This is going to sound like one of those crazy stories you read on the internet, but let me assure you, this is more than just a tall tale designed to feed the sick minds of teens looking to get their next scare, or to scare children into playing nice, this actually happened and I still to this day, don’t understand how or why.
When I was about 6 or 7 I was living in a house on Black Pit Drive, in fact, I’d been living in that house since the day my mother brought me home from the hospital, and I had a lot of weird s**t happen to me over the years, but nothing gets weirder than this. While living on Black Pit Drive I had a close friend named Tommy, my mother gave me a lot of freedom to a child of that age, I could go to the end of the street to Tommy’s house and play out on the street unsupervised, but her one rule was, I don’t go onto Redwood Lane, which was the next street over.
Being the kids we were, one day, we decided we’d take a little walk down Redwood Lane, I’m not going dress it up as something it’s not, it was the mid 90’s, the sun was high in the sky, the smell of fresh cut grass filled the air and trees lined the streets. Walking down that street, everything was normal and we found ourself venturing onto Redwood Lane most days, this is where we met “Friendy”. Friendy was the name we gave to a specific tree, we don’t know why, or what kept us going back to that tree, but we did, we would go to see this tree a couple of times a week, speak to it, give it hug, and say out goodbyes. The last time I actually remember visiting Friendy with Tommy was this one day when Tommy was picking moss from the tree and I yelled at him,
“Stop hurting Friendy!” I shouted, like the moss was a part of the tree, and Tommy was picking it apart piece by piece,
“Sorry Friendy,” Tommy said, with a shaky voice, before we said our goodbyes for the day,
From this day on, Tommy never joined me on my visits to that tree, but I felt obligated to going around, talking to the tree and giving it a big hug every couple of days, in my mind, I was it’s only friend. It was a couple of weeks after this when I first heard Friendy speak, it turned out Friendy was male and had a very calm and soothing voice, he would speak to me in my dreams on the days that I didn’t visit, but I genuinely believed this tree heard everything I said the days previous, I believed that he would visit me in my dreams just to reply to what I had to say and to tell me about his day, I believed this tree was one of the best friends I ever had.
One day, I went round to Tommy’s house to tell him the exciting news, after knocking on the door Tommy’s dad answered,
“Oh, hello Mr. Hadden, is Tommy playing out?” I asked with excitement in my voice,
“No Robert, no he is not, he’s grounded,” Tommy’s dad replied, closing the door,
I felt, at that minute in time, like Mr. Hadden didn’t want me playing with Tommy at all, like him telling me Tommy was grounded was something personal against me and what he was actually saying was,
“I don’t want Tommy playing with you!”
Thinking back, this wasn’t the case, but I was a child with a very over-active imagination. As soon as Mr. Hadden closed the door I went straight round to see Friendy, I only had two friends and one of them wasn’t allowed out.
“Friendy, Tommy’s dad is being horrible to me, he won’t let me play with Tommy,” I said, sobbing,
I sat there for a while ranting about how horrible Mr. Hadden was being, then saying how it was my birthday soon and my mum was getting me a new Sage game, World Of Illusion Staring Micky Mouse, then I gave Friendy a hug and said goodbye.
The next day Tommy came round to my house with him mum, she was dropping him off as she had to go to the hospital, at 7:46 that morning Mr. Hadden was discovered with a rope around his neck, hanging from the tree that Tommy and I called “Friendy”. I never did tell Tommy what I said to that tree, and to help cheer him up, my mum gave me World Of Illusion as an early birthday present, we played that game all day long, until eventually, Tommy’s mum came to pick him up and they went home. Friendy appeared to me in a dream that night and said I didn’t have to worry about Mr. Hadden anymore,
“Mr. Hadden has gone,” Friendy said, in his usual, calm, angelic voice,
I woke up from this dream and climbed out of my bed to look out of my window, staring up at the clear night sky and seeing the stars twinkle and a million heavenly candles, I just knew that somehow, Friendy had something to do with Mr. Hadden’s assumed suicide,
“Thank you Friendy,” I whispered as if this tree had just done me a favour.
In the morning I was on my way to Tommy’s house but I decided to walk the long way round, taking a detour down Redwood Lane, I knew Tommy wouldn’t want to see Friendy, certainly not after his dad was found dead there, so I went alone, before going to Tommy’s. As I got close to Friendy a huge smile filled my face,
“Hello Friendy!” I said excitedly,
“He’s talking to that tree again!” two kids laughed from across the street,
I ran away out of embarrassment, sobbing all the way to Tommy’s house,
“He’s not just a tree, he’s my best friend,” I thought to myself
When I got to Tommy’s his mum was sat in the front garden smoking a cigarette, I’d never seen this woman smoke before and was a bit taken back by the sight,
“That’s dirty, Mrs. Hadden,” I said, over the fence
“Oh I know Robert,” she replied, “I shouldn’t do it really, should I?”
“No Mrs. Hadden, it’s dirty and it’s bad, is Tommy playing out?”
“No sorry Robert, he’s not today, but you can go in and see him if you like,”
“Thank you!”
I went inside and we sat playing on his brother’s Sega for a while, fighting our way through the levels of Altered Beast and Streets Of Rage, his brother always had the more violent games and I imagined every enemy on those games to be the two kids who were laughing at me for talking to Friendy. I told Tommy all about them,
“He’s not just a tree, he’s Friendy,pajamas” Tommy said, “They’re stupid anyway!” he laughed.
After completing both games Mrs. Hadden called us both down for dinner,
“I hope you’re hungry Robert, I’ve made you a little something too,” she said with a slight smile on her face,
“Thank you, Mrs. Hadden!”
Just as we were finishing up Tommy’s mum called from the hallway,
“Robert, your dad’s here for you,”
“Coming!”
I ran to the front door and straight into my dad’s arms,
“Ready to go?”
“Yes dad,” I replied, “Thank you for dinner, Mrs. Hadden,”
“You’re welcome Robert, see you tomorrow,”
As my dad and I were walking down the garden path, he grabbed me from behind and swung me up into the air, placing me on his shoulders,
“What have you done today?” he asked
“Oh, just play on the Sega,”
“You and that bloody Sega,” he laughed
When we got home it was getting close to my bedtime so I went straight upstairs and changed into my pyjamas before my dad came up, turned on my Thomas The Tank Engine night light, and read me a bedtime story.
The next day, I was sitting in front of the TV watching Pokemon and eating my cereal when Tommy came walking into the living room,
“Your mum just let me in, guess what?!” he exclaimed, “Those two boys who laughed at you, they’re dead!”
“What? How?” I asked,
“They were picking bits off Friendy and a big branch fell on their head!”
I instantly knew that Friendy had done this, just like he did with Mr. my mother had overheard our conversation from the next room, and a couple of weeks after this we moved. It turns out that te reason she didn’t want me and Tommy playing on Redwood Lane is because every 20 years strange things start happening on that street, people start dying due to suicides and accidental deaths, and I think I know why… Friendy.
This was in 1996 when this happened, and yesterday, I went to see Friendy again.
