15 May 2019 | Haunted houses, Haunted locations, Old hag, Shadow people, Your Stories, Your True Encounters
I was born and raised in Tucson,Az. The youngest of four children. When I was about 5 years old we moved into the house I would spend most of my childhood. It was a new neighborhood at the time in the early 80”s on the northwest side of town.
The house was a simple 3-bedroom ranch style house. It looked pretty much like all the other houses on the block.
I was pretty fortunate that there were a few kids my age to play with. I became good friends with the kid next door. Wesley was his name. He was a year younger but he loved G.I. Joe as much as I did. We played G.I. Joe all the time and when we weren’t playing G.I.Joe we were exploring the desert behind the neighborhood.
I would say that we were very lucky that we never ran into rattlesnakes or scorpions, but one thing we found often were satanic symbols along the wash wall and the pentagrams with ashes from whatever was burned and the occasional cat that was used as a sacrifice. Who would of guessed that they would be a sign of things to come.
I had a fair understanding of what these symbols represented for the most part. I have two brothers that were very involved with a fundamental church at that time and often talked about the works of the devil and saw demons behind every rock and bush. Little did I know that one day one of these demons would crawl from under one of those rock to terrorize me.
In the time that I lived in that house I would come to be terrorized by what may have been a shadow person or quite possibly a hat man. I never had an experience until one fateful day in the summer between second and third grade.
I was over at Wesley’s playing G.I.Joe as usual, when his mom asked me to come over to her room. I approached the entrance of the room not thinking anything of it. I noticed the mother, the father and a couple other people I did not recognize standing around the room. They asked if I wanted to see something really cool. I said sure. One of the men that I did not recognized started to say something. I didn’t know what it was he was saying but suddenly something shot out from under the bed or perhaps between the mattress and the box spring. It came to the center top of the bed completely underneath the covers.There was a large lump but quickly the blanket formed around this thing and took the form of a Native American warrior complete with head dress and tomahawk from the waist up. It was not perfect detail but you could make out the from quite well. It scared me but at the same time it was really cool. The process repeat three more times. A cowboy followed next shooting his pistols in the air. Then a knight on his horse. I could hear the hooves galloping till it appeared then the horse neighed and disappear. Finally the last entity was the most terrifying for me. It was a witch, with hat. She cackled and turn towards me. She said something but by then the adrenaline was flowing and heart was pounding loud into my ears I couldn’t hear the words. All the adults started to laugh. I freaked out and then everything went black after that.
The next thing I remembered was walking home crying hysterically. I didn’t say anything to my parent, I was too terrified to tell them. I didn’t tell my brothers or my sister. None of them were living at home and wouldn’t have believed me away.
I tried to let the incident go and not dwell on it, except one ramification from this séance (for a lack of better term) was my friend was no longer allowed to play with me anymore. I could not understand why and what I did. I wasn’t the one who conjured the four boogie-men from under the bed. Even his cousin who was in my class and a friend that would come over play with him wasn’t allowed to talk to me. I wasn’t sure what I did.
Wesley’s father built a tree house in their back yard. It was really just a glorified hunting blind on stilts since the trees in southern Arizona have two inch long thorns. I remember seeing his mother and him playing in the tree house wishing I could play too. I ran into Wesley at school and he finally spoke with me. I asked him why we couldn’t be friends. He said that his parent said he couldn’t and left it at that. I asked if he liked his tree house. “I can’t play in it anymore” he said “why not” I asked “because the witch got out and lives there now”. “I thought I saw you playing with your mom” I said. No. It was me but not my mom”
It confirmed that what I had experience was true after all and now the witch was out.
I never really saw Wesley again. He and his family moved out and away shortly after that. No one lived in that house for more than two years at a time after that. Unfortunately for me after they moved I started getting a late night visitor.
I couldn’t tell you what the date was or what time at night, but what I can tell you is one night I woke up to see a dark humanoid figure standing over me. It appeared to wear a cloak and hood, perhaps a hat. It wasn’t black but more like a void with shape. It’s shoulders were moving up and down like someone breathing heavy. I couldn’t tell if it male or female. Maybe it was the witch. It was making a sound. It was like breathing but wheezing and growling mixed together. I wasn’t sure what to think. I was scared and I did what any scared shitless kid would do, I threw the covers over my head. I could see it thru the blanket; it was still there. I thought maybe I could run to Mom and Dad’s room, but the creature seem to think otherwise or at least that’s the impression I got. I did the only thing I could think of, I started to sing. I sang all the song from Sunday school I could remember, “Jesus Loves Me This I Know”, “Deep And Wide”, “The B-I-B-L-E” and a few other.
I don’t know how long it took but the shadow finally went away. This happen off and on for years. There was no rhyme or reason to it’s pattern. It would show up multiple nights in a row, then nothing for weeks or months. Every time it showed I did the same thing over and over, I sang.
It was years before I could talk to anyone about it. One day I was talking to my friend Pat, that lived across the street, and somehow the subject came up. I didn’t reveal about what happened in house next door but I did talk about the shadow person.
He told me about an old man with three fingers that would scratch at his window asking to come in. Later I found out that Hector down the street would see a lady in his room at night. It seems that I was not the only one. As time went on I had heard several stories around my neighborhood and nearby neighborhoods. Perhaps the whole area was a hot bed of spiritual activity. Later I would find out that supposedly Arizona has spiritual vortexes and maybe we were in the middle of one..
Unfortunately the neighborhood started to go bad. After a neighbor up the street was murdered, my folks decided it was time to move. When we moved, my shadow witch didn’t follow.
It wasn’t the of end my encounters with the paranormal but at lest I got a break for awhile.
Submitted by Eric Cymbalak
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