Trippy Tales # 80..."Lurking In The Shadows"

Is the "Hat Man" (aka) the "Shadow Man" real?  Or just a mass delusion of our imagination?  Many people swear they've seen him lurking in the shadows, giving off an intense feeling of doom & dread. Such as the reader below...This story comes from Andrea Witon Paulo, who claims to have had more than one experience with this mysterious being...

"From what I remember, I was having a normal dream, until HE showed up. A man dressed from head to toe in black..." 

His outfit consisted of a long trench coat, gloves, dress pants, and a top hat that was pulled down over his eyes. As soon as I saw him, a feeling of intense fear came over me and I had the overwhelming urge to wake up. 

Normally, I'm able to wake up from my nightmares easily, but in this one, it took every bit of energy I had. It was as if every cell in my body was being pulled down by the force of gravity. As if something was trying to pull me back into the nightmare. 

I struggled up to what felt like the surface of the ocean, and when I broke that surface, I was awake. However, the fight wasn't over yet. As soon as I was back in the physical world, I knew something was wrong. I couldn't move. I started freaking out. Inside, I was screaming and crying out for help. I'm not religious, but believe me, I was praying my heart out. I couldn't even open my eyes.

Then, I felt something. It was like a tug. There isn't really any other way to describe it, other than it felt like something was trying to pull out my soul!

I resisted as best I could, but the effort from waking had drained all my strength. I was sucked back into the dream. Only this time, the dream was different...

 I found myself in a small room. The man was there, standing between a counter and a huge bookshelf, both cluttered with unidentifiable objects. He was holding something in his hands. It looked like a crystal ball with a mysterious fog trapped inside of it. 

The fog swirled and churned, as if it were trying to escape. The man looked up and placed the ball down. He took a few gliding steps forward so that he was in front of the right side of the counter, from my perspective. He took another step closer to me, then said, "Welcome back, Andrea," and grinned. That was probably the scariest moment of my life.

His voice is hard to describe. It was very silky and dark, but had an alluring quality to it as well. I felt like a deer in headlights; unable to move or think. All I could do was stand perplexed, frozen, as he drifted closer and closer. Then I heard something...

I'm not sure if it was my own mind, or some entity that wanted to save me, but it was screaming, "Get out of there, NOW!" The voice snapped me out of whatever trance I was in, and I was able to close my eyes and focus all my willpower to waking up and getting as far away from him as possible. Just before I left that little room, I opened my eyes and saw the man lunge for me. "No!" he yelled. It sounded like a command full of rage and hatred. He was too late. I already felt myself rising to my conscience body...

 I woke from the nightmare, but I was still unable to move. I panicked again and was afraid I would be sucked back in. However, this time, I was so freaked out that my adrenaline rush enabled me to move enough to open my eyes and barely roll over to turn the lamp next to my bed on. As soon as light flooded the room, the heaviness faded from my body as well as the tense atmosphere. I lay in my bed soaked in sweat, panting, shivering, and tingling all over. I was happy though. I knew I had beaten him. 

That was my first encounter with him. It was pretty freaky... I even told my mom about it the next morning, but she said it was just a dream. "

But was it "just a dream?"  Stay tuned as we delve further in to this strange, yet, extremely common phenomena.

Oh, and by the way...

you might wanna consider investing in a night light! ;)

~Queenie~

TRIPPY TALES #79..."THE GRINNING BOY"

"THE GRINNING BOY"

BY MRS. AMANDA CLAREBOL @ "your true tales"/about.com

"My husband and I are newlyweds. We got married on May 2, 2009. We are both in our early 20s and we live in New York City. We did a thorough search and finally settled into our two-story loft apartment. We got a great deal on the place and I fell in love with the old-fashioned chandeliers and big windows.

We had only lived here about a month, though, when I began to notice strange occurrences. John, my husband, works long hours and I am currently unemployed, so I spend a lot of time alone. It is becoming apparent that I am not quite all that alone in this big empty house.

When we moved in, we noticed what seemed to be extra latches on all the doors (bathroom door, bedroom, even crawl-space doors) and nails in the windows so that we could not open them. One day when John and I came home from being away all day, we noticed that the window by our bed was shattered. Furious that someone outside had thrown a ball through it, we searched the room but came up with nothing.

Later that night, when we had gone to bed, there was a sudden "SMASH!" John and I bolted upright, and to our disbelief, the cracked window had opened all by itself! The rest of the glass that remained in the window previously had fallen out when it banged open again. We cleaned up the glass and taped clear plastic over the window for the time being.

These occurrences seem to happen more frequently when John isn't home: an extra step on the stairs behind me when I've finished walking down them, doors rattling and trying to break free of their extra latches, loud dragging noises in the crawl spaces, sounds of people stomping around in the very room I happen to be sitting in (and of course seeing nobody there!), loud banging noises in the walls when I'm trying to nap, doors flying open by themselves when they aren't latched.

Just yesterday, when I had gone to bed early and John was still at work, I heard heavy footfalls coming up the stairs. Assuming it was John, I wasn't alarmed and listened to the footsteps move from the stairs into the hallway and stop outside my door. I waited for him to come in for about five minutes, and when he didn't I got up and peeked out. There was nobody there.

Earlier today as I was folding laundry and putting it away, I heard those same footsteps coming up the stairs, move into the hallway and stop outside my door. Instinctively, I looked up to my open doorway and, of course, nobody was there. But what I saw next sent me into shock...

Down the hall, there's a window that looks out over the street. As clear as day, I saw a grinning boy staring at me through the window! I screamed and the boy continued staring, his evil little grin filled with utter malice. Quickly, I jumped up and slammed the door, bolting it. I hid in my room until John came home and I hysterically told him what I'd seen. We went to the window and looked down... the window is on the third floor up and there's just no way anyone could have been standing or sitting just beyond the glass!

John is staying home with me tomorrow and we're going to start looking for new apartments! I think the evil of this house can sense that I know it's there and therefore, targets me. But I am so emotionally disturbed I cannot sleep at night! I fear this house so much and cannot wait to leave!"
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(Check it out! Look for the womans' face! 3rd pane from the bottom...right hand side)  Also, there are orbs ALL OVER the room! Freaky!)

~Queenie~

Thanks for visiting the playhouse! Check back tomorrow for a brand new blog!

Trippy Tales #78...More Terrifying Tells To Make You Yell!

"THE FACE BEHIND THE COUCH"

By Pernilla from Sweden @ "yourghoststories.com

"It all happened when I was around 6-7 years old... 

It was a Saturday morning, around 7am, and I was the first one to wake up. I walked to the living room, sat down on the couch and put on the TV. The rest of my family was still asleep and I knew that they would not wake up until 9am or something.

While watching a cartoon, I got this strange feeling that I had to look to my left. Now, we had this corner couch and I was sitting all the way to the right, and when I looked to the left, I saw a face disappear behind the backrest!

You may not believe me, but this is actually true. 

I actually saw a face, that was looking and smiling at me, disappear behind the couch. 

I remember that I didn't get too scared, just a bit shocked. I was just sitting there, not moving and just looking at the empty place where I had seen the face. After maybe a few minutes, I stood up and walked slowly to the back of the couch, but when I got there...nothing. I was alone in the living room.

I know that this was not a dream and I know that this face didn't belong to any of my family members because I didn't hear any footsteps and no crackings on the floors and... Nobody in my family is bald... 

This memory has been following me ever since and I'm still wondering what or who it could have been.

My mom has told me that when I was around 5, she could hear me talking to somebody in my room. She slowly walked to my room and looked inside. She saw me talking and looking at something that was not there. It looks like I have had imaginary friends, so maybe this bald face was one of them.

What do you guys think? Thank you for reading! :)

"THE TRIP DOWN THE STAIRS"

By MmLuvXx @ "yourghoststories.com

"When I was nearly 6, I had just come home from school and had gone upstairs to get changed... 

When I was finished I had just come out of my bedroom and I had heard this voice saying "step over the body". I thought this was strange because I had been hearing voices like that for a while saying "Be careful" and "Don't fall down" and other things like that.

The voice was quite blurry but I made out what it said. I didn't really understand what it meant until I got to the stair case and pulled my leg out to step on the top stair. Then I felt something hard like there was a person or box and then I tripped over it.I fell down the stairs and broke my leg but as I looked up, there was nothing on the stairs or the landing I could have fallen or tripped on.

Since then, I step over the last step, even if someone is in front of me I step over it, coming up or going down. Fortunately a few years ago I moved house. Unfortunately the same incident happened but without the voices and since then I still step over the top step.

Recently, I told some of my friends in senior/high school the story. They just laughed but I don't want to tell my teachers because they might just think I'm mad. I didn't tell my parents, I just told them I lost balance and I'm a bit scared that something will happen to me again.

A similar incident happened to my cousin in the same house and some of my friends said that they felt someone was watching them. My mam said she felt it get colder. I did a background check on my family and apparently, one of my great great great great grand-parents had died on the top stair in a really big house, but not in the house that I'm in now."

Stay Tuned For More Trippy Tales...

Sneakin' up on you soon! ;)

Trippy Tales #77..."The Thing In The Dark"

By Kathy @ your true tales

"This incident took place when I was 8 years old in 2001. I am 16 now, but I still remember it like it was yesterday. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. I had lived in that house for all of my life. It wasn't until after my parents decided to open up the attic that weird things started to happen...

I would see shadow people, as you would say, but whenever I told my mom about them, she would just say it was my imagination... so that's what I would tell myself, that it was just my imagination.

Well, one night I was 100 percent positive I could not have imagined a creature like that. Every night since I was little, I would always wake up in the middle of the night (usually around 3), then just fall back asleep. One night I woke up, but I woke up with something staring at me. It was about 3 to 4 feet tall, it had a huge head with a tiny white "eye" in the middle. My room was dark, but the creature's body was so dark that I could perfectly see the outline of it in the dark.

My first reaction was literally... "What?!" I just stared at it because I didn't know what it was. I was just curious. My mother told me it was just my imagination, so I pretended I was asleep and turned over to turn on the light. (The light switch for the closet light was right next to my bed.) I turned over to see what it was. When I looked, there was nothing there, so I tried to figure out what it was. Maybe a stack of clothing... but there was nothing there. Maybe a shadow of some sort... but my curtains were closed and there couldn't possibly be anything that could have made the shadow. So in the end, I just fell asleep.

The next night, I slept with the lights off because I forgot the previous incident. I went to bed and again woke up around the same time. I saw "it" again! This time it was standing right next to the light switch. I was stubborn: I told myself that I was going to prove to myself that this was just my imagination. I sat up in bed and put my legs over the edge of the bed. As I got up, the creature tilted its head and looked up at me as I looked down at it. My thoughts went blank. My head was empty. I felt no fear, nothing... just emptiness.

Then my hand moved up to turn on the light, and as I turned the lights on, it vanished before my eyes in a purple smoke. This is when I started to think it was not all just in my head.

The next night, I woke up at the same time again. When I opened my eyes, I saw two of those little creatures! One was standing on my sister's bed and the other was standing between our beds. The one on my sister's bed just stared at me; it literally looked like it was pissed off at me. The other one was walking around looking at me, then turning to my sister, then looking at me again, and turning to her again... it did this repeatedly. Then it started lightly tapping the top of my sis's bed. It wasn't hard, though, so she didn't wake up. It looked like they where trying to choose between me and my sister, and it seemed to have liked her.

At this point I'm like, "What do I do?" The next thing I knew, I acted like I was sleeping, then quickly turned over, turned on the light and ran out my room without looking back. I just ran straight to my parents' room. I woke up my mom and told her there were things in my room. She didn't believe me and just said it was my imagination.

She took me back to my room, put me in my sister's bed, turned off the lights and closed the door... and just left me there. I did not sleep at all that night. I just lay there in bed wide awake, staring at my room, wondering if they were going to come back or not. I was so petrified! I didn't fall asleep until the sun came out! Since that day, I have not fallen asleep in a dark room by myself. The only way I can sleep in a dark room is if someone is awake next to me.

I am still scared they might come back."

Trippy Tales # 76..."The Hinsdale Haunting"

From paranormal blogspot.com:

In 1970, Clara and Phil Dandy moved in to a century-old farmhouse in Hinsdale, New York, leaving the chaos of city life behind. Shortly after, their son Mike befriends some local boys. They decided to explore the nearby woods one day and encounter something unexpected. Upon spotting a hunter, they begin to follow him until he mysteriously disappeared right before their eyes sending the boys running from the forest. This would be the beginning of a stressful four years.

A couple of weeks later, Clara walked the family dog in the very same woods and heard strange chanting. One night, board games were pulled off a shelf on to Mike's bed waking him from a deep sleep. They also experienced mysterious burns on their bodies, bricks pulled from a crawlspace chimney dismantled and placed in the middle of the room, a female spirit spotted wandering the house and witnessed "energy orbs". All these experiences led the Dandy's to contact Rev. Alphonsus Trabold from nearby St. Bonaventure University to rid themselves of the haunting in 1974.

After a few phone calls, Rev. Trabold arrived at the house with psychic Alex Tanous. Tanous relays to the Dandy's that the house was a stop on the stagecoach route. Tells them he saw several bodies in the crawl space of travelers who were robbed and killed or died of natural causes. Claimed he sensed seven spirits under those stairs. Several days after the visit, Mike had a car accident suffering a ruptured spleen and head injuries. He told state troopers someone was in the car with him but no trace of another person was ever found.

After Mike recovered from his injuries, Rev. Trabold and Alex Tanous made another visit. Tanous contacted the spirits haunting the property telling them to move on. Then, Father Al and the family joined together and performed a "common exorcism", an exorcism of a house or object. The ritual brought peace to the family and calmed the paranormal activity...for a few months. After the activity returned, the family decided to move out. They couldn't find a buyer and had to declare bankruptcy, but managed to leave for California in 1975.

Clara later penned a book about their experiences entitled Echoes of a Haunting (A House in The Country). The house has also been the subject of a docudrama and featured on an episode of the Discovery Channel's A Haunting. The famed house on McMahon Road has made a jump back in to recent news. Current owners Florence and Joseph Misnik have lived in the house since 1986. Their experiences have not compared to that of the Dandy's. Flo saw a man in blue jeans with a rifle in their bedroom. They have often heard the sounds of a phantom car in their driveway and smelled cigar smoke even though neither smokes.

Now in their 80s, the subject of the structures future is in question. Michael Rambacher, a friend of the Misniks and medium/paranormal investigator, is in the process of trying to acquire the house from them in order to establish a paranormal research centre. Rambacher is in the process of trying to raise enough money to pay off their mortgage and make necessary repairs to the dwelling. He hopes the couple will then donate the house and land to paranormal research with the assurances they can remain on the property until their deaths. The Misniks believe the house has a lot of history and don't want it to disappear in to ruins.

To read more about the Hinsdale Haunting, please visit the facebook page at the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/notes/the-dandy-house/the-dandy-house-the-haunting-the-stories-the-folklore-the-bs-setting-it-straight/223890721001621

Or just look for it online...there's a whole slew of information about it on the web! :-)

Thanks for visiting the playhouse! I hope you return real soon!

 Until then...we'll leave the fright light on for ya!  ;-)

~Queenie~