looking at all the exhibits and after a while, we realized we had lost track of time. We only had a few minutes to get up to the 3rd floor for lunch and attendance and we were on the other side of the museum from where the elevators are. We hurried quickly to the lobby and hopped into an elevator. Out of breath from the near sprint we had done to the lobby, our group piled into the elevator, we hit the 3rd floor button, and my chaperone said we had made it in time and that we still had a minute or so to spare. Then as the doors were closing, an extremely well-dressed man walked into the elevator. He was wearing black shoes, a black suit with a white dress shirt, black tie, black leather gloves, and a black fedora, and was carrying a black leather briefcase. At the time I thought nothing of it, but I've always looked back at this and thought this was very odd as it was summer and he was dressed for the dead of winter.
As the man got on, I noticed that he kept his head down, almost as though he didn't want us to see his face. He quickly turned around, only then lifting his head. He just stood there with his back to us, and I don't remember ever seeing him select a floor. The elevator doors closed and this eerie feeling seemed to be emanating from the man in black. We had left the lobby on the first floor and were going up the third floor, so the ride should have been maybe 10 or 20 seconds at most. The elevator's display showed we had arrived at the third floor, but the elevator didn't stop. the numbers just kept climbing, and we were definitely still moving. (I want to preface this by saying those elevators in the lobby only have access to 4 floors, and to my knowledge the museum only has 4 above ground floors. I'll talk more about that at the end.) At this point, it had been well over a minute since the elevator started moving and the numbers on the display continued to climb; as did the elevator. That eerie feeling that had been seemingly emanating from this man was getting more intense and the air in the elevator was beginning to get extremely heavy, this seemed to get more and more noticeable as we continued to go up. The higher the elevator climbed, the feeling turned from eerie to foreboding. I remember getting the feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when you know something bad is going to happen. Something definitely wasn't right, the display was saying we had passed the 50th floor and we were still climbing.
At this point it had been around 5 minutes in the elevator. The atmosphere in the elevator had gotten almost unbearable. This heavy, ominous feeling was something I've never experienced since. The closest thing I can compare it to is that feeling you get when you walk down a dark hallway after watching a horror movie, and even that doesn't begin to describe this. Suddenly, the elevator stops. There's a sudden shift in the atmosphere of the elevator. It went from this foreboding feeling to a feeling of impending doom. Then I remember an almost panic when I thought about was on the other side of those doors. I was telling myself over and over again that the buttons on the elevator don't go past the 4th floor, so there aren't any floors beyond that, so whatever on the other side of those doors can't possibly exist. This whole experience can't possibly have happened, and when the doors open I'll see all my friends from the other groups eating lunch and everything will be okay. But that's not what happened.
And this is where things have always gotten fuzzy for me. I remember getting on the elevator with my group, the man walking in, and the elevator going up. But I can't remember my group being in the elevator after a certain point. I know it was at least five minutes from the time we entered the elevator before it stopped, and yet I can't tell you how much time passed between when the elevator stopped and when the doors opened. I can remember looking at the display to see what floor we were on, but can't remember what it said. I remember being frozen there, with no sound or movement whatsoever. I remember feeling like if those doors opened, something bad was going to happen, to the point where I remember panicking inside my head, pretending that none of this wasn't happening. But every time I opened my eyes that sinister man was still standing there, as still as a statue.
And then all of a sudden, the man who was responsible for all of this, who had not moved a single muscle since the elevator doors closed, drops his briefcase. Not even a second after the briefcase hit the ground, the doors of the elevator opened. And yet I can't remember what was beyond those doors. I have tried for the last 14 years to remember and have never been able to see it. I just remember it being white and bright. The man then calmly picked up his briefcase, tipped his fedora, almost as to bid us goodbye, and walked off the elevator. I then remember the doors closing and that ominous feeling being gone, and in an instant we were on the 3rd floor and the doors popped open.
Only then do I remember seeing the rest of my group on the elevator. All of them looking as terrified as I did, especially our chaperone. Looking out, I saw the rest of the kids and chaperones from the other groups. We walked out of the elevator, and had been expecting to be extremely late for lunch, but we had made it on time. Which is impossible, because we had initially made it to the elevator a minute or so before lunch started, and that encounter on the elevator had lasted at least five or ten minutes. I remember our chaperone pulling the other adults aside and I assume told them what had happened to us on that elevator. I remember sitting at the table with my friends eating a pizza Lunchable and the kids from my group and I sharing the story of what had just happened, no one believing us. I remember the chaperone I had avoiding the subject for the rest of the day, and the other kids in my group seemed to have dropped it as well.
I remember that I told my mom what had happened and I've always felt as though she didn't believe me. But before writing this, I wanted to make sure that really did happen since I was so young and it had been well over a decade since this happened, and that it wasn't something my mind made up over the years or maybe just a very vivid dream. So I asked my mom if she remembered me telling her about this, and she said she did. She remembers picking me up from the community center and the second we got into the car I had told her all about the man in black and the elevator going up all these floors and even that he had dropped his briefcase. She said she also remembers me telling her that he had said something to me, though she doesn't remember what, and I don't have any memory of him saying anything.
So there is my story. 14 years later, I still have absolutely no clue who that man was, where the elevator took us, what was beyond the doors where the man walked off, or anything that happened in that elevator. I just know that it happened. I have no idea how long we were in that elevator, it could have been minutes or even hours, but what I do know is that time seems to have been separate from our reality, since no time had actually passed when we got to the third floor. Hopefully you have heard something similar or at least have an idea what happened. I've gone through every explanation I can think of and none of them make sense. From not remembering correctly what elevator we got on, and perhaps getting in one somewhere else, but that's impossible for reasons I've listed in the paragraph below this. I've thought maybe it was a really vivid dream, but my mom remembers me telling her right after picking me up from daycare, the day of the field trip. I've even considered a gas leak in the elevator causing us to hallucinate. The one thought that's always been in the back of my mind has been that we got onto the elevator and took a ride through another dimension.
Just a little side note, I had a job with a catering company in the Albany area last Summer and one of the most common venues we catered at was the New York State Museum. Over that summer, I rode probably every public elevator in that building, and even a cargo elevator they have, and not a single one I rode on had any buttons beyond the 4th floor.
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This happened about 5 years ago when I was 17. I'm a pretty shitty writer and don't know shit about formatting so bear with me. I also shared this story when it first happened on /x/ so some people MAY have seen this before.
When I was a teen I had been dating this guy (let's call him C) for awhile. He was older and abusive, but I was young and stupid. Anyways, I was staying at his house which was about an hour and a half away from my hometown, where I lived. I did something to piss him off, I can't remember what, but he ended up kicking me out of his house at 3 in the morning and didn't give me enough time to grab shoes or socks, so I was barefoot.
I didn't have a car and didn't know anyone in this town (I smoked weed with the neighbor kid sometimes, but I didn't know them well enough to ask for help and their dad creeped me the fuck out) I also didn't have a phone at the time. I decide I'll walk to McDonald's about a mile away and call my dad to come pick me up. I didn't believe in anything paranormal and had a cocky "I'm tough, no one can fuck with me" mentality so I wasn't worried about walking alone at night, I was mostly just hurt and pissed right off. I get about 2 blocks away when I stepped on a big ass piece of glass and fucked myself up. At this point I'm bleeding, hurt and tired. I decide I'll head back to C's and hope he's calmed down enough to let me back inside his house. This is when shit got fuckin' weird.
I'm almost to C's, about 4 houses down the street, when I see them walking towards me in the middle of the road. There were two of them, one about the size of an 8 year old, the other looked about the size of a small toddler. My first thought was "What the fuck are kids doing out this late? they have some shit parents" That's when I felt it, an immense amount of fear built up in me, and I stepped behind a parked truck on the street. I don't know why, but I didn't want them to see me. From behind the truck, I watched them. They weren't moving normally...the best way I can describe it...is they looked like they were walking with broken legs. Their gait was weird and jerky. That's when I noticed their arms. They were moving them really weird. It was inhuman...they were twisting them around and moving them in ways a normal person wouldn't be able to. I was sufficiently freaked out and they were still walking towards me. I was SCARED. I wanted to run but I couldn't. I just stood behind the truck and watched them. Then they stopped for what felt like forever. I could swear they were looking at me...but I can't know for sure. All I could see were their silhouettes. And then...they just turned around and walked away, in their bizarre way, around the street corner and disappeared from sight.
At this point I'm rationalizing and have convinced myself I just saw some kids being weird as shit. I make my way to C's door and knock..he refuses to answer. Fuck. Okay, well I'm not walking anywhere far with this foot. So I decide to go to the park across the street (right across from C's house, there was a small neighborhood park with a single swing set) I sit on the swings building anger and trying to figure out what the fuck to do. Am I going to have to sleep in this fucking park? And then I hear whistling. Ooookay. Probably just C's weird neighbor, he was always up really late, smoking weed in his garage. So I figure he's trying to catch my attention cause sometimes I hung out with his son and smoked. I walk over to his garage and it's dark inside. What. I knock, no answer. Okay so it wasn't him. I hear the whistle again (this is a human whistle btw, I think at-least. Didn't sound like a bird or something) and start looking around the whole neighborhood, looking for someone in their front yard or something. I walk around the sidewalk looking at houses. Nothing. Odd, but whatever, I go back to the swing set. And then I hear it RIGHT behind me. I didn't even fucking look back. I ran straight to C's and started banging frantically on his door while crying. C answers this time, and I frantically explain the whole ordeal. He grabs a bat and runs out the door. Apparently he went to go look for the kids, or whoever was doing the whistling. He couldn't find anyone. Later that night, we were sitting on his floor, rolling cigarettes (we were poor) when we BOTH heard the laughter of multiple children. It sounded like it was coming from the window. He ran outside and of course nothing was there. I was fuckin' shitted, though. We heard it again one more time that night and that was that.
Never experienced anything paranormal again and broke up with C shortly after. For the first few weeks after the encounter, I stopped going outside at night. However, over the years, I've rationalized it away as just kids fucking around. C suggested drunk midgets. Like I said, I don't REALLY believe in the paranormal...but sometimes late at night, I remember those kids and have trouble sleeping. The way they were moving was just...not right. I don't know how any person could move like that and the sense of primal fear I felt is something I'll never forget.
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I've read through this thread before and can't believe I didn't contribute my trainyard funeral and living dead man experiences.

Growing up in the small town I'm from, there's wasn't much mischief for high-schoolers to get up to. Mostly there was cruising -- wherein you drive up and down the same strip of road for hours on end, looking at people and having little conversations when you get stopped at lights -- and going to the Omelette Shoppe (but never before midnight or so, a definite faux pas. Lol.)

Anyway, one night we got fed up with the "strip," and decided to reroute along the long loop by the high school to get out of the traffic for a bit, and came around an odd little corner in the road near the trainyard.

There were a few little shops scattered about there, and a fab Italian place on the right-hand side of the road, but there was mainly the great hulkin train tracks where they'd haul coal and whatnot through. The road went right underneath one of the tracks in a sort of mini-tunnel, more like an underpass really.

As we came to the underpass, we saw a line of people, all dressed in black, mostly long black coats, buttoned up, black trousers, tall black hats, carrying a coffin across the road. I had to slam on my brakes to keep from running smack into them, but they never turned and acknowledged the car in the slightest. Being as it was late at night, there was no other traffic, and we sat there watching until they crossed to the other side, then took off.

Nobody said anything for a bit after, then noone mentioned it. I don't recall seeing where the procession was heading to either. I suppose it could've been a remnant ghost procession -- some Civil War battles were fought in the area, as I understand -- but they seemed solid enough.

The living dead man was a different night. A group of us had been out at one friend's house and were heading back into town on a grocery run. I was driving again, with two other friends in the car with me. We came around a blind curve on the twisty road, and there was an old man standing smack in the middle of it, in a tatty old black suit, back to us, hands outstretched, looking up at the sky. He looked a bit like the Tall Man from "Phantasm," that sort of weird fringe of hair, but bald on top.

What I remember especially were his hands. I had never, nor have I since seen such long, skeletal hands. His fingers seemed to go forever, all gnarled and knotted up with veins and such.

I barely had time to react and swerve to keep from hitting him, when the man swivelled en pointe, raising his arms in a sort of menacing crouch, maniacal grin on his face, a pose he held as we swerved around him and sped off around the next curve.

Most likely just some ancient local lunatic out for a stroll, but the sense of dread and menace it inspired in a band of teenagers was palpable. Never saw him again.
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On another note, long ago, I worked in an art restoration gallery. One slow afternoon, the other employees and I were talking about strange, paranormal things that had happened to them (unfortunately, I had nothing to share). But one man told of an afternoon, when he and a friend of his, and his friend's young daughter were walking down a country road. There at the side of the road, standing about 3 feet above the ground, was a gnome-like being ringing a bell, which made no sound, at least that they could hear. The gnome saw them, and disappeared. The trio walked silently on for a bit, when the little girl said, "Who was that funny little man?" And her father said, "Yeah, who WAS that funny little man?"
Unfortunately, I don't remember what the gnome/little man was wearing, or really what he looked like, and I haven't been in contact with the coworker for twenty years, so don't ask me to ask him more about it. I don't even remember his name! But I was very impressed by his story, and wonder what dimensional portal was active that afternoon, so that the little man could be seen but not heard.

Why was he standing ABOVE the ground?

Why was he ringing a bell?
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My wife and I bought a house in rural North Carolina and moved in two weeks ago. There is forest surrounding our house for a good distance, no neighbors, quiet place.
My wife and I were sleeping last night and were both woken up at the same time, must have been around 2am, can't say for sure, the power was out. I grabbed my phone that was plugged in before I went to bed to check the time, and it was dead.
There was a bright light outside, this is very hard to describe, it was like a football stadium light, very white, shining down. My first thought were police were outside and shining a spotlight on the house for some reason, my wife and I both get up to look out the window and see nothing is out there. It was then we both noticed it was too quiet, no crickets, or normal rural sounds that we had grown used to in the past couple of weeks.
Not seeing anything kinda spooked us both, but we kept looking from the window trying to find the source of the light only to conclude it was above us. The light was steady, unmoving, we stood at the window for about five minutes before, in an instant, the light shut off. Then my wife and I both saw something move out of the forest and approach our house. It is very hard to describe what this was, it was very dark, the normal house lights we have on the front of our house were not on, so we only had moonlight to go with, whatever we saw, it appeared to come up to our porch, and then went back to the forest.
The light came back and quickly flashed off. And then the normal front porch lights came on, and I could hear the whirl of the AC kick on again.
We both stayed in bed scared shitless on what just happened. I have been outside looking for anything, and can't find any clue. Can someone please tell me what the fuck happened?
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My dad had shared this with me. A few years ago my dad was driving his truck with his friend in the passenger. It was about 11pm and not many cars were on the road. As they drove, they spotted an elderly woman with her thumb out hitchhiking on the side of the road. My dad thought it was very weird for an old woman to be hitchhiking, let alone at 11pm. He pulled over and the old woman hopped in the backseat. She was very thankful and directed instructions of where she headed.
Fast forward to about 10 mins later, my dad still driving down the long road, my dad's friend in the passenger looks very pale with shock written all over his face. My dad nudges him and asks what's wrong and he quietly bobs his head in the direction of the woman. My dad turns his head toward the elderly woman, but doesn't understand what's wrong. He scans her and suddenly snaps his neck back facing the road. The hairs on the back of my dad's neck stood up and he has goosebumps.
The elderly woman, who was perfectly normal from the waist up had actual orange chicken legs under her skirt, which was now exposed from sitting. All four chicken toes on each leg with claws. My dad and his friend continue to drive, not saying a word, frozen with terror.
As my dad approaches the woman's destination, he sums up the courage to speak to her, "Okay, we're h-" Both my dad and his friend turn around only to find the backseat empty, the woman nowhere to be found. My dad hadn't stopped the truck whosever and there was no sound from the backseat either during the drive. They tried to look for the woman on the road, but there no one or even any cars in the area, only themselves.
My dad still can't explain it but he says it is something he will never forget it. Also the reason he will never pick up another hitchhiker again.
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In the Eighties I was a child in Brooklyn, in New York City. Italians lived in the area, and they kept the streets safe with what little muscle remained after the U.S. government broke the Mafia's back in the Seventies (sidenote: the Mafia is still alive and well these days, and always will be; I hate them, but they're like roaches. No matter what you do, you can never completely get rid of them). Immigrants have always streamed into New York City, and my neighborhood was no different. We had the Chinese, the Koreans, and the Russians moving in, but also an oddity and a bit of an anachronism - we had Sicilian immigration. This was a holdover from the Seventies, when the powerful mafia families imported friends and relatives from Sicily so they might serve in New York as paperless, untraceable trigger men, or "zips." We all knew why the Sicilians were coming to our neighborhood, so many years after the major zips were busted in famous cases like the Pizza Connection, in which Gambino boss Paulie Castellano smuggled millions worth of cocaine using pizza shops: the local gang was rebuilding its numbers.

Shortly before I was born, a man called "Poccione" came to live in the neighborhood. Poccione didn't speak English - only Sicilian-dialect Italian - yet he drove a Cadillac, dressed exceedingly well and carried himself with great dignity, despite having no marketable skills in America. Everyone knew he was a zip, and steered clear of him. Even the other zips did, and the zips were known for their crazy bravery and fearlessness. The local gang head resented Poccione, but we grew to understand that Poccione was part of the package. Either he came with the zips, or none of them came. The Italians in my area needed the zips to avoid losing their territory to the Chinese and the Russians, and so Poccione was tolerated and respected.
People tolerated Poccione a little too much. His demeanor was cold, and he made no effort to learn English. He often demanded to be let into people's houses so he could look around, on the pretense of sharing dinner with them (which he would always leave early), or on the pretense of visiting their young children, which he claimed to love in his remote yet rhythmic Italian.

Poccione did take a particular interest in children. One of my first memories is of him, tall and black-haired, with cold eyes and pale skin, staring down at me while visiting my grandparents (who could not refuse). He claimed to love children, but he never talked to us. We passed him on the way to the store, we saw him walk by as we played kickball in the street, but he only stared, as if appraising something. He was pushy about more than visitations with the parents in the neighborhood. When a child was born, people talked about how Poccione would visit them and demand that they accept a small gold charm. The parents would place this around their child's neck and would not take it off, Poccione explained, because they should be honored that he would give it to them, and he would be very upset indeed if he saw the child without it. Why, he would question their friendship, he would say.

I had one of these charms around my neck for the first years of my life. I remember it as a kid. I remember thinking it was very strange. It was a small gold hand with its fingers arranged in the popular devil's-horns metal gesture, and it hung from the neck with the fingers pointing down and out. I remember that it was heavy and always cold. I would take it off sometimes, or hide it, but my parents would never let me walk around the neighborhood without it. I had to stay in the house, and know where it was at all times so I could rush to put it on if Poccione stopped by for coffee.

By the time I was six, in the late Eighties, my parents started thinking about moving away. I had been to about fifteen different doctors and I was always sick with infection. When I was a younger child, I would do strange things. When I was three my parents told me that more than once I walked out of the house in the middle of the night and stood in the street (only the vigilance of a neighbor saved me from getting hit by a car, I think). I would go into the basement of our house and tear at the wood panelling with my fingers until my hands were raw and bleeding. I needed a nightlight because I would always complain about seeing shadows and feeling unbelievable terror at night. My parents only let me go into a pool once, because, as they explained, I stood by the lip of the water for a good minute, staring in before I pitched face forward, limp, into the pool. I don't remember that.

I was a fucked up kid, and it's a miracle I didn't kill myself. Bad, dangerous things kept happening to me. I remember being very young and climbing up furniture to get to the top of the refridgerator (just to do it). I grabbed onto a knife rack as one of my handholds, and brought the thing crashing down on me. I fell to the floor and watched the knives tip out of the drawer and fall, helpless to move. They punctured the ground around me, forming an outline like a cartoon machine gun makes. I laid there until my parents found me. And throughout all this time I was in and out of specialists' offices, because I was getting worse. My parents found out that this was not abnormal in the neighborhood. If you lived in Brooklyn in the late Eighties, you may remember reading a news story about how a certain neighborhood in Bensonhurst had an unusually high rate of child mortality. That was my neighborhood. I grew up with no friends because the families with young children either moved away or lost their kids to car accidents, illness, or going missing (and in New York, you have to assume that's abduction)

It was at this time that I remember Poccione becoming very pushy with my father. I remember that Poccione used to take food to the house, saying it was for me, because he had heard about my illnesses and wanted to "get my strength up". He claimed that they were old-fashioned Sicilian recipes, but the food looked and smelled wrong. My father took the food from him, but threw it out. He didn't refuse; I remember that Poccione looked angrier in those later days, paler, more gaunt.

One day, Poccione disappeared from the neighborhood. Apparently, he was killed in some gang dispute. When the cops raided his house, they found a weird altar in his bedroom, filled with candles and idols of a bipedal goat, and reportedly the altar gave off a very strong smell of sweetish rust (cops today won't tell you this sort of thing, but back then, the neighborhood cops were the sons, brothers and fathers of neighborhood families, and word got around).

With Poccione gone, the gold charm was removed from my neck that day. I remember throwing it into the trash. I stopped getting sick after a few weeks, and my odd behavior ceased almost immediately. I haven't talked about it with any of the other kids who survived that neighborhood. I've lost track of them. I'm not sure I want to think about it.
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"It was 1998. I was 37 years old. I had been working with the forest department for 12 years. There was a fire in the Apalachicola National Forest that summer. The Bradwell Bay area was on fire when all this happened. The fire was raging pretty bad at this point. We didn't know if we would ever get it out. That morning I had reported to the command center on Helen Guard Station Road to get briefed on what I would be doing that day.
So me and another guy were given the task of driving around looking for animals along the road of the Bradwell Bay area. Animals would make it to the road and usually fall out if they were injured or had real bad smoke inhalation. Our job was to pick them up and take them to the vets at the command center. The vets would treat them and on some occasions euthanize the ones that wouldn't make it. So we were driving around the area heading south doing about 45 mph. Faster than I should have been driving. I was talking to my partner and didn't realize how fast I was going. All of a sudden we saw a black figure run out of the woods on all fours. It ran right up under my driver's side tire. I hit the animal with both the front and back tires. I was driving a 95 Dodge Ram 4X4. So I knew at that speed I had killed it. Immediately we thought it was a bear. We got out to pick the bear up and put it in the truck.
Upon further investigation, we realized what I had hit was not a bear at all. It was a creature that neither one of us had ever seen. It was about 6 feet tall. It had legs, knee caps and feet just like me and you. The arms hung to about the knee. One arm a matter of fact was down by its knee. The other one was up over its head. I had run the creature over under its right underarm, across the shoulder blade and over the back of its neck. The creature was covered in hair. About 3 to 5 inches long on the arms, legs and head. The hair on the back, ribs and chest was much shorter. The muscle definition on the animal was phenomenal. It looked like a prize fighter or one of the guys you would see in the UFC. We flipped the animal over. The jaw was broken from where I had hit it with the truck. I could see though it had a protruding snout much like that of a baboon or what you would think a werewolf looks like. It had eyes just like us. The thing looked a lot like a chimpanzee.
We quickly radioed into the command center and they sent two FWC officials out to our location. Within about 15 minutes, the FWC officials arrived and they told us they had never seen anything like it. So we all picked the animal up and loaded it into the back of their truck. The animal weighed about three to four hundred pounds which dead weight is a lot. They told us they would figure out what it was and let us know. So we had been contacted by the command center at this point and they told us to come on back and make a statement about what we saw.
So we showed up at the command center and immediately we were brought back to a room where we were to fill out an incident report. We were about 10 minutes into the incident report when we were asked to stop and wait and that there were some people coming to see us. Within about 30 to 45 minutes two government officials showed up. They walked us out to the vehicle. They were asking where we ran over the... the thing. We told them where it was and so they examined the area. The truck had no damage. There was a black steel bumper on the front. The animal hit the bottom of that and the tires took care of the rest. There was really nothing on the truck except for on the undercarriage. There was seem blood and hair. The officials collected the blood and hair samples and put them away. Next they asked us if we would get into the vehicle they came in and take them to the location where we had ran the animal over at. So we complied and got into the vehicle and left with the gentlemen.
It was a rather quiet ride back out to the spot. They didn't say much at all except for a couple of exchanges with each other. We showed up at the spot and walked them through what happened. Then all of a sudden one of the guys, I guess the guy in charge turned and looked at us and said congratulations fellas you ran over a bear. I said sir, but this is no bear that we hit. He quickly interrupted me with, you don't understand, you ran over a bear. He then said that every time I tell anybody about this I ran over a bear. I was to never speak a word about what we actually hit. That I could face charges. My whole retirement could go away. They said I could lose my job and that they would slander me and make me look like a fool. So I looked at my partner and we had no other choice but to comply.
On the ride back it kind of struck me as odd that this was an actual government cover-up. They knew what this thing was that we had hit. They had seen them before and now they were in possession of a body. For some reason they didn't want anyone to know and they were going to great lengths to keep this under wraps. The main reason I'm telling my story is, I'm hoping one of the other three people, my partner and the two FWC officials will come forward. I figure it's a lot harder to silence four people than it is just one. People need to know that these things are out there and that they are real.”
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TL;DR: Met a scary man named Jimmy C who knew everything about me, said he had planned to drown me in the ocean, and said something foreboding that has caused me to look at the license plate of every black Mercedes I've ever seen, even 10 years later. I thought I didn't remember it right, 10 years later my ex-girlfriend showed me her journal from that day - I had remembered it exactly right.
I met a "man" once who knew everything about me and said he'd jumped off the San Francisco bridge many years ago (even though I met him in Tybee Island, Georgia).
STORY (true): This has haunted me for a long time. I was about 19 or 20 at the time and I was living in Savannah, GA. I drank a lot (had a crappy fake ID), I worked this terrible job as a grunt laborer. The kind where you go to those temp labor agencies like AbleBody and LaborFinders. I'd show up at 4AM, work until 5PM, and drink myself to sleep after only taking home maybe $60 for the day.
I was supposed to go into work this particular morning, but I decided to skip (it's a labor agency, they'll just find somebody else). I call the girlfriend and tell her I want to go to the beach (Tybee). I had already started drinking.
She comes over, we hop in my big, ugly van, pack up some rods, and head to the beach.
I decided to have a drink across from the beach at this little bar. This is where the story gets interesting.
Shortly after ordering my drink, I get this really weird feeling. I became hyper aware of my surroundings.
The door opens, and I see this guy walk in out of my peripheral vision.
There was a seat between me and my girlfriend - but the bar was empty at like 9AM and he could have sat ANYWHERE ELSE - yet he chooses to sit right between her and I.
Then, he starts doing this thing with his fingers. The bar top was reflective. And he takes his fingers like two little legs, and starts just...walking with them "skating" with them on the top of the counter.
This isn't something out of the ordinary, but I took notice because when I was in school, I did that all the time. I pretended I had roller blades on my fingers and that I was skating around my desk. I hated school and was always distracting myself. So I became kind of mesmerize for some reason.
That's when he looks at me, and in this really think kind of...Germanic or "Nordic" accent he says, "I notice you're a man who pays attention to detail. I'm also a man who pays attention to detail."
Now, before I continue - I have to describe this guy. He had this short, spiky hair that was bleached at the tips, kind of like a late 90s style.
He had REALLY expensive clothes on. Like, a nice Prada leather jacket, nice designer jeans, really nice boots. He seemed like a kind of gay guy with awesome fashion sense and really distinctive taste.
I always remember this, because I think to myself, "Some weird homeless crazy guy COULDN'T have afforded those clothes."
Anyway, the other thing that stuck out was his eyes -- they were piercing gray. It reminded me of like a Husky's eyes, but his pupils just stayed this disturbing pin-point size. They were just extremely small, which caused his look to be kind of terrifying.
His teeth were normal, right? But not at the same time. I don't know how to explain it, they were sharper than they should be... as if they were filed slightly
His hands were normal, but his fingernails were slightly long and pointed, as if he deliberately did it.
He kept licking his teeth, too, as if he were salivating.
The thing about this guy is that, you look at him, and EVERYTHING seems normal, but off at the same time, so you're questioning if YOU'RE crazy for thinking this.
This guy, then begins to start talking about the relationship between me and my girlfriend, but really strangely. He's talking about how beautiful she is and how I should pay more attention to her (I was kind of a dick to her).
Shortly after he began talking like this, I had this almost "knowing" feeling come over me. Like... I knew this guy was not a human. I look at my girlfriend and say, "You need to leave."
She just kind of looks at me like she "knows" too - without a word of protest, she gets up quietly and leaves. Later I learned that she went next door to get a coffee.
That's when this guy, literally says to me with the utmost confidence - "You were supposed to go fishing today."
He points at the beach across the street.
"If you had, I would have drowned you in that ocean" and I shit you not he fucking HISSED.
Again, for some reason this overwhelming calm had come over me. I just ask, "Who are you?"
He answers back with this crazy guttural language - like "ack ack" but it was really long. It sounded Arabic or Hebrew or something? I just - for some reason without skipping a beat, and I have no idea why I was so calm to this day - ask, "say it in a way that I can understand."
He says, "You can call me Jimmy C. I jumped off the San Francisco bridge years ago. And we've been watching you."
From there on out he never referred to himself as "me" or "I" but only "we".
The conversation became something very strange after this. He was saying things like, "We see you taking a bath - we wish we too could feel the warmth of the water and the comfort of the steam" and other stuff.
He kept buying me drinks too - specifically whiskey sours. it was like he had an endless supply of money. He smoked Marlboro Ultra Light cigarettes.
After I don't know how long - because I lost sense of time kind of - I told him I'm going to leave. I walk next door, I get my girlfriend and she's stone silent.
We start driving home - don't say a word. Then I just ask, "Do you know what that was?" and she just says "That was a demon". This girl had parents that were scientists, she was really analytical, completely non-religious, and that was the first thing she said out of her mouth.
Now, I didn't say this part before, because - to me - this is the most important aspect of the story, so I'll say it now. Because it's what happened AFTER this that screwed me up for fucking years.
The last thing this Jimmy C. guy said to me before I left, is this.
"Look at my car"
I look outside, I see one of those newer Volkswagon Beetles. It was white.
"What does the license plate say?"
I look at the plate and it literally says, "Fierce".
He looks me dead in the eyes and says, "The next time you see me, I'll be driving a black Mercedes and the license plate will say Utopia".
Stupid, right?
That night I was still calm. I don't know why. I felt like that guy on Office Space after his hypnotherapist died right in front of him and he was weirdly zen.
But, my girlfriend started having terrible nightmares of this guy's head just staring at her in her dreams.
Weeks went by, and that's when the encounter started affecting me. I found myself becoming paranoid about that black fucking Mercedes!
Every black car I saw, I checked if it was a Mercedes, if it was, I immediately looked at the license plate. I started doing it when I watched TV or movies as well. I couldn't stop.
Now, I'm going to fast forward a bit. About 10 years go by... I'm 29 (so this is just recently) and, in silence, when I'm alone, when I'm drinking, I often think about this encounter. I still look at black Mercedes every time they pass, but I'm not so much anxious about it anymore, as curious.
And, I remember that my girlfriend at the time always kept a journal. By now I'm pretty sure that I'm insane, maybe I was drunk, maybe I'm not remembering any of this correctly.
After years of trying to find news articles of a "Jimmy C." that committed suicide of the San Francisco bridge, looking at black cars, and so on, I feel like I'd "grown out of it."
Yet, still, I had to know. So, last year I track down my ex girlfriend. We ended on bad terms. I find out she's a school teacher in Wisconsin, has married a woman, and is actually trying to have a child.
I figure she's not going to talk to me, but I send her an FB message anyway. I ask her if she can find the journal from that day, because I have to know if her events line up with mine.
Sure enough - she had it. And it contained even more detail than what I remembered, because she had literally written it at the coffee shop next door RIGHT after it happened.

Notes on what happened at Tybee Island, GA on the first Tuesday in December 2005: Drove there during the day and the sunshine was getting me down - kept thinking about how earlier I had gone to [The_Restlessartist's] house after waking up there - and he woke up early, took a shower, came back and woke me up, acted very sweet. Then I went home, took a shower, came back to go with him to Tybee, and he'd gotten drunk already and was teasing me, being sort of an ass. I even threatened to go home once, but I stayed, feeling that I really should go to Tybee with him. But I was excited to show Tybee to Will during the day since I knew it well and he'd never seen it. He talked about how it all reminded him of his childhood as we drove through the salt marshes and over bridges - the sun, the palm trees. I'd grown up in fog. Got to Tybee and he wanted to get a couple of beers even though we had rum in the trunk. Well really the back of the van. The first bar we went to carded [The_Restlessartists] , and so we left, remarking that everyone in the place had given us strange looks as soon as we walked in. Went over to Fannie's a couple of doors down, all in the area of the beach by the pier. I decided I didn't want beer after all and told the woman I'd just like a glass of water.
[The_Restlessartists] had a PBR. Only cost a dollar. Noticed the VW Beetle (white) parked outside when I came in, but did not see Jimmy enter. [The-Restlessartist] pointed out a man sitting one stool down from me drumming his fingers strangely on the stainless steel bar, more like dancing with his nails, stretching his long fingers. Thought immediately that he was gay. [The-Restlessartist] and I watched and talked in whispers about it for a few minutes before he - the stranger - spoke. He first talked about how I had noticed him dancing with his nails (the words he used) then lookd at his nails, surprised, and said they look like shit. I laughed, getting a weird feeling about the guy. He then spoke about how it's important to notice details and he likes it when people pay attention - that he pays attention to everything - that he knows that I do too. His eyes are (some word I can't decipher), blue/grey, he has blonde hair and a narrow pointed nose above pale lips that cover crooked teeth, not very white, almost like fangs. His teeth are all I can look at until I look him in the eye, something I normally won't do until I know a person at least a little, and he seems to evade me.
He asks if I love [the_restlessartist] (doesn't use his name or mine). Without hesitation, I nod and say yes. He asks [the_restlessartist], "do you love her?" And he looks uncomfortable, laughs a little bit, says, "Yeah, I guess so." then the guy says that I am beautiful, that if [the_restlessartist] won't love me, unconditionally, as I do him, someone else will. He touches my hair and says that I am a creature of God. He then tells us that he walked three miles up and down the beach and it sucked... said some things about "God's green earth" ... told a story about a scorpion that asked a frog for a ride across a river... who then stung the frog, told the frog it was in his nature, and then they both enjoyed their last minutes of life because they both would then die. He told [the_restlessartist] he knew him and kept trying to get to him through me. He'd say "I'm not hitting on you girl," but continually told me I was beautiful. He tried to piss [the_restlessartist] off - kept saying that he knew him, said he is in his room at night, he's what crawls on [the_restlessartist's] back. Told [the_restlessartist] his glasses (the aviator sunglasses that I gave him) were cheap - that my glasses were perfect because I see through them rather than hide behind them. Then he said that I was perfection, that I was "one step away from becoming myself."
Earlier he talked about fashion - thought my glasses might be Armani, said Prada was his favorite person, when I noticed that his orange leather jacket had a red rectangle of fabric on the left breast that said PRADA.
He said to [the_restlessartist] that he knew who he was, to which [the_restlessartist] replied that he knew who HE was. The stranger left to go to his car to get money for more drinks - he'd offered to buy us all a shot of tequila and already bought [the_restlessartist] a beer. As he walked out he pointed to the license plate. His car was the white Beetle outside. The license plate read "FEIRCE." While he was gone, [the_restlessartist] asked me if I knew who the man was. I nodded, saying I had an idea. "Yeah, but you think you're crazy every time you think it, don't you." I was thinking the man was the devil or something close.
[then I wrote that I missed some things - here they are:] When asked where he was from, he didn't asnwer. We thought he could've been from Tybee, but he said he didn't live there. Asked him where he lived and he just started talking about his other car, a mercedez Benz with a plate that said "Utopia." Asked if he live din his car, he said no, "Utopia's doors are closed to me."
[the_restlessartist] asked him where he learned all he was talking about (he'd said he could speak 5 languages, English being the most important because it is "trained" and often spoke a few sentences in a language I could not recognize. And he said he lad live din San Francisco, where he jumped off a bridge and died.
This is the point where I told her to leave. That's when he said he would have drowned me in the ocean, started referring to himself as "we" and finally told me that the next time I would see him it would be in that black Mercedes.
When I read what she had written - literally THAT day - I knew that I wasn't imagining the details wrong. That this ACTUALLY happened. This is probably the single most frustrating and scary thing that has ever happened to me. i want to imagine it's just a normal crazy guy, but unless you SAW it and FELT it and heard him talk about all the little details of what you were supposed to do that day when only you knew it, you just can't understand the impact of it.
It's been 10 years, and my only solace really is that my ex-girlfriend was there to corroborate. That communication - where I reached out to her - actually caused us to be on good terms again after a decade. It seems to have been something that bothered her just as much as it bothered me. And still, to this day - even though I'm living 10,000 miles away in Southeast Asia. I can't stop looking for that car. I can't stop thinking about Jimmy C's twisted face.
I wonder if he's still "crawls" on my back, and if the fear I feel at night - often to where I must drink myself to sleep or find a one-night-stand just so I don't feel alone - is him, or "them", watching me.
EDIT: Somebody sent me a site where I can lookup California license plates (I tired this earlier in GA, don't know why I didn't try it in California). The license plate "Utopia" is registered to a Mercedes, but it won't say the color. I'm kind of freaked out to say the least: http://imgur.com/zoig3dR
EDIT #2: This is the site: http://www.vindecoderz.com/EN/California/license-plate-number-lookup
EDIT #3: Somebody found another more reliable source, still shows a 2000 Mercedes as having the license plate "Utopia" in California. Yet, this one had the vin number if anybody is good at looking that up: WDBHA29G7YA818700
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So I've shared my story a few times (multiple now) whenever someone asks what the creepiest thing to have happen to them is so it might look very familiar, but here it is: When I was 16 I would jump on my trampoline out back for hours every night. Literally, hours. I would listen to my ipod and just daydream to get away from a rough family life.
One night when I was jumping a kid ran past our fence full speed carrying a box about the size and shape of a skateboard. He ran to the park behind my house and held it by the edge then tossed it into the air so that it flipped a few times before landing on the ground. At this point I was a little weirded out because he was just standing over it staring for a pretty long time. Then out of no where he just bolts full speed back past our fence like he didn't even notice I was there.
All right that's a bit weird. I just kept jumping and staring at where the box was.... here's where it gets creepy.
The box looked like it was moving. Then something started to rise out of it. I actually stopped jumping and rubbed my eyes and watched as what looked like a full grown man rose out of a box that was like 2 inches thick. He had an elongated head with no hair. His skin was orange, and his eyes were huge and pitch black. He raised one arm up to his side and the box just kind of went into what I can only describe as a trench coat. He walked over to the only pavilion we have at the small park, grabbed the metal beam holding up the overhang and started to bang his head hard onto the beam over and over.
At this point I had rubbed my eyes quite a few times and couldn't even move. I had no idea what I was seeing. Then without warning he just stopped and his head quickly whipped around and stared right at me. It was like he could feel me watching him. A giant and I mean giant smile came across his face as those dark eyes just stared at me. He tilted his head back and forth a few times. I had goosebumps and my eyes stared to tear up. Even typing this is making my hair stand on edge because I won't ever forget that look.
As I was about to start crying (and I don't know why I wanted to cry but his face just filled me with terror) he turned around and kind of phased down the road off into the distance. Phase like those units the Protoss have in Starcraft that leave a "trail" of themselves for a short period of time if that helps to explain it. He was gone.
That was it. I bawled my eyes out and sprinted inside and called my best friend who assured me I was seeing things and needed to calm down. I'm sure I sound insane and no one will believe me, but this is the creepiest thing that has happened to me. I know what I saw and to this day when I think about it my eyes begin to water and my hair stands on edge. Never saw anything like it since.
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This happened about 5 years ago in Indiana.
It was the middle of summer. Heat lighting was flashing over the lake. Several friends and I were at this dudes beach house. It wasn't very late, maybe a hour or 2 after sunset.
We all went outside onto the 2nd story back deck to smoke. I was watching the lightning. The house was only a few hundred feet away from the shore. But the walk to the beach takes a minute because there was a grassy dune between it and the shore.
So a couple of us noticed a light beam from a flashlight coming over the dune. It was scanning the grass, like they were walking around or possibly looking for something. Most people on the beach at night don't use lights. It's actually pretty bright all night on lake Michigan after your eyes get use to it.
The light sweeps by something in the grass, then it shines back onto it. What was illuminated was very strange.
It appeared to be a naked guy crawling around on the grass. Although, it had elongated arms and legs. It was moving kinda fast crunched over. It only lasted a few seconds, long enough for all of us to see it.
Then, after the thing ran off, the flashlight shines directly at us. It stayed pointing at us until it went out after a few seconds. Creepy.
So, were all like WTF was that, we ask asked what each other saw. We all seen a weird stretched out naked guy.
I wanted to go down there. I wanted to see if we could find it. But, no one would go and they were creeped out and wanted to go back inside.
I was very disappointed, but I wouldn't go alone. I still regret it.
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When I was a child I would get sent to my grandma's house on school holidays. She lived directly across from a sugar cane field. My uncle and cousins lived in Innisfail where my uncle would leave my cousins at our grandma's house as well so we could play.
We regularly played in the cane field, when the cane was fully grown we would play hide and seek, tag, or race each other through the cane (often with our arms up protecting our faces), a few times we thought we could hear someone else running with us. One day we were walking through the cane talking about nothing important when we thought we saw another kid in the distance of the cane, we called out to them and they looked at us. When we got closer we saw it was certainly not a person but this bizarre pale humanoid looking thing, it turned to us not necessarily in a threatening way yet we didn't know what it was so we ran away.
A few days later grandma went to work one evening, leaving my cousins and I home alone. One of my cousins went outside for some reason, but come back crying. We asked what was wrong she said there was something crouching behind the wheely bin "growling" at her. So we all decided to check it out, the thing was there again but you could see it better. I could see it was really skinny, had abnormally long arms basically the hands went past its knees, was hairless, no genitals or nipples but was naked (sort of like a sickly Ken doll), it had a nose that was basically two slits like Voldemort's, it had big but purely black eyes (no white), a long face, what I'm assuming to be a mouth yet it was just like a line on its face where a mouth should be, and it sort of had these long fingers that it had gripping on the side of the bin.
The reason we got such a clear description of the thing was because it was poking its head out from behind the bin to stare at us, we decided to throw things at and near the bin to see what it would do. It made a growling/screaming noise like an angry cat but deeper then stood up, it wasn't very tall or big (possibly a similar size to my cousins and I who were 10 to 12 years old at the time). It then turned around, couched down, then ran/bounded away on all fours back into the cane field.
We told our parents and grandma, who just made a joke about it and ultimately didn't believe us. My cousins and I no longer played in the cane field.
Several months later that went into the new year, I was sent to grandma's house again for the school holidays and my cousins were dropped off there too. One night we were in the back seat of our grandma's car, grandma was driving while my uncle was in the passenger's seat. While grandma was reversing out, we all saw a thing crouching in the grass near the cane field. It was illuminated by the car lights. Our grandma and my uncle thought it was a person so grandma turned the car side on to it, our uncle rolled the window down to ask if they were okay. It then laid down flat and straight then put its face up, my uncle immediately put the window back up. It was the thing again but this time instead of running/bounding away it sort or slithered/shuffled backwards into the cane field while staring at the car and laying down.
My uncle and our grandma went quiet while driving, then pretended it never happened. Even years later they just try to say it never happened, that it was a weird dog, or joke that it was a farmer's inbred kid. The last time I ever saw it was when a cousin and I were sitting on a ledge in grandma's yard around sunset, we had been talking for probably an hour and I felt as if we were being watched however there was no eerie feeling. We suddenly stopped talking and turned our heads to see it standing there, sort of poking out of the cane field. Basically openly watched us, we weren't sure of what to do but my cousin moved his hand up like an almost wave, it moved a hand similarly but still had its arm down and did it side on, then a car was coming down the road so it darted back into the cane.
I have no idea what it could have been. It seemed to want to watch us more than anything, though despite its abnormal appearance it didn't seem malicious. We have no idea what it was, where it came from, why it was there, if it would do anything to us, etc we also couldn't talk to anyone about it because you'd certainly get made fun of or thought to be crazy.
5 people saw it, my cousins and I certainly saw it more than once, and it seemed to be mainly around when the cane was high.
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I came across something odd, I hope this is the right place to tell my story.
Just as a preface: I live in the suburbs outside of Chicago. My city is highly suburbanized and is highly populated. Despite this, there are areas in the city that are not so citylike. These events took place near a major road in a kind of rural section of the town.
Two nights ago, around 9 PM, I was driving home with my girlfriend. We were talking about a TV show we both enjoyed and just making general small talk. Near my house, there is a certain road that just always made me feel extremely uncomfortable. The road has no street lights, and is hard to see on. All of the lights from the surrounding area seems to be drowned out due how densely wooded the area is. Accompanying the array of trees are some small houses, most of them are in states of disrepair and a number of them are vacant. With this area being kind of chilling at night, I always turn my high-beams on when I drive down there.
As we are about halfway down the road, I notice something dart from the edge of the road into some hedges. What I saw wasn't exactly pleasant to look at, even with my limited view. My headlights illuminated the bottom half of the creature, due to it being fairly tall and fairly down the road. Due to this, I couldn't see the whole thing, but of what I did see, I remember vividly.
The creature was gangling. It was about 6 to 7 feet tall and looked to be starved. I could make out its ribs underneath its tight skin. Its fur was very short, like that of an otter and covered all of what I could see. Its knees were pointed backwards, sort of like a bird's, and its feet seemed to be pawed like a dog, only, they were massive. Even more horrifying were its long skinny arms. I couldn't see its hands, but just from seeing those arms, I didn't (and still don't) want to know what was attached to those things. From looking at its hips, I could tell that it walked either upright, or something very similar to that. Its back was at a 45-degree angle to its legs but was curved instead of straight. The way it ran was like a person over-exaggerating a tiptoe, like what you would see in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. This creature was less like one animal, and more like a conglomerate of many others.
When I saw this thing, I went silent. I didn't know what to do, so I just kept silent and kept driving. I looked back in my rear-view mirrors, but only darkness looked back. I couldn't see anything. My girlfriend could see that I was visibly shaken and aloof in the conversation. Apparently, she didn't notice whatever the hell that thing was and didn't know why I was acting so odd. At first, she didn't believe me, but as I gave more and more detail, while showing more and more fear, she knew I was telling the truth. I was understandably uneasy for the rest of the night.
When I told my account to one of my friends who lived in the area, he reminded me of an event that took place just back in August. One street over from my sighting, there was a bloodied and skinned animal on the side of the road. We both drove by it a few times because it was there for a few days. Whatever that poor animal was, we didn't know. It was too badly mangled to be recognized. We think that the animal might have been a raccoon or a dog. Hopefully, these two events are unrelated.
Any ideas on what this thing could've been? I'm stumped on answers, and I just want to sleep at night without worrying for my family.
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My uncle Keith was walking down the road along with his mother (Auntie Alvina), and two nephews. She was babysitting the boys for the night so Alvina was taking them to her house to stay. To those who have gone to or are from reserves know that some have their houses built far apart from others, so the roads are long and usually barren. Each time Auntie Alvina went to babysit she would have to walk 2miles to her place there and back, so all together it's a 4 mile walk.
Anyways, it was a summer night and the moon was full. Auntie Alvina was holding her nephews hands as they walked and uncle Keith was following beside and keeping his mother company. While walking Uncle Keith spotted something in the ditch, white shapes sitting down circling around a small tree. As they drew closer these shapes turned out to be white figures with pointed heads, pointed noses, pointed chins, no mouths, with long slanted eyes that were impossibly tall (this ditch was about 10ft deep), their size being about 10-11ft tall, because while sitting in the ditch they were eye level to the road. When Keith saw that he elbowed his mum to ask if she knows the same thing. She said "Yes," then she hissed at him not to stare at them. As they got closer yet, Keith noticed that these figures seemed to be speaking to one another, nodding and bobbing their heads while looking at each other but no sound was coming out. Her nephews noticed too and started crying, Auntie Alvina tried to hush them as they walked past. Out of the corner of his eye Keith could see that these figures noticed and began staring at the four of them. That's when his mother told them not to run. They kept waking as they could see the approach to their house and Keith had every desire to run. As they got closer to safety they could hear these figures following and walking in the ditch behind them. Finally they made it to the house, Keith runs the last few steps and as he's closing the door he turns and sees the five or six creatures standing and watching from the road.
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I saw a VERY DISTINCTIVE creepy creature enter and leave my room. My parents thought i was dreaming, until four years later policemen were attacked by the EXACT same thing on a nearby town and it made national news.
All right. I was seven and shared a room with my sister. It was about 1 am and I couldn’t sleep. So I was just staring at the wall when I see something move by the door. Someone is coming in very slowly. And it’s dark so it takes some time for me to realize who it is. It’s a woman, with a big pointy hat. I think it’s my cousin (who lived with us), but she isn’t that short. The only way it would be her is if she was walking on her knees. As I look down to see if that’s the case, I realize she is not touching the floor at all. And even though I can tell she has an old woman’s face, that is definitely not a human’s face, her eyes are too big and she’s expressionless. She is very slowly heading and turning to where my sister is sleeping. And I’m just trying not to move at all. She reaches her bed and only stands there looking down at her. And then I move and make a sound. And the thing turns her head to me just like that. Her huge eyes are making eye contact with me for a second and the next thing I know is she just went out the room almost flying, really fucking fast. After that I covered myself with the blanket. So I tell my parents the next day and obviously they don’t believe me. A midget woman with a pointy hat, huge eyes and a dress floating in my room is too random. So after some years I start thinking I was maybe dreaming or something.
Fast forward four years and in the news there is a cop who was attacked by a witch in a city 3 hours away from where I live. He saw something coming from the sky floating and landing on the roof of the car he was in. Then it tried to get in through the window and started to scratch him, pull him. He ended up passing out. And in the interview he says: she was dressed in black and had big eyes, dark skin and had a pointy hat. She was flying on its own.
They showed the drawings they make when the victim describes what they saw, and it was the same exact thing I saw. They also have sighting in 2010 by another cop, and the descriptions match too. He also mentions it had “super-human speed.” And obviously a bunch of people started to fake related stuff since the news got relatively big. This happened in Mexico btw. After I saw the news, I couldn’t sleep well for a week, in fact I have to admit I had to sleep with my parents a couple of times. For a reference, it looked sort of like the flatwoods monster.
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I'm 58 years old so this happened to me over 52 years ago. I've never told anyone this story, yet I still wonder about it to this day. I've not had success searching online for others having similar experiences.
I was the youngest of five boys living in a large, older two-story house in Alhambra, a middle class suburb of Los Angeles. I was a pretty high-strung nervous kid, gullible and easily scared. Which is why I was allowed to keep the light on in my bedroom that I shared with two older brothers, until it was their time to go to bed.
So it's an early summer evening and I'm in the well-lit bedroom upstairs by myself while the rest of the family is downstairs. There is no sound and no other lights on upstairs. I'm lying down facing the doorway, wide awake, when I see it walk/glide past, glance through the doorway at me, then look forward again and continue silently moving down the dark hallway.
How to describe what I saw? I guess the closest thing would be a clear medical mannequin displaying the human circulatory system. It was a non-descript human male shape with see-through "skin" with artificially bright red "arteries" and bright blue "veins" -- I don't remember seeing organs like a brain or lungs, and there were also no facial features or hair. It didn't walk like a normal human being but rather moved with a fluid, static-y jumpy type motion. It made no sound, gave off no light nor smell/odor. But most shockingly, it didn't scare me AT ALL!
I immediately jumped up and ran to the doorway but it was already gone without a trace. Thinking back, I still don't know why I didn't scream out in fright and why I ran so quickly and fearlessly after something that outwardly should appear "creepy" -- instead, I was left with the feeling that I had surprised IT. And I was equally left with the strong notion that I shouldn't tell anybody about this... which I've done for over a half-century! Never saw anything like it ever again, but it impacted me profoundly.
TL;DR it was a silent see-through humanoid except for visible arteries and veins. maybe an alien, maybe (myself as?) a time traveler, maybe a residual type visual projection anomaly thingy.
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There's Industrial Ave. One little residential street in the middle of a very commercial area. The story is that the developers tried to buy it and the homeowners would have none of it. One street, with about 4 houses on it held out. It's supposed to be that if you drive all the way out to the end of the street (which ends in a 3 way dead end) and then try to leave, something will grab the bottom of your car. Done it, and it did feel like there was something preventing the car from moving, other than just mud. They have since blocked the road off, so I assume that there is no one still living on the street. Yet, the little old couple that lives/lived in the first house is still out in their garden every single time I go back there, which s every few months. The area fascinates me. I do not have the balls to approach them to find out if they are real. They might be, and for all I know they blocked the street off, not the city.
1. Avondale Cemetery. The old caretakers house stood on the property for years after it was no longer needed. The city finally tore it down last year. That house was the single creepiest building I have ever been near. Hard to describe. Of course, the legend is that there was a monster that lived in the basement. The cemetery itself is strange, especially if you know the stories, which are that when the freeway was built, they dug up many of the bodies that were in the way and dumped them into other graves and vaults, as well as transporting some to a different cemetery. If there were ever a place for pissed off spirits, that would be it. To this day, 1000 pound headstones fall over with no sign of a vehicle used to pull it, and sometimes the vaults will be open, even though they all appear to be sealed when you examine them. It's a strange place.
2. River Rest Cemetery. Full of bronze statues of children. It's positively huge, with a really big mausoleum in the center that is lit at night and that you can see from all areas of the cemetery. I have had weird experiences in here, including missing time, and being lost, even though there is no way to get lost, since you can see the huge mausoleum from anywhere in there, in order to orient yourself. The legend is that the statues move, and I can't back it up, because that's probably the one bit of oddness that I haven't had happen there. It stands next to the property that used to hold the old insane asylum, which was also supposed to be haunted, and backs up to the juvenile detention center (also supposedly haunted) and the animal control building (where failed experiments and ghosts of dead animals supposedly roam the property).
3. If you go to the river bank, right across the river from the water treatment plant with any type of angel trinket, like a figurine, and set it down in the water, the ghost of a woman will appear on the catwalk of the water treatment plant. Supposedly it's the ghost of a women that hung herself there when she found out that her lover was married. Never tested it.
4. St Pius X Catholic School. They supposedly have gnomes that will watch you from the edge of the playground if you go there at night with food and wait for them. I have tried this, no gnomes.
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From about the age of eight to the age of eleven, I lived this house with a dilapidated garage and a big rusted kerosene (?) tank in the back garden. I don't know what it was about the place, but that corner of the yard had a really gloomy vibe and I would see all kinds of strange things around there.
One afternoon, I was in my room and looked out the window to see a huge black canine forelimb reach out from between the padlocked swing doors of the garage and claw furiously at the outer surface. The wood was rotten away in places and the lock/chain had a bit of give, just wide enough to let this one leg squeeze out. My immediate thought was that some local dog had been sniffing around in there and my mum had come along and accidentally locked it inside. I went outside and unlocked the door, only there was nothing alive inside. There was no other exit from the garage except a couple of high windows, which were locked, and judging by the size of the paw - we're talking Great Dane-scale - there was no way an animal like that would have been able to hide.
Another time, my mum was looking for something in the garage at night (I forget what) and called me out to help. There was no light in there, so we were searching in almost complete darkness. After a minute or two, I looked out the window at the far end of the garage and saw the outline of a human figure sitting cross-legged on top of the kerosene tank, silhouetted against the glow of light pollution in the sky. It was waving its arms above its head in a rigid fashion, like some strange signaling system. I shouted to my mum that there was someone out in the dark waving at us, but she didn't even look; just yelled at me for being silly and shooed me back into the house (in truth, I think what I said scared her and she was too freaked out to stay in the garage).
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When I was around 8 years old my bedroom was down a hallway by itself. I had a window that had been broken, so there was a piece of wood in place of the bottom part. The window was very high up. No one could just reach easily. My mother had been cleaning my room that night and had me go back in there to get her glass of tea she had left in there. When I walked in I glanced at the window and there was a rigid, gray, bony witch looking finger with a long dead looking nail and bumps along the finger. The finger was an abnormal length and just above the wooden sill motioning me to come toward it. I crawled under my bed, terrified and screamed for my mother. I told her I was too scared to come out from under the bed. She was in the living room watching TV and didn't feel like getting up, and did not realize what I was so scared over. I eventually crawled out and darted out of the bedroom as fast as I could. I am twenty six years old and that memory is still as vivid as the day it happened. It has always been extremely unsettling to think that, whatever it was, it was trying to get me to come to it.
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Floating skeleton "pixies"
Was going to the bathroom when I was about 4 or 5 and happened to look down the stairs. I saw a pulsating blue-ish/purple-ish light. There was no sound so it wasn't a tv.
out of nowhere these two tiny floating skeletons came around the corner from the bottom of the stairs. They moved SUPER slow and once they turned around, they stopped, looked up at me, and started coming up the stairs.
I screamed, bolted back into my room; pants now full of urine; and up into my bed which was one of those double decker metal beds with the desk on the bottom and bed on top.
They came into my room, looked right up at me. (I was under the blanket with a hole to see) went over to my brothers crib, looked at him, and disappeared.
Haven't seen them since, nor do I ever want to again.
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Ok first, I am a pure skeptic and rationalist. By no explanation, I mean I have no explanation. Nor will I attempt one.
A few years back I and a friend of mine (we called him Tacklebox) went over to another friend's house (J-bot). The living room is on the second floor and the ceiling is made of a very weak particle board-like substance, flaky and painted white. On one of these ceiling tiles, there was a scrape that ended with a large hole. It sat just over where J-bot had placed his T.V.
So, the three of us are hanging out, watching a really bad B-rate film about giant insects on the Syfy channel, when Tacklebox glances up and says "Yo, is that spider in that hole?" J-bot and I look at him and start laughing. His obvious attempt at scaring us because we were a little high and watching the film we were watching was a complete failure. "No, guys I'm serious, " he says, but there's some gravity behind his voice and expression. So, J-bot and I, sitting on the floor, stare deep into the hole, looking for something resembling a spider. The hole was probably large enough to put two fist through and I was staring at what may have been loosely hanging fabric, draped lightly around the inside of it. Then, suddenly, what manifested due to its movement, was something resembling fingers, crooked, bent and jointed,that scurried backward into the hole. Panicking, we found ourselves on the other side of the living room frantic for an explanation. What we saw was not a spider, and even if it was, it was larger than even a tarantula. We weren't sure what to do, so we slowly approached the hole, on foot, and I took cover behind the loveseat, peaking up over the back support. That's when I saw the craziest thing. It stuck something out through the whole. It was a light brown and grey with lighter grey spots, but it resembled a periscope, but rounded and stubbier, spinning around, scanning the area. My imagination struggled with what I was seeing. My brain just couldn't come up with any explanations. I actually began to accept the fact that it was extraterrestrial, because I had nothing else. Then we grabbed a piece of cardboard and some courage, rushed to the hole, placed the cardboard over, taped it down and then re-taped it for good measure. Then we named the ceiling-beast Lawrence. That cardboard stayed up there for years, with warnings all over it. If anyone so much as pretended to take it down, anyone present for the initial incident would dart from the room and down the stairs.
No explanation.
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I posted this on your other post as well: I have seen this creature or similar twice in my life, both in Florida near swamplands. The first time I saw it there were 8 people with me who saw it too. Only for a split second - we were in a screened in patio chatting late at night. Lots of strange noises from the bushes in the yard and then a raccoon jetted out, then all of a sudden this... emaciated zombie humanoid creature shambled past on all fours in a weird crabwalk way right after the raccoon it was chasing. Stunned silence and then everyone started screaming or crying. The creature must have been 7 feet long if you could unkink all it's twisted limbs and was able to move VERY quickly. We called it Mr. Slither.
The second time, I was driving at night down familiar winding country roads. I saw big yellow eyes reflecting my headlights, then a giant black lump on the side of the road. I began slowing down and put my brights on.. it was a bigass hog lying on the side of the road. But the eyes were coming from just above it's neck/shoulder... Then this same fucking thing from last time removes it's bloody chin from the boar, humanlike but on all fours joltingly slithers into the ditch with only it's head peeking out. Words cannot describe how this creature moved. I about shit my pants and gunned the car. I truly believe what I saw was real and most certainly paranormal nature. It was NOT human, though it appeared to be imitating the shape of one as best it could.
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This was around late October/Early November 2015. I (21/m) was working at a sandwich shop in downtown Louisville, KY. It was starting to get dark, and it was time to put the outdoor seating away.
I go out the front door of the restaurant and look down the busy street. It's about 7 or 8PM, so everyone was starting to come out to go to the bars and restaurants.
Half a block away across the street, I see an elderly man. Something is obviously not right with him. He looks see-through, almost. Very sickly. I notice that he is hyperventilating. I look closer and start getting more freaked out. Just the way he was breathing, I'm not going to be able to describe, but it was inhuman. His chest was HEAVING, but also going so fast at the same time. I've tried to breath that way myself but I just can't emulate that deep of a breath at that rate of speed.
At this point, my mind is racing for some sort of logical answer. It has to be some homeless person messed up on some drug. But working where I do, I'm very familiar with most of the homeless in the area and have never seen this man before.
I finish putting away the tables, go inside, and explain to my co-worker what I saw. She's hesitant to believe me, but we don't put much more thought into it.
I go back up to the front, look out the window, and HOLY SHIT IT IS ALMOST DIRECTLY ACROSS THE STREET FROM THE SHOP, LOOKING ME IN THE EYES. I literally couldn't move or couldn't say anything. It was like I was frozen in shock because what I was looking at made absolutely no sense.
It had the face of an old elderly man, with grey hair, and solid black eyes, almost like the pupils were so dilated it took up the entire eye socket. The skin looked very transparent and sickly. It was still breathing all weird, with the chest heaving, causing all other parts of the body to follow it, with his mouth hanging wide open, almost like his jaw was unhinged. But the most disturbing part was his body.
I didn't notice it before because it was at a distance, and was obscured by traffic and pedestrians, but I could now see up close that his clothes looked like they were literally hanging off his body. It really did looked like he had clothes hangers for a body. He was wearing a generic red and black plaid shirt, with denim blue jeans, (and possibly suspenders - I can't remember for sure); the generic old person attire. The clothes were not oversized but were very wrinkly and looked like they were just blowing in the wind. He had hands barely poking out of the loose shirt sleeves the same shade of transparent pale as his face. I didn't notice or couldn't see his shoes or feet.
People were reacting to him, but not as much as I thought they should have. When people walked past, they gave him lots of space and generally had concerned looks on their face. It was how a normal person would react to a drunk homeless person or a mentally disturbed person making a scene.
At this point, a line was forming and I had to get back to work. The next time I looked out front about 10 minutes later he was gone. Never saw him, or heard of anyone who saw him since.
It was so weird, and gave me the weirdest feeling, and everything happened in slow motion. It's an interesting experience that I thought I'd share.
tl;dr - I was at work and witnessed an almost transparently pale elderly man who was impossibly skinny and hyperventilating at an inhuman rate.
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I must preface this with a few things.
This encounter is second hand but was told to me on multiple occasions by the person that experienced this. I am a natural skeptic and cynic so I can't say I 100% believe it but his telling of it was pretty simple yet concise and did not vary between retellings. I've known this guy for many years and his advice and input on just about everything is well reasoned and always helpful so I'll just take his word on it even if with a grain of salt.
Also keep in mind I am not a seasoned writer and past and present tense may get a little jumbled but I'll keep it clear and accurate as best I can.
So let's get down to business. My friend, we'll call him Marv, likes to go solitary camping on occasion to be one with nature and the things that go along with that. He is also an avid gun collector and enthusiast.
I don't remember exactly when he said this took place but it was few years back and he decided to go camping on a whim. He packed his gear, a few guns, hunting rifle and .45 sidearm specifically, and headed out into the country onto a vast swatch of property owned by a friend of his. He had full permission and the works. This happened close to the Kisatchie National Forest in south/central Louisiana. I won't be any more specific other than that. Safe to say it's miles and miles of forest and wilderness.
He liked to hike in pretty deep and camp at a specific spot he found a few trips prior. These details are kind of sparse as it's not really the meat and potatoes to this encounter. So he made his way in and set up camp in his usual small clearing for the night. Skipping ahead a few hours it was now late afternoon when he heard leaves crunching and twigs being stepped on.
He assumed it was an animal at first and got up from cooking something on the fire to try to get a look. He gazed in the direction of the noise and saw a man approaching through the trees a good many yards away.
He has described his etiquette for dealing with other people in very remote places as always being cautious as more often than not people he comes across are armed like him. He tries to stay as friendly as possible but still keeps his guard up looking for any ulterior motives as you never can tell what some folks are up to out in the middle of nowhere. He'll make chitchat with them, find out generally what they're up to if he can, and occasionally share a meal etc. He's never really met anyone nefarious as of yet other than this situation and maybe one other but that's a whole other ordeal.
So one thing that sets off small alarm bells for him is he knows he's the only one with permission to be on this property and secondly this guy is not dressed for the location at all. He said the guy was wearing a white t-shirt, short blue jogging shorts, and white socks and sneakers. Mind you Marv is miles out in the middle of the woods away from any paths, roadways, houses, or anything really. Nobody is going to casually stroll into his current location dressed like that unless they are lost/confused etc.
It was early fall but not quite cool (very normal for Louisiana) so there's a ton of mosquitoes, ticks, and other insects aplently. You're not going to have most of your skin exposed if you can help it deep in the woods. I know that all too well from personal experience myself.
So Marv assumes something might be up and calls out "Hey there, do you need help or something?" pretty loud. Definitely loud enough to be heard. The guy keeps walking forward staring directly at him. Marv is starting to get unnerved and as I said I know this guy well and he's cool as cucumber in a tense situation. Getting more uneasy, as the guy is closing the distance, he gets to his feet and loudly declares "Hey man, can I help you with something or what?" The guys is 15 to 20 feet away from Marv now standing at the edge of the clearing and the forest.
The guy looking Marv dead in the eye, speaks, and clearly says "Help me." Marv said he was already starting to actually get worried at this point because he said the way the guy said this was as if something that didn't know exactly how to talk was saying help me or at least that's what he first thought. It did not sound right. The guy still unmoving says "Help me." again slightly more emphatic but really just slightly louder. Marv said this is when he picked up on what was truly wrong about this. He said the timbre of the voice was more female and actually sounded like a recording being played back and that the guy's lip and mouth movements weren't matching up with the phrase.
It's like he was just opening his mouth, emitting the phrase, and closing it again. Marv asked "What do you need help with?" not daring to back up or move whatsoever. The guy still standing motionless as well still looking directly at him said "Help me" again and repeated the phrase another three times slowly but not louder in volume.
Marv now totally unsure of what the hell is going on interrupts the guy by barking "Alright you need to fucking go now unless you actually need my help!." "Do you need my help or not?!" he continued loud and firm in tone. The guy didn't miss a beat and started up with the "help me's" again and made as if to take another step in Marv's direction.
Marv told me that he then did the only thing that made sense in the moment and drew his .45 semi auto pistol and pointed it at the guy telling him again "You need to fucking go! I don't care what you want!" The guy starts to get more animated and agitated actually starting to say the phrase louder now over and over but not stepping closer or backing away.
Marv did what he thought was right given his current predicament, assuming he was dealing with an unstable or potentially dangerous individual, and discharged a round into the ground in front of the guy. Now this is where it gets fully batshit crazy (I'm not kidding) as the guy stops uttering the phrase, goes silent, and still staring at Marv full on backflips/'somersaults (like gymnasts do) backwards into the woods and immediately out of sight. (Yes you read that right.) Now I know what you're thinking because I had and still have the same reaction. That sounds like bullshit for sure but Marv gave no indication of falsehood and told me this multiple times each time in dead serious demeanor.
Yet Marv said the guy backflipped away effortlessly as if pulled back by an unseen tensioned coil. He described it as completely humanly unnatural and totally out of place. The guy had just appeared and repeated the same phrase over and over eventually becoming almost frantic before Marv shot at the ground before him causing him/it to flee.
Marv said he stood there focused on the forest where the guy just flipped into and saw and heard no further movement. It was like the guy had never even been there. He stayed like this as the sun began to set and the normal night noises crept in. As I mentioned before Marv is a pretty unshakable fellow and actually stayed in the area for the night and next night before returning with no further incident.
When he had told me and some other friends about this of course we asked many questions. We asked him to elaborate on the guys speech sounds. He said the more he thought about it after the incident the more sure he was that it was definitely a female's voice coming from the guy. It was like he/it had heard someone say this and mimicked it like a parrot or other talking bird would. Almost like a lure. He doesn't know what it wanted. He/it (yea it might qualify as an it) didn't give any indication to follow or utter anything else. He/it reacted immediately to the gunshot and you know what followed there. He has been back to the property since with no other strange occurrences.
The only other minute detail that I can think of is he did remember hearing during the early morning of the first night what sounded like a gunshot off in the distance and it did sound eerily similar to his .45. He thought he may have heard it again on the hike back out. There are people that hunt in the area of course and it could have just been that. He couldn't be sure.
Since this incident (and one other he had in a complete different location) he did some online research of the whole Kisatchie area and found many legends, stories, and supposed encounters dealing with skinwalkers and other unnerving bits of Native American folklore in the area. Not to mention mimics and other similar supposed creatures. A lot of his encounter lines up with these tales but there's nothing tangible to prove it of course but even as a skeptic it does make me wonder about strange things in the remote and untouched areas of our world that can't be explained.
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I'll make this quick.
As a kid, about 6 or 7 years old, I fell in my grandparents yard and hurt myself. As an old war vet, my grandpa toughed me up and dropped iodine on my open wound. I screamed and cried as expected, he left the room to get something else and suddenly, the window curtains in his room flew open and what I can only describe as a cross between Maleficient and a harlequin popped her (its?) head inside and screamed at me. I was so shocked, I just sat there staring at it and then it left. My grandpa came back and bandaged me up, but I didn't tell him about what I saw. I went to the backyard and looked everywhere, but I couldn't find any trace of this figure.
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When I was about 16, I began to hear some faint sounds coming from under my bed. I had a waterbed, so when I say "under", I mean, under the overhang of the bed (about 8-10" in).

At first all I heard was breathing, which seemed to originate from the lower right corner of the bed. It was faint, and thinking it was one of my cats (who weren't allowed in the room due to the fact that cat + waterbed = disaster), I checked it out. When I found nothing there, I was slightly disconcerted, but not frightened.

Over the course of the next few nights, the breathing gradually became louder and difficult to ignore. Along with the breathing I heard a chewing sound, some smacking, some snorting, and I swear, a sneeze. Each time I looked under the bed, nothing was there. It bothered me so much that I asked my mother what was going on - she was of the opinion that it was "squirrels in the walls" or some such thing. The sounds, however, seemed to be coming from a much larger animal than a squirrel, and besides - it always came from the lower right corner of the bed, not from the walls.

Though the sounds made me uneasy, they strangely never seemed threatening, and I was never terrified of them, though in retrospect, it seems like I ought to have been. However, one day (during daylight hours) I was meditating in the room, seated, facing the wall, with my eyes closed. There was some newspaper scattered on the carpet behind me (I had a messy room). After about 10 minutes of sitting quietly, I heard the breathing coming from somewhere behind me, but this time I also heard the newspaper crinkling as if it were being stepped upon. Suddenly the newspapers crackled loudly and whatever it was seemed to come to a stop right behind my back. Not only could I hear it, I could "sense" its presence. I was, needless to say, paralyzed with fear, and sat frozen for a good 10-15 seconds before standing up and bolting out of the room. I didn't see anyone/anything else in the room!

After that incident I made a point - feeling silly doing so, but still - to ask the "entity" very nicely to leave, out loud, during the day. It came back once, making the familiar smacking/chewing sounds, but never again.

I might add that we'd lived in that house for ten years before this incident, and nothing remotely paranormal had happened to us there before, or since.
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This is my first post. I wanted to share an experience that happened to me some years ago, for which I have no explanation but still to this day I'd like to see if anyone out there has any ideas to contribute. The fact that I stumbled across these accounts on the FT website of black silhouette figures confirms a lot to me, namely that myself and a friend are not alone in something we experienced. Please read on!

I was walking from a friend's house to my own, in the early hours of the morning after a night of general chat while I was at university here in London, UK – specifically, a relatively leafy suburb called Brockley in South-east London. I had drunk only everyday tea or soft drinks all night and had consumed no drugs whatsoever. I'd simply gone without sleep. The time was around 6am and dawn was literally breaking when a friend and I found ourselves walking down my street to where my apartment was located, when we saw a figure walking up the street towards us. The word we coined later to describe its movement was 'lolloping' - a kind of up-down bouncy walk. It took a few seconds for the two of us to realise this was no human being. I asked my friend: "See that man?" "Yes," was the reply. "It's not a man, though, is it?" I found myself asking. "No,' said my friend, sounding scared. "It isn't."

The creature was entirely black and like a cardboard cut-out, flat and one-dimensional. It had no features at all, and it had arms that hung down to its knees. It seemed to be ignoring us, then it seemed to realise we could see it and it began to 'lollop' faster towards us.

We ran to my front door and hid in the hallway as quiet and unmoving as possible when we saw the thing - we felt it was male - approach the front door and appear to look through the glass from the way its head moved up and down and around. It then turned away.

We didn't sleep for some time after that, discussing what we saw. It was shaped like many descriptions of 'greys' but both myself and my friend came away with the impression that what we saw was either of this world or from another parallel dimension. To all intents and purposes, it appeared to be sauntering along the road enjoying the walk before it became shocked to see us staring at it in horror. We instinctively felt this was not a creature to try and communicate with, this was not something that it was good to be near. We might have been wrong but neither myself nor my friend would ever like to see this creature or others like it again, though I'd love to get some ideas on what it was. We felt that if this creature had somehow gotten hold of us, we would not be around today to tell the tale to anyone who might believe us or at least give the story open-minded consideration.
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This happened to me when I was around 5 years old.

I awoke late one night, for no apparent reason. I got out of bed and went into the living room. I felt the urge to approach the window (I've no idea why). I opened the curtains.

A man-sized lion (or more accurately, man in lion costume) crouched behind the curtains, upon the window sill. The lion jumped off the window sill, and landed in the middle of the room.

It grabbed me by the arms, and "danced" aggressively around the room. It swung me around for a while, then eventually stopped. Finally, it "dropped" me on the carpet. I looked up, and the lion was gone.

The lion never made a sound.

I went back to my bed and hid under the covers. In the morning, there was no sign of the lion.
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In the early eighties my children and their friends, all under 12, were playing in a local field. There were usually cows there but was empty when they played. They came running home very excited and announced "The trees are walking" they were terrified too. All the children said it was true.....I didn't bother to check it out but even though my children are much older they still agree with what they saw. It was a warm sunny day and it was not a landslide...no other idea what that could have been.
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Just a strange thing I remember from when I was a kid. I was out digging up worms with my dad and my sister on the grass near my house. I must have been about 4 or 5 which makes it 1981/2. I looked up and saw an old fashioned court jester stood in front of us a few yards away with his arms out stretched. He then turned and walked away. I looked away a bit scared but a bit amused and when I looked back it had gone. I was the only one who saw him/it.
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Once again I am posting something that I've thought about posting ever since I first joined this list. I think you will all realize very quickly why I haven't posted it before this. To this day, even I'm not completely sure what is was that I saw. I know what it looked like, but I've found that it's better, for me at least, not to believe that it really was what it looked like.

This happened years ago. I really don't remember how old I was at the time, but I don't think I was more that about nine years old. That would put the time of this somewhere during the summer of 1984. My Grandparents ( My Mom's parents ) lived out in the country about fifteen minutes drive from home. I was spending the weekend with my Grandparents. The story that follows occoured on the Friday night of that weekend.

It was after dark. I was on the couch, turned around and sitting on my knees, looking out a large picture window. I was waiting on Grandpa to get home from work. Grandma and I were the only two people in the there at the time. As I waited, a dense fog began to form. The fog began to grow thicker as time passed. Grandma was getting a bit worried. Grandpa was late getting home and she was afraid he'd have an accident due to low visibility brought on by the fog.

Several more minutes passed. I was still kneeling on the couch, watching out the window for Grandpa. Then I saw what looked like two lights coming up the road toward the house. At first, I thought it the lights were from the headlights on Grandpa's car. Then I realized that the lights were not the right color. One light seemed to be a lemon yellow, while the other appeared pink. I watched, curious, as the lights moved closer. Then I yelled for Grandma to come to the window and look at them.

Grandma was busy preparing supper and didn't want to leave the kitchen. I took another look at the lights, which were still moving closer, and then went to the kitchen to try to convince Grandma to come and see them. At this point, the lights were still not much more than fuzzy colored blobs due to the thick fog.

I left the window and ran into the kitchen. I told Grandma that there was a pair of lights approaching the house. She said something along the lines of, "Good. He's finally home." I told her that the lights didn't look like they were from a car. I told her about the odd coloration. Finally, Grandma agreed to go take a look for herself.

Running, I got to the window before Grandma did. I resumed my former kneeling position on the couch before really looking out the window. The lights were still there, closer than before. They were just starting to take on a more definite shape, like something was emerging from the fog.

Grandma leaned forward for a closer look at the solidifying shapes. I turned to her, asking what the lights were. She didn't know and was beginning to act a bit scared by the sight. I turned back to the window.

The strange lights were almost to the house by that point. (**Thinking back now, I realize just how bright they must have been to have been visible at the first.** ) Then the lights finally took on a more tangible shape. (**This is the part that REALLY makes me doubt what we THOUGHT we saw**) What we saw looked to be two cows, both bulls, dancing along the road on their hind legs. (**No, this is NOT a joke.**) One was glowing yellow, the other was glowing pink. Each of the "bulls" had a front leg, "arm" draped over the shoulder of the other. They were heading toward the driveway.

At this point, Grandma fainted. I only remember giving her a quick look as she collapsed beside me on the couch, then I resumed staring in disbelief and shock at the sight outside.

The "bulls" danced along until they got to the driveway, turned as if to make their way up it to the house. Then both just faded away.

After some time (**I'm not sure how long exactly, but I don't think it was more than a minute or so**) I turned away from the window to Grandma. She was still unconscious. I had no idea how to revive her. I remember shaking her, as if trying to wake a sleeping person, and talking to her. I do not recall what I said. After a few moments, she began to stir. As Grandma woke up, she turned quickly back to the window. I told her that whatever we had seen was gone. I asked her what HAD we seen.

Grandma sat me down on the couch and told me that I was NOT to breathe a word of what had happened to Grandpa when he got home. I asked why. Grandma wouldn't give me an answer. She just kept telling me to keep quiet about it.

A few minutes later, we heard a car door slam outside. Grandpa was home. Again, Grandma warned me not to say a word to Grandpa about what had happened.

Naturally, the moment Grandpa entered the house, I ran straight to him and told him everything that had happened.

Grandpa spared only a second to ask Grandma if she were okay. The moment she said "Yes" Grandpa retrieved his shotgun and went outside. Grandma began to scold me, very loudly, for disobeying her orders.

Several minutes later, Grandpa came back in. He had found nothing.

To this day, neither of them will discuss what happened that evening.

If that had been the end of the matter, I would have convinced myself years and years ago that both Grandma and I had simply been hallucinating. In fact, not too long after the incident, I had convinced myself of that.

Several years after seeing the "bulls" at my Grandparents' house, a friend of mine who I grew up with came to me one day with a story. I'll call this girl "A". (**Both she and I were about twelve when she told me this**)

When I lived in Ohio this girl's Grandparents lived directly behind us. "A" lived mostly with her Grandparents during the summer months. Only a one lane alley separated our two yards. Across this girl's Grandparents' yard was the railroad bed I've posted about a few times in the past. On the other side of the railroad bed was a small farm. (**We lived at the very edge of town**)

"A" came to me one day saying that she had seen something very strange the previous night. I asked her what she'd seen. "A" made a long speech about how I'd think she was crazy if she told me. I pointed out that she'd already brought up the subject, obviously, she wanted to tell me. "A" agreed.

She said that late the night before she had been unable to sleep and had been looking out of her bedroom window. It began to get foggy. In the fog, "A" claimed to have seen two glowing lights moving across the pasture back at the farm. One light was yellow, the other pink.

(**Please keep in mind that I had NOT told anyone about what Grandma and I had seen at this point.**)

"A" said that, as the lights got closer to the railroad bed, they began to take on solid shapes. At that point, I was starting to get cold chills. "A" said that she must have been seeing things and that she wouldn't waste time telling me the rest of her story. I insisted that she did. After a few minutes "A" said, almost in tears, that the lights took on the shapes of cows. Bulls. Each bull had a front leg draped over the shoulders of the other. Both appeared to be dancing along on their hind legs. They were moving toward the railroad bed. Toward "A" 's Grandparents' house.

"A" said that at that point she had turned away from her window and hid under the blankets until morning.

After "A" told me her story, I told her my own, very similar one. As far as I know, "A" never saw the "bulls" again after that night. I've never seem them again, myself.

If not for "A" 's story, I would long since come to believe that what Grandma and I had seen was a hallucination brought on by the dense fog and car headlights or something like that. "A" 's story makes me think again. I don't know WHAT we saw, but I do know that we saw SOMETHING.
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The story recounts how one winter, when he was a child and living in Scotland, a man called Richard Curle woke from sleep at 'about two in the morning' in a 'rather isolated' room in the house he had lived in since he had been born. Wide awake, he lies there in his bed, watching a swaying tree branch outside of his window. He suddenly becomes aware of slow footsteps approaching the back of the house 'ominous in their leisurely tread'. He hears the sound of these slow footsteps in the courtyard below - despite the fact that it was locked every night - then, with growing horror, actually inside the house itself. He hears these footsteps 'on the flagstones of the lower passage' and 'with a kind of fatal foreknowledge... on the back staircase'. As he knew the house so well he could trace the journey of the intruder; 'they reached the top of the stairs, turned sharp left, then sharp left again, descended a few steps, approached the door of the room leading to his room, and finally stopped at his own door'. Affleck Gray now quotes directly from Curle himself;

'By this time I was sitting up in bed with my eyes glued to the door and with horror in my heart. The handle turned and in the opening stood a creature with the face of a fox, which walked on its hind legs. It was dressed in some sort of way and, would you credit it, wore a top hat, which added to its appearance an indescribably macabre touch... It gazed at me with a fixed rather than a malign expression but did not speak. I shouted out, 'Go away!' - how well I remember the exact words! - and it turned around and went away. I heard its steps follow, in retreat, the precise route they had followed before, unhurried, and steady as ever, until at last they died out on the road leading to the woods'.
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What I am about to describe happened to me and a friend of mine many years ago. I remember it vividly even though it must have been nearly 40 years back.

It took place in a grave yard in Barnet North London. It was a balmy warm early evening and my friend and I were walking through the grave yard on our way home from School - both of us lived in the same street which was no more than about half a mile from the school. Being a little mischievous (as 8 or 9 year old boys can be) we started throwing flowers at each other off some of the graves. Looking back at best it was disrespectful and at worse it was vandalism. Anyway both he and I were having great fun throwing these flowers at each other - so much so that we failed to see, standing no more than 10 feet away a witch sitting there laughing at us.

The thing is - the witch was exactly as you would think a witch should be - she sat there with the black cape, pointy black hat, black cat on her lap and the broom stick resting up against the boiling cauldron. There was absolutely no way she could have just walk up and sat herself down like that - she just appeared. Laughing at us. Both my friend and I just stared at her for what seemed like minutes but must have been no more than about 10 seconds and then we just ran as fast as we could out of the grave yard.

It's the most bizarre thing I have ever seen.
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 This is an account told to me by my father. It's always intrigued me. Before I delve into the story, I want to say I'd describe my dad as level-headed, a bit skeptical about most things, and pretty up-front.

When my dad was younger, he often hung out with his mates in London. He'd often spend hours at a time out, especially in school holidays, and sometimes would leave home at breakfast only to return at dinner time. This was back in the 50's.

One particular day, he was desperate for the toilet and he was far from home, so he decided to go to one of the local public toilets. His friends waited outside while he went in alone.

He said he went in, and the whole place seemed empty. The doors of cubicles were all open, and he could hear nobody else. He went into a cubicle, used the toilet, and when he came out and started to wash his hands, he noticed in the mirror that one of the toilet doors behind him was now closed over. He never heard anybody come in - and even now the place was quiet.

Suddenly, he felt something grab the back of his legs. He jerked, frightened, and looked down. He said he saw the most enormous pair of grey hands coming out from under the toilet door, and they were moving forward, as if to try to grab him.

My dad said he was absolutely terrified, that the hands looked very real to him; hairy and veiny, and he pulled away, and ran from the toilet screaming to high-heavens!

I don't know what happened after that... My dad says he was scared, he truly believed what he saw looked real, and he went straight home.

He says he has never forgotten this encounter. He says he realises that people will say it was someone wearing gloves, but he said the sheer size, life-like appearance and way the "being" came in unheard or noticed by friends, makes him wonder if it was real.
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That brings me to my own story. Way back about forty years ago, I lived near a very small city in Upstate New York. For about two years, whenever I was on the main street of the city, I would see this person, dressed like a harlequin. This is very strange for a very conservative city in Upstate New York. As a kid, I recall walking past this person (or whatever it may have been) and just getting the most uncomfortable feeling from her. (I think it was a ‘her’ since she was dressed in dirty pink satin and stripes and wore filthy ballet slippers.) Her face was also painted up like a harlequin.

Her behavior was odd, too. She never blinked, only stared vacantly into the distance. The other weird thing that used to frighten me was that I’d look back to get another look at her and she would suddenly be on the other side of the street.

To my recollection, people scarcely reacted to this person. For about two years running I would see this person, always dressed the same way, always behaving the same way, no matter what the weather.
Has anyone else ever seen anything like this? I doubt the person was goth/punk since this was in the 1960s, but from what I recall, the person acted strangely enough for me to be afraid that she would even LOOK at me. She moved stiff, like she had to force her limbs to work. And the weird thing for me was that no one else on the street really noticed her or her strange behavior.

I still get chills when I think of this person. She felt, I don't know, not right, if that makes any sense.
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Kids are funny. All sorts of weird things happened to me when I was younger. Some of that weirdness has carried on into my adult life, but some of it definitely hasn't. Our family has come to the conclusion that the back bedroom of our house (my parents' house, that is) is haunted or just in a bad place. Plenty of quite unpleasant things have happened. My younger brother saw his doppelganger on a very frequent basis (at least once a week) for a period of several months, and that became quite frantic. I remember being woken up in the middle of the night once, and looking out of the window to see a huge, hairy hand sticking up above the sill as far as the wrist. I put it down to a prank being played by my father, but have since discovered that he was not responsible. We haven't been able to explain it. I also remember waking up once to discover that I was covered in blood, all over my face and hands and pyjamas. When I went out to the bathroom I discovered there was blood smeared all along the wall of the corridor all the way out to the front door. I never found out what had happened, but I remember dazedly wiping it all up, cleaning it very thoroughly off the walls, unable to think of anything at all, rather like an automaton. I was about 14.
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My name is Joshua. I live in Rutherford County, Tennessee. When I was still a toddler, a strange event happened ... one that, despite the hunger with which I devour any and all "paranormal"-related literature, I can find no precedent for. So I will tell you guys about it, in the hope that maybe someone has some sort of an explanation.

It all happened one night in another part of Tennessee (the event is so strange to me that I dare not say where). My mother was taking my little brother and I somewhere. We all got into the car, and then my mother realized that she had forgotten her purse. So she said to wait while she went inside to find it.

As she went inside, I looked over to my left (I was sitting in the back left seat of the car), and there I saw the weirdest thing ever: sitting on the neighbor's front steps was a creature! (My memory for this has been slowly growing cloudy, so I am amazed I still remember as much as I do.) It was about the size of a man, I guess, and was white with fur or something completely covering it. Now, like I said, I'm WAY into the strange, so I know about sasquatch and everything. But this wasn't sasquatch.

It had somewhat the head of a camel (seriously) or something similar, with a neck that was a little longer than a person's. As I remember it, it had arms just like a person would have, which were, I think, by its side or in its lap like someone just sitting (cause that's what it was doing). Its legs and feet ... my memory really gets cloudy here. But I think it had legs that were shorter than it would have had if it were a person. Lastly, it had a fat tummy, like it had just eaten a beach ball or something.

Okay, so if that isn't weird enough, it was gone when my mother returned to the car. I tried to tell her, but she didn't believe me. To this day, I still don't know what it was I saw. So any ideas?
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I live in King's Lynn, Norfolk (UK) and nearby to where I used to live was a field named 'Peksas'. It is not an overly large field. Around the length of perhaps 1 1/2 full footie pitches. Along one edge it has a river lined with small trees and along the other sides are roads. At one end of this field is a children's play area which is surrounded by a large circle of simple wooden fencing (to keep the kiddies safe from the possibility of running into the road etc).
Anyway, it must have been Feb/March time around 5 years ago that myself and 2 friends made our way to the play area at around midnight to go for a moonlit walk and a chat (as was often our custom). It was snowy on the ground and once we made it to the wooden circle we sat on the benches and chatted for a while. Soon, we all began to hear a noise, similar to the sound of a crisp packet being trodden on. Not all that strange I hear you say. Well, no, apart from the fact that the noise was steady and evenly spaced. As if it were the sound of a bizarre footstep.
Myself and my friends cast our eyes around the circle to see if we could discover where the noise was emanating from. Being dark we could not see far from the boundary of the play area. All of a sudden all 3 of us snapped our vision at precisely the same place. I personally saw at that moment a humanoid form, slightly bent as if hunched. It is hard to describe but even though it were dark the shape was 'shadowy', as if it were a silhouette against the night and then quick as a flash it had vanished. I spoke to my friends after the incident and they both confirmed a similar description. For the next 30 minutes the 'entity' seemed to toy with us, appearing just beyond our field of vision (on the peripheral) and when we tried to focus it seems to dart very quickly in another direction and vanish completely. The 'crisp packet' noise persisted the whole while.
For some reason (and my friends confirmed this also) I felt safe within the barrier of wooden fence, being as the creature seemed to remain outside this perimeter. We huddled together like soldiers keeping a look out in the center of the play area, and became more and more apprehensive until the creature made an appearance within our safe zone near the slide. That was too much for all 3 of us and we clambered over the nearest fence panel and ran back to my friend's house (no more than 3 minutes away). Even though we did not use the metal hinged gate we all distinctly heard it slam behind us with some force.
We returned many times with many different friends. Some we told beforehand what to expect and some we did not. Many experienced the same phenomenon with us time after time and to this day my little sister refuses to cut across the field at night (a shortcut of sorts).
We came to call the creature 'The Hunter'.
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Not sure where to put this as it didn't happen to me, but to a close friend.
Whilst on honeymoon in Edinburgh some friends of mine went to a restaurant for a quiet evening meal, during which they shared a bottle of wine (I mention this in case anyone thinks that the following was alcohol induced!). At some point during the meal, Mrs S got up and went to the ladies and Mr S sat staring out of the window which looked out onto a hill. Mr S says that he then sat and watched as a skeleton walked down the hill towards him, in through the restaurant door where it then sat down opposite him in Mrs S' seat and spoke to him. He says that he has no recollection of what it said, but that he replied to its question, again with no recollection of what he said. The skeleton then got up and walked out, Mrs S returned and he told her what had just happened. The weird thing was that she didn't think it odd when he told her!!
Both of them are pretty normal. I'm flummoxed! Sorry it's taken so long to get back...Mr S has been on hols!
So, he says he was sitting near the toilets, facing the front of the restaurant. He said that way in the distance was the outline of a hill and he watched a speck moving down the hill and then along the street towards the restaurant. It wasn't wearing clothes, it did open the door but he cant remember if it moved the chair. He still cant remember what it, or he, said and it got up and walked back the way it came.
He had two beers (not wine as previously reported) and ate the ribs (not of the skeleton).
He gets the impression it was male, but "how the hell would I know"?
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As a 4-year-old, I fucking hated tying my shoes. I was terrible at it and progress was just not happening. One morning I was throwing a shitfit because my mom told me to tie my shoes before we left the house, and I was trying to avoid this horrible responsibility while crying and screaming on the third or fourth step of the staircase. The ceiling above the staircase extended from the second floor, horizontally, to the space above the first step, where it met a vertical wall that connected the second floor ceiling to that of the first. Imagine a big upside-down "L". So my punkass is screaming on one of the lower steps, and my gaze drifts upwards after a few minutes. I stop crying immediately, and I go silent. I distinctly remember seeing a man in a sharp black suit with the head of a boar, only blue and complete with tusks and fur, bracing himself in the corner of the ceiling (like a ninja) above my head staring down at me. He didn't say anything to me, but I know what he wanted. My mom began to ask me what happened, noticing my abrupt change in mood, and I cut her off in a monotone, saying only "He told me to be good."
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The most detailed Roof Walker story tells of a man from Ithaca, NY, who, late one night, looked out his apartment window and saw someone walking on the 11 story roof of the opposite building. After a bit, the strange figure jumped and landed on the roof of another adjoining building across the street. The figure then stared right at him with glowing, white eyes, and the man bolted out of the room without a second thought.
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When I was 7, I woke up in the middle of the night with an earache. I decided to tell my mom and step dad and walked out of my room. Someone was sitting on the chair in the living room (about 3 feet away from my bedroom door). The person looked strange (the face was just kind of distorted) but it was dark and I couldn't see well. "Mom?" I asked. The person shook their head, and I started getting scared. "Mike?". The person shook their head again. I decided the best course of option was to go back to bed so I wouldn't have to walk past this...person. I climbed in bed, and closed my eyes for a second, before opening them and seeing the person standing in my doorway, smiling madly and nodding furiously.
Edited: I screamed at the top of my lungs and closed my eyes. My step dad came running out of his room in his underwear with a baseball bat (that was a scary sight in itself). There was nothing there, but clothes my mom had folded and put on the chair where strewn about the living room. For the longest time I told myself it was my cat, sitting on the clothes.
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Sir - my brother referred your email addy to me. He thought you may have an answer to what I saw this past July while camping in the Sierra Nevada Mts. near Tioga Lake, CA. My teenage son and I were camping in our RV. There were other campers in the area but not very close to us. On the 3rd night of our trip, we encountered something that neither of us can explain.

This is bear country and I know that there have been Bigfoot reports over the years. But what we saw was neither as far as we can tell. We secured all of the food and other supplies in the RV and were getting ready to go to bed. It was about 12:30 am. My son fell asleep quickly while I was getting a few things ready as we were going to leave this location later in the morning. I was looking at a map when I started to hear high pitched screams. At first I thought it was a coyote but it was a single scream and sounded more human - like a woman's scream. I opened the RV door and stood silent in the doorway. Once again the high pitched scream started. This time, it woke my son. We both stood at the door as the screams continued from the direction of the mountain. After about 10 mins the screams stopped - we both went to bed.

Something startled me while I was sleeping because I woke in a panic. I looked at my watch - it was 2:40 am. Then all of a sudden that same high pitched scream erupted outside of the RV. As it started my son jumped out of his rack and fell to the floor. I grabbed my .44 just in case. As we looked out through the windshield the moonlight was bright enough to illuminate a tall thin creature with light colored skin. My son yelled 'zombie!' - it did look like a female human form but the face and the rest of the body looked horrible. It reminded me of an old witch - no clothes, deformed face, long light colored hair, long arms and legs. I figured it stood almost 7 ft. It was walking away from the RV toward the lake. I had seen enough. I made sure everything was ready to go and drove out of there ASAP.

We ended up near Mono Lake. A few days later I was able to talk to a ranger as he walked through the camping area. He was an older guy and quite engaging. I described what we witnessed - my son also verified what we had seen. The ranger got a serious look on his face and said that over the years, something similar had been reported a few times. He said that they called it 'Penelope' but he didn't know why it had gotten that name. That's all he knew.
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Many years ago I was helping out on a short drove for a fella I was staying with. We were north of, I think, the Tanbar/Windora line, heading towards the Diamantina/Minmin region (in Queensland near the north-east South Australia border corner). We were driving to another station as the drought had dried up all water sources for the livestock where we were, and needed to move them ASAP – it was about a week's wait for a truck so we decided to drove - boss, us five boys, and some old fella who was from a nearby station.
So we drove the first day, pretty uneventful, and made it to camp. We penned up the livestock and started to settle in for the night. Had tucker, got settled in our swags, and dropped like a stone. I had third shift (keeping watch over the stock with a rifle in case dingoes or whatever have a go).
I slept like a fuckin' log as usual, and got woken up for shift (2am or something). Old fella who woke me was like "Apparently I need to come with you, boss says no one goes alone tonight."
I was pretty confused (we usually shift alone) but went along. After a few minutes' walk, we got there and here's what I see:
Two blokes on shift
They each have one of boss's Class D .22s (semi auto, about 20 round mags)
Two entire fresh cartons of ammo (about 1000 rounds total of power points)
A metric fuckton of empty boxes and used shells around them
Three dead foxes in different spots near the pen.
Stinks like fuck as if the dead ones were rotting quick. Smelled like way more than three dead dingoes.
It was a little weird, as usually we do shifts alone and almost never need to shoot. Boss also never gave people his Class D's as usually the bolt actions were sufficient, but I assumed that they got bored and did some plinking and I just didn't wake up to the noise because of the distance, and I'm a heavy sleeper.
We're handed the rifles, turns out old bloke is staying with me, and the other boys go off to camp. But as they walk off, one said "good luck" in a tired voice. I asked what they meant and they just kept walking without saying anything. You tend to be too tired to talk with that sort of work, so I ignored it.
So this old fella and I are sitting on shift. It's a full moon and clear skies, so we don't have to worry about torches, and the air was fresh but surprisingly warm for the outback. Pretty good night for shift, to be honest. Well, we're on for the whole of about 5 minutes, and a dingo pops his head up out of some bushes near the fence line, and starts creeping towards the cattle. No biggie, old fella and I lift our rifles, both shoot about the same time, and ... miss. Dingo completely ignores being shot at and continues creeping up. I shoot again. Miss. What the fuck? I never miss the second shot!
Then ol' fella next to me shoots, but I realize he's facing behind us. I look back and there's a dying dingo behind us! Look back at the pen and creepy cunt is nowhere to be seen. Huh. Must have run back to the scrub.

Five minutes later, creepy cunt creeps out again. This time I pop him and down he goes, and put a second round in the head to avoid suffering. A minute later we hear a shuffle behind us and both turn around to see about 5 dingoes, maybe 20-30 meters from us. We unload on them, and get two while the rest scamper. Turn back to the pen and there's about three creeping. Hit one, one buggers off and the other keeps creeping. Old fella misses the third and then the third legs it.
He then gathers up the dead dingoes, throws them in a ditch behind an embankment nearby, and we settle back in. Turns out this has been going on all night!
Maybe ten minutes later, wash, rinse and repeat. This went on for our entire three hour shift, reducing in frequency as the morning light started appearing. It was absolutely insane. Old fella and I, who are very proficient with firearms, just couldn't hit the buggers - usually we rarely miss a shot. The dingoes just kept coming out of nowhere. It was if they were taking turns. Some were approaching us from behind or the side - not sure if they wanted to attack us or distract us, but it always happened when the creepers came out toward the stock. I reckon we must have shot a hundred of the bastards during our shift, but we used a fuckton of ammo to do it because we just couldn't hit them. It was quite possibly one of the scariest situations I've been around. I don't know why, but it just wasn't right. It was as if the dingoes were so desperate that the possibility of death didn't matter, and they knew they wouldn't get hit. I've rarely felt bad about killing feral or dangerous animals, but you can bet I felt bad shooting that many in one night. But they just kept coming! Over and over and over! We probably only had a couple hundred rounds left when the other boys got up to start a move on.
I wasn't on shift the second night, but apparently the same thing happened again. When I got up at 4:30 to begin prep, the two fellas who were on third shift looked spooked as fuck, the whole thousand yard stare going on and a pile of dead dingoes near their post. We got a move on again. It was hell. Third night none of us slept and just stayed awake listening to the cracks of the .22's every few minutes. For. The. Whole. Night. We got to the other station that afternoon, some of us having not slept since they got up for third shift the second night (so maybe 36 hours). We all had a bit of a nap, and agreed to sit up each with a rifle all that night because the dingoes were likely tracking us and if we're all shooting we could hopefully wipe them out. So we stayed up, loaded and ready to go and .... nothing. Not a peep. Not a glint of an eye. Nothing.
It was as if a thousand dingoes magically appeared, tracked and attacked for three days and nights, then when we got to the paddock in the next station, disappeared the same way they appeared.
One of the blackfellas with us (thousand yard stare man) was spooked as fuck and around daybreak he kept going on about how the land didn't want us there, quoting some dreaming and other crazy shit I've never heard a blackfella talk about. Kept on saying that we can't go home the way we came - we should head east to Jundah then hit the highway to get home. Was saying that it didn't want us crossing the land again, and how the attacks on the way there were a warning and backtracking through again was certain death. When we said he was being paranoid, he said he'd rather ride to the highway on his own (on a quad bike through terrain with no GPS or guide) than go back the way we came. He was terrified and damn near in tears. The fear in his eyes was something I've never seen.
Eventually, we also opted to take the 300km highway roads home instead of the 60km backtrack.
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This reminded me of an experience that happened to me and my family.. my brother was driving my mother and I home one day, a few years back.. when all the sudden my mother looks out the window (she's in the back seat, I'm tall and it sucks to get into the back) and says "Is that a car?"
I look out my window and see something in the sky.. it was dark colored, glossy, and looked incredibly like a 1980's model Cadillac.. we're all sober, it's just a little bit before sunset, and we're driving through the middle of my town. My brother looked over and saw it too, but didn't get a chance to look at it as much.. I could make out headlights, windshield, door handles, and tires.. everything really. It was above a highway and about 150 yds out.
TLDR - My family and I saw a flying car.
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I remember looking in a bedroom door and seeing my sister lying in bed and a black bird was perched on the end of the bed. I see the room from the eye level I would have been at the time - I was a year and a half when that sister died. So I know why it imprinted on my memory because I knew something bad had happened but I can't explain the bird, but I do have a horror of birds anywhere near me.
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I've never shared this with anyone so I'm sorry if it doesn't make sense.
When I was about 7 years old I was sitting in my bedroom with my friend Celia. We were playing. I think we were building with Lego. It was late afternoon and our parents were outside the front of the house chatting. My bedroom had a window at the side of the house.
At some point while we were playing I looked up and saw ...something on the other side of the window. I have no idea how to describe this thing and I haven't heard anyone else mention anything that sounded similar. From the neck down, it looked like a person. I can't remember what it was wearing but I think it was dressed in a dark blazer. The collar was visible so I know it was facing us.
From the neck up, everything started to look very wrong. Its head was heart-shaped, its skin was brown and leathery like the hide of an animal but it was slightly translucent, and beneath the leathery skin I could see thick pulsing black and dark blue veins. There was no face.
I remember looking at this thing for a moment and it was like my brain had fuzzed over being scared and I remember thinking something like "No...no, that's not meant to be there. That's not what a person looks like..." I remember mostly feeling surprised more than scared. I don't think I really thought it was real. I slowly turned my head to look at Celia and she was doing the same, turning her head to look at me. I saw her wide eyes and her mouth hanging open and as I realized we could both see this thing, the fear clicked in and I thought "that's not a person, that's not a fucking person, WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT THING THAT'S NOT A FUCKING PERSON!!!"
I remember being paralyzed with shock and fear. I wanted to bolt but I couldn't move. I suddenly felt really sick. Like the room was blurry and spinny. I don't remember the thing walking away but one moment it was there and the next it was gone. Celia and I both stood up wordlessly and walked solemnly outside. I remember feeling unnaturally cold, wobbly and fragile and a little too thin like you do when you're coming down with the flu. We walked to the front of the house and we each grabbed onto a parent and snuggled into them until they finished their conversation.
Celia and I never talked about it.
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Ah I had a similar experience, though no one believed it because I was only 7 or 8 when it happened. I remember waking up in the middle of night when I felt a long slender zombie like hand touching and brushing my hair. It was just the bones with some skin covering it. I woke up and I was frozen. I could feel the hand, I turned my head without getting up and saw the hand slowly sliding off the bed
Me too! I woke up in the middle of the night once and felt terrified, then a yellow glove-like hand that looked like it was melting reached over my face and a voice said 'Gotcha!' Then I jumped out of bed and ran to wake up my Dad, who came into my room to check it out. He looked out the window and there were three cop cars circling our block, silent but lights flashing. We lived in a quiet suburb where police presence was rare. I'm still mystified by the whole thing 18 years later.
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It was 2008. I was recently married and my wife and I had driven to Vegas from Flagstaff for dinner. After an evening there we were driving back because we had no money for a hotel. I hadn't been drinking, I was of a stable mind. It was late and I was a bit tired but I was young and had some coffee. It after midnight, and lightly snowing. My wife was asleep next to me as I drove, and I was listening to some AM country music. I like drives like that, I just relax and think.
I don't believe in the supernatural. Even when I was a Christian I was never very into the ethereal world, of angels and demons and ghosts. I never felt very "spiritual".
But as I drove along, on this empty road, I though I heard my wife say something. I looked at her, and she was asleep, but I looked through her window and saw something running next to my car.
He was about the height of the truck, maybe a little taller. He ran full speed. He had long dark hair and piercing eyes, and a nose like a muzzle but to a point, like a coyote. He had a beaded shirt, with beads that made a shallow V across his chest. His arms were scrawny and face sunken, and hairy. As he ran, he turned to me and bared his teeth.
I immediately lost all breath from my lungs and was frozen. I gripped the wheel to control the vehicle and turned away from him and looked back. He was losing lateral distance from the vehicle but still keeping pace. I turned back to the road and hit the gas.
I looked over again and he was gone. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw nothing in the road. Nothing ahead. I sat frozen holding the wheel and speeding down the road. I hadn't made a noise, my wife hadn't woken up. I didn't say anything, I didn't stop the rest of the way either.
When I got to Flagstaff I woke my wife and we went to bed but I could not sleep. Even as I write this I have a terrible feeling of dread. I've spent tons of time in the desert, in the forest, camping, hiking. I feel fine at night in a cemetery, I have seen flying objects and assumed a logical reason for them. But I have no explanation for what happened that night. I saw that. It happened. Maybe I fell asleep, maybe it was a dream, but I don't personally believe it. That thing was there.
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One year in elementary school I spent almost every recess "feeding" a "monster" that I thought lived in the woods near the playground. I know lots of children have imaginary friends, but looking back on this feels very weird to me. I don't remember ever seeing the monster, but I was very serious about feeding it rocks. In my memory it could eat any rock in the forest, but it loved the white rocks that were on the playground, and it couldn't come out of the forest to get them itself. I would throw it rocks and "talk to it" during recess. The part that gives me the chills is how I called it "the monster" even though I wasn't afraid of it.
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Driving to work a few years back on a hot summer morning. Clear blue skies / sun already beating down at ~ 7:30am. I'm listening to a local radio station with not a single fuck to give about anything - I was chilled out and happy to be alive.
As I pull out from a junction and join the queue of traffic slowly crawling to the town centre, I spot a very 'odd' looking woman just across the road from me. Now, I don't have the best memory for details but I do very clearly recall that she was about middle-aged, had very unkempt, shoulder-length brown hair (really scraggly) and I could tell by both her facial expression / gait that she wasn't all there mentally; she was hobbling along in an awkward and erratic manner, apparently staring down at the pavement with this weird expression on her face... hard to explain.
Anyway, just as I'm being a judgemental piece of shit and thinking "Wow, fucking hell... I hope she's not lost or something - she looks mental", this woman snaps her head up from glancing at the floor and perfectly meets my gaze. Her eyes lock on to mine and this fucking awful, twisted grin appears across her face... but that's not all.
At the very same moment she locks on to my eyes, the radio goes batshit crazy (think somewhere between distorted signal / static) too.
After a couple of seconds she looks away and carries on about her business. As she averts her gaze, the radio returns to normal... and my blood turns to ice.
I haven't ever seen her since - and no offence to her - but fuck all of whatever that was in its entirety.
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On February 12, 2015, several groups of climbers on Ben Nevis in Scotland were startled to hear a "blood-curdling" scream somewhere in the clouds of the mountain. At least one group of climbers abandoned their climb to investigate the scream, but found nothing but silence. Some of the climbers called in emergency services, and the Lochaber Mountain Rescue Team investigated... but found nothing.  Later that day, the various groups started to compare notes on a climber's forum page, which is when they discovered that they had all heard the scream, though they were at differing parts of the mountain, and that none of them knew who had screamed.
        The overall description of what was heard, when all notes were compared, was a series of sustained horrific screams that lasted about four or five minutes and ended suddenly, followed by the sounds of a woman crying. Some of the climbers stated they had heard cries for a "tight rope" just previous to the screams. Though some people in the climber's forum suggested that maybe it had been a deer's cry being misinterpreted, every climber that had heard the screams stated they had been human, and there was no mistaking that. As one of the climbers, Christopher Sleight, later wrote: "my first thought was simple but terrible: I was listening to someone who had just watched a loved one - not simply a climbing partner, but a loved one - fall to their death. There was so much pain and loss in that dreadful noise."
        Though it wasn't mentioned by the climbers, it seems implied that the screams were perceived as being from a stationary person; which is likely why some of the climbers tried to locate the source. None of the investigators found evidence of an accident. A later check by some of the climbers with local police found that no one was reported missing. While a number of the climbers in the forum were of the opinion it was some sort of stunt by celebrity Bear Grylls, who they had heard was filming in the area, it turned out he had been filming on a different mountain and days earlier... so was not responsible for the screams.
Mysterious or Supernatural?
        Shortly after the BBC News website posted an article by climber Christopher Sleight describing the mysterious screams came a number of web theorists either merely implying or directly stating the idea that the screams were of a supernatural origin. The most common suggestions of what supernatural agents could be involved were either banshees (phantom women that cry before a person dies) or the legendary Big Grey Man, a spirit or creature told of as haunting the peak of Ben Macdui (but never before reported on Ben Nevis).
        The climbers who actually heard the screams, however, all came to a general agreement that the most likely source was a panicked wife or girlfriend, who thought something horrible had happened, and then was too embarrassed afterwards to admit to being the source of the screams.
        For my take on the matter this is listed as a Mystery, as there is nothing here that couldn't be explained in a straightforward way... but the question of who screamed and why will likely remain a mystery until either the screamer comes forward, or evidence of an accident or crime is discovered on Ben Nevis.
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I've also had a dogman encounter, though far more brief and less terrifying than yours. I lived in Southern California at the time, up in the San Gabriel mountains a couple hours east of LA. I know when people think of Cali all they seem to picture are beaches but I assure you the land here is diverse. Very much so.
My home town is super tiny and has a fairly popular ski resort on the western side of town. If you take the (only) highway out past this ski resort for several miles is nothing but forest, forest, and more forest. A few campgrounds and day use areas, a couple forest service buildings, and a very old gold mine is all that is out there. After those few things there is nothing but national forest, and then one insanely isolated very old restaurant that still functions, and then back to forest for a long time.
Anyway, just setting the scene a little. I was about 10-11 when this happened and it was almost Christmas. It snowed quite a bit that year and was snowing on the evening of this happening. My stepdad decided that we would cut down our own tree that year and so we got into my Mom's big flipping dodge truck (seriously that thing was way overkill, Mom) and headed off towards the mine, which was a couple miles past the ski resort.
We got to the base of the road and were talking and laughing etc. Stepdad was driving pretty slow since it was snowing pretty good. They had plowed part of this road recently too, and there were big snow berms on either side of the road, damn near up to the top of the truck cab. So probably a good 8 feet off the ground. So it's just barely getting dark at this time, too. Not quite dark, but twilight I guess. So not dark enough that we can't see anything, but dark enough that the headlights in the truck are on.
Quite suddenly, from over on my side there comes a huge, dark shape that arcs over the top of the snow berm. It lands in the middle of the road fairly..gracefully, almost. My Stepdad slams on the brakes. I'm too stunned to speak or even scream. Because there, crouching in the road is a godamn werewolf. I can't describe it like anything else. It had a long muzzle, and pointy ears like a dog or wolf, but a bit longer/pointier. It was covered in fur and its "paws" were long digits that ended in claws. Not quite a hand, but not quite a paw either. Reminded me more of a raccoon's hand, honestly. I don't remember it having a tail. It was very large and looked strong.
Anyway, this all happened in mere seconds. The thing jumps down and lands in a crouch, briefly glances at us in the truck as my stepdad slammed the brakes, and then it just vaulted up and over the berm on the left side easy as pie. It didn't use all fours to jump. It just crouched on its long hind legs and jumped. If I had to guess I would say it was maybe 6-7 feet tall if it were standing straight up. More than a little terrifying even if it was a simple and extremely quick encounter.
My Stepdad refused to talk about it when I asked, terrified, if he had seen that thing too. I knew he must have though because he hit the brakes so fast, and he was wide eyed and his face had broken out in a sweat. I never did bring it up again because we had not the best relationship and I haven't talked to him since my Mom and he got divorced. I do sometimes think about it though, and am very tempted to contact him and ask but...I just don't know if it would be worth it or if he would even remember. I feel like I can never forget, though.
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When I was 12 I was living for a week at my sister's and her boyfriend's apartment because my parents were out of town. Her boyfriend had a computer with lots of games and I was a nerd so was obsessed with it. One morning I got up really early and started playing games with headphones on so I wouldn't wake anyone still sleeping. I knew her boyfriend started working really early so he wasn't home but I wasn't sure when my sister started (she was working part-time), so I assumed she was still sleeping. After an hour or two of playing games I wanted to turn the speakers on instead. I hadn't seen my sister yet though, so I figured she must have left earlier in the morning as well. To make sure, I silently sneaked into their bedroom to check. Their queen-sized bed was covered with heaps of thick duvet covers and I couldn't tell if someone was lying under them or not (my sister usually slept with her head under the covers for some reason). I sneaked up to the bed, lifted the covers, and scared myself a bit when I saw her face right there, sleeping. I quickly went back to the computer and continued playing games.
What's paranormal about this you ask? Well, an hour or two later the front door opened and in came my sister, coming home from work. I'm still not sure what happened there.
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I worked the graveyard shift at a convenience store for a couple of years and I have strong memories of a couple of odd "people," but this guy really stands out.

Picture a guy built on the proportions of Hagrid from Harry Potter-he had to stoop to get in the door which was about 7 feet high. He was was wearing an old green army jacket with the sleeves rolled up (or maybe they were just too short because he was so big) over a pair of vertical striped railroad overalls, without a shirt. His pant legs ended mid-calf and he had big black workboots on his feet. He had hair/fur, like a dog w/a curly coat, on his shoulders and arms and the peekaboo chest and back areas underneath the overall straps. He was filthy--not like a bum or wino is filthy, he didn't smell of urine or body odor--but he was covered in smears that looked like oil, on his face and hands and bared skin, and he smelled like asphalt, like he was sweating it, the was some people sweat curry. Even though he was truly gigantic to begin with, his head was even massively larger, out of proportion to his body. He had a tangly black beard and a mane of tangly black hair and the overall effect, with the large head, made him look kind of leonine. His face had bumps or welts all over it, like a cartoon character that has been caught by a swarm of bees. Yet the weirdest thing of all wasn't his appearance, but the fact that honey bees were flying in and out of his coat pockets. Truly!

When I saw him walk in I really thought that I was seeing a real life troll or ogre. But even though everything about him was off kilter in some way, I wasn't at all scared--this guy just exuded some quality that said harmless and friendly. I don't remember what color his eyes were but they were cheerful and twinkly, a la the Santa myth. He didn't talk, just picked up a quart of oil and smiled and nodded, then smiled and nodded some more when I told him the price, then pulled out a bunch of bills and change and handed it to me, which I sorted out for him and gave him the rest back. It was weird, but I didn't get the idea he didn't understand, like with some of the non-English speaking customers. He seemed comprehensive, just not fully functional.

I saw him once more, about a month later, with the same getup, bought a quart of oil, bees flying out of his pockets. Then I never saw him again. That's the first time I ever suspected that there might be people on this world who aren't human.


The other "creatures" that I encountered while working at the convenience store overnight didn't make such a big impression on me when I first met them, but gradually I began to suspect that something wasn't quite normal about them.

One night in early summer a guy pulls up in a battered purple Gremlin with one of those Domino's pyramid signs on the roof, puts in a couple bucks of gas and comes in to pay. I usually read when I had no customers, and didn't pay much attention to the people as they were pumping, so I was suprised when what looked like a 12 year old boy came in to pay. I kept looking for his mom or an older friend, but there was no one else, just him.

He had really greasy dirty-dishwater blonde hair, brushed forward in a kind of forelock, like the way Uriah Heep is depicted. He was wearing a Domino's hat on backwards, a Domino's uniform shirt that nearly came to his knees, jeans and tennis shoes. His clothes and his skin were slightly dusty with some sort of gritty powdered chalk. I figured it was pizza flour until I swept up some of his footprints and realized that the substance was more like crumbled plaster.

Even though he was small--I'm 5'5 and he came up to my chin--his shoulders and back were really muscular, so much so that he was hunched over. His skin had a really weird yellow-ochre complexion to it--like jaundice yellow mixed with white clay. His face was liberally sprinkled with acne, and he had a large bulbous nose, like my old German grandpa who really liked his beer. He was just plain ugly, and when he smiled it didn't get any better--he didn't have enough teeth.

He didn't have gaps like he'd lost them, his gum area was not just receded, but shrunken and wouldn't have been able to hold the normal number of teeth. His teeth were shaped weird, too--the closest thing I've seen to it before was a kid at school who hadn't gotten enough of some vitamin while he was in the womb and his teeth were spindly at the ends, almost fanglike, but more whittled down looking. This guy had that effect going on, but with less teeth all over.

His one other oddity was that his arms were so long they almost reached his knees--or maybe it was an effect given off because he had the longest hands and fingers I have ever seen in my life-- kind tree-froggish or like Nosferatu.

This was before I met the bee-guy so I just assumed he was some sort of runty, inbred, extremely ugly 18 or 19 year-old who lifted weights.

A couple nights later he comes in again, buys another $2.00 gas. I make small talk--get those pizzas delivered before they got cold? He obviously has no clue what I'm talking about. I remind him of the other night, and he tells me this is his first night, that he just started as a driver. I look out and see that it's not the purple Gremlin, but a purple Pinto. I couldn't believe it wasn't the same guy.

I would see these guys probably 3 nights a week for over three months, mostly apart but sometimes together. They claimed that they weren't related and hadn't known each other before they started driving for Domino's. I learned their names at one time but promptly forgot them because I couldn't keep them straight.

When they talked all they talked about was money, but in a weird way. Most teens talk about how they are going to spend the money--concerts, cars, clothes. These guys just talked about the money and how they preferred change to cash. They would meticulously tally their tips, each had one of those giant plastic "soda bottle" banks in their car and took great joy in filling it. They gloated over the fact that they only kept just the minimum amount of gas in their cars to do their runs and didn't spend a penny more than they had to.

Everytime I saw them I became more and more certain that there was more to them than could be accounted for by rational explanation. One time they came in when I had some of the usual teenage hangers-on were visiting and I wondered how I could have ever mistaken them for deformed teenagers. Despite their small size and acne and muscles, there was just something creepily wizened and old about them in comparison to the normal teenagers. Another time they came in and bought burritos which they heated up in the microwave and ate on the premises. One of them had the hot plastic 3"x6" package in his hand. He was having trouble opening it, so I turned to get a pair of scissors. I turned back and all that was left was the wrapper on the counter--the burrito was totally gone-he wasn't even still chewing. It was like he had managed to swallow it whole.

I spoke to their manager once when he came in to buy beer. He confirmed that they didn't seem to be related and hadn't seemed to know each other before they started working together. He said that according to their papers, one was 29 and the other was 27. Talk about your stunted growth. He had no idea where they lived, he suspected that they lived in their cars or camped out somewhere. Everyonce in a while he had to ask them to bathe, but otherwise they were good, though extremely odd employees. He had heard a rumor that when they went to cash their checks they asked to be paid in rolls of coins instead of cash.

It wasn't until after I met the guy with the bees flying out of this coat that I begin to wonder if they too might be "others" trying to pass themselves off as human. I started to wonder how much oddness we just rationalize away without examination because we don't believe it can exist. The bee guy and the pizza gnomes might have had a hard time passing as one of us in the 8-5 world, but in the 11-7 world, they could pretty much go unremarked upon, even in such a non-diverse place as Des Moines. In our "consensus reality" most people see what they expect to see and discard or disregard any dissonance. And most of us really don't look too close at what we see in the dark.

I stopped working there at the end of the summer to go back to school. The Domino's Pizza delivery gnomes may still be out there somewhere, so next time you get a pizza ask your delivery person if they'd rather be tipped in change.
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While reading The Secret History by Byzantine historian/muckraker Procopius I ran across the Fortean account of a former palace servant who was shocked to see the Emperor walking around late at night with no face.

Apparently he had the habit of doing this and also was never seen to eat or sleep.
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About three years ago, I was driving to my dad’s house from across state in Pennsylvania. He lived far out in the country, down a desolate paved road that crossed with an old dirt road as well as some unused railroad tracks. The entire area was surrounded by deep woods and unused farming fields. There were a couple of dilapidated old houses, an old well, and a few old cemeteries nearby.

I arrived at those crossroads I mentioned earlier after being on the road for about four hours (it was around 1 or 2 a.m. by this point) and I decided to pull over and relieve myself. I stopped my truck about 60 feet from said crossroad, close to a small farm shed with some old equipment in it. There was a single light bulb on the side of the shed providing the only source of light in the nearly pitch black darkness of the night. On the opposite side of the road from the shed was a steep drop off into a ditch, on the other side of which were some dense woods.

As I was peeing in the dark by the shed, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a massive feeling of dread, like someone had just punched me directly in the gut. I had been around these woods all my life and used to walk around the area at night as a teenager, and I assure you that I had NEVER felt so scared as I did at that exact moment.

I quickly finished up and, goaded on by my sudden sense of panic, ran back to my truck, got in, and locked the doors. I flicked the headlights on and cranked the engine so bad that you could hear the gears grinding, but all I cared about was getting out of there.

As soon I began to turn back onto the road from the shoulder, my headlights shone over the ditch and picked something up on the other side of the road, about a foot from the asphalt. My stomach immediately sank again.

There was something crawling out of the ditch on all fours. It was hunkered down like an animal, but its body looked almost human, albeit a human that was attempting to mimic a stalking animal. It didn’t look hairy, but it was a uniform color. Almost yellow, not dun yellow like a cougar or lion, but a sickly yellow that reminded me of jaundiced skin. Its head was shaped like an oval, but there was no hair or ears that I could see. The mouth was very, very wide, and looked like a thin, straight line that extended all the way across the creature’s face. It was very, very slightly upturned at the edges, like a slight smile. The eyes were very small and beady, just like two black pinpoints. It had no nose or any facial features aside from the mouth and eyes.

Since I was around seven feet from it, I’m certain it wasn’t just a person wearing a mask. Even the body sort of seemed “wrong”, but I can’t pinpoint why. I couldn’t see feet or hands, since there was about a foot of grass at the edge of the road. Whatever it was, I’d say it was about the size of a 12-year-old.

As soon as my lights hit it, I could tell by its movements that it had been in the process of slowly creeping up the ditch to the road, and when my lights hit it, it sort of retracted slightly, like it was surprised that it had been discovered. I didn’t stick around long enough to see what was going to go down next. I floored the gas and flew all the way to my dad’s house and stayed up the entire night
freaked out.

The part of the experience that still utterly scares me to this day is that whatever I saw was definitely, definitely stalking up that ditch to get to me when I had my back turned to it. Otherwise, I can’t  possibly explain what had triggered those emotions when I stood there in the darkness with my guard completely down.
The only thing that came close to that sudden realization of grave danger was when I was nearly struck by a speeding car on a city street many years ago. I don’t know what could have happened if I had lingered around for a few minutes longer, but I’d rather not think about it.
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2007, on a fairly deserted stretch of dusty road near Iskandariyah, Iraq: I wasn't driving, I was the gunner, so I had a much better view than I otherwise would have. It's about 2300, or 11PM, and we had been driving since shortly after dark, and suddenly I see movement off to the side of the road, in the air. It looked like a manta ray, but flying... Brown, with a tail and everything, I watched it flap its wings a few times to gain height and soar over the road, off to the other side, and away. I asked if anyone else saw it, but nobody in the truck could have seen it, it was parallel to us and too high. I asked around later and apparently I wasn't the only one to see something like that, specifically...
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Me and my wife were driving through the mountains of Oregon, a forest to the left, with a drop off to a canyon with more forests off to the right. My wife is driving, it's really late, and snowing lightly. Out of the forest on the left, a huge black shape comes swooping about 10 feet in front of our car. It looked like a little person with huge bat wings, it even had arms and legs that dangled. It flapped it's wings once and was gone down the drop off and out of sight in less than 5 seconds, but scared the hell out of us. My wife slammed on the breaks, while I'm like "What are you doing? Go!" Not sure what it was, and we still talk about it to this day. I don't really tell many people because it makes us sound crazy, but we saw saw something we cannot explain.
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When I was in high school, I had a friend who was part of a youth group. He invited me to go on a "sewer run" with the group, where we would run through a large sewer tunnel maybe a quarter to a third of a mile.(Not too good on distances.) This was at night, so the inside of this thing was pitch black. Before we went in the big tunnel, they of course just had to tell us stories to convince us that it was haunted. Freaked me out at first but the story became a little too extreme at the end and I dismissed it. So on we go into the tunnel, with our flashlights on so we can see where we were stepping. Some people wanted all lights off, so when we all arrived on the other side we agreed lights off. A couple flashes here and there were okay, but we were able to keep the lights off for almost the entire trip. I guess it helped my friend had a laser pointer, so I could follow that and he could use it to get limited information on what was directly ahead. Anyway, the run goes on with little incident, a few stumbles but no full on trips. I was mostly looking at the ground, as that was my way of keeping orientation, and knowing I was still with my friend. As we neared where we first entered, now our exit, I looked up and forward, as now I could see the majority of the group from a few lights. I should say now, this sewer was very dry. There was a small amount of moisture down the middle, but the sides were well and dry. As I looked up, standing right in the middle of the sewer, just at the edge where the light started to fade, I saw something. I can only describe it as a tall, thin, completely black cloaked figure, with its eyes a sort of whitish grey color, and its face a void darker than the rest of its body. I quickly alerted my friend and he lifted his flashlight, because between the two of us, only he had one. It disappeared instantly, and we continued on to the end.

A few days after, I asked him about that night, and if he saw anything there as well. After describing it to him, he told me that he did indeed see it. I sometimes ask him about it and he remembers seeing it. I don't think I will ever forget it. That image is burned into my memory with quite some clarity. I have not seen anything like that since that night and haven't really written out this story, or said anything about it to hardly anyone.

Okay, so I was with a group of friends a couple years back and we were all chilling at the local park. I kinda gotta describe the park real quick though. Had an elementary school on one side of the fence and the park was on the other, park had a few dugouts and walkway with a bathroom at the beginning. So we're talking and stuff in one of the dugouts when we see a figure all black just hovering a few feet above the grass, moving at high speed. It seemed to notice us and scaled the fence in the oddest way I have ever seen. It basically threw its legs over the top first and then just collapsed into itself on the other side. The fence was at least 13 ft tall. Happened all within 10 seconds and scared the shit out of us, we bolted immediately and didn't stop running until we were on the next street over. We still wonder wtf we saw that night.
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So out where I live it's just outside of a town nestled at the bottom of mountains (FYI I live in Australia) and it's not too secluded since I live with my family and you'll generally come across someone's property every 500 metres but there are some stretches where you won't see a house for a km. One night my mum and I are coming home pretty late at night and we we're just talking and listening to the radio. We come around a corner and we both saw this fucking creature that I still don't know what it is till this day. But it had the body the size of a medium dog, mangy looking black fur, an almost abnormally large head, big green eyes (which was the first thing I noticed) but most weirdly an almost impossibly long and thin neck, like it shouldn't be able to support the large head. My mother and I are fucking cussing like sailors at this point and make a u-turn around to get a better look at it, and within 10 seconds there was no trace of it. Normally I'd brush this off as probably a wild dog but the body just didn't look like a dog and it was too big for a cat, even a wild one. The real scary part is that my family and I have seen that maybe two to three times now almost exclusively late at night. However my SO's father has said that he's also seen it twice, once at night and once at daytime and I get the feeling we're not the only people in town to have seen it.
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I was out turkey hunting. We had started hiking at night, and had found our spots at about 4 AM. I was roughly a quarter mile away from my hunting partner (shouting distance).
It was pitch black, and we were trying to keep our lights off. I kept hearing human footsteps, coming from almost random directions. After getting sufficiently uncomfortable, I heard a voice that sounded like it was maybe 10 feet behind me.
"Hey, Lawless Syntax." in my hunting partner's voice. I smelled the smell of coffee and Marlboro Reds.
I replied "Sup?" but got no response. I flicked my lighter but didn't see anyone in the area.
After saying that a couple times, I shouted for my hunting partner, he called back from what sounded like a quarter mile away.
It started raining in the distance and heat lightning would occasionally illuminate the field. I saw a tree that looked like a human figure. After a few moments it wasn't there. More footsteps around me.
After a while when the sun just started to faintly show, I decided to take a break and was getting a bit creeped out, so I walked the quarter mile to my hunting partner's tree stand to ask him what he wanted.
He said that he hadn't left his spot, and didn't walk up to me at any time in the morning.
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I live near the criminally underrated north woods of Maine. The creepiest thing I've seen out there is lights. Lights in the woods at night. On two occasions me and a friend approached them-- they vanished when we got close. It was way off trail, in the middle of nowhere. No one had any business being out there at night.
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I like going for walks at night sometimes because I dislike people and I've been trying to get into shape for a while now. So night time is great!
For that I have a route through some fields which are surrounded by cities and even highways. One major city's skyline is clearly visible from the paths I take on a normal day/night. Sometimes however we get really thick fog because of a mountain range.
One night I was out for a walk and super thick fog hit. It was fun at first. I couldn't even see the end of the light cone from my headlamp and barely saw one foot in front of the other walking my familiar path. Usually you'd hear the sound of the highway close by since it's very busy all day and night. But at some point I noticed I didn't hear it anymore. As a matter of fact, I didn't hear anything but myself. There wasn't even wind. Mind you I was in an open field, no trees to obstruct the wind and there's usually always some.
Knowing the area well I just decided to keep on with my path and soldiered on. After a while I heard a sharp whistling. That in itself isn't too weird. People walk their dogs a lot in those fields and it was far away. However the whistling continued to sound through the night and it seemed to get louder and closer. It was somewhat melodic after a while, more like a song than someone trying to catch the attention of a dog or person.
The really weird part was that it came from the direction of the open and very muddy fields while it got closer and closer. Sure you could walk there but you'd make plenty of noise and probably lose a shoe or two trying to wade through that mess.
I tried ignoring it but it creeped me the hell out. So I kept on walking, slowly getting cold despite walking up hill and faster than usual.
The whistling kept up and out of the corner of my eye I could sometimes make out a silhouette illuminated by my bobbing headlamp.
That's when I started to really freak out. I live in Germany and we have a tale around here of the "Nebelpfeifer" which basically just translates to Fog Whistler(s). There've been some historic accounts of them, with one of the major ones happening during the 30 Year War, where a small village close by Düsseldorf in 1622 was surrounded by heavy fog over night. Whistling was heard all around throughout the night and on the next day more than a dozen people were missing, never to be found again.
It's said that Nebelpfeifer try to lure unsuspecting victims closer. If you can whistle their favorite tune you might survive. If not, they'll devour you. They'll stay right at the edge of how far you can see into the fog and never come any closer. They also only really stalk people who are out and about alone, unless there's dire times like during many of the wars in Europe as mentioned above.
Remembering that freaked me right the hell out and I basically speed walked/ran home.
Only experienced it once and probably got the best workout of my life, too. Wouldn't recommend it though. These days when fog hits I turn on my heel and head back home to work out another day. I'm not great enough of a fool to meddle with stuff like this.
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I am an au pair in Sweden and spent most summer weekends in my family's summer house, which is out in the archipelago outside of Stockholm. Breathtakingly beautiful place but boonies doesn't even begin to cover it. The nearest neighbor is about a 30 minute brisk walk away. And after that there's nothing except ocean or thick, terrifying forest. This particular night was date night for the parents so I was left with the two children alone out in the terrifying murder house. There are two houses on the property, one main house and the other is a guest house, where of course I got to sleep all alone. It's literally two meters from the ocean.
The game plan was to go exploring in the forest--which I had never done alone with the children, only with the parents--and then walk to pick up my boyfriend from the bus stop. He would stay with us until the parents got home from their date and then my boyfriend and I would go sleep in the guest house.
So, while in the forest, I kept getting the jitters. Things were definitely strange and it wasn't just because I was alone with two children, I grew up in the forest. But several times we heard the birds calling out these weird distress call noises and big flocks would appear, a long time before we were even close enough to scare them. And there were big thudding footsteps nearby. I was terrified of there being an asshole moose or something. We came to a little hidden lake, and then things got even weirder; though the place is unpopulated for miles, there was a woman sitting on a rock opposite us, about sixty feet away. She was naked and wet as though she'd been swimming even though the water was MUCH too cold for that. When she saw us, she stood up and did this weird pacing thing, like she would get close to the water and then back away, then move close again. Like she wanted to cross and come toward us but there was the obvious lake barrier in the way. The kids were mildly worried and it wasn't long before I ushered them back the way we'd come and we made our way out of the forest.
On the road to pick up my boyfriend I had the oddest sensation of being watched. I was really terrified actually. But we met him with no incident and returned to the cabin just as the sun was setting. We gave the kids dinner and just as they were curling up with some comic books, the main door slammed open.
I really remember thinking it was a for real person. There were heavy footfalls and then BAM! like someone had stomped and flung open the door. But there was no one there. My boyfriend went out and had a look around--nothing. Must have been the wind. Of course, right? It's always just the wind....
While we were in bed reading we could hear skittering around and clawing from underneath where we were. I knew for a fact that rats and other rodents camped out at the other end of the house, because that's where the kitchen was, but whatever. I had a really awful feeling in the pit of my stomach but my rational boyfriend promised me it was a fox or weasel and not to get worked up.
Fast forward to 3am. I had to pee, my boyfriend and I were in the guest house. My bosses had come home long ago. I am a badass and pee outside no problem, so I stumbled out of the darkness and squatted down outside the guest house to pee.
And it was right after, right when I straightened and adjusted my shirt, that I got that awful feeling of dread. I had it in the forest, I had it on the way to see my boyfriend, I had it while we were camped out inside the house. I had felt just fine in the guest house with my boyfriend, but now the feeling was back.
Behind the guest house is a steep hill, about a 45 degree angle, and on that hill sits what we call the 'ghost house.' It was the house of an old soldier in the 1600's and now it just sits there all terrifying and vacant. There's a trail going from the ghost house to the main summer home, and my boss had lit the trail with dim (useless) solar lamps. You can't see to read by the light of the lamps, but the idea was to light your way up the hill a bit so as not to trip and die over a tree root. I could sense something moving up the trail. That means, something moving FROM the main house TO the ghost house. I squinted in the dark and saw the shape of a person, but that wasn't right because by the solar light you can see some colors--jeans or shirts or jackets, and ours all had reflectors on them--but this was just a black shadow. I thought 'animal' but then ruled that out because it was on two legs, walking REALLY fast and smooth, but then it slowed down and seemed almost to notice me. I was actually terrified (good thing I had just peed?) but my intuition told me to commence stare-down, so I did. I was fighting to see in the dark and just when I couldn't focus, I realized there were two very softly illuminated eyes on its face. And they were on me. It slowed down to a stroll and I could see the eyes change tint from a blueish to a yellowish glow based on where they were in relation to the solar lamps. They were catching light.
So I stared. It was going so slow now this felt surreal, and I could hear twigs snapping and other noises that a real life non imagined creature makes. I remember actually thinking "this isn't a hallucination, it's fucking WALKING on the ground..." And then the weirdest part....instead of moving at a normal, relative height the way human eyes (or animal eyes) would do...the eyes started kind of hovering. They were six feet off the ground, suddenly would dip down to four feet, then back up to five. And they never left me. But the direction this thing was moving in never changed, it kept going up the hill.
The eyes and the figure faded out into the darkness once the solar lamps ended, and I went back into the guest house and locked the door. I heard nothing else that night. My boyfriend slept through everything, but early in the morning he woke up whimpering from a nightmare. And that's the only time anything has ever happened at that summer house and I was there collectively a month.
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Few people asked me for more creepy stories from Africa. I have 2 or 3.
This one takes place in the early 1960s. It happened to my father and his elder sister. He was around 4-5 years old and she, 12-13 years. This is my aunt who shared the story there are more than 20 years between them now. This is 100% true.
Again, please bear with me, English is not my native language. I am still learning.
At that time, my father was living with his family (his father, his mother and his sister) in his native village in Africa (Ivory Coast, West Africa) It is a small village of around 1500-2000 people.
When they were not attend school, my father and my aunt accompanied their parents to their fields. So to explain a bit, in our country, it's not like in Europe or the USA where the fields are nearby farms. There, the fields are located far from villages, sometimes at 5-10 km in the dense forest. So every morning except Sunday, villagers are walking 2-3 hours through the rainforest to reach their fields, work, and around 4:00 pm, they make the way back, again through the forest to return to the village before dark night, carrying either food or firewood for cooking or sometimes both. There is no road, just narrow trails in the forest. It can be scary, but usually, it is pretty safe if you stay on the trails. Sometimes you can meet snakes, foxes, monkeys, large birds, that kind of animals. Before, there were elephants and big cats species but no more now because of deforestation and poaching.
Well, that day my father and his elder sister accompanied their father, my grandfather in the fields. Everything went normally as usual. On their way back, since grandpa had a lot of loads , he walked more slowly, so my aunt and my father who had just little stuffs to carry walked faster and have pulled ahead on him. My aunt walked in front of my father and they did not speak, they were so eager to get home. The trip was well off without a hitch. Suddenly, at one point my aunt had a strange feeling of emptiness behind her, she turned to see that her little brother was not behind her.
Surprised, she started shouting the name of my father... unanswered.
She started to panic. Since he was behind her, whatever the place where he could be, it should be only behind her. So she threw her charge and began to run by redoing the way, while shouting the name of her little brother. For several minutes, she saw nothing. Then, at one point, she spotted several meters in front of her on the trail, which she described as a tiny creature (around 1.10m-1.20m) and this little creature walked carrying a little boy on its back !! she said that the creature seemed to have its feet positioned upside. She stared shocked.
Then ,she shouted loudly to the creature: Hey you! to ensure that was what she thought. the creature turned back to my aunt. It was not human and that was definitely my father on its back. When the creature saw my aunt, it started running, still with my father on its back. My aunt started running too to pursue it. The creature left the trail to outright get into the dense forest. it was not counting the determination of my aunt who entered in the forest. She pursued them through the forest for several minutes.
Since, she was more agile and faster than the creature (which was slowed with a charge on its back), she finally caught it up. She lunged at him, screaming: Give me back my brother! Give me back my brother! ,grabbing her brother and pulling him back. The creature also grabbed onto my father. Then, seeing that my aunt was clinging, he let go my father who fell to the ground, and just vanished before her eyes.
My father was groggy and looked like in a state of daze. My aunt took him by the hand and they went out of the forest to go home. Once at home, when he regained consciousness, grandpa and grandma (my aunt had told them what had happened) asked him how he ended up on the back of this creature. He said he saw no creature. He said he walked behind his sister when the creature appeared to him as the doppelganger of his father. It came from behind and asked him if he was tired and asked him to climb on its back to go home. So he agreed because he thought it was his father. During all this time, and even when his sister was pursuing the creature, he saw himself on the back of his father (my grandpa was 1.75 m in height and the creature 1.10-1.20m !!) until he fell to the ground.
The incident did not occur again. They never knew what had attempted to kidnap my father. But I know until today , sometimes, there are cases of disappearances through the forest especially children. When I was little girl and I sometimes went to the fields, we were asked to always stay in the group on the trail and not to respond if we heard someone call us in the forest. My grandparents thought maybe it was a creature named "angbé". This creature is quite common, enough to give it a name. We do not know much about these creatures apart from they are small, dark colored, with weird feet, non human. These are responsible of missing children, babies, or more rarely adults. They have the ability to become invisible or change appearance. They draw people through the forest by mimicking the appearance of a known person, either voice or imitating the cries of a baby. I have never seen for my part since I was going to the village only during the holidays but several of my cousins or other relatives who live in the village have already seen. Once they are spotted, they disappear.
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I have just been reading this thread with interest as about two years ago I posted a story - though not fiction obviously, on here about an experience my husband had had at work which seems to tie in with these other stick men experiences!

He was a shunter on the railway and had just gone to the cabin at about 4.00am for a break when he heard dragging loud footsteps following him.

Now this cabin and rail yard is in the middle of nowhere - fields all around not a soul to be seen and it is spooky enough in the daylight but my hubby is not one to scare easily and so he thought nothing of it imagining it was just a fox or escaped pig (?) or something.

Inside the cabin though he was suddenly overcome with this awful sense of foreboding and fear as he had lay down for a quick ten minutes nap between trains and suddenly he heard the footsteps right outside the door.

It was a full moon and so the window was illuminated and as he crouched on the bed in terror he distinctly saw a weird shape passing the window. He described it as like somebody being bent over walking with their arm bent holding onto the window ledge. Nothing wrong with that, except that the 'body' was stick like and brown and the arm was 'like a twiglet', to paraphrase him - like a knobbly brown branch bent at the elbow!

The door handled turned and hubs nearly fainted with fear but then suddenly the breathing stopped and he just felt it was safe again - he ran to the door - bearing in mind that the vista is so that you can see anybody walking away for quite some distance. It had been a matter of seconds since the breathing and door rattling had stopped but there was nobody to be seen all around - whatever it was had just vanished into thin air!!

To add a foot note to this story he later that week had to ride on one of the trains with a driver for a mile or so up the line and this particular driver used to always lock the doors to the cab - none of the others did as it is in the middle of know where as stated.

Hubby asked him why he always locked the doors and received a strange long look from the driver who asked Hubs why he asked. He being macho laughed it off and said no reason and the driver just answered that strange things happened at night around them parts - I wonder what he had experienced?

Hubby still gets a shiver when he thinks of that night and cannot explain it at all!!
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I was living in Monahans, Texas and my family and I were just returning from an evening church service. We were renting a small home on a corner lot with a detached garage.

We were just returning and I was carrying my son who was not yet a year old and as I approached the back door I could see through the bathroom window into the master bedroom. There was a lamp turned on inside on the bureau and as I looked in I saw a black silhouette turn around the corner and run into the bedroom.

Three things struck me at the same time. First was that we had an intruder, second was the fact that the intruder had absolutely no features. He was a black silhouette—like a shadow, except for the fact that when he ran in front of the lamp the light did not pass through him so he had substance, but no dimension—flat and totally black. Third, I instinctively new the intruder was masculine.

I immediately handed my son to my wife and went into the house searching for an intruder and found no one inside. There was no exit from the bedroom other than the window and my wife and other children remained outside while I went in and no one left the house.
When I related this story to a lady friend several years later she exclaimed rather excitedly “the gingerbread man!” It seems she and her sister had seen a very similar being a children.
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In the late 60s we lived in Station Street, Crewe, which we left when the whole area was to be slum-cleared. The houses were old fashioned, very basic terraced ones opening directly onto the street, and as everyone knew everyone else it was safe to 'play out' quite late at night. One evening, Mark (aged about 9) was walking along the wide pavement when he saw some characters coming toward him. There were 3 I think, and they were somewhat taller than people.

They were dressed as men in suits, but had very large DOGS' HEADS!! These heads swayed widely from side to side as the creatures walked. Mark was absolutely terrified as they approached, but they seemed not to notice him and he passed them safely. He ran all the way home and only told me about the 'Big Dogs' as he called them some time later. I laughed my head off, thinking he was trying to scare me. When it became obvious that he was really scared, I tried to figure out what he'd seen. My 10-year old brain could only come up with ghosts or aliens, neither of which seemed to fit the bill.
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Once when I was five years old I saw a giant rat about the size of a 12 year old child. It stood on its hind legs and was dressed in a little red riding hood cape and carried a basket. It was sniffing the air.
I was in the backseat of the family car which was stopped at the light. I remarked to my mother, "Look at the giant rat!" She turned around and told me "hush, that's a little girl!" I remember being absolutely perplexed because I could see with my own two eyes that it was a giant brown rat.
My mother remembers this episode and swears that it was a little girl and not a rat. But it WAS a rat. The rat/girl was standing at a bus stop. My mother didn't recognize her but said the child was very homely and she was embarrassed that I might have been overheard calling her a rat.
But I swear it was a big brown furred rat wearing only a red riding hood-like cowled cape and it held a small wicker basket in front of it with both of its dainty paws. It had a long tail and whiskers and had its head slightly lifted, sniffing the air. I was utterly amazed at the sight.
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Reading the story on the dog headed men reminds me of a similar thing that happened to me as a child ( aged about 10 ) it happened as follows. i used to live in a place called Ashton ( east Manchester ) and behind my house there were two large factories and whilst playing down there one summer morning my friend ( same age ) told me to look at two figures walking towards us silhouetted by the sun. We thought it was our parents coming to tell us off for playing where we shouldn't but when they got close one of the figures appeared to have a dog's head, and we both froze still. It was obvious it was a real dog's head by its movements, details, etc. The other figure was human. We both ran home and told our parents, but they did not believe us even though they saw we were obviously very spooked, so they called the police and a few hours later they caught up with a man who we identified as the man who had been walking with the dog-headed man. He told the police exactly what we saw was true and he claimed to have met the dogman on the banks of the canal and was following him to see if he was real, but he claims he lost him. Both the police and my parents did not believe this story, and to this day nobody else has believed me either, so to hear of a similar story is just amazing to me. Has anyone else had a similar experience?
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Have just discovered this thread; but, this post recalls memories of something read long ago in – it would seem -- the same book, by the same author, now re-titled: former title (when I knew it) The Middle Kingdom -- The Faerie World of Ireland. Contained much about same; including a small section on highly-evil Irish supernatural stuff – one item in which was, the above piece on the Stable Demon. Another piece in this section, which hugely creeped me out (can only go on memory here – verbatim reference not available) was titled The "thing" in the doctor's garden. Reminiscence from a witness who was a young girl about 100 years ago as from now, residing on Spike Island in Cork Harbour. A near neighbour there, was a doctor whose house had an extensive garden. The witness happened one day randomly to be on the opposite side of the wall separating from said garden; saw in there, over the wall, a hideous giant semi-humanoid-looking apparition, coloured yellow. She felt a strong intimation that this thing was profoundly evil; and perceived that it seemed to be slowly turning its head in her direction. A wordless message came mentally to her – to the effect that if it actually looked at her, she would die. She fled in terror – found refuge in the house of another neighbour, who comforted her, telling her “you aren’t the first one to see that thing; and you won’t be the last”.
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One night two years ago, when I was a freshman, my friend Wendy called me around two am, saying there was 'something' outside her house, and wouldn't I please please please come over? It was pretty cryptic, but I was used to Wendy being weird, especially when she'd get scared in the night, because she lived with just her dad, who worked nights, leaving her on her own. I popped some clothes into a bag and hopped out my window. It was somewhere in mid-June, early enough to be relatively cool but still summery. The moon was so bright that the silver-white glow reminded me of stadium lights. I started out for Wendy's house, about a half a mile away.

Wendy's house was easy to pick out; it was the only one with all it's lights turned on. As I started up her driveway, a creepy, I'm-being-watched feeling raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I hurried up the porch steps and raised my hand to knock.

Before I could, Wendy yanked the door open and pulled me inside. She was muttering that I should 'hurry, before they come again', and pulling me, of all places, towards the bathroom at the same time.

"What the hell are you doing, Wendy? Have you gone insane?" I demanded, perhaps a little louder then normal: I was starting to feel uneasy.

"Shhh, shut up!" She hissed back. "They'll hear you!" She shut and locked the bathroom door. It was about this time that I crossed my arms and refused to speak until I got an explanation.

It turns out Wendy had chosen to take me to the bathroom because it was the only room in the house without a window. She began to describe the events prior to my arrival. She had woken up around three to a strange noise, like huge spitballs being thrown at her window, or so she said. At first she was afraid to look, but eventually she snatched back the curtains and peeked out. Several huge, wet-looking balls were sitting in the grass outside her window, looking solid, like jelly, but clear and translucent like light. She described them as 'jell-o-y'. She said that they appeared to be surrounding her house, rolling around on her lawn like big beach balls. I must have looked at her like she was crazy, so she dragged me out of the bathroom to her bedroom and pointed to the lawn. It looked like some enormous spider had woven a web on her lawn. Shiny tracks of some wet-looking substance patterned the grass like giant snail trails. Her window looked like someone had sneezed the mother of all sneezes on it.

After seeing those, I immediately decided the bathroom was the place to be. We sat in there and sang songs to pass the time. Eventually, around three, claustrophobia and boredom helped us overcome our fear. We slipped out of the bathroom to the dining room, where we could peer out her huge picture window. A clear, jelly-like blob sat in the grass immediately outside it.

It's very hard to explain. I only saw it a second before we both turned and fled back to the safety of her bathroom. It was about two feet in diameter, I'd say, glowing limey white like a glow in the dark bit of slime. It was shiny, too, like it was wet, and vibrating a little. It didn't do anything; just sat there, but there was no way I would have gone outside to investigate. It gave me the same feeling one gets when looking at a tiger in a cage at the zoo: no one is afraid to look from the outside, but not many people would care to go inside the cage to get to know each other better.

At any rate, Wendy and I sat in the bathroom until her father came home. He escorted me back to my house, and a few months after that, Wendy moved to Dublin. We don't speak much anymore.
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I'm new to these forums and your title 'Little People' caught my attention. I was really more interested in ghosts, but I have a kinda bad story to tell about little people. I saw some once. I'll describe one: About two and a half feet tall. Quite muscular. Had long hair. Was male-looking in the face but who knows? Was kinda wide/not fat/just wide. Was kinda curved in the back. Was not a midget/not human/more elf-looking. Had big hands with not enough fingers like the cartoon hands (don't laugh). Seemed to hop around and jump higher than normal/a lot higher. Had funny colored clothes/maybe not even clothes just a garment of some kind. Looked unhappy and maybe even mean.
I personally was scared because I was helping this guy in the woods in Canada where I spent that summer rounding several of these creatures up and binding their hands behind their back with rope and put them in the back of a van. Against their will.
This guy hired me to help him do this, and I'm not proud of what he did. He like pulled them out of this one certain place in the woods and we put them in his van and I think he shot them. No kidding. I know it's gross. Sorry. He took them out and around a shed where he wouldn't let me see and shot them.
I should have reported this. Now it's years ago. I didn't think they were quite human like us. So I guess I helped him kill them. He gave me the impression that he did this every year when they came out of this like hollow in the woods. They also had some sort of pets, like iguanas (no joke). They ran away when this guy took the little people away.
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Doctor Marco Gessatti thought he was in store for a routine flight as he headed from Rome to Boston one night. As he sat in his seat he suddenly became overwhelmed by a sudden sensation of panic followed quickly by a strange nauseous feeling he had never experienced before, even more, peculiar the eight or so other passengers in the cabin also appeared to be feeling discomfort.

Gessatti believed he was suffering from a panic attack. Then, suddenly, there came a loud thud as though something had collided with the plane, as Gessatti and the other passengers turned to see what it was, they were amazed by what they saw. Clinging to one of the cabin windows was what looked like a gigantic, green beetle. The gigantic insect stared in with its huge segmented eyes, and Gessatti claimed it was so large he could see the hairs on its legs as well as some sort of adhesive pad on its foot that helped it hold onto the plane. Then, just as quickly as it appeared, a massive pair of veiny wings unfolded from the creatures hard, green shell, and it took off back into the blackness of the night sky.

Gesatti and all those on board were stunned. This sighting is one of the most incredible ever recorded, if not for the sheer number of problems it poses, for example, even if a beetle could attain such a size, how could it attach itself to a plane moving 500 mph 30,000 feet up in the atmosphere? And why did all the passengers suddenly feel ill just before the insect appeared?

While the sighting is certainly odd the fact that a doctor is the one who reported it makes it all the stranger since stories about giant bugs attacking aeroplanes would hardly do much for his professional reputation, the exact date when Gessatti saw the beetle is not known.
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There was a letter written to the magazine Animals and Men a few years back about a weird creature that chased a car.
It took place in 1997 in the Grayfield-Greencastle district four miles from Kilkeen in County Down, to Louise Donnan and her niece Clare. As they drove along a certain section of road the saw what appeared to be a big sheep up ahead. As they drew closer they saw its coat was not wool but composed of what looked like rags. Both women felt a wave of revulsion as it turned its head to look at them. It ran over to the car and they saw that its round head was level with Clair’s window. The only feature they could see through the tatty coat was one of its eyes.

“We were both almost frozen with fear as the eye looking straight at us was reddish in colour, and gave a terrible, wild, penetrating stare. When I looked at its eye I could almost see its mind working powerfully behind it, a mind not of an ordinary animal but of one with another sense and evil I have never encountered before (or since). I felt sick with fear but thankfully Clair was able to compose herself enough to accelerate the car and we took off at an impressive speed. Our relief was short lived as suddenly we felt a ‘thud’ at the side of the car. To or horror this mad ‘animal’ we thought we had gotten away from was running alongside the car and deliberately banging into us.”

After chasing the car the thing abruptly stopped and the two women felt as if it had got to ‘the edge of its territory’. Neither drove anywhere near the area again.
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On a spring night in 1966, John Farrell and Margaret Johnson were driving along a lonely country road not far from Drogheda, County Louth, in the Republic of Ireland. They were driving past Lord Dillon's estate when a huge animal loomed up in the road ahead. John Farrell braked hard, and he and Miss Johnson were thrown back in their seats. When the girl looked out of the window she saw:

"...a huge horse with a man's face and horrible bulging eyes. I could see by John's face that he saw it too. I think I screamed, but both of us were so frightened that we were paralysed. The thing had a horse's body. But it was the face, leering and hairy and huge which shocked.
The animal stretched right across the road and completely blocked the car. It stayed there for nearly two minutes. We were petrified. Then it vanished. John quickly swung the car around and drove it to my home, about a mile away.
We were so frightened that we drove through the gate and knocked it off the hinges. I woke up my father and both of us told him the same story. We don't drink and two of us couldn't have imagined the same thing."

Margaret's father later commented to the press:

"They must have seen something awful. Both were still terrified when they came in here and each of their descriptions of the ghost tallied, Margaret was very sick for days after the incident."
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I work a late shift for the local newspaper -- I get home around 1.30, 2 am and am generally up until 4 or 5 (or later), so I'm well acquainted with the normal sort of nighttime critters one gets outside an apartment. Monstrously large slugs, water bugs, spiders, the occasional freakish cricket, raccoons, moths, and other flying-type things -- all things I recognize and can identify.

So. I'm up late doing laundry one night and head out to shift my last load over to the dryer, when I see something quite peculiar hanging off the outside wall of the apartment. It was a sort of darkish, shiny, wriggling mass of .... something. Too many eyes and teeth, and all moving and writhing. It looks as if there were bits dripping off into the grass as well, which was fairly alarming, as I was only about 2 ft. from the thing. Looking back on it -- and referencing ideas/photos from elsewhere -- it was a bit like one of those weird lumps of hair/teeth/the odd stray eyeball that doctors occasionally remove from someone. ... Except that this thing was alive on the wall on its own and quite sickening if I do say so.

So. Needless to say, the laundry waited til the next day. Come morning, there was no trace of it or anything about, though I did see a quite large snake filling the ditch between the sidewalk and the grass. But surely snake's eggs wouldn't attach to a wall, and surely I would have noticed something like that, as I pass the wall every day.
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"L.C. and a business associate, Charlie, (fictitious name) had just finished lunch in the small southwest Louisiana town of Abbeville. Still discussing their work, they began their drive north along Highway 167 towards the Oil Center city of Lafayette about 15 miles away. The date was October 20, 1969, and the time was about 1:30 in the afternoon. It was one of those picture-perfect days in fall--clear blue skies and a nippy 60 degrees, just right conditions for cruising along with the car windows rolled down.

The highway had been practically traffic-free until they spotted some distance ahead what appeared to be an old turtle-back-type auto traveling very slowly. As they closed the distance between their vehicle and this relic from the past, their discussion turned from their insurance work to the old car ahead of them. While the style of the auto indicated it to be decades old, it appeared to be in show room condition, which evoked words of admiration from both L.C. and Charlie. Because the car was traveling so slowly, the two men decided to pass it, but before doing so, slowed to better appreciate the beauty and mint condition of the vehicle. As they did so, L.C. noticed a very large bright orange license plate with the year "1940" clearly printed on it. This was most unusual and probably illegal unless provisions had been made for the antique car to be used in ceremonial parades.

As they passed the car slowly to its left, L.C., who was in the passenger's seat, noticed the driver of the car was a young woman dressed in what appeared to be 1940s vintage clothing. This was 1969 and a young woman wearing a hat complete with a long colored feather and a fur coat was, to say the least, a bit unusual. A small child stood on the seat next to her, possibly a little girl. The gender of the child was hard to determine as it too wore a heavy coat and cap. The windows of her car were rolled up, a fact which puzzled L.C. because, though the temperature was nippy, it was quite pleasant and a light sweater was sufficient to keep you comfortable. As they pulled up next to the car, their study turned to alarm as their attention was riveted to the animated expressions of fear and panic on the woman's face. Driving alongside of her at a near crawl (no traffic in either direction allowed this maneuvering) they could see her frantically looking back and forth as if lost or in need of help. She appeared on the verge of tears.

Being on the passenger's side, L.C. called out to her and asked if she needed help. To this she nodded "yes," all the while looking down (old cars sat a little higher than the low profiles of today's cars) with a very puzzled look at their vehicle. L.C. motioned to her to pull over and park on the side of the road. He had to repeat the request several times with hand signs and mouthing the words because her window was rolled up and it seemed she had difficulty hearing them. They saw her begin to pull over so they continued to pass her so as to safely pull over also in front of her. As they came to a halt on the shoulder of the road, L.C. and Charlie turned to look at the old car behind them. However, to their astonishment, there was no sign of the car. Remember, this was on an open highway with no side roads nearby, no place to hide a car. It and its occupants had simply vanished.

L.C. and Charlie looked back at the empty highway. As they sat in the car, spellbound and bewildered, it was obvious to them that a search would prove futile. Meanwhile, the driver of a vehicle that had been behind the old car pulled over behind them. He ran to L.C. and Charlie and frantically demanded an explanation as to what had become of the car ahead of him. His account was as follows.

He was driving north on Highway 167 when he saw, some distance away, a new car passing up a very old car at a slow pace, so slow that they appeared to be nearly stopped. He saw the new car pull onto the shoulder and the old car started to do the same. Momentarily, it obstructed the new car and then suddenly disappeared. All that remained ahead of him was the new car on the shoulder of the highway. Desperate to associate logic to this incredible sight, he immediately assumed an accident had occurred. Indeed, an accident had not occurred, but something more haunting, perhaps as tragic, and certainly more mysterious had.

After discussing what each had seen from his perspective, the three men walked the area for an hour. The third man, who was from out of state, insisted on reporting the incident to the police. He felt that it was a "missing person" situation and that they had been witnesses. L.C. and Charlie refused to do so as they had no idea where the woman and child along with the car had gone. They were missing all right, but no police on this plane of existence had the power to find them. The third man finally decided that without their cooperation he could not report this on his own for fear his sanity would be questioned. He did exchange addresses and phone numbers with L.C. and Charlie. For years he kept in touch with them, calling just to talk about this incident and to confirm again that he had seen what he had seen."
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When she was a pre-kindergarden age, she has a vivid memory of waking in the night to see a full grown human skeleton sitting on her dresser, apparently waving its legs like you might do when you sit on the edge of a dock or something. Afraid, she pulled the covers over her face. She then remembers hearing a clinking sound (probably the thing jumping down onto the floor), and then it was on her bed. It pulled the sheets away from her face. She then got up and ran downstairs to where her older brother (aged 12 at the time) was doing homework. Apparently the thing clambered down the stairs which took it a long time and came right up to the edge of the table where she just sat down with her brother. The thing stood across the table and stared at her. It began to climb down under the table towards her and when she looked down it was no longer there.

Sidenotes: Her brother has no memory whatsoever of seeing any sort of 'skeleton' but does remember her acting like something was there, and being absolutely hysterical. She was very very shaken up at the time. This girl is a A/B student and very involved at school. She's extremely intelligent and sharp and has no reason to lie to me especially considering we've been friends for more than six years now.
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Just told this story to a coworker:
Was around 7 years old and it was near the holidays. The house I grew up in has a downstairs and a basement. So I left my pillow downstairs after a day long movie binge and went to grab it later that evening.
Grab the pillow and look up, see a man on the other side of the room dressed to the nines just looking around paying no attention to me. Weird thing was he was entirely grey. Head-to-toe, skin color and everything, grey.
I'm staring, jaw wide open, completely petrified with fright. He looks up at me, notices I'm able to see him, and drops his jaw lower than humanly normal almost as if he was screaming at me, but without sound. He then ran through the wall and disappeared .
I wasn't able to go downstairs if the lights were off until I was a teenager.
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This particular battle is the origin of yet another, even more bizarre report of a monstrous abomination that is really hard to classify. In the area of Georgia’s Chickamauga Creek, also at the site of the epic, bloody Battle of Chickamauga, a strange creature was said to lurk about the battlefield in the aftermath of the ferocious fighting, prowling and flitting amongst the fallen corpses and feeding on the dead, particularly in an area known as Snodgrass Hill. The thing was described as being vaguely humanoid, with glowing green eyes, waist length yellow hair, and disproportionately large jaws filled with formidable looking sharp teeth, and would come to be nicknamed “Green Eyes.” Interestingly, the beast would be sighted from time to time even long after Civil War hostilities ended. In 1981, a park ranger by the name of Edward Tinney gave an account to the author Richard Winer, which described a rather harrowing encounter with the creature. Tinney claims that as he was walking through the park one evening in 1976 at about 4 AM he was overcome by an inexplicable chill and heavy sense of dread, soon after which he witnessed a bizarre monster stalking through the woods. Tinney would describe the encounter thus:

When it passed me, I could see his hair was long like a woman’s. The eyes -I’ll never forget those eyes- they were glaring, almost greenish-orange in color, flashing like some sort of wild animal. The teeth were long and pointed like fangs. It was wearing a dark cape that seemed to be flapping in the wind, but there was no wind. I didn’t know whether to run or scream or what. Then the headlights of an approaching car came blazing through the fog, and the thing disappeared right in front of me.

Was this the same entity seen by troops feasting on the corpses of the dead on desolate battlefields during the Civil War? It is really hard to categorize what this strange phantom could have been. Was it some kind of a vampire, werewolf, alien, or something else entirely? Did it ever even really exist at all? Whatever the case, it ranks among the most bizarre stories of mystery monsters from the Civil War. Unfortunately, as in many cases of strange creatures seen during wartime, these accounts have become obscure and forgotten over time, lost to the tides of history.
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Hi Everyone,

New to this as far as posting but have been watching the site for a long time. Never seen anything like what I saw so I am looking for a little help in figuring out what I did see.

This goes back to 1975, NW suburbs of Chicago, along the Des Plaines River corridor.
Was spending the night at a friend's house and his house, with a double lot, backed up against the forest preserve that borders the Des Plaines River.
We were watching TV in their family room, which was at ground floor level and had a large sliding glass door that exited to the back yard. It was fairly late in the evening (11-ish) and the time of year was early October. Weather was clear and temperature was typical for the season.
While we watched the show a shadow suddenly appeared before the sliding glass door. As curtains were drawn we could not make out what it was, but it seemed very big as the shadow ran from top to bottom of the door.
My friend and I at first believed it was his older brother and/or friends who were deliberately trying to scare us. (we were both 14/15 at the time).
As a result, we thought we could turn the tables and scare them by pulling back the curtains suddenly and dashing out through the sliding door.
Bad idea.
When we pulled back the curtains we both froze and while it seemed like forever I am pretty sure we let go the curtains immediately after we saw what stood there.
I am not a trained observer and this happened 30+ years ago but this is what I recall.
A creature stood there, its head was above the level of the sliding glass door top so I am guessing around 7 to 7.5' tall.
It had a slender body, reddish-brown in color with hair starting at the waist and going down to its feet - which were huge, though I didn't notice this right away. From the waist up it was smooth skinned with no visible hair. The arms seemed overly long and the hands (? didn't see any real details) seemed very large.
The really weird part was the head. For all intents and purposes it seemed to be a horse's head, but with a larger mouth. Its eyes were reddish-orange in color and it was staring right down at us.
We were frozen for a moment (presumably) because I don't recall letting go the curtains until it lowered its head towards us and opened its mouth, making an animal noise (like a growl or similar - it wasn't that clear through the glass) and opening its mouth.
When it did this I recall two things one being that the teeth were "like ours" - nothing weird per se, and the mouth was really, really large.

Once we dropped the curtain it banged into the glass of the door once but then the front door of the house opened with my friend's mother and farther returning home from an engagement that evening.
My friend's father could easily see that we were white with fright and, after grabbing a baseball bat, went with us to the sliding door.
No more shadow (of course!) but when he switched on a set of floodlights they used for their pool we could see it standing at the back of the yard heading into the forest preserve.
So at least my buddy's dad saw it, but that was it.
We followed the path the thing took when it walked towards the forest preserve but we did not follow. All of us had been scared.
What we did find in the back yard were a few incomplete footprints and one fairly intact footprint.
The intact one measured 25 inches in length and had only 2 toes. Somewhere both I and my friend have a couple of pictures of the prints but I would have to find them and scan them to post.
If it's worthwhile then I will.

In the shorter term, if anyone has any clue about what we saw I am very interested. One of my friends in Germany said that it sounded similar to a Kornbock and while there do seem to be some similarities I don't think that's really what we saw.

Thanks in advance for your kind assistance!

Answers to queries:

It was bipedal, the illumination was the background light - it is a large suburban area. It was always upright when we saw it. There were 2 floodlights, one on either side of the door pointing out into the yard - this provided the most illumination but at that point the creature was at the back of the yard and roughly 150-200 feet away.

Someone commented on a false memory. As indicated in the message 3 people saw it - there has never been any denial by the folks who saw it and while my friend's father is now very old even he still recalls the situation.

If it were a moose that would truly be unique – they don't live in Illinois, and this was bipedal. And a moose would have been significantly larger – from hunting I am familiar with them, elk, etc. and it wasn't this. A bear (we do have black bears) is way too small for what we saw and the wrong color.

The comments actually drove me back to visit the site, which still exists with the same family living there. While my buddy now lives with his family out of state his father was there and we talked about it again.

My only interest is whether or not someone has seen/heard of something like this before.
My best guess has always been that this was some type of hoax/prank and it may well be, but the facts at the time as recalled by those who were there do not support this.

Happy to answer any questions - sorry for the late response. I have talked with my friend's father about it this past weekend. His recollection aligns with mine, though he added that there was also a distinctive smell in the back yard. He recalled it as smelling like a wet dog.

He also commented that he felt the creature came back several times over the ensuing few days - which I had never heard before.

This gentleman is Greek, immigrated to the States and in talking to him he seemed more bothered by the events than I.

I am trying to reach his son - I will come back when I have something from his recollections.

To answer the questions that stick out in my mind (very impressed and grateful for the responses);

- I have finally spoken with my friend Pete, who was with me through the whole incident. While he agreed with the details of the story in general he added a few more observations;

1. The creature left both marks (he thinks hand prints or similar) and drool on the sliding glass door. I don't recall this at all.
2. He said that his hand print was 3X smaller than the one on the window and that the print on the window had only 3 digits. Once again, I don't recall this at all.
3. He also has a picture of the print and yes, he said he will email me a copy and I will post a scanned copy.
4. Centerville is downstate from my location and for those of you in the UK or elsewhere it's certainly closer than London or Paris, but it's still about 150 miles away.

In talking with my friend we both agreed that it seemed very unlikely that this was a hoax or a nicely done costume. With today's technology and knowledge that may be different, but we didn't see how it could be done so seamlessly at the time, the height, the way it stood and especially the mouth - as it was so much larger than a human mouth and looked so damned real.
Plus we were in high school - if it were a prank someone would be gloating at our (assuredly) comical expressions of sheer terror at some point.

I would be extremely satisfied if it was something I could put in a nice niche and say, "well, so that's what it was". I am sure this will never happen unless it were a hoax and the person responsible admits it.

But thanks to the suggestions - they are indeed similar though of course I am no expert on cryptozoology.

To be honest, I really wish it had never happened because I've not been able to get it out of my head for 30+ years. I think I would have preferred Bigfoot or a UFO - strange, but something people understand better. One further clarification.

My original post said the one intact foot print was 25" long. Now that I have the one photo it actually shows a ruler next to the print and it's only 17" in length.

Not sure on the "why" for the disconnect but it is noted.

Being that this is the first time I had spoken about it in donkey's years it must be my memory.

But this is why it's been good (if somewhat awkward) talking about it with the others involved seeing as all of us have had something to add to complete the picture.
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When I was young must have been between 5 and 7 yrs old anyhow I remember the house across the way from us was uninhabited and in a bit of a dilapidated state (this was on a housing estate so was since fixed etc etc.).What i remember is this house always seemed to have cats coming and going in their tens maybe 20's and a friend and i decided to go in. We went in to the front door and into the living room of the house and in front of us was a hole in the living room wall what was strange was the hole had no light emitting from it (it was broad daylight outside) it was a pretty sizable hole but there were lots of cats meowing and coming in and out of the hole! My friend got scared and began to feel uneasy and started to run i remember waiting that extra second only to see what i can describe a CAT shaped thing the size of a man emerge from the darkness in the hole this all happened in slow motion i even remember thinking this cannot be real it was walking on its two legs like any human and was a ginger and white color. this image has never left me I can not explain it i know it was broad daylight it was a sunny day. Perhaps an illusion of some sort but it sure felt real.
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I have seen something that sounds similar to this, although I was only 6 or 7 at the time.
I was visiting with relatives in the country, and in a place and time when there was a great deal of wildlife, including foxes. I had seen some foxes earlier, a day or two before this occurred, out in a field not far from the house, so I think that coloured my perception.
On this day though, I was playing near the barn, and looked up to see a 'fox' walking past the chicken coop on it's two hind legs. Pointy ears, long fluffy tail, and slanted eyes, but much too large (I now realize) to have been a fox, and definitely foxes don't walk upright. It's colour was a reddish brown, not as red as real foxes are, in my experience.
It didn't see me, but walked off into the surrounding woods, I had it in sight for perhaps 30 seconds to a minute.
Perhaps it was the same sort of creature, although he considered the thing he saw cat-like, and I considered it fox-like.
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American werecat sightings are truly rare, except in places such as traditional ethnic communities. Yet a few werecat sightings. or things that sound much like the werecat folklore of a hundred years ago, get reported by normal, modern Americans. These cases almost always involve the elusive semi-mythical "black panthers" of the eastern United States. One such occurrence happened about 1970, a mile south of Olive Branch, Illinois, on a road bordering Shawnee National Forest. A man named Mike Busby had his car stall along this road. As he was opening the hood, he heard a noise and looked around. He saw two slanted, green eyes glowing in the darkness. In a moment the creature possessing these eyes came into view: a black panther walking on its hind legs.

It jumped on Mike and cut his shirt to bits, scratching him badly on the left arm, chest, and belly. Mike held the mouth away from his neck by sheer force. The thing felt like it had short, wiry fur, and Mike could feel whiskers around the mouth. The creature smelled strongly of wet fur, even though it wasn't wet. It made growling sounds that were unlike the sounds a real cougar would make. In the headlights of passing vehicles, Mike saw the creature a bit more clearly. Its fur was a slick, shiny black like watered silk, and it had a strange tail. The animal seemed frightened by the lights and ran away. Mike Busby was certainly attacked by something. He was treated for minor injuries and got a tetanus shot in St. Mary's Hospital in Cairo. A truck driver named John Hartsworth claimed he saw the struggle on the side of the road; he described the creature as a "big cat."
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It does make me wonder why these 'gnomes' do seem to be seen in the same areas.
An old friend of mine had an experience with what he described as 'gnomes' when he was about 18 or so. He woke up in his room at the same time on the same day of the week to find what he said looked like typical gnomes in his room. He said the first time he woke up, looked around the room as his vision adapted to the light when he thought he saw the shape of a little gnome with green clothes and pointy hat. As he focused in on the little guy, he said it saw him and began to make a break for it to an area of the room which was agreeably colder than the rest. My friend fumbled for the light but when he turned it on, the little man had gone. My friend was so shook up that he actually went down and slept on the floor in his parents' room.
Years later his younger brother moved into the same room when my friend moved out and told us a curious tale. He said he had woken up one night to a small man on the roof, looking through the skylight and signaling for him to let him in, my friend's bro just bolted downstairs and didn't mention it to anyone until he told us. The thing is, my friend had never told anyone but me about his gnome experience, not even his brother, so he didn't get the idea from him. My brother then told me a tale of when he was young. He said he was in bed with a cold one day when he awoke to a group of typical little gnomes at the bottom of his bed, heading towards him in a menacing fashion until he screamed blue murder and they disappeared. The most bizarre thing is that my friends and bothers events both took place a couple of streets away, and about twenty five years apart.
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This happened to my mother and stepfather close to twenty years ago, in rural central Pennsylvania.

They had gone to my stepfather’s cabin in the woods for the weekend. They were having breakfast one morning, both silent and worried. When one finally asked the other what was wrong, they realized they’d both had the same “dream”.

Both had woken up during the night with an absolute conviction that something was at the window, watching them. While they could open their eyes, both were unable to turn and look at it. The bed was pushed right next to the window so whatever it was was right there. They were both absolutely terrified and knew that it meant them harm. My stepfather is still upset over the fact that he knew he was completely unable to protect my mother from it.

My stepfather, on the side of the bed away from the window, saw their collie – a large, well-trained, and very protective dog - lying on the floor, also absolutely motionless. He whispered the dog’s name. She would roll her eyes to look at him, but wouldn’t otherwise move – not even raise her head.

Both of them remembered smelling absolutely the worst stench of death they’d ever smelled. I forget what childhood trauma my mother said it reminded her of, but my stepfather said it smelled like when he’d stumbled on a pit that hunters had been throwing bits of carcasses into all summer.

There are bears in the area, but my parents are quite familiar with what it’s like to have one snuffling around the property – one even came right up to our tents while we were camping one night, and certainly didn’t smell like death.

When they told me about it, a couple of years later, they said that they had noticed that when they went to open up the cabin that summer, they had noticed that the bird and insect noises were gone – usually there’s a constant hum.

The next summer the insect noises were back and they had no problems. They still always get out of the car and listen at the edge of the woods before they drive up to open the cabin each year.

I lived in the area until I was 8, and never heard any local legends of anything like that, though maybe people just didn’t want to scare me.
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All throughout my childhood home (ages 5-13), I used to keep seeing a severed hand. No blood, or gristle, just a severed hand. It looked like it was from an old man, and had very long fingers and well manicured nails, patches of wispy white hair, liver spots, and that old-age wrinkle texture to it. It would pop up everywhere, I can only say for sure I never saw it in the bathroom or kitchen. It was always severed about four or five inches lower than the wrist, and always appeared ‘standing’ on the severed end, it was a Left hand, and always had the back of the hand facing me. The one I most recall was the time it appeared on some glass shelves we had in the front room. I can pretty much still see it in my minds eye as I type; it wasn’t decaying, and I could see the cross section of fat, muscle and bone. It used to terrify me, and, rational an adult as I am, I still can’t ever bring my self to say with 100% certainty that I completely imagined it.
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One night I woke up and a Lassie dog was staring me down about 10inches away from my face. I calmly said "out boy" and it just turned around and left my bedroom. I have no idea who's dog it was and no other member of my family saw it.
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One year, my little brother kept hearing things outside his bedroom window. They had just moved to a new house, and he was still slightly high-strung about everything, so this didn't help things out. He kept hearing banging outside of it, like someone was jumping up and down on the front porch. Of course, nobody was there whenever he looked out.

It finally ended when, after a night of such noises, he went outside and the screen on the exterior of his window had holes burnt all through it, in the general shape and size of hand prints. Since his window is about nine feet off the ground, it was mildly disturbing. It never really happened again after the hand prints were discovered.
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April 10, 1903 edition of the Richmond Times Dispatch

The one thing which acted more effectually than the appearance of county officers to eject Charles Cooke, a well known farmer, from certain Henrico property, which he had been ordered to leave, was the fearful apparition of a ghost-- a giant dog with a white woman's head. The man pulled up stakes at once and yesterday moved down to Varina District where he hopes to be out of harm's way....(Cooke) said that for several nights past about 10 o'clock the premises have been visited by a most fearful apparition-- a ghost, which takes the shape of a dog with a woman's head. It gets into the yard and scatters the milk pans and the wood pile, uttering the while most horrible noises. Upon some occasions it comes up to the door and rattles the knob.

Cooke showed the deputy two pistols he had armed himself with as a means of protection against the ghost. Still he wanted to get out of the place, and hence he was moving. He had chosen a house about ten miles down in Varina District, where, he hoped, the ghost could not follow... An old white woman who lives in the same house with Cooke declares that all he says concerning the ghost is absolutely correct.
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Last year I woke up to a loud noise. Now granted, in my neighborhood people come home at 3 am, party, and to make things worse I can hear my neighbor walking around since the house creaks so bad. So it's usually a loud car door, a door slam, and sometimes the odd domestic fight. The year before that the other side was broken into, so I was on my guard.

Now normally, I have learned to tune all this out, since often I would get freaked out, search the house with a weapon, and then feel stupid and paranoid afterwards. Nevertheless, I keep a .45 inside the bed's two small sliding drawers, one side keeping the gun and the other keeping the ammo (I don't load a gun unless I'm using it.)

Well, so I'm wide awake in my bed, and I heard another bang. I turn on my reading light, and then I walk over and turn my bedroom and hall light on. I peer over the stairs and I just listen. I hear it again, but I'm having trouble pinpointing it. And it's loud enough to cause me concern. So I walk downstairs in my boxers, check the living room door, check the kitchen door, and everything is fine.
I have the dishwasher in front of my kitchen door which blocks it from opening. Rather than pulling that away I flicker the basement light on a few times, figuring that would freak out an intruder. I hear nothing. So as I walk back up stairs I hear it again, but I attribute to my neighbor walking around again.

So as I turn off all but my reading light I hear it loud and clear. It's above me. I then hear slow footsteps moving about, and some small shuffling. I wait for a moment while listening to it, making sure I'm hearing what I think I'm hearing.

I grab my .45 from the head of the bed, check the clip, rack it, and I'm gone. I turn on the light again and I open up the closet door and turn it on. The noise continues, but seems startled now since the pacing of the footsteps increase.

I push the clothes aside that are handing and I proceed to tear away the empty boxes I placed in front of the access door (I was meaning to put these in the attic but I got lazy.) My heart is racing, I'm half terrified and half hoping to catch the intruder before he gets away.

I pull open the attic door and reach for the chain light. The light comes on, and I hear footsteps and stumbling on the other side of the attic, opposite of the small staircase.

Now, there still isn't a lot of light in the attic with the naked bulb, so I reach outside the closet and grab a flashlight I had on a small dresser. I crawl onto the shelf that the boxes were on and shine the flashlight in the direction of the noises, while keeping me safely hidden in the staircase. The noises continue as I blindly shine it on the far side of the attic. So I slowly crawl on the first step and rise to poke my head above the attic floor.

My flashlight is shining on a white figure. It's skinny and lanky and it's hunched over like an ape. At first I'm thinking it some crack head that crawled on my roof and somehow found a way in my tiny attic but couldn't figure out how to get out. So I yell at the guy, asking him how he got in here. He just stares at me with these black eyes. I didn't know if he was naked or just wearing underwear, and at this point I'm just pissed and disgusted. I put the flash light down, figuring the light in his face may be scaring him more than I need to. After that he still isn't moving or talking. So I yell at him again, telling him he needs to get the fuck out of here.

Well, the white figure stands up, as much as he could in that little space, and strikes a pose that reminds me of a bull about to charge. I can hear the joists creak as he shifts his weight.

I chamber the gun and point it just below his feet. I'm doing my best to breathe slowly to keep myself calm. I tell him he needs to sit down and tell me how he got in or how he plans on getting the hell out of here. I tell him I have a loaded 45 on him and he'd better sit down.

He starts making slow strides towards me. He takes about two steps, each one creaking the floor boards, exaggerating each sound. I start to squeeze the trigger and I am damning the slow trigger pull on this cheap ass Browning knock-off. He takes a third step, he's halfway across the attic, and I'm aiming at his legs. The gun finally goes off.

Now there is a loud band, the shell ejects and bounces off my face, slightly burning me, and the attic fills with dust. My hearing goes away for a moment and I can smell the gun powder.

A moment later the dust starts to clear, but there's now a white cloud where the figure was, and that clears away as well. At first I think I'm seeing things or going crazy, but I'm alone in the attic and I just fired a gun in a residential neighborhood. I uncock the gun and set it down. I pick up the flashlight and check every corner of the attic. I don't see a damn thing. I check the small window above me, but it's intact. There seems to be no way in or out other than the stairwell I'm standing in which I had to clear crap out of my closet to get to. I walk over to where the white figure was standing. I look down and I see black footprints on the joists. I trace the prints and see that they seemed to have moved back and forth the attic several times. There were even prints on the stairs.

I peer down at one and poke it. They're made of some soft, black mud and the smell like shit. I look down at myself and I seemed to have knelt in it when I was on the stairs and didn't notice until now. So leave the attic and head to the bathroom to clean up, I'm still in disbelief of everything that had just happened. Then the front door starts pounding.

It's the police and they're pissed. My neighbor called them when she heard the shot. I let them in, and there are three of them. I tell them I saw an intruder, shot at him, and tell them where the gun is and how many rounds are still left. So they sit me down on the couch and two go to check upstairs. This takes them maybe ten minutes. I can hear them muttering amongst themselves and they don't sound happy. They come back down and start drilling me to go over my story several times. I mention the foot prints, and they said they say them, but if someone was in the attic they're gone now. Then they start asking if I've been drinking or on drugs or medication. I tell them no, and that I'm drug tested at work.

So they have a pow-wow outside with one babysitting me inside. I can see a few neighbors trying to peak into the open front door from across the street. I'm tired, pissed and embarrassed as all hell. I'm in my damn underwear with a tiny burn on my face and shit smeared on my legs that's half washed off.

So one sergeant comes in, gives me a speech about gun safety and how I could have hurt someone, and tells me they're going to call me to come to court and issue a citation. They don't leave until I give them a trigger lock to put on the gun and close it in its case.

So I'm awake the rest of the night. In the morning I check out the attic again. The foot prints are still there but the wood has absorbed most of it. I look at the window again and wonder if there was any possible way anyone could have got through it. I take one last look and I notice something in the corner. There is the skeleton of a rat or other small rodent. Its head is crushed and its back legs are torn off. There are some tiny bits of rotted fur or flesh around it.

I reluctantly clean it up.

So a year later, the cops never called me back, and I'm moving out of that place.
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During my senior year of high school I got a job working at a large department store that I will not name (but if you think for even half a second about ‘large American discount department stores’ you can probably guess what it was). I ended up working in the deli. You know how things go when you first get plopped down into a group of people who’ve known each other for a long time: it’s pretty uncomfortable because they have lots of in-jokes or catchphrases that you have no hope in hell of understanding. That’s what I thought the Army Man was, an in-joke.

You see, whenever there was some sort of accident -- like, say, a woman working in bakery knocking over a stack of boxes, or one of my coworkers in deli dropping an entire eight-piece chicken on the floor on the way to the fryer, it was customary to jokingly grumble “The Army Man did it” and then restack the boxes or throw away the chicken or whatever. I never bothered asking for an explanation since the only thing that makes you feel like more of a loser than not getting an in-joke is asking everyone what an in-joke is all about.

After a while, though, I began to understand a little of what the crack meant. Sometimes whenever anyone blamed something on the Army Man, they would put their arms out in front of them and do a sort of pantomime of an on-your-belly-under-barbed-wire boot camp crawl. I took this to mean that that there was an imaginary solider crawling around on the floor of the store, causing all sorts of elfish mishaps, and some past joke to this effect had spawned whatever meme my coworkers were perpetuating.

I’d been working for a few months when I finally decided to ask what the Army Man was all about. I was in the break room when one of my coworkers, let’s call her Betty, happened to go on lunch. She was about my mom’s age and took a motherly interest in my current affairs, so she asked me about how my grades were and if I’d been accepted to any colleges and all that jazz. I humored her while she ate and then, about five minutes before my break ended, asked her about the Army Man.

Betty froze up completely, holding her lips really tight, and just shook her head. She refused to say anything about the subject, not even trying to be subtle about it, but Betty was always one for melodrama. I mean, Betty had made the joke along with everyone else; I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t talk about it now, unless she was being intentionally childish. I dropped the subject and went back to work.

A few days later I was in the break room again when Ruth, one of the women working in bakery, happened by. This time she brought up the subject with me, asking if I’d spoken to Betty about the Army Man. I figured it wouldn’t make any sense to say otherwise so I said that I had, and that Betty had refused to say anything about it.

Ruth just nodded and said, “Well, you know how Betty is.” When I said that I didn’t Ruth held her hands in front of her like she was praying and began to flap her lips in a silent imitation of prayer. Betty was an ardent Pentecostal, I knew, and instead of swearing had a habit of yelling out “Help me, Jesus!” when she got hot grease on her hand, but why this meant she didn’t talk about the Army Man, I had no clue.

So Ruth explained:

Sometime the year before one of the unloaders working third shift had been moving pallets into the large freezer where we kept all frozen goods that weren’t on the shelves; it was common practice to keep the freezer door open for most of the night while the unloaders took stuff from the truck and moved it in. This particular unloader had surprised his coworkers when they found him outside the freezer with the door slammed shut. When they tried to open it he begged them not to and, when they ignored him, he tried to fight them away.

At first they thought it was a joke, but soon it became obvious that this guy was desperate for them not to open the freezer door. He refused to tell them exactly what had happened; from the way he talked it sounded like he’d seen an animal sneak into the freezer, though why this would freak him out they couldn’t guess. They got the managers on duty that night, explained the situation, and against the unloader’s protests, ventured into the freezer.

There was nothing in there but boxes, though a few of them had been pulled down from their shelves and smashed, ruining quite a bit of merchandise. The unloader was fired, since it was assumed he’d done something wrong and was trying to shift the blame onto someone else. But before he’d left for good he’d worked a few more days, Ruth told me, and it was during this time he mentioned to some coworkers exactly what he had seen: a shape like a man on his stomach, naked and pale, just disappearing between the plastic flaps that hung down over the freezer door.

Of course the unloader could have mistaken a reflection in those same plastic sheets for whatever it was he claimed to have seen, so he was generally laughed at even after he was fired. It became harder to joke when other people began to see and hear it, though.

It was just snatches of conversation you might pick up, Ruth told me. The women working the returns desk, for instance, would mention that they thought they heard someone on the floor on the other side of their counter, but since they couldn’t see anything it must have been something on the floor -- but they didn’t bother looking, because of course it was nothing. Cashiers had similar stories of hearing something move through their checkout lane even though there were no customers, something too low to the ground to be glimpsed over the edge of a counter. Coupled with the description the unloader had given, this was when people began to think of the thing as a person trying to be covert, pulling himself around on his stomach by use of his forearms. This was why they started calling it the Army Man.

Betty saw it in the deli. We had a hot case, a metal plexiglass display where we put warm food such as chicken and what-have-you under heatlamps; the top half of the case was filled with pans of food, French fries and so forth, that we served to customers, while the bottom half was filled with boxed eight pieces and rotisseries that the customers could grab on their own. One night while closing, Betty had bent down to clean the glass windows on this section of the hot case. She screamed her all-purpose curse -- “Help me, Jesus!” -- before promptly tumbling back on her ass and twisting her ankle.

At first the people working with her thought she’d just slipped, since the deli floor was covered in grease pretty much all the time. Betty was having trouble standing up again so they called in management, who quickly arranged a way to transport Betty to the hospital. While they waited, Betty explained to them what she saw: on the other side of the glass, out on the floor of the store, had been a thing looking back at her. That was what she called it, Ruth told me, not a man but a thing. Betty was out of commission while her leg healed up -- it wasn’t broken, just twisted really bad.

After a few weeks of general annoyances, a guy working in electronics insisted he’d seen someone crawling around on the merchandise shelves at the back of the department. Thinking it was a customer’s kid, he ran over to straighten them out, just as a few plasma TVs were knocked over and shattered. When he told management his story they of course didn’t believe him; there was barely enough room on the shelves for the TVs themselves, let alone a person, child or not. He was fired.

Four months or so before I started working, one of the mechanics in automotive refused to let a customer take their car back. The customer was naturally pissed and had called the department manager, a man named Rick. As the mechanic later told anyone who would listen, he’d been working on the customer’s car when he had to take a leak. Upon returning he’d seen things like fingers poking out from the vehicle’s undercarriage, curled around the bumper, but they withdrew before he could do anything about it.

He searched the car and found nothing, but when the customer came back he still had his doubts about letting the automobile leave the garage. He laid out the situation privately for Rick, who volunteered to test drive the car first and explained it away to the customer as some new quality control policy.

Rick drove fifteen feet into the parking lot before one of the front wheels of the car let out a groan and fell off completely. Needless to say Rick was very much embarrassed and there was a tangle of the usual insurance issues, with the customer blaming the store for tampering with his car. Somehow this was all settled out of court.

Rick killed himself two months after the car incident, though no one could say why. He hadn’t seemed particularly depressed and he’d been working as hard as ever, but one night he went home and (from what Ruth heard) overdosed on sleeping pills. Ruth had her own ideas, of course: the Army Man had gotten into the car with the intention of leaving the store, but Rick had foiled its plans and so, instead of following the customer home, it had chosen to follow him home instead. This naturally raised more questions than it answered: what the hell was the Army Man, then, and how had it gotten to the store to begin with? Ruth just shook her head and said something like, “Don’t ask me. I just bake French bread.” And that was that.

I quit the deli a few months later to head off to college. In the intervening time I had begun to wonder why people continued to joke about the Army Man, if it had ever existed in the first place and if it was half as serious as Ruth made it out to be. Was it just some way of relieving stress, trying to make it seem less important than it really was, or were they fucking with me? In time it occurred to me that if Ruth was right, if this Army Man could somehow pass between people and places, then there was a chance, however small, that it might come back to the store, or worse, that Rick had brought it back before he killed himself, and if either of those had happened, it could leave again with someone else.

Perhaps it was done out of fear, as a superstition. I’d been doing it too, I realized. It was just part of the atmosphere of the deli, part of working with people for an extended period of time: you adopt their references, their in-jokes, their memes.

I work in the campus library currently. It's quiet, but I've never heard anything whispering across the carpeted floor. However, when I’m not paying attention while stacking books on a cart, a practice that inevitably leads to a bunch of them falling over, or when the network goes on the fritz and we can’t figure out why, I often find myself muttering, “The Army Man did it.”

I think a few of my coworkers have overheard me, because they’ve started to say it, too.