So to start this out I’m going to tell you a little bit about myself. I’m currently 29, I was born, raised and still live in central Ohio. I grew up in the woods in the country but I was never sheltered. I’ve been all over the state, all over the country, I’ve seen many things I’m very cultured. I’m not a religious person though my mother is and I was raised around Christians. I’m not spiritual I do not believe in ghosts, demons, angels or anything supernatural. However, some of the things I have experienced may not fall underneath that category but I still cannot explain them to this day.
The first incident happened when I was about five, I was going to this little preschool in the woods up on a hill in a small farm town called Bremen. Few people have been told these stories and the ones I have told all ask me in the beginning, you were so young how can you be sure what you saw, how can you remember that? Well, I’m not sure. I was young, so young that this didn’t even register until years later when I had another incident which triggered this memory to slowly start appearing in my mind like an old time light-sensitive photograph slowly appearing in a darkroom. The experience I had when I was 5 was quite mild. So mild that if I had no other experiences that memory would have been forgotten. Again, I was in preschool and there was only about six or seven of us in this class plus our teacher had a nephew of hers that was just a year or two younger than the rest of us. He wasn’t quite ready for preschool but it was the teacher’s nephew so I think that’s why he was there.
That day the teacher went all out and brought all kinds of stuff for our lunch since it was close to our last day. It was a really nice day so she decided on having a picnic outside. I remember her sending us out in teams of two with tasks for each group to set up for this picnic. Me and my partner were in charge of picking a spot and laying down the blanket. The next group was in charge of utensils, next was the drinks and so on. After each group was done with their task we would come back inside to wait for the next group to depart until we were set up and we could go outside and eat together. The last group was the food and yes my teacher had one of those standard picnic baskets like from Yogi the Bear with the fold-up lids and plaid cloth lining the inside of it. It had been a few minutes and the food team had not returned from taking the food out to the picnic, so our teacher round us all up and we headed outside.
As we walked around the corner we saw our preschool mate Maria bawling her eyes out, shirt ripped, bits of food smashed and scattered in an unorganized path leading to the woods as the teachers nephew Matthew just sat there on the blanket staring into that direction. Our teacher immediately freaked out running over to both of them making sure they were okay, nobody was hurt and asking what happened. It had looked like a wild animal came out of the woods and attacked these kids. Maria couldn’t say a word she was so terrified and Matthew, well the only thing he could get out of his mouth was “little people”. Now as my teacher tried to get more information from them and still seeing if they were okay I was curious where the picnic basket went so I started to follow the trail of food. As I get to the edge of the woods I can see the picnic basket about 10 to 20 feet in and that plain cloth hanging from a bush a few feet further back. Now as I’m looking at this basket something catches my eye further into the woods. Yes I was young yes this was a long time ago but I can still see it in my head today. I saw someone running away. I thought what I saw was another kid. A kid with long hair. This kid was short, he was small, real small. By this time my teacher realized where I was and yelled for me to return to the group and get away from the woods. She believed it was a dog that attacked us and she had told everybody’s parents that’s what had happened. I tried to explain to everybody it was the kid with the long hair but nobody believed me nobody would think that a kid our age, would steal other kids lunches and run into the woods. But me Maria and Matthew know it was no dog that stole our lunch that day.
Fast forward about 10 years, I’d say I was about 15 years old. By this time I had completely forgotten about my experience at preschool, like I said it was a mild experience so it hadn’t even registered in my mind. It was a weekend it was summertime and my parents were out of town. My sister is older so she was off at college at this time so I was the only one home. I wasn’t left at home alone too often due to being in and out of trouble I hadn’t built much trust with my parents. With that being said I was quite excited to have the house to myself. But what had happened that night has made me never want to be alone again. I wasn’t afraid back then we lived in the country in the woods there wasn’t many people around and it was a good area we kept our vehicles unlocked, we kept things outside, there was no crimes other than maybe some kids playing some pranks every once in a while. Although we had a Solarium glass window that was an entire half of our living room and it faced the woods. So at night you couldn’t see out that window into the woods but I knew if anything was out there it could see in. This wasn’t even a thought in my mind that night though. Being able to have the house to myself was the only thing on my mind.
I was having a great time, I had the music blaring, made my own dinner, milkshakes, I even took the big screen into my bedroom so I could eat snacks and watch TV in bed. After I had overloaded on junk food and inappropriate TV I passed out. Next I remember slowly waking up to a sound it almost sounded like our dog cleaning himself, which really annoys me. But as I come to and out of my sleepy haze the noise becomes more clear to me that it’s something munching. It wasn’t my dog, it sounded slower. It was something taking its time eating. Something was eating the snacks I left by my bed. As I lay there with my eyes clinched still trying to think what I was hearing eat, I heard my glass of water slide across the table by my bed. Next I heard tiny little gulping noises with a little whistle at the end of every swallow. This terrified me there was nothing in my house that drank like that and it suddenly popped in my head that I fell asleep without closing the garage and locking the door. At this point I was so scared I don’t know if the adrenaline is what gave me the courage to sit up and open my eyes but I did just that. And as fast as I sat up and open my eyes I regretted that decision. Because there looking back at me was that kid with the long hair. But this was no kid. This was not human. It had eerie similarities to people but it was tiny it stood no taller than my bedside table.
It was hairy, its hands and fingers were long and skinny with long fingernails. Its mouth was open as if it was shocked that I sat up and caught it. Inside that dark tiny mouth besides my bedside snacks was a set of misshaped orange teeth, the same color of a groundhogs teeth. I knew this because our Doberman had dragged a dead groundhog home last summer with its jaw ripped open exposing those odd orange-colored teeth. I screamed as loud as I could and it suddenly took off running out of my bedroom, my memory was jogged and I instantly pictured my preschool picnic and the kid with long hair running through the woods. It ran out of my house as I heard the door slam behind it I ran as fast as I could and locked it. I was just about to reach for the phone and call the police or somebody and I seen my parents headlights pulling up the driveway. This was a sign of relief and I slowly started to calm down knowing my parents were home. But as they reached the top of the driveway and turned in the headlights faced the woods that are outside of the solarium glass window and as the lights shined into the woods I glanced out and all I see is sets of reflecting eyes looking back.