Narrator (0:00)

Hey, welcome to Scary Stories and Rain. Before we begin, be sure to check out my brand new podcast, Scary Stories and Fire. If you would prefer the same great stories but with a super relaxing campfire background, the link is in the description. Also, if you haven't yet, I highly recommend you subscribe to this podcast. If you enjoy listening to Relax or Fall Asleep, hundreds of hours of stories and rain for $2.99 a month. That will get you access to all episodes with zero ads. Consider subscribing and I hope you enjoy this episode. This isn't exactly my story, but I was the one with the tidbit that makes this story scary. I used to be really involved in youth group at my church and every summer we went to confirmation camp at a camp in the woods. This camp is in the middle of harvest country, so there are a lot of fields where migrant workers will find employment. Sometimes if they need to shower or get water, they will go to secluded parts of the camp and use the facilities. Some people also own property or live around the camp. None of the people around camp have ever harmed a camper, but we are all told to be careful and in general, during a weekend retreat, I stayed up late to talk to a group of the counselors and we shared our favorite stories about camp. One boy, we'll call him Aaron, told us a story about a man he ran into at confirmation camp. He said it was his first year at camp and he didn't really know his way around that well. He had gone with one of his friends to the nurse's cabin to get medicine and was running late to a group activity. As they left the nurse's cabin, he ran into a man who was just walking around the camp. They asked him who he was and asked for directions to the pavilion. He told them that he was the nurse's husband and that he could take them to the pavilion. As Aaron was telling this story, I asked him to describe the man who said he was the nurse's husband because there were two nurses. The one nurse is around 85 years old and widowed and the other nurse is a lovely older woman who goes to my church. He said the man wasn't too old, really tall and bald with a mustache. He then continued his story. He said that the man led them around for a bit until they eventually got to the entrance of a path that led to the woods. They were both a little concerned because they didn't remember the leaders telling them that the pavilion was in the woods. It had also gotten very dark and the man was the only one with a flashlight, but they still followed him down the path into the woods. A minute or two into the walk, the old man's flashlight died, leaving them without any light at all. The boys told the old man that they were going to turn around and go back into camp to see if they could find another leader. The old man was hesitant but eventually gave in and they all walked back to camp. As they got back into camp, the boys asked the man if he really knew where the pavilion was. The old man just looked at them and said, follow the path behind you around those bushes and it's on your left. Then the old man left the boys and disappeared back into the woods. The boys made it back to the pavilion for their group activity and just thought the entire thing was weird. As Aaron finished the story I had a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach before I mentioned that I knew the nurse's husband. He's average height with graying hair and no facial hair at all. I have no idea who the tall, bald mustached man was that led the boys into the dark woods that night. Who knows what he was up to and what he would have done if he had taken them further into the trees? I live in rural southwestern Ontario in a town called Tilsenburg in the heart of the Tobacco Belt. I was born and raised in Norfolk county and have since lived all over the province, and my sleepy little corner of the woods is without a shadow of a doubt as bizarre as it is isolated. It isn't isolated in a physical sense, more so in the sense that it has always and will always be rural farmland peppered with Carolinian forests, small towns and the kind of self hatred you can only find out in the country or in small towns nobody ever escapes. Now, like most small communities, belief in the paranormal is is quite common. These things can easily be explained away. Historically, rural communities have a tendency to hold on to superstition and the soul crushing boredom that small communities are faced with often presents a golden opportunity for a story due to a traumatic event involving a violent carjacking. I moved in with my girlfriend's family about six months ago. I have heard countless stories about ghostly encounters in this house from my girlfriend beforehand, which usually left me in an odd combination of sincere belief, skepticism and intrigue. That is until I started having experiences myself. My first encounter in the house was six months before I moved in. My girlfriend, like I said, filled me in on plenty of stories about the entities she has encountered here and while her experiences correlate with her parents own experiences in the house she by far has the most frequent encounters. According to her, there are three active entities in her house. An old woman who lived here in the 1930s, a tall and hulking dark male energy, and what we call the Crawly Boy. While she is sure of the identity of the woman, she has never been entirely certain that the latter two are indeed two separate entities. Whether the Crawly Boy is the same entity as the tall man is unclear. We aren't entirely sure why he crawls, if it is meant to scare us, or if this was just some poor guy who had his legs crushed by some farming equipment. We were sitting in the living room in the early morning, around 1am Maybe 2am to this day, she tries way too hard to stay up with me. The pristine silence of a mostly asleep house is an enticing prospect for the introverted. We were sitting and watching TV when she starts complaining about seeing wisps, usually indicative of a migraine. A few minutes later, I started seeing them too. That happens down here at night, she said to me. Sometimes I think it's just a migraine, but then sometimes other people see it too. Five or ten minutes later, I happened to glance over into the adjoining dining room. And wouldn't you know, I saw it too. It's hard to accurately describe, but I'll try. You will see movement out of the corner of your eye. A white, shapeless mass will register in your periphery, usually whipping by or disappearing as soon as you turn your head. Sometimes you don't even register it, as it can resemble a coming migraine or exhaustion. But if you pay attention to the room around you, it is anything but normal. As we are sitting there, I glanced up into the dining room and noticed that something was off. It was as if the room was distorted, as if the room itself and all of its contents were vibrating and that vibration caused everything to just wiggle. Seeing this, any rational mind in the modern age would probably jump to ghastly as a probable explanation for this. But I swear to you, our carbon monoxide and gas detectors are functional. If there was a gas leak in the house that was large enough to distort the appearance of an entire room, we would all be dead. So we are sitting there, just watching and wondering what could cause this, when out of nowhere comes the unmistakable feeling of being watched. My girlfriend suddenly shifts her gaze to under the table. Ew. I look unsure of what I'm seeing. I could have sworn that I saw a blur along the floor under the dining room table. It was then that she tells me that she had seen something crawling along the floor and seemingly hiding. At any rate, it's gone by this point, but the feeling of being watched is still very much present. Time goes by and we go back to doing what we were doing. I had gotten up to get a refill and sat down, picking up the remote but fumbling and dropping it. As I get up to lean down and pick it up from beside the recliner next to me, I catch a glimpse of something I can hardly believe. As I pick up the remote, I see something under the couch, something moving. I focus in on what I'm seeing and my brain finally registers what it an arm. A thin pale arm with what I can only describe as silvery putrefied skin as it skulks back further under the couch. Every horror movie on earth has prepared us for this situation. Nothing good comes to those who look. And so we didn't. Six months later, after I had moved in, we were sitting on the front porch in the heat of the summer talking about whatever when the subject turned to ghosts. Like I said, just about any person living here will tell you a ghost story if you talk to them long enough. This particular conversation involved the creepy statue of the Virgin Mary at the church across the street. And somewhere in the conversation her son, just recently having turned 10, looks up at us and says, one time I saw a man without legs and he was crawling past our house from over by the hospital toward the church. Okay, so bear with me. This happened when I was a kid and I double checked the story with my family. This was in the mid-80s. I was about 7 at home with two of my older sisters who were 8 and 11, and two cousins who were 7 and 8, all five of us girls. My sister, 11, was in charge of babysitting us four younger girls. You have to picture what our house looked like to understand what happened. It was a two story box style house with a flat roof and a small box front porch also with a flat flat roof. I can't remember what we were doing, but we were all in the house. We kept hearing noises coming from the roof, like walking and what sounded like rocks being dropped down the downspouts. You know kids. We thought of a squirrel or something but it kept happening. Then my older sister said something about how maybe someone climbed the huge tree beside the house and climbed onto our roof. We were all scared because we knew there was a roof access point in the bedroom that I shared with one of my sisters. My oldest sister told my other sister and one of our cousins to walk across the street to the corner store and on the way back, look up and see if they could see someone on the roof. So the girls left. They walked halfway across the parking lot and being curious kids, they turned around, looked up and saw a guy in one of those totally 80s guys cropped top football jerseys. Think Johnny Depp in A Nightmare on Elm Street. He was crouched down on the roof. The girls came running home, freaking out and told my oldest sister about the guy. She freaking out first went to the neighbor's house to use their deck to see if she could see on their roof, but she couldn't see anything. She came home and then called the police and it felt like it took them ages to show up. When they finally arrived, I don't think they believed a word we said. One cop drove down the road up a hill about a block away to see if they could see anything. But the way the roof was, you couldn't see a person if they were laying down. Then these cops tell us kids that we had to go upstairs and check everywhere to see if we found anyone. Five little girls from ages 7 to 11 sent upstairs scared out of their minds, crying to look for a mysterious man knowing about the roof access. We all cried, not wanting to go, but they said we had to. To this day I remember how scared I was. I remember looking. But how well do little kids look, right? The cops didn't listen to us. They didn't check the house inside or out, and then they just left. We were so scared to be left home alone with some guy there who knows where he was. We didn't know if he was just laying down on the roof or jumped down or somehow got in and was hiding somewhere inside. My mom finally got home a few hours later and we told her what happened. And she told us that there was a lock on the roof access and that no one could get in, but she checked anyways. Then she went to check on the outside. There were clear footprints in the dirt, dug in good from him jumping off the roof onto the porch and off into the flower bed. Oh, my mom was so upset when she realized we told the truth and we were not believed by the police. We went to the police station the next day and we were all separated and interviewed. We all told the same story. My mom went up one side of the cops and down the other. We never found out who the guy was or why he was there. Did he know that it was a house with five little girls home alone during the summer? I turned 22. My boyfriend and I moved into our first apartment together. It was a smaller building, about 12 units, and had an eclectic mix of tenants. Everyone was kind and always happy to exchange small talk if we crossed paths in the hallway or the parking lot. My boyfriend, being more social than I, quickly got to know the names and units that belonged to everyone. Being a young man, he was often asked to help move furniture or carry in groceries for some of the older residents. One woman in particular, Lisa, was especially talkative and seemed to find any excuse to have my boyfriend and I come over to help her around the house. Having grandparents of our own, we knew that she most likely wanted company other than her orange cat, so we would always find the time to take out our trash or carry bags of cat litter up the stairs for her. One day in early July, we ran into Lisa while we were coming home from the beach. I was unloading the car, my head in the backseat, trying to gather the items that had spilled from the beach bag onto the floor of the car, when I heard Lisa's voice behind me. Hello, Jess. Hot weather we're having today, isn't it? I jumped when I heard her. I never understood how this 85 year old woman could be so silent. Oh, hi there, Lisa. Yeah, it was a scorcher. I pulled my head out from the car and turned to look at her. Despite the hot weather, Lisa was wearing a pair of jeans, slippers, a turtleneck, and a wool sweater. Oddly enough, she was not sweating. I hope I'm not bothering you. I saw you and Jim from my window and wanted to invite you both over for dinner tonight. My brother is coming over today, so I'm making something special. Since you two are always so helpful, I wanted to invite you as well. I hesitated to answer. Lisa had never invited us to eat with her before, nor had she ever mentioned a brother also, and at the time I thought I was imagining it. Something seemed to be off about her. She was several inches shorter than I and usually looked up at me and made eye contact when she talked. This time she was standing several feet away and staring at what seemed to me the tail light two feet to my side. At the time, I brushed it off as exhaustion from the heat. It was 90 degrees after all, and she did appear to be wearing far too much clothing for the weather. Just as I was about to decline the offer, something in my gut telling me tonight would be a night to stay in, my boyfriend walked outside. Hi Lisa. How's your day been? Jim said in his usual friendly tone. I hope I'm not bothering you. I saw you and Jim from my window and wanted to invite you both over for dinner tonight. My brother is coming over today, so I'm making something special. Since you two are always so helpful, I wanted to invite you as well, Lisa said, repeating exactly what she had just said to me, never breaking the gaze from the taillight. Of course we will. We would love to meet your brother and try your cooking. Jim, always the social butterfly. It was something I loved about him when we met, but there were times when it could get really on my nerves. Wonderful, Lisa said. Her face broke out in a smile, but her eyes were still locked in that unnerving stare. I will see you at 8:00. My brother will be getting in late so we'll have to have a late dinner. Before we could respond, she did a swift about face and marched back into the building. My boyfriend and I stared at each other with puzzled looks on our faces. She seems off. Are you sure we should go? Maybe she needs to rest, I said, trying my best to find an excuse not to attend. It's probably just the heat. You know how old people get. She's also probably a bit stressed about her brother visiting. I didn't even know she had one, so it must be a big deal. Jim replied. We have to go. She's expecting expecting us and we don't want to be rude. We seem to be the only people she talks to in the building. I guess you're right. My stomach was doing a backflip at the thought of sitting through what I expected to be a very awkward evening. I never liked dinner parties anyway, but this one was giving me a weird feeling. We unloaded the car and I brushed my anxiety off as a bit of heat heat from mixed with a little too much alcohol while at the beach. Once inside, I jumped into a cold shower to cool off and clean the sand and surf off. Jim and I napped for about an hour and at 8 o'clock we put our shoes on and headed upstairs to Lisa's apartment. Jim reached up and knocked on the door, that weird feeling that returned and I found myself holding holding my breath, hoping that for some reason Lisa and her brother would fail to open that door. The doorknob turned and Lisa, still dressed in her unseasonably warm clothing. Come in. My brother just got here. Take a seat in the living room. We shuffled our way into the apartment and as soon as we were taking off our shoes, a smell hit my nose like none I had ever experienced before. It was a mix of rotten meat and mildew. Exasperated by the heat of July, I gagged and shot a look of confusion and concern at my boyfriend. He nodded and whispered into my ear, it's probably just the cat box and an old trash bag. You know how this building gets in the summer with no ac. I guess, I mumbled back. Jim always gave people the benefit of the doubt. He really was just too nice and unassuming sometimes. With a knot forming in my stomach, Jim and I proceeded into the living room fully expecting to see an unbathed elderly man sitting on Lisa's couch. I was not prepared for what I saw when we turned the corner. No one was there. The only living thing in that apartment other than Lisa was her large orange cat sitting on the armchair. Lisa, Jim, this is my brother Darryl, Lisa said with a gesture towards the cat. I squeezed Jim's hand and tried my best to maintain a smile on my face. Jim looked at me. This time the look of terror and confusion was on his face. I mouthed the word stroke at him and after a moment he nodded back. With the heat and her age, a stroke was the most likely cause of this confusion. Quickly changing the subject to see how she responded, I asked lisa, how are you feeling? Has the heat wave been hard to deal with? Oh, it's been terrible. I always loved summer, but it's been too much to deal with these last few years. Lisa said while standing in the doorway to the kitchen. I couldn't imagine how she was wearing so much clothing. I was beginning to sweat just looking at her. That's when I realized that despite the heat and the lack of central air in our building, not a single fan was blowing or a window open. Lisa, would you like me to open a window for you? It's really stuffy with all these people in here? Jim asked. No, the bugs will get out if you open the window, Lisa responded. She had that far off gaze on her face again. This time she was staring just past Jim at a wall where her photographs were hanging. Jim and I both wrote off the slip as part of whatever was going on with her. Jim mouthed the word stroke at me and I nodded in agreement again. Lisa, are you sure you're feeling alright? I think we should call the doctor. I think the heat might be getting to you. I said as gently as possible, not wanting to upset her, potentially making matters worse. I'm fine, Jess. Daryl asked me the same thing earlier. I must be a little tired from the heat. Isn't that right Darryl? As Lisa said this, her gaze remained steady on the wall at the back of the room. She didn't have many lights on, just one lamp in the corner. It was hard to tell, but it looked as though her pupils were so dilated that the blue irises were completely covered by the black of her pupils. There was no response from Daryl as he wasn't there, just a swish of the tail from her orange cat. How about some dinner? It's just finished and ready to serve. Lisa turned around and walked into the kitchen. Jim and I were both starting to get really unnerved by the whole situation. We thought it was obvious that she was having a stroke, but other than talking to someone who wasn't there and wearing a sweater in the grueling heat, her motor skills and speech were perfectly normal for a woman in her mid-80s 80s. Jim, I don't think she's having a stroke. I think something else is going on, I said to my boyfriend as soon as she left. We'll give it a few more minutes. If she doesn't start acting normal by the end of dinner, we'll call an ambulance, jim whispered to me as we walked into the kitchen. The smell from when we first entered the apartment was suffocating as I got hotter and more uncomfortable. I was dizzy from breathing shallowly through my mouth and the back of my neck was covered in sweat. When we walked into the kitchen, the table was set for four, not surprising after what just occurred in the living room. Jim and I took our seats at the table. The smell was worse now in the kitchen than it had been before. She must really be behind on that cat, catbox and trash, I thought to myself. The glass at the table was already filled with water. I picked it up to take a sip but immediately stopped when the cup reached my mouth. The cup was warm from the heat and a sour vinegar smell filled my mouth as I opened it to take a sip. I quickly set my glass down on the table and kicked Jim's leg under the table and gestured towards the water with a disturbed look on my face. Jim picked up his glass, smelled it, and I thought he was going to vomit right then and there. The look on his face was one of pure disgust. At this point, Lisa had her back to us and was preparing her dishes on the counter. Suddenly I became very confused, concerned about dinner. If something was wrong with the water, what was the food going to be like? I waited. Jim and I said nothing, just stared at each other across this tiny kitchen table with looks of anxiety on our faces. Lisa's cat jumped into the chair next to mine and let out a low meow. His tail was flicking. Here's dinner. I made it especially for you, Darryl. I know it's your favorite. Lisa turned around and was carrying a large roasting pan. She set it down in the center of the table. I reached out to help her to avoid spilling steaming hot food all over the place, but realized that the pan was the same temperature as the room. It wasn't hot at all, even though she had just pulled it out of her oven. Lisa sat down in the chair, took off the lid to the roasting pan, and I was met with the source of that terrible smell. Inside the pan was a pot roast with carrots, potatoes, and gravy, but it was all covered in mold. I gasped and froze at the sight of it. Your favorite, right, Daryl? Lisa said again as she reached for the ladle and scooped two large helpings onto the plate in front of her cat. I watched in horror as she then turned to me and did the same. I couldn't speak. I couldn't move. I couldn't breathe. Knowing now where that smell had been coming from, I felt Jim kick my leg. Our eyes locked. Lisa continued serving the rotten roast to Jim and finally to herself. I stared at my plate. In the dim light and the heat of Lisa's apartment, I made out tiny white maggots, hundreds of them, crawling out from between the layers of meat and vegetables. The meat had turned green and the vegetables were slimy. I shut my eyes and covered my mouth and nose with my one hand. It was all I could do to keep from throwing up. Something was wrong with Lisa. My eyes shot back open when I heard a clatter. Jim had practically fallen out of his chair and was scrambling towards the the door. Jess, we're going now, he said in a stern and terrified voice. I opened my eyes and bolted up from the chair. I felt Jim grab my hand as he said, don't look, just go. My body did exactly the opposite as we grabbed our shoes and wrenched the door open. I took a quick look behind me, something to this day I wish with all my heart I had not done. When I looked back, I saw Lisa's cat with its face to the plate, devouring the dish in front of him. But even more disturbing was Lisa sitting there chewing away on the maggot infested roast, a huge smile on her face as she looked at the cat and said, I know, Daryl. It's my favorite too, before shoveling a heaping fork full of the putrid meat into her mouth. Jim and I ran upstairs and spent the next half an hour puking. After that we couldn't eat for two weeks and I ended up throwing out the clothes we had worn into the apartment because no matter how much we washed them, I couldn't seem to get that smell out. That evening, once we had stopped vomiting and we were able to calm down enough to talk, Jim called emergency services and told them what had happened. He said that our neighbor was unwell and that they should send an ambulance as well as someone from social services to check on the elderly woman. A couple days later, we received news that Lisa had been taken to the emergency room that night and then died soon after in the hospital. Her funeral was being held the following weekend and we were encouraged to attend as she didn't have much family left. On the day of the funeral, Jim and I were still unable to eat. We had been living on coffee, water and saltine crackers since the night we went over there for dinner. We had scrubbed every inch of the house, opened the windows and had three scented candles burning almost constantly. We mustered the courage out of respect for our neighbor and headed to the memorial service. We walked into the mostly empty room at the funeral home to pay our respects. Looking at the face of Lisa as she lie there in her coffin, I couldn't help but wonder what happened to her? Why had such a kind old lady gone so far off the deep end so suddenly? Had her brother Darryl recently died and maybe she couldn't handle the grief? Had it been a stroke? We were never given an answer from anyone on what actually happened. But we did learn one thing at the memorial service. While reading through her obituary, I noticed that there was no Daryl listed at all in Lisa's family. In fact, she only had one sister who had died of breast cancer in her 50s 30 years prior to this. I mentioned this to Jim on the way home and we could agree that it was best to not think about it. We moved a few months later. The apartment had been wonderful, but there was no way we could stay in that building after what had happened. Jim and I are still together and he is just as social with the neighbors. But now we pay closer attention to the elderly people that live in our building. Let me start this story with a little context. I'm a 28 year old female. I have had what I suppose some would call paranormal instances. Nothing big, just a noise, a voice, something out of the corner of my eye. But I have always chalked it up to my mind playing tricks on me since I am very paranoid and nothing has ever been there when I looked. It is also important that I explain The Layout of my Home I lived in an old mobile home with my fiance, one of those ones that look like an actual house. The inside was old with plywood walls and an eerie feel to it. Since it's old, it makes a lot of noise which I'm used to. You enter the home in the laundry room. There is a door frame in front of the entrance with no door attached. When you walk through that frame to the right is a guest room and in front is the master bedroom. If you walk to the left, there is a kitchen on your right and a dining room to the left. Straight ahead is an open California living room. There is a small wall that covers the view of the kitchen from the living room. We had our TV against that wall and the couch right in front against the back wall. One night I was laying on the couch around 2am as I used to work until 1am watching TV. All of the lights were off except one lamp that illuminated only the corner of the living room by the couch. I started hearing a noise that sounded like someone was clearing their throat. I knew it wasn't my fiance as he was out of town for a bachelor party. I turned down the tv, looked into the dark hallway and didn't hear or see anything. Then I started to hear what sounded like footsteps. I once again turned the TV down and I couldn't see the the hallway from where I was laying. So I sat up and looked into the hallway. Nothing. As I started watching TV again, I heard louder footsteps and quickly turned the TV down. The footsteps continued. It sounded like someone was aggressively pacing from the guest room to the kitchen entrance. Back and forth. I jumped upright on the couch and slep stared down the hallway but again didn't see anyone and the footsteps stopped. I then heard a sound from the kitchen. It was the sound I heard earlier. The sound of someone clearing their throat. It was a deep sound like a man. Because of the wall, I couldn't see into the kitchen at all even when sitting up. I was paralyzed with with fear, sitting upright, looking into the hall and waiting for someone to come out of the kitchen. I kept listening and heard it again followed by the sound of liquid with ice in a glass swishing and then a loud sipping sound. I jumped up and ran into the bedroom, closed the door and jumped on my bed. I was still listening. My dog got up out of her bed and walked to the door. She was just staring at it. I called her name but she didn't move. She didn't even flinch. All of a sudden I heard loud footsteps Coming out of the kitchen and down the hall. There was a scratching sound on the door. Then the scratching started going along the plywood walls, back down the hallway to the guest room and back to my room. I can't tell you how many times they went up and down the hallway. The scratching finally stopped and I heard a low, deep laugh outside the door. The scratching got more intense and my dog started barking. I told her to stop so that I could hear, but she wouldn't stop. I heard loud running from my door, down the hallway to the guest room and then a loud crash. I jumped up, grabbed my dog and ran out of the house. I went to my mom's for the night. When I came back in the morning, no one was there. Of course. I looked at the wall in the hallway and saw that there were deep scratches on my door leading down the hallway. It didn't look like scratches a human would make. They were extremely deep and thick like claws. I went into the guest room and saw that the closet mirror was cracked on the bottom as if someone had kicked it. I never sat out in that living room at night again and never had an experience like this again. We have since moved out of that house into a place in the same community, but it is much more updated. It was by far the scariest thing that has ever happened to me, and obviously I hope it never happens again. When I was 7 years old, I lived on 62nd Street Street. I had a ton of neighborhood kids that I played with every day. And the days were spent roller skating, riding bikes, and going from house to house playing with all my friends. It was 1981 and my parents were pretty relaxed about letting me leave and be gone all day until nightfall. I don't remember when I first saw Mr. Hinkle, the old man that lived at the end of the block. But I remember the other kids warning me about him. Make sure never to walk in front of Mr. Hinkle's house. If he sees you, he'll run out and chase you. Mr. Hinkle grabbed me and tried to drag me into his house one time when I was getting my Frisbee out of his front yard. Mr. Hinkle is the meanest old man in the world. Mr. Hinkle hates kids. After hearing all this, I was afraid, but I was also also intrigued. I wondered if he really was as mean as they had all said. Would he actually try to chase us? So over time, we all got a bit braver and started to walk in front of his house. Nothing happened. The first four Times we did it, but on the fifth time, I heard the screen door open, and there he was. I see a short, bald, wrinkled old man holding a wooden cane raised over his head, shouting at us kids to get off his property. He wasn't fast, but he began to shuffle out the door towards us. I noticed he was wearing slippers, and I was surprised by that for some reason. But then all of us ran as fast as lightning to get out of there. Once we were all the way down the block, we stopped running and began to laugh and talk, excited excitedly about what just happened. It was like seeing Bigfoot or the Wolf man and outrunning them. Seeing such a feeble and slow old man made us feel that he couldn't do anything to us. So after a couple of days, we decided to up the stakes just a little on our fascination with him. I dare you to knock on Mr. Hinkle's door. This dare went on between all of us kids for about two days before someone was finally brave enough to try. Was Mikey, the oldest boy of 10. As we all watched from the safety of some bushes across the street. None of us breathed as Mikey crept over to Mr. Hinkle's driveway. My stomach was in my throat as Mikey tiptoed over to the porch and the front door. Just as Mikey reached his arm out to bang on the door. Mr. Hinkle whisked the door open faster than we thought possible and grabbed Mikey by the arm. We heard him shouting at the boy, who was hopping up and down, trying to get away. We all screamed and ran in every direction to each of our houses. I ran so fast I never looked back. As I rushed in my house, breathlessly telling my mother about the kidnapping I just witnessed. She clearly didn't believe me and told me that I should be ashamed of myself for bothering a little old man. I was then forbidden from going down to Mr. Hinkle's house again and sent to my room. As I sat on my bed, I could only imagine what was happening to Mikey. The next day, as I rode my bike down the sidewalk, there was Mikey. I rushed over to ask him what happened. He dragged me into his house, and he was laughing because I couldn't get away. He had an ironed grip on my wrist, but my brothers taught me how to fight, so I kicked him right in the knee and he let me go. He was bent over, so I knew it had to hurt. My mom went and talked to him. After I told her what happened, she said she would call the police if we came near his house again. So I'm basically grounded. Wow. Me too, I said. After this, we all left the old man alone. It wasn't worth it. And after seeing Mikey get grabbed, it was just too scary to mess with. So life went on. Months went by. I only saw Mr. Hinkle one other time when a nurse was helping him get out of his car and walking him into his house. It looked like he had a nurse with him at all times, so we all assumed he was really sick. But as I said, life went on and we forgot all about mean old Mr. Hinkle. Until one day in October. It was about two weeks before Halloween and all of us kids were totally excited. The neighborhood was decorated and we talked about trick or treating, which houses were the best and and what costumes we were going to be playing. Somewhere in the middle of the block, we finally look over and notice that Mr. Hinkle is sitting in a lawn chair in the middle of his driveway. He never came outside, so this was definitely out of the ordinary. He was wearing a large brown fedora hat, a tan jacket and trousers, brown leather shoes. His cane was resting against his leg and on his lap was a huge punch bowl filled to the brim with candy. We watched him for a minute until he looked over at us and smiled. Ah, young children. Come and get some candy. He yelled. He then chuckled to himself, but kept smiling this weird, too large of a smile. It instantly felt like a trap. We huddled together and talked it over. Should we go over there? No. But he's got all that candy. It's a trick. I don't know. Let's just walk over. But don't cross the street. We finally all agreed. We slowly walked over towards the end of the block, making sure to stay on the opposite side of the street from his house. Yes, come children. Get you some candy. He bellowed as he saw us walking towards him. It was completely and totally weird. We all knew this was not right, but the temptation of candy was just too enticing for all of us. We had to know what the catch was. Finally, we are directly across the street from Mr. Hinkle. Come. Come on, have some candy. He would keep yelling. Mikey finally shrugged his shoulders and walked over. Mr. Hinkle just smiled and nodded his head. And Mikey gingerly grabbed a candy bar from the punch bowl. He stood there and opened it and Mr. Hinkle, seemingly understanding that Mikey was the test dummy, said, see? Don't you want some candy? My friend Beth then walked over and got some candy. She stood right there and ate it. Me and Angela exchanged looks and smiled. Guess it's alright. We ran across the street and both reached in and grabbed some candy. Good, Mr. Hinkle said we. We all stood there eating our candy and Mr. Hinkle, still smiling, said, go get some more. As we all clustered around the punch bowl, each of us grabbing more candy. Mr. Hinkle had picked up his cane without us noticing. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. He laughed as he began wailing on all of our heads with his cane. Get you some candy. Mr. Hinkle yelled and laughed as he swung the cane wildly, trying to hit us again. We were all stunned, but we all yelled and ran far enough away so that he couldn't reach us. We stood there watching him, confused as to why this little old man was so crazy. Finally, suddenly, his nurse came out and said, Mr. Hinkle, you get back in this house and leave those kids alone. And she bent to pull him up out of the chair, moving the candy to the ground. Mr. Hinkle was still wildly laughing and shaking his cane up to the sky as she led him inside. We all went home quietly wondering what just happened. Too young to understand. Two nights before Halloween, I heard sirens. I looked out my window to see an ambulance heading down the street and to see it stop in front of Mr. Hinkle's house. I saw lots of commotion, but I didn't know what was going on. I found out the next day that Mr. Hinkle died. I was sad but disturbed and I didn't know know why. Halloween night was a blast and after gorging on candy and watching all the Halloween cartoons that night I finally went to bed. I woke up to a loud thunderstorm. My bed laid directly underneath my window to my room. And when I was lying in bed, I could see outside. Lightning flashed and Mr. Hinkle was staring at me through my window. He was wearing his big brown fedora and he was tapping his cane against my window and he had that sickening too wide smile and crazy eyes. You got some candy, didn't you, you dirty little girl? He said in a sing song type of voice. I screamed and cried for my mother as I ran out of my room. My parents rolled their eyes, chalking it up to too much sugar and too much imagination. But I refused to sleep in my room for a week after that. The day after this happened, all of my friends talked about the terrible nightmare they had all had about Mr. Hinkle being outside their window. Every single one of us experienced the same thing. Everyone seemed seemed to accept it as just a bad shared nightmare. I was the only one who always wondered what really happened. Was I asleep? What was that thing outside my window? This is a disclaimer that I'm not the best storyteller. Recounting lived experiences in this format has never been my greatest strength. On top of that, I know, I know everyone says this about themselves at the start of every story, but I say this earnestly. I've never really experienced anything of the supernatural variety in my life life, and I do like to think of myself as a skeptical person. The thing is, I just don't know what to write this off as, and neither does my boyfriend with whom I shared this experience. For complete transparency's sake, I do have mental health problems, but none of the sort that include symptoms like auditory and visual hallucinations. As it stands, I have never had either. If my boyfriend hadn't been around to witness the very same thing, perhaps I would have questioned myself on that too. I have been having trouble sleeping lately and the reason why has never bugged me so much. A sound that chilled me to the bone when I was lying there in the dark. I would usually complain to my boyfriend about it in the morning and he would tell me flat out that he has experienced nothing similar and did not get woken up at any point either. When I did, we sleep with the window open almost every night and whether there was a breeze or a full blown storm, I have never heard noises quite like the ones that woke me up. Add to that the fact that noises have never much affected my sleep. I always fall asleep with something playing in the background and alarms have rarely ever successfully woken me up. Blocking out background noise is kind of key to getting some shut eye when you have rowdy upstairs neighbors and people that love recklessly speeding around town blasting music. My boyfriend has employed more hands on tactics to wake me up in the mornings when the sound of his voice alone at vault volume that would wake most anyone else up easily enough won't do. And he's kind enough to not just flat out yell. But this is all why it bothers me so much. Once I'm asleep, there's little to no noise that'll wake me. And I can say that with the confidence of the owner of a snoring dog, the girlfriend of a snoring man, and a loyal servant to two very active cats that aren't strangers to the occasional petty fight. Between the aforementioned snoring of my dog and man both, I heard what I can only describe as a cackle. A very high Pitched one at bat without being definably feminine or masculine. It sounded mean spirited, like I was being laughed at. If that sounds silly, perhaps it is in broad daylight, fully awake and alert. Perhaps it wouldn't have creeped me out half as much as it did. But in that very moment I was unable to open my eyes. I could not force myself if I tried, let alone to move and potentially turn on a light to look for the source of that noise. The second time I heard a similar noise noise. It woke me up from some of the deepest sleep I had had in weeks. The same high pitch, but this time no laugh, but instead something that sounded like someone struggling to speak. It sounded inquisitive and curious, but whatever was being said was completely lost on me at the time. Only after the third noise that woke me up did it occur to me what might have been said. I have been thinking so hard about it and I'm sure I heard a very clear J. I believe it was someone trying to figure out or recall my dog's name. Because on that third occasion I felt my blood run cold hearing someone very clearly saying my dog's name. I know my boyfriend's voice. Up and down, tired and high energy. It's rather distinctive sounding too, and I knew immediately upon waking up it was not my boyfriend. Not just that, but it was a long time before we both fell asleep specifically because of said dog. There was a lot of Jack this, Jack that, get off my blanket. Jack not even at his most tired. Did my boyfriend ever sound like that. I don't think his voice can reach that pitch at all. Up until the most recent and last thing that happened. I chalked this all up to exhaustion, bad dreams, stress I might have had. But that's all out the window now. All I am left wondering now is why anyone would want to steal my dog. Don't get me wrong, he's a lovely pooch, but he is by far not an insanely expensive or rare breed. Nor is he exceptionally well mannered. I'm not even sure that he's a purebred beagle. In spite of the seller's insistence. Not that I personally care, that last thing is in my memory as fresh as if it happened yesterday, even though it's been a good two weeks. Weeks now. This time it was my boyfriend who woke up. Our apartment is due to no fault of our own. Quite the hellhole. I could tell a whole different horror story about our landlady's incompetence and her moronic cousin that she paid 30 bucks to repair our front door. But if you've been listening this far, I won't bore you further. You might have already guessed, however, that that one especially bothersome issue that we have with the apartment is said front door, which never properly closes. There is a quite visible gap that has been annoying my boyfriend to no end, because this gap, paired with the neighbors that can neither read nor listen and will without fail always leave the hallway doors open, ensures that there's a draft most uncomfortable when you're trying to sleep and temperatures outside are in the minus. That draft is what woke my boyfriend up, and consequently my boyfriend woke me up. It's 3am at that point and I'm being awoken by my boyfriend literally dashing over me to get out of bed and he blurts out a question you can probably imagine with two dogs and two very curious house cats sent my pulse absolutely racing. Did you leave the front door open? Just as confused and admittedly a little annoyed at the perceived accusation in that tired state of mind, I managed to tell him no. And yet I could hear the door repeatedly hitting the wall as the wind whistled into our little apartment apartment. But that was by far not the worst. I heard the quick light clicks of dog claws on the tiles of the hallway outside and I just about lost my mind then and there. But the time I had gotten up, my boyfriend was rushing out the door and after the dog. So even though I knew he'd get to him first, I still hurried after him just in case. I was halfway to the dog door and my boyfriend halfway out when we both realized there was light when there shouldn't be the dull orange glow of the street lamps outside seeping in by the open hallway door. Before either of us could even think to cuss out loud, we both heard the voice that time very, very clearly. Someone called to my dog, and although it was was clear it was not loud. It was a perverse hoarse sounding but no less high pitched imitation of that sort of soft and cheery tone that's sure to get your dog come running, tail wagging for some cuddles or treats. And that he did or would have done if it wasn't for my boyfriend instinctively bolting in consideration of the open outside door and someone very clearly attempting to lure our dog away. After that, it all happened very fast. We both just barely saw someone slipping away from the doorway as my boyfriend, in pure anger and shock, yelled profanities I'll refrain from translating up until the moment he had caught the dog by his collar the sound of fast footsteps, steps headed away from us. Not just running, but outright sprinting was nearly instantly audible the second he began pulling the dog away from the open door that he had reached about almost halfway. My boyfriend did go on to pass me the dog by his collar and sent me on inside with him, deciding to see for himself if he could still catch up to the lunatic whose doings these were. But. But unfortunately that went nowhere. It came back to me defeated and out of breath and freezing cold to boot. He said that he caught a glimpse of someone one last time as they headed around a corner up the road leading to the local animal shelter, but he was too cold and breathless to continue the pursuit. I didn't blame him, and I still don't. It was it was risky to begin with. Nothing else has happened since other than countless talks about it and a call to the animal shelter to warn them. And while we're still in shock, all they had to say to our warnings was equivalent to ridiculed. They said it was probably just a fox or boar that had wandered too far off of park limits and agitated our dog. How on earth does that explain two open doors and someone quite literally vocally coaxing our dog? Our door is always locked and there was no sign of forced entry, no scratch marks, no busted lock, nothing other than a gross greasy residue on the hallway doorknob and muddy footprints that look like someone has been walking around barefoot. We have found nothing and no one. For privacy reasons, I won't disclose where this happened. The town I grew up in has a rich and unique history and thankfully it is actually positive. The man who put the town on the map left an important legacy on the town, which I have benefited from. The town isn't all too exciting for locals, but I have seen a lot of tourists go nuts for the various attractions. There is a theme park that has its own ghost stories of people seeing children who drowned in the old pool that used to be around the place park. The community center's theater section has ghost sightings of a maintenance worker that hung himself on the fifth floor. I work at the town's museum. The building itself is fairly new. However, the artifacts that we display and collect in our archives are very interesting. We get a lot of reports of things moving around on their own. The archives has a collection collection of Native American arrowheads that are very active. Even the chairs in the tastings area seem to move around from day to day. The first story that I personally witnessed was the weird noises that came from the cafe's kitchen. Our museum also has A food lab where we teach classes and have guests create their own piece to take home and eat to keep unnecessary cleaning chemicals away from the food. In the lab, we share a dishwasher with the cafe. The lab is connected by a swinging door and leads right into the back of the cafe's kitchen. I had a shift in the lab one day and it was eerily quiet. The cafe closes before the museum, so once the staff from the cafe leave, it gets pretty creepy in the back kitchen. There are a few times that I've heard weird noises from the kitchen when no one was there. It just sounded like someone repeatedly banging on the dishwasher or refrigerator. This quiet shift got weirder when the noises started up again. I didn't want to go back into the kitchen, so I waited in the back of the lab for the next class to start. That's when we heard noises on the lab's walkie. All departments in the museum have a walkie to connect to the manager on duty when needed. But we don't turn the lab's walkie on as not to interrupt classes. The charging port also rarely gets plugged in because we need the outlets for other equipment. Needless to say, the walkie shouldn't have been doing anything because it wasn't turned on and it was dead. But it clicked on for a few seconds like someone had been pressing the button to speak into it. The light flashed and then it was dead again. The other lab instructor and I both looked at each other and then looked back at the walkie. After telling this story to my co workers, I found out that there were other weird things going on with the walkies and people have heard gargled noises like someone was trying to communicate through them. The next story was one my boss told me. She said that before she was promoted, she worked as a part time employee in the tasting section. One random week, there was a wheelchair from the local hospital that showed up near one of the shop entrances. The manager called the hospital and had someone come and pick up the wheelchair. It was a weird enough experience until it happened again the next day. Day the same wheelchair appeared and someone from the hospital came and picked it up. It happened again and even a fourth time until the manager had an idea. Instead of calling someone to come get the wheelchair, she would just leave it there and see what happened. The next day it had disappeared and no one saw it again. To this day, we still still have weird instances with the wheelchairs that we keep in the building. There is no explanation and I doubt there ever will. Be. It's. It's.