E's Friends: Spooky True Stories Part 2!

So last week I featured a couple of spooky true tales from a couple of good friends of mine on Twitter. This week, I have one more from my good friend Josh, and one of my own to share. Now, please remember, this kind of phenomenon has both it's believers and skeptics. I, myself, am a true believer in life after death, demons, spirits, etc. And then there are skeptics, who label these as imagination running wild or things that could be explained using rational thought. Believe them or not, these things happen, and we can all agree that we are unable to rationalize what has happened before our very eyes. Let us now descend into madness...

The Mangled Boy - Mr. Josh (@JoshPond10)

"I’d like to tell you the one paranormal experience above all that I've ever had. The one that truly messed me up. The experience that haunts me to this day and has given me full blown panic attacks when things trigger the memory late at night or in shadowy places. I call him the mangled boy.

I call him that because I won’t say his name, which I now know, and because, well, he was mangled. I won’t say his name because to this day I am afraid he will come back. For years when I was a kid I would be visited in the night by a boy. He was always the same age, wearing the same clothes, was always wet and his arms were crushed and mangled. The rest of him looked bloated and putrid, as though it’d been under water for some time.

He would walk into my room, walk straight to me, stand next to my bed and ask me to play with him. He would stare at me unblinkingly and when he arrived, he wouldn’t leave. I would tell him to go, I would hide under the covers, I would shut my eyes, but nothing worked. I could hear the drip of the water dripping off him. I could hear his heavy, wet breathing. Even typing this, goose bumps are rising on my skin. It wasn’t just a dream that felt real, it was more grounded and real than regular life. It was late at night, and I could hear every squish of every step as he restlessly swayed standing by my bed.

His voice was the stuff of nightmares, the voice of a child whose vocal chords have been dead and underwater for years. I told my parents about it, but we lived in the most dangerous part of one of the most dangerous cities in the world. So, they comforted me, but had other things to worry about and didn’t believe in made up stuff like ghosts and ghouls when they had to worry about making it through the day without getting robbed or mugged.

Two things happened then that made it worse, but especially the second one. First, I had a sleep over birthday party. We watched horror movies (because of course we did), ate terrible food, played NES and had loads of friends sleeping everywhere that night.  The mangled boy visited me. This night I totally ignored him, assuming he was a figment of my imagination and if I talked I would be talking to myself and everyone’d think I was crazy.

For this next part it’s important to know I’m one of nine, but I only have one brother. The next morning at breakfast, my friend Jared asks, “Hey, who was that guy that came into the room last night? He didn’t look like your brother. Was he wet? I stepped in water when I got up to use the bathroom.” All I could do was stare at him. I then grilled him to be sure of what he saw and he described the clothes and everything. I couldn’t believe it.

There was this woman who lived somewhat near and every once in a while my parents would bring her food. We did this for some folks, but mostly super old folks in the neighborhood. What can I say? It’s a hood thing and I never questioned it, but this lady wasn’t old, she was my parents age. Still never questioned it, though. So, one day I go along with my dad to drop off some shrimp and chitlins. While my dad talks to her in the kitchen, I sit in the living room being bored in the age before smart phones. I see a photo album on the coffee table and start flipping through it.

Just random people I don’t know, then I turn a page and I see him. The mangled boy. He’s there, in a photo, but not mangled, he just looks normal. It feels like all the blood drained out of my body. I have never felt that feeling again, but it’s like my whole body went cold. It was him! I instantly knew it. I couldn’t stop staring and when my dad walked back into the room and asked if I was OK, it shocked the hell out of me and I dropped the book and ran out of the house.

In the car, he obviously asked me what was going on and I asked him who that lady is. He tells me that a few years ago, when I was a toddler, a boy had gotten stuck in the rocks by our house. When the tide came in, the kid drowned right in front of our house. We lived next to the water on the Gulf of Mexico and there were huge granite rocks to keep storm waters from crashing into the houses. This boy had reached for something and gotten his arms stuck between two of them. He couldn’t get out and his screams were never heard and the tide took him. My parents felt so terrible that they’ve brought her food and visited with her like that ever since. It was him. He came again after that and I thought, this is it, I can finally face my fear. I thought if I told him what happened, everything would be OK, he’d find peace. I told him I knew who he was and that he was free. Instead of it setting him free or something, a wave of the darkest, most terrible feeling I can possibly describe washed over me. A terror filled me that I cannot even describe. He yelled in my face that I would never get rid of him and I hid under my covers. We moved soon after for unrelated reasons and I have never seen him again. This is the third time in my entire life I have told this story because, even now, I fear he will return. I don’t want to play."

The Dark Shape - E's Reviews (@EnzosReviews)

"Ever since I could remember, I've been followed by something terrible, something dark, and something not human. For me, it gets a little complicated, and believe it or not, I might have some kind of a sixth sense or something, I don't really understand it or can really explain it, except that I can sort of 'feel' things around me. No, it's not like the movie, I don't just see dead people around me who are trying to communicate. It's almost like I can feel energy or emotions, and I can empathize with people on a whole different level. It's this, I believe, that draws certain things to me. Sometimes it's not so bad, like I can go into a house or a building and I can feel safe, comfortable, absolutely zero negativity. But then there are some places I go to where I feel scared, terrified, on edge, anxious, etc. My family home is not one of those negative spaces. It's bright there, all the time, it's comfortable, it feels warm and loving...so why is it that, ever since I was a child, a dark shape has been following me and terrorizing me?

I know, I know, this sounds like sleep paralysis and yes, I have experienced it before. I'd literally wake up screaming, panicking, trying to find a way out. But what I'm about to describe is not something that has gone away, and it absolutely happened to me while I was wide awake. I did not come out of a deep sleep, I was not paralyzed. This was also no human spirit and to this very day, as an adult man, it still haunts me, it still terrifies me, and it's still following me.

The first time I noticed it, I was probably about eight or so. I was laying in bed, night light on, my brother passed out in his bed which was next to mine. I had a hard time sleeping as a child, my brain was and still is always running and working and yes, I do have a vivid imagination. I had seen shadows before which made me jump, but realized that hey, that's just my own shadow, shouldn't be afraid of that! But this one night, the shadow was different. It was in the corner of the room my brother and I shared. Something so dark, I couldn't even see the wall. It was as if the night light, couldn't even penetrate it. This shadow, this shape, it wasn't like the other shadows I had seen before...it actually would move. I'd stay absolutely still and just watch it. Little did I know...it was also watching back...

This continued on and off throughout my childhood. It would take residence in different corners of the room and just move about. I told my mom about some other spooky things that had happened around the house, which she obviously thought was just imagination, but being from a Catholic family, my mom did the one thing she could think of to bring some peace of mind to our family: she called our local diocese and asked for a house blessing. After that, things calmed down, we went back to normal, and I hadn't seen the dark shape for a few months.

One summer, we went to New Jersey to go to the beach (we'd frequent this one place there called Wildwood). There was a board walk, the ocean, it was awesome fun. Then we came back from there and my brother was racing with me to get to our basement which was where our 'game room' was, including our NES which is what he wanted to get his hands on (we were always competing for player 1). As soon as he hit the landing at the bottom of the stairs, he screamed and ran right back up. He said he saw a dark man in our basement. My dad, thinking someone had broken in, ran down there to check but couldn't find anyone, and our windows were all locked up tight. My dad did the only rational thing he could, he installed bars on our basement windows. Meanwhile, my mom did what she thought was best...she called the priest back. This is when things started getting worse for me...

This shape, this shadow, this...thing...it came back...and it was no longer content with just standing in a corner. I saw it getting closer and closer to my bed...and it was started to take a physical form. This one night, I sat in bed, staring at the foot of it, staring at this thing...this thing with red eyes and a grin...a grin filled with sharp teeth...and hands that ended in claws. This was it. This was the true form of the thing that was content with feeding upon my fear and was getting closer and closer to me. This thing, this leathery, demented, maniacal thing...it made my childhood a living Hell.

When I hit my teenage years, it disappeared. It was no longer a part of my life and I was glad. I also never shared my experiences with anyone before, thinking that I must have imagined it or I was maybe a little crazy. As an adult, I moved away from my family home in Canada after falling in love with someone I consider my best friend in the entire universe, my wife, and we moved to Texas and her home town here in El Paso. Now, I already know my house is haunted, there's something going on there, for sure, but that's another story for another time...the shape...it's back...it breathes on me at night sometimes...it stands in the corner....it whispers to me....it knocks on the walls and growls at me...especially when I keep my Rosary nearby..."


So that's mine and Josh's true experiences! What do you think? Spooky? Not spooky? Are we just imagining things? Do you believe in this kind of thing? Do you have your own tale of terror or the unexplained to share? Then e-mail me: enzoloveshorror@gmail.com or hit me up on Twitter @EnzosReviews

Thanks for reading!