November 6, 2025 • 42 mins
All Hallows' Eve
Episode 461 | November 6, 2025
INFO & CONTACT
SOURCES
That one time my father and I saw a goblin: https://www.reddit.com/r/Humanoidencounters/comments/bz7kyi/that_one_time_my_father_and_i_saw_a_goblin/
Shadowy figure running across country roads at night: https://www.reddit.com/r/HighStrangeness/comments/1o5a7kl/shadowy_figure_running_across_country_roads_at/
Encounter in Grand Lake, CO: https://www.reddit.com/r/Humanoidencounters/comments/1n72u6c/encounter_in_grand_lake_co_on_june_14_2016/
The Hatman: https://www.reddit.com/r/Humanoidencounters/comments/1mgixbu/hatman_has_anyone_else_ever_experienced_this/
What did I see?: https://www.reddit.com/r/INTHEHILLS/comments/1cs7nup/what_did_i_see_looking_for_answers_why_do_i_keep/
The Haunted Demon House of Detroit: https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2022/09/The-Haunted-Demon-House-of-Detroit/
Confronting a Pumpkinhead on the Road: https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/01/confronting-a-pumpkinhead-on-the-road/
Episode 461 | November 6, 2025
INFO & CONTACT
- Website: https://paranormalmysteriespodcast.com
- Tell Your Story: https://paranormalmysteriespodcast.com/tell-your-story
- Forum: https://paranormalmysteriespodcast.com/forum
- Patreon: https://paranormalmysteriespodcast.com/patreon
- Buy Me A Coffee: https://paranormalmysteriespodcast.com/bmac
- PayPal: https://paranormalmysteriespodcast.com/paypal
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ParanormalMysteriesPodcast
- Social Media: https://paranormalmysteriespodcast.com/links
- Podcast Source: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/paranormal-mysteries--2321086
- My Wife’s Podcast: https://paranormalmysteriespodcast.com/sleep-relaxation-podcast
SOURCES
That one time my father and I saw a goblin: https://www.reddit.com/r/Humanoidencounters/comments/bz7kyi/that_one_time_my_father_and_i_saw_a_goblin/
Shadowy figure running across country roads at night: https://www.reddit.com/r/HighStrangeness/comments/1o5a7kl/shadowy_figure_running_across_country_roads_at/
Encounter in Grand Lake, CO: https://www.reddit.com/r/Humanoidencounters/comments/1n72u6c/encounter_in_grand_lake_co_on_june_14_2016/
The Hatman: https://www.reddit.com/r/Humanoidencounters/comments/1mgixbu/hatman_has_anyone_else_ever_experienced_this/
What did I see?: https://www.reddit.com/r/INTHEHILLS/comments/1cs7nup/what_did_i_see_looking_for_answers_why_do_i_keep/
The Haunted Demon House of Detroit: https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2022/09/The-Haunted-Demon-House-of-Detroit/
Confronting a Pumpkinhead on the Road: https://mysteriousuniverse.org/2017/01/confronting-a-pumpkinhead-on-the-road/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
This episode is brought to you by my newest supporters,
Michelle and Brent. Thank you for making the show possible. Tonight,
I'll be celebrating Halloween with a variety of ghoulish tales,
ranging from ghosts and goblins to bizarre creatures and the
(00:24):
great beyond. So I hope you'll join me as we
enter the world of the unexplained. I'm your host, Nick Ryan,
and this is paranormal Mysteries. Although its significance may vary
(01:05):
depending on your beliefs or geographic location, I think we
can all agree that Halloween holds a special meaning for
each of us and occupies a unique place in our hearts.
But while many folks associate Halloween with candy, costumes and
even horror movies, many years ago, its true significance was
quite different, and in many ways more terrifying. Halloween's origins
(01:30):
date back over two thousand years to the ancient Celtic
festival of soo Wyn, also pronounced by some as sam Hayne.
The Celtic people, primarily in the United Kingdom, Northern France
and Ireland, celebrated their new year on November first. This
day marked the end of summer, the final harvest and
(01:51):
the beginning of the cold, dark winter. It also signified
a time of year that was often associated with human death.
When you see, they believed, as many still do, that
on October thirty first, the boundary between the world of
the living and the realm of the dead became blurred,
and the ghosts of the deceased would return to earth.
(02:12):
Because of this, it was traditioned to light bonfires, carved
jack o lanterns, and even wear costumes in the hopes
of boarding off evil spirits. Today, many of these traditions
are still alive and well, but perhaps not taken as
seriously as they were over to millennia ago. As with
most things, tradition seems to get lost in the shuffle
(02:33):
of everyday life. And maybe that's why I enjoy the
nostalgia of Halloween as much as I do. It reminds
me of a simpler time, and of course, it brings
the topic of ghosts and ghouls to the forefront of
everyone's minds. I also feel as though Halloween brings people
together in a way that some other holidays just can't.
Perhaps it's simply the changing of the seasons. Sharing a
(02:56):
pumpkin spiced latte, or even a trip to your local
cidermel However, the one thing that I think most people
connect with is our fascination with fear and the unknown,
and in my opinion, Halloween serves as an important reminder
that there are countless mysteries lurking among us. Some of
them loom in the dense, dark forests or foggy cemeteries
(03:18):
on the edge of our towns, while others hide in
our very own basements or attics. But what is it
that haunts our reality? Ghosts, demons perhaps, or possibly another
breed of horror that we can't possibly imagine. The only
thing that is certain is that we don't really know
when our time will come to encounter the unexplained. For some,
(03:41):
it'll be an experience that expands their minds and provides
them with an amazing story to tell their friends. But
for others, the unknown will take the form of their
darkest nightmares, and it will place a mark on their
lives that will haunt them forever. What follows is a
series of bizarre experiences that involve many different types of
(04:02):
paranormal phenomena, and as always, I've included links to the
sources and articles that I'm going to reference in the
show notes now. I did try to include encounters that
happened on or around Halloween, but the majority of Tonight's
tales occurred on many different, unrelated dates, which I think
proves my earlier point that the unknown typically chooses to
(04:23):
present itself when we least expect it. This brings us
to our first encounter of the evening. I call this
experience the tiptoeing Goblin. This particular occurrence must have happened
back in March of nineteen ninety one. I only remember
this because my father, who was a police officer, was
(04:45):
working a lot of overtime on a security detail due
to a worker strike at one of the New York
Daily News facilities, which was in the industrial section of
town in Kearney, New Jersey, which was only about twenty
minutes west of Manhattan. It was a Saturday night, and
I was just getting home in time for my eleven
PM curfew. I was a month shy of being fourteen
(05:08):
years old, and I was surprised and happy to see
that my father was on the couch and catching up
on a stack of newspapers as I was expecting him
to be working overtime, I sat on the couch with
him and shot the breeze while the Arsenio Hall Show
was on the TV. After catching up, we turned our
attention to the TV, and that was when I saw it.
(05:29):
Off to the right of the couch where we were sitting.
I see in my periphery this thing tiptoeing about six
feet from me. It was over by the fireplace and
towards the foyer door. Just as it was about to
go out of my view from where I was sitting,
I turned my head just in time to see the
back side of this creature. It stood about eighteen inches tall,
(05:51):
was bipedal and had a humanoid build, with the exception
of its legs being articulated as if a four legged
animal was walking on its hind legs. Only its arms
swayed as it walked like any human's wood, and it
was covered head to toe in a very short, shiny
coat of brownish hair. It was not clothed, and it
had no tail. I only caught full sight of it
(06:13):
for around a second before it went out of view,
and I did not clearly see its face as it
was walking away from us. Though when I initially caught
it in the corner of my eye. I was under
the impression that it did not have a snout or
a muzzle, and that it was closer to a human's face.
The one thing that did stand out to me was
that it seemed like it was sneaking, not scurrying, but
(06:36):
deliberately tiptoeing, like it didn't want to be seen or
even heard. I was sitting there for a second more,
trying to process what I had just witnessed, when I
then turned to my left to bring this to my
father's attention, only to see that he was staring in
the exact same spot where this goblin turned the corner.
He was slack jawed and wide eyed. Didn't disbelieve. Then
(07:00):
asked him if he saw it, and he just mumbled,
was that a rat? All I could say is rats
don't walk on two back legs. At this point, he
grabbed his maglight and we proceeded to lift, pull, and
flip over furniture trying to find it, or at least
any evidence of it. We checked the chimney flu in
(07:22):
the fireplace, which was closed. All the doors and windows
were locked, no holes were in the walls, nothing, and
nowhere for it to get in or even out. The
only thing we succeeded in doing was waking up my
mother and sister and then getting yelled at. Now, I'm
not one to worry if someone thinks I'm full of crap, crazy,
(07:43):
or even a flake, So when others bring up spooky
or weird stories, I'm always ready to fire this one off,
partly in the hope that I'll find someone else that
has encountered something similar to what me and my father saw.
But alas I've had no such luck. The closest I've
ever gotten is when I told this experience to a
coworker and he said that it reminded him of something
(08:04):
called the brown Jenkin from an HP Lovecraft story called
The Dreams in the witch House. I've never really been
a fan of Lovecraft's writing, so I've never read the
story myself. But if anyone was so inclined to do
an image search for the brown Jenkin, you would find
images that are in the ballpark, or perhaps the ballpark's
(08:24):
parking lot to what we saw. Well that's my story
and I'm sticking to it. I call this next odd
experience creature in the Cornfield. This happened in West Central Illinois,
(08:45):
And this first occurrence happened maybe six months ago or so,
around one or two am. It was storming and I
was driving home from work, about an hour commute, and
my normal exit was blocked off due to a semi
going into the ditch nearby. So I rerouted my GPS
and took a different, unfamiliar way home, and I ended
up going through a wind turbine farm. Now, for context,
(09:07):
I have megalophobia, and specifically wind turbines really freak me
out because they're so big. At night, they have blinking
lights and it's very ominous. Plus the lightning would light
up the sky once in a while and i'd see
a flash of them. Anyway, my point is I was
in a high stress state on an unfamiliar country road
(09:28):
when this happened. I was probably fifteen to twenty miles
away from my house. So I take a left turn
and as I'm about to straighten out the wheel, I
see a black, shadowy vaguely humanoid figure, probably seven or
eight feet tall, and it was moving across the road
very quickly. Now I use the word move because it
looked like it was sprinting, but there was no impact
(09:49):
when its feet would hit the ground. It moved smoothly,
like it was floating. I could see the vague outline
of abnormally long arms and legs. The silhouette was kind
of hazy, so any quote unquote outlines that I saw,
I'm not even sure that I actually saw. It was
just a black mass, like if it was sprinting, there
(10:10):
would be no visible space between its body and limbs,
if that makes sense. It's kind of like it was
surrounded by a black mist or vapor or something. It's
incredibly hard to describe. My headlights were shining on it,
but it was completely black, like it absorbed all the light.
It happened so fast that I couldn't register what I
(10:30):
was looking at. It ran into a cornfield, and I
drove the rest of the way home sobbing and paranoid.
I also got this awful gut feeling, like an overwhelming
sense of dread, right around the time that I saw it.
From what I remember, it was like the gut feeling
hit first, then I saw the figure within seconds. It
happened so fast that I can't even trust my own memory. Also,
(10:54):
it didn't seem fazed by me either. It didn't shift
its attention towards me, look at me, or acknowledge my
pres at all. It just seemed to be on a
mission to run into the cornfield. It had no distinguishable features,
no visible face or clothing, and there was nothing but black.
When I told my partner and my parents, they believed me,
(11:15):
and they made me feel like I wasn't crazy. My
grandparents used to live in our current house, and they
said they've actually seen similar things in this area over
the last thirty or forty years, but it's been long
enough that I've tried to forget about it, and I
convinced myself that it was just a hallucination or perhaps
even my imagination from being in a stressful situation. Now though,
(11:37):
on to my next occurrence. My parents, uncle, and cousins
were outside of our house tonight. I lived with my
parents and my uncle and cousins were visiting. I was
inside when I heard some sort of noise outside. My
mom said it didn't sound like any animals that would
be around here, but more like a person celebrating and
saying woohoo or something similar. It sounded like it was
(12:01):
coming from the front yard, so they shined a flashlight
in that direction and saw nothing. But that's not the
weird part. They had ordered a pizza delivery earlier that night,
and shortly after hearing this noise, the delivery driver shows up.
She seemed a bit shook up, and she told my
mom that she saw some sort of shadowy figure run
across our road just moments earlier. We live on a
(12:23):
gravel road, may be half a mile away from a
county highway, as well as the nearest neighbor. She described
it almost the exact same way that I did, abnormally
long limbs, dark and shadowy, even with the headlights directly
on it. It moved very quickly across the road, and
moved so smoothly that it looked like it was floating.
It scared the absolute crap out of her. I don't
(12:47):
know if that noise that we heard is actually related
or not, but it's weird that they said it sounded
so close. All our neighbors are elderly folks and farmers
and aren't close enough to hear that. Clearly, some animals
around here you make weird sounds, so I'm choosing to
believe that it was just an animal. However, it really
does freak me out that this woman saw the same
(13:08):
thing that I did, and it's closer to my house now.
It's literally less than a half a mile away. My
mom is also a pretty hardcore Christian, and she made
a comment about how this thing may have followed me home,
which I don't necessarily believe, but at this point I'm
considering all the options. This next experience I'm going to
(13:34):
call the Wandering Orb. This is my account of a
very strange encounter I had in Grand Lake, Colorado on
June fourteenth of twenty sixteen. I have only been driven
to share it now because I very recently happened to
learn about the nineteen eighty four Isidora Furree encounter while
watching a random YouTube video, and what was described in
(13:57):
that encounter was roughly exactly what I and the others
with me had seen on this particular day. Me, my
roommate at the time, my girlfriend at the time, and
my girlfriend at the times friend drove to Grand Lake,
Colorado from Boulder, Colorado for an overnight camping trip. All
four of us were twenty years old at that time.
(14:18):
I suggested Grand Lake because it wasn't far, plus I
was familiar with the area from having lived there for
a while. As a kid. We drove up through Estes
Park and Rocky Mountain National Park, and we ended up
camping at what is now known as the Green Ridge Campground.
That evening, some time after ten PM, but exactly when,
I'm not sure, we walked down a dirt road from
(14:40):
the camp site to the area where Shadow Mountain Lake
drains into the headwaters of the Colorado River. There was
an incline that went down to where the river started,
and we walked down there. One thing that I'd also
like to mention is that the area was significantly much
more heavily wooded at that time, as it was completely
ravaged by wildfire in twenty twenty. None of us had
(15:02):
a flashlight or anything like that, and it was incredibly
dark except for how the moon illuminated the river when
you'd look downstream. I remember that very specifically because I
also very specifically remember coming up to that river looking
downstream for a bridge or a fallen tree or something
that could be used as a crossing, neither of which
I could see. And again I did have a very
(15:25):
good view of the river. The next thing that I
remember we see from across the river what looks like
a very tall person wearing a headlight. The light was
particularly bright and clean, looking like a very clean looking
white light. I'll also note that no human or humanoid
figure was actually visible. It was just the light, though
(15:46):
it basically appeared as if it was a human or
a humanoid with some sort of light source on their head.
I remember that it was briefly moving and then stopped
and then started quote unquote staring at us. My roommate,
who was drunk, started calling out in a friendly way,
like hey, buddy. However, the light just stayed there without responding,
(16:08):
but it still seemed like it was observing us. I
don't remember how long it was staring at us, but
it was extremely weird and uncomfortable. Eventually it started moving
downstream a bit, and this is where everything started becoming
extremely strange and honestly scary, because the light was moving
in a very steady and fluid way. It wasn't bobbing
(16:30):
up and down like you'd expect to see from a
headlamp someone was wearing while walking across rough mountain terrain
at night. I mean, it was very steady and fluid,
and then it disappeared. At this point, we were all
weirded out. By what had already happened, and we were
talking about heading back, and the next thing that we see,
the light is now on our side of the river,
(16:53):
and there was still no shape or form of anything
else visible, just the light. I'd like to emphasize again now,
I looked downstream on the river, which was the only
clearly visible part of the setting for a crossing, and
I didn't see anything, including as far back as where
the light appeared. I also looked at old satellite images
on Google Maps, and there doesn't seem to ever have
(17:14):
been any evidence of a bridge being there, So basically
it did not make any sense how it could have
crossed over the river and then reappeared like that. At
that point, we all decided that that was enough, and
we walked back up the incline to the dirt road.
Once we were back up there, we looked down the
incline and we saw the light still staring at us,
(17:35):
but it was much closer now and there was still
no obvious figure or shape other than the light. My
roommates started belligerently screaming obscenities at it, and then the
light charged at us. The speed and way in which
it moved was very non human, as in, it was
moving way too smoothly to have been just a headlamp.
It also moved a little too fast, not impossibly fast,
(17:58):
but just a little too fast to be a human.
At this point, we were all terrified and we booked
at the hell out of there. I was always a
very gifted runner, so I ended up being way ahead
of everyone else. I looked back once and I just
saw the others running behind me and nothing else. After that,
the girls were crying and they locked themselves in the car.
(18:19):
Once we got back to camp, my roommate went from fun,
boisterous drunk to completely terrified and paranoid. He grabbed a
hatchet and started telling me that it was alien technology,
and he was trying to convince me to go back
with him and investigate it. I had to talk him
down from that and eventually coax the girls out of
the car. We hung out outside for maybe another hour
(18:41):
after that and kind of just not saying much. We
eventually went to sleep and woke up the next day,
and we then drove back to Boulder. I was always
skeptical about what happened, but my roommate and ex always
said that something weird happened that night. Whenever it was
brought up, my ex ended up having recurring dreams about it,
(19:02):
and my roommate had a bit of a mental decline
in the year that followed. It ended up sticking with
me as well, and in recent years i'd been less
and less able to rationally explain it. I don't claim
to know what it was, only that it wasn't normal,
and it has stayed with me ever since. This next
(19:26):
encounter is called the hat Man is Watching. The hat
Man was in my bedroom as a twelve to thirteen
year old in the nineteen eighties. It was in the
corner by my closet. I was almost convinced that it
was just something casting a shadow in my room, but
then he moved towards my bed. All I could do
(19:47):
was close my eyes and pretend I never saw him.
In terror, I refused to open my eyes, even as
I felt something lean over me and hovering over my face.
I did not open my eyes until daylight creeped in
through my curtains. Though I stopped feeling the terror sometime
before that, I was still afraid that he was waiting
for me to crack and peek. Decades later, I was
(20:10):
living up north and married with kids. My youngest was
taking a nap in his crib, but he kept fussing
like something was bothering him. So I went and laid
down in his room to read while he slept. Once again,
in the corner, I see the same shadow. I keep
the corner of my eye on it, and I pretend
to keep reading. I was trying to deny what I
(20:32):
could see, and I was jumping through hoops in my head,
trying to again make a rational reason for this specific shadow.
Then he moved. He began to lean over the crib,
and I now knew why my baby wasn't sleeping. I
yelled at it to leave him alone and to never
come back. I grabbed my son and I went to
(20:52):
tell my husband, and then proceeded to listen to all
the reasons why I was not. Three weeks later, though
my husband saw the same thing. It wasn't until that
kiddo was in his teens that I learned about the
hat man. At that point, I was at a family
gathering and I started talking to my cousins about how
odd it is that our generation is very consistent about
(21:15):
our fear of having exposed windows at night. None of
us will allow anything from outside to be able to
see into our homes at night, especially the bedrooms, even
on high floors. The older generation doesn't know why we
all do this, but we've all done it since we
were all very small children. We are also all weirdos
(21:36):
about mirrors as well. This next experience is called three creatures.
This happened to me on the evening of Monday, May thirteenth,
twenty twenty four. I had some more weird crap happen
last night. I took my two dogs for walks. I
(21:57):
normally walk Thin, a large all black German shepherd, toward
the park where I have had these experiences, and then
I walk Booger, a shy terrier mix, to the other direction,
toward downtown. On my walk with Finn, about a block
away in the direction I was headed, I saw three
or four deer, calmly walking toward the park. Most nights
(22:18):
where something weird happens to me starts like this. The
deer seemed completely unbothered by me as I approached. They
kept walking toward the park, but would stop every few
steps to look back at me, kind of as if
they wanted me to follow them. Then, as Finn and
I reached where the deer were, I noticed about ten
or more other deer waiting as well. They all started
(22:39):
walking together, calmly but still looking back at me. Every
few feet. On my way toward the park, I smelled
the stench of rotting meat. I know the smell very well,
as I used to be a butcher. It was strong,
like someone plugged my nostrils with rotting ground meat or something.
At the same time I smell this stench, I get
the chill. Finn's hair also stands up and he gets
(23:02):
more nervous. I can then feel the air around me
getting colder. As we continue walking, I looked down an
alleyway that cuts the block in half, and what I
saw I tried to convince myself wasn't real, or maybe
that I just saw something else, and my brain tried
to convince me it was this. It was a large, muscular,
(23:23):
pale and hairless creature that was moving fast. It was
so fast I could barely see it. I'm positive that
what I saw wasn't a deer or something normal because
of something that I saw later that night during my
other walk with Booger. It solidified that what I saw
was something I wasn't supposed to see. In the meantime,
(23:43):
I convinced myself I was making stuff up. As we
approached the tree line of the park, the large group
of deer moved to the side of the street where
the neighborhood is and I was on the side with
the tree line. Then I noticed something in the clearing,
a lone deer that was separate from the large group
across the street, and it was staring directly at me.
(24:03):
I have my flashlight pointed at him, and I even
hung up my call with my wife to use my
phone to take the video of this moment. This lone
deer doesn't even have micro movements from breathing, and the
other deer across the street were constantly readjusting. Now you
might be thinking to yourself, oh, deer do that when
bright lights shine on them. Deer in the headlights always
(24:23):
act like that. But just wait, Finn starts to pull
really hard and acts anxious, nearly knocking me over. I
turned to look across the street toward the large group
of deer for at most three seconds before quickly turning
back around to face the lone deer once again. In
those three seconds, that lone deer was easily thirty feet
(24:44):
closer to me, still not moving, and still staring directly
at me. I felt weird and I felt unsafe. I've
lived in rural Iowa my whole life, and I've always
lived outdoors. This didn't feel normal. I was scared. I
backed away while shining my light at the deer, and
once I got a block or so away, he finally
(25:05):
turned around and calmly walked into the tree line. The
whole way home, I felt like I was being stalked,
not just watched, but like something was following me now.
I went home and sat for a bit, and I
tried to talk myself into believing it was all coincidence.
After nearly twenty minutes, I started to walk Booger, my
smaller chy mix. The entire walk was nice and very enjoyable. Actually,
(25:30):
I had my earbuds in and was talking to my
wife about what I saw in a joking way. At
the end of the walk, I turned to go down
our alleyway as I leave from the garage on our walks.
I then stopped speaking because I saw something on the
opposite end of the alley, and my wife heard me stop.
I then saw two large, muscular and pale, hairless creatures again.
(25:54):
They were walking like apes at the end of the alley.
It was the same type of thing I saw with Finn,
but this time they were not going fast. They were
much closer, and it felt intentional. I saw them walk
across the street very slowly, staring directly at me. These
were not deer. They didn't have long faces like deer,
(26:15):
they didn't have fur or tails, they didn't walk like deer,
and they weren't slender like deer. I stood there, paralyzed
with fear, well after they had left my sight. Fifteen
seconds later, I finally got the courage to walk the
few feet into my garage, and when I took my
first step, I saw a third one. It was slowly
(26:35):
meandering across the street and staring at me. Booger noticed
him too, and started growling. I then ran to the door,
and I watched the garage shut all the way. The
rest of the night, Finn guarded the bedroom door. He
never does that. He sat staring at the door all night,
and Booger stared at the windows. Before I continue. Please
(27:03):
consider showing your support by subscribing, sharing, and given the
podcast a positive review. You can also visit me on Patreon,
buy me a coffee or PayPal and make a donation,
or become a member starting at just a dollar a month.
You can even join my Patreon membership for free and
get access to all of my future updates. And of course,
(27:23):
just listening to the show is the best support of
all and I'm grateful to have you here. Now, please
stay tuned and I'll be right back after these brief messages.
I found this next experience in an article on Mysterious Universe,
and it's entitled The Haunted Demon House of Detroit. The
(27:48):
story here takes us back to nineteen sixty two and
a William Adams, who was a normal working class man
who worked the graveyard shift at the Cadillac plant in Detroit, Michigan,
and had just moved into a rented house with his family.
They were pretty ordinary people, with nothing particularly odd or
special about them, Yet they were about to become the
center of one of the strangest and most intense hauntings
(28:11):
the city had ever seen. It began with the nightmares
when they moved into the house. William took to sleeping
during the day in a tiny secluded bedroom in the
back of the house in order to not be disturbed
by the noise of his five young children, and shortly
after settling in he began to have horrific nightmares. These
(28:32):
dreams were incredibly realistic, featuring all manner of grotesque imagery,
to the point that he would wake in a cold sweat,
screaming so loudly that the neighbors could hear him. These
nightmares would come to him every night, and every night
he would wake in a terrified panic, never remembering exactly
what had happened, but in a complete state of dread.
(28:53):
He had never experienced anything quite like it, and it
got so bad that he was running on very little sleep,
unable to function at his job, and he was starting
to think that he might be losing his mind and
in need of mental help. He decided that he could
not stand sleeping in that room any longer, and oddly enough,
when he went back to sleeping in the master bedroom,
(29:13):
the nightmares ceased. At the time, William did not attribute
any of this to the paranormal. However, this was only
the beginning of the strangeness. It soon became apparent that
this back room had a certain sinister atmosphere to it.
The family dog refused to go anywhere near it, and
the children claimed that they sometimes heard strange noises coming
(29:35):
from within, so they avoided it as well. William checked
out the room several times and noticed that it felt
very cold when he was in there, even in the summer,
and there was always an indescribable air of dread. He
could not figure out why this would be, as the
room was just a tiny little space, barely big enough
for a bed in a closet, and by all appearances
(29:56):
there was nothing else menacing about it. Yet the dog
and the kids were terrified of it, and he could
not deny that there was definitely a strange and slightly
threatening ambiance when he was in there. Despite this, when
William's grandmother came to visit, he offered the room as
a guest room, but she too was immediately aware that
there was something off about the place. She nevertheless slept
(30:19):
in there, but during the night she heard noises in
the floor and walls that she described as sounding like
someone trying to break in, and she refused to sleep
in there again. She was so scared by the experience
that she cut her trip short and she hastily went
back to her own home, thinking that there had been
an intruder trying to break in. William contacted the police,
(30:41):
but they could find no trace of a break in
or anything suspicious. It was now starting to dawn on
him that, despite his unwillingness to believe it, there was
possibly something paranormal going on. He looked into the history
of the house, but all he could find out about
that room was that it had been added onto the
house after the original structure had been built, and there
(31:01):
was nothing that would explain why there was so much
strange phenomena within it. When William's cousin, Shirley came to visit,
he stayed in the room as well, and it didn't
take long for things to get weird. Shirley was not
told anything about the strange things that had been going on,
and in a way, it was sort of an experiment,
since he was always known to be a practical individual
(31:22):
who would not be prone to making anything up or
having his mind play games with him. However, that night,
he would feel himself being turned over by an unseen force,
and he was then confronted with the image of what
looked like a woman standing in the doorway and facing
the other direction. She had long hair and was wearing
what looked to be a short fur coat over a
(31:44):
blue dress. He at first thought that it must be
missus Adams, but as he studied her, he realized that
it was not, and at the same time, he was
suddenly overcome with a sharp, irrational fear that paralyzed him. Later,
he would say this regarding his experience. I didn't know
anything about the room. There was no reason for me
(32:06):
to suspect anything, no reason to be afraid. It seemed
that I was in the bed for just a few minutes.
I don't know whether I was asleep or not. I
was facing the wall, and then I felt something turn
me over. Don't ask me to describe the feeling. All
I know is that it rolled me over. And then
I saw it standing outside the bedroom door. At first
(32:27):
I thought that it was Lilian, but I started to tremble.
It was a woman with long hair, and she had
her back to me, looking into the kitchen. She was
wearing a short fur coat and a kind of blue dress.
His fear became so intense that he screamed out, and
when he did, all the lights in the house went
out surely, then stumbled around in the blackness and eventually
(32:51):
found his way to the kitchen, and this is when
the lights abruptly turned back on to show Missus Adams
standing there, and there was no sign of the woman
in the blue dress. As he talked to her, they
could hear what sounded like groans coming from the bedroom,
and a foul stench wafted through the house that made
them feel sick. As they tried to figure out where
(33:11):
the smell and the sound were coming from, there was
a sudden, loud, wailing scream that sounded like the mournful
scream of something half human and half animal. Then a
trap door in the utility room opened and then slammed
shut with great force, sending both of them into a
state of abject terror. When William came home from his
(33:32):
light shift, they told him about what had happened, and
the police were called once again. However, all the doors
and windows were locked and there was no sign of
a break in or an intruder. At this point, William
was thinking that enough was enough, and he decided that
he would go back and stay in that room the
following evening to see for himself what was going on
and confront whatever was in there. Unfortunately, though, he would
(33:55):
get more than he bargained for, and he explains what
happened next. I'm not the kind of guy who believes
in ghosts, at least I didn't back then. I'm a
grown man with a family, I've been in the Army.
I just couldn't convince myself there was anything to it.
I had to try again and see what would happen.
I don't know how long it was, but I was
still awake. I heard a noise in the room. I
(34:18):
turned over to look, and there was a face only
inches away from me. It was the most horrible thing
I've ever seen. The eyes stared past me and the
mouth moved to talk, but only a hissing noise came out,
as well as a terrible stench. All I could think
of that next morning was that if the bedroom door
had been closed that Sunday night, I would have killed
(34:40):
myself beating against it to get out. The sight of
that face hovering in front of him in that dim
room sent him into a hysterical panic. He was in
such a terrified state that Shirley and his wife had
to wrap a blanket around him. And throw him into
a chair to calm him down. As they did this,
the sickening stench they had se smelled before came back,
(35:02):
saturating the air with the most repugnant smell they had
ever experienced, and it made surely vomit. This was enough
to send the entire family packing, with them hastily grabbing
their children and immediately leaving to go and stay at
a neighbor's house. The very next day they would move out,
never to return to that cursed house and its paranormal weirdness.
(35:24):
Not long after this, Missus Adams's brother Leo and her
sister Virginia came to check the house out and help
the family move some of their things out because they
were too afraid to go back in there again. Curious
as to whether there was anything to the stories or not,
Leo decided to go to that back room and see
what all the fuss was about. He did not believe
in any of the stories that he had heard, but
(35:46):
this was about to change. And Virginia explains what happened.
I was standing out in the kitchen and Leo said
that he was going to go and lie down on
the bed for ten minutes. In the dark. A few
minutes later, I heard this, this awful groan coming from
the bedroom. If it was Leo, I have never heard
him make a sound like that before. Then he came
(36:07):
rushing through the door and into the kitchen with the
most horrible look on his face, like he was scared
out of his mind. I asked him what he saw,
but he wouldn't tell me anything. Leo never would tell
anyone about what he had seen in that room, but
it was bad enough that he had nightmares for weeks afterwards,
and he also refused to ever step foot in that
(36:28):
house again. After this, the house remained empty even after
its notoriety grew, and the landlady forbade any paranormal investigators
from entering. This next experience involves an encounter that I
had never heard of before, and I came across it
(36:49):
in an article on Mysterious Universe. And I'm going to
call this experience Pumpkinhead. One of the strangest of all
encounters of the monstrous variety occurred on the night of Saturday,
November eighth in nineteen fifty eight. The unlucky soul who
had the misfortune to encounter the odd beast was named
Charles Wetzel, who at the time was driving his green
(37:12):
two door Buick Super along North Main Street in Riverside, California,
near the Santa Anna River. As Wetzell reached one particular
stretch of road that had flooded, the radio of his
car began to crackle loudly. With the water levels high
and Wetzell trying to figure out what was wrong with
the radio, he slowed down simply to ensure that he
(37:32):
didn't find himself driving off the side of the road.
As Wetzell continued to slowly negotiate the road, he was
shocked to the core by the sight of an extraordinary
creature that surfaced from the shadows and stood in the
middle of the road, preventing Wetzell from going any further.
Wetzell could only sit and stare in a combination of
fear and awe as he tried to take in and
(37:53):
comprehend what stood before him. It was humanoid in shape
and in excess of six feet in height. It had
a large round head described as being pumpkin like, with
glowing eyes and a prominent mouth that had beak like
qualities to it, and scaly skin that resembled leaves. The
(38:13):
legs of the beast did not extend from beneath its torso,
but from its sides. What began as a bone chilling
stand off quickly mutated into something else. Entirely. The terrifying
creature issued a loud, high pitched noise that was described
as being part scream and part gurgle, after which it
suddenly charged at Wetzel's buick. He could only sit paralyzed
(38:37):
with fear as the scaly thing raced towards the hood
of his vehicle, then lunged even closer and violently clawed
at the windshield. Although it was good fortune that led
Wetzel to have a rifle with him, by his own admission,
he was fearful about using it, not because it might
injure or kill the animal man, but because he was
worried that if he fired through the windshield and failed
(38:58):
to kill it, the shattered glass us would allow the
monster to reach inside and haul him out of the car,
possibly to tear him to pieces. With his body flooded
with adrenaline, Wetzel took the only option he felt was
available to him. He floored the accelerator, spun the wheels
and shot away. In doing so, he ran the beast down,
(39:19):
which was evident by the fact that Wetzell felt the
car go over its large body. Now, while some might
consider a story like this to be nothing more than fiction,
many believed his story to be true. The reason for
this is that Wetzel quickly reported the affair to the
local police, who then launched an investigation. The article then
goes on to say that it's most unlikely that a
(39:40):
hoaxer would run the risk of being charged for wasting
police time or for filing a bogus report. In fact,
police took Wetzel's story so seriously they sent not just
officers out to the scene, but a pack of bloodhounds
as well. The monster, whatever it was, was never found
dead or alive. There were, however, two pieces of evidence
(40:02):
that corroborated Wetzel's amazing experience. Police found vicious looking claw
marks on the windshield and on the underside of the buick.
These were both calling cards that Wetzel preferred to forget about. However,
it was unlikely that he ever would. The mysterious account
(40:24):
of the Pumpkinhead creature remains a mystery even to this day.
And like all of tonight's experiences, it proves that although
we see Halloween as a way to celebrate the unexplained,
you never really know when you'll actually encounter it for yourself,
and in many ways, I think that's the most unsettling
thing of all. As always, though, i'd like to hear
(40:45):
about your experiences and when they occurred, and you can
find all my contact information in the show notes as
well as at Paranormal Mysteries podcast dot com. Until next time,
thank you so much for listening, and I hope all
of you have a wonderful and safe Halloween, and of
course I hope you'll join me for my next episode
(41:05):
as we continue our journey into the unexplained right here
on Paranormal Mysteries
This episode is brought to you by my newest supporters,
Michelle and Brent. Thank you for making the show possible. Tonight,
I'll be celebrating Halloween with a variety of ghoulish tales,
ranging from ghosts and goblins to bizarre creatures and the
(00:24):
great beyond. So I hope you'll join me as we
enter the world of the unexplained. I'm your host, Nick Ryan,
and this is paranormal Mysteries. Although its significance may vary
(01:05):
depending on your beliefs or geographic location, I think we
can all agree that Halloween holds a special meaning for
each of us and occupies a unique place in our hearts.
But while many folks associate Halloween with candy, costumes and
even horror movies, many years ago, its true significance was
quite different, and in many ways more terrifying. Halloween's origins
(01:30):
date back over two thousand years to the ancient Celtic
festival of soo Wyn, also pronounced by some as sam Hayne.
The Celtic people, primarily in the United Kingdom, Northern France
and Ireland, celebrated their new year on November first. This
day marked the end of summer, the final harvest and
(01:51):
the beginning of the cold, dark winter. It also signified
a time of year that was often associated with human death.
When you see, they believed, as many still do, that
on October thirty first, the boundary between the world of
the living and the realm of the dead became blurred,
and the ghosts of the deceased would return to earth.
(02:12):
Because of this, it was traditioned to light bonfires, carved
jack o lanterns, and even wear costumes in the hopes
of boarding off evil spirits. Today, many of these traditions
are still alive and well, but perhaps not taken as
seriously as they were over to millennia ago. As with
most things, tradition seems to get lost in the shuffle
(02:33):
of everyday life. And maybe that's why I enjoy the
nostalgia of Halloween as much as I do. It reminds
me of a simpler time, and of course, it brings
the topic of ghosts and ghouls to the forefront of
everyone's minds. I also feel as though Halloween brings people
together in a way that some other holidays just can't.
Perhaps it's simply the changing of the seasons. Sharing a
(02:56):
pumpkin spiced latte, or even a trip to your local
cidermel However, the one thing that I think most people
connect with is our fascination with fear and the unknown,
and in my opinion, Halloween serves as an important reminder
that there are countless mysteries lurking among us. Some of
them loom in the dense, dark forests or foggy cemeteries
(03:18):
on the edge of our towns, while others hide in
our very own basements or attics. But what is it
that haunts our reality? Ghosts, demons perhaps, or possibly another
breed of horror that we can't possibly imagine. The only
thing that is certain is that we don't really know
when our time will come to encounter the unexplained. For some,
(03:41):
it'll be an experience that expands their minds and provides
them with an amazing story to tell their friends. But
for others, the unknown will take the form of their
darkest nightmares, and it will place a mark on their
lives that will haunt them forever. What follows is a
series of bizarre experiences that involve many different types of
(04:02):
paranormal phenomena, and as always, I've included links to the
sources and articles that I'm going to reference in the
show notes now. I did try to include encounters that
happened on or around Halloween, but the majority of Tonight's
tales occurred on many different, unrelated dates, which I think
proves my earlier point that the unknown typically chooses to
(04:23):
present itself when we least expect it. This brings us
to our first encounter of the evening. I call this
experience the tiptoeing Goblin. This particular occurrence must have happened
back in March of nineteen ninety one. I only remember
this because my father, who was a police officer, was
(04:45):
working a lot of overtime on a security detail due
to a worker strike at one of the New York
Daily News facilities, which was in the industrial section of
town in Kearney, New Jersey, which was only about twenty
minutes west of Manhattan. It was a Saturday night, and
I was just getting home in time for my eleven
PM curfew. I was a month shy of being fourteen
(05:08):
years old, and I was surprised and happy to see
that my father was on the couch and catching up
on a stack of newspapers as I was expecting him
to be working overtime, I sat on the couch with
him and shot the breeze while the Arsenio Hall Show
was on the TV. After catching up, we turned our
attention to the TV, and that was when I saw it.
(05:29):
Off to the right of the couch where we were sitting.
I see in my periphery this thing tiptoeing about six
feet from me. It was over by the fireplace and
towards the foyer door. Just as it was about to
go out of my view from where I was sitting,
I turned my head just in time to see the
back side of this creature. It stood about eighteen inches tall,
(05:51):
was bipedal and had a humanoid build, with the exception
of its legs being articulated as if a four legged
animal was walking on its hind legs. Only its arms
swayed as it walked like any human's wood, and it
was covered head to toe in a very short, shiny
coat of brownish hair. It was not clothed, and it
had no tail. I only caught full sight of it
(06:13):
for around a second before it went out of view,
and I did not clearly see its face as it
was walking away from us. Though when I initially caught
it in the corner of my eye. I was under
the impression that it did not have a snout or
a muzzle, and that it was closer to a human's face.
The one thing that did stand out to me was
that it seemed like it was sneaking, not scurrying, but
(06:36):
deliberately tiptoeing, like it didn't want to be seen or
even heard. I was sitting there for a second more,
trying to process what I had just witnessed, when I
then turned to my left to bring this to my
father's attention, only to see that he was staring in
the exact same spot where this goblin turned the corner.
He was slack jawed and wide eyed. Didn't disbelieve. Then
(07:00):
asked him if he saw it, and he just mumbled,
was that a rat? All I could say is rats
don't walk on two back legs. At this point, he
grabbed his maglight and we proceeded to lift, pull, and
flip over furniture trying to find it, or at least
any evidence of it. We checked the chimney flu in
(07:22):
the fireplace, which was closed. All the doors and windows
were locked, no holes were in the walls, nothing, and
nowhere for it to get in or even out. The
only thing we succeeded in doing was waking up my
mother and sister and then getting yelled at. Now, I'm
not one to worry if someone thinks I'm full of crap, crazy,
(07:43):
or even a flake, So when others bring up spooky
or weird stories, I'm always ready to fire this one off,
partly in the hope that I'll find someone else that
has encountered something similar to what me and my father saw.
But alas I've had no such luck. The closest I've
ever gotten is when I told this experience to a
coworker and he said that it reminded him of something
(08:04):
called the brown Jenkin from an HP Lovecraft story called
The Dreams in the witch House. I've never really been
a fan of Lovecraft's writing, so I've never read the
story myself. But if anyone was so inclined to do
an image search for the brown Jenkin, you would find
images that are in the ballpark, or perhaps the ballpark's
(08:24):
parking lot to what we saw. Well that's my story
and I'm sticking to it. I call this next odd
experience creature in the Cornfield. This happened in West Central Illinois,
(08:45):
And this first occurrence happened maybe six months ago or so,
around one or two am. It was storming and I
was driving home from work, about an hour commute, and
my normal exit was blocked off due to a semi
going into the ditch nearby. So I rerouted my GPS
and took a different, unfamiliar way home, and I ended
up going through a wind turbine farm. Now, for context,
(09:07):
I have megalophobia, and specifically wind turbines really freak me
out because they're so big. At night, they have blinking
lights and it's very ominous. Plus the lightning would light
up the sky once in a while and i'd see
a flash of them. Anyway, my point is I was
in a high stress state on an unfamiliar country road
(09:28):
when this happened. I was probably fifteen to twenty miles
away from my house. So I take a left turn
and as I'm about to straighten out the wheel, I
see a black, shadowy vaguely humanoid figure, probably seven or
eight feet tall, and it was moving across the road
very quickly. Now I use the word move because it
looked like it was sprinting, but there was no impact
(09:49):
when its feet would hit the ground. It moved smoothly,
like it was floating. I could see the vague outline
of abnormally long arms and legs. The silhouette was kind
of hazy, so any quote unquote outlines that I saw,
I'm not even sure that I actually saw. It was
just a black mass, like if it was sprinting, there
(10:10):
would be no visible space between its body and limbs,
if that makes sense. It's kind of like it was
surrounded by a black mist or vapor or something. It's
incredibly hard to describe. My headlights were shining on it,
but it was completely black, like it absorbed all the light.
It happened so fast that I couldn't register what I
(10:30):
was looking at. It ran into a cornfield, and I
drove the rest of the way home sobbing and paranoid.
I also got this awful gut feeling, like an overwhelming
sense of dread, right around the time that I saw it.
From what I remember, it was like the gut feeling
hit first, then I saw the figure within seconds. It
happened so fast that I can't even trust my own memory. Also,
(10:54):
it didn't seem fazed by me either. It didn't shift
its attention towards me, look at me, or acknowledge my
pres at all. It just seemed to be on a
mission to run into the cornfield. It had no distinguishable features,
no visible face or clothing, and there was nothing but black.
When I told my partner and my parents, they believed me,
(11:15):
and they made me feel like I wasn't crazy. My
grandparents used to live in our current house, and they
said they've actually seen similar things in this area over
the last thirty or forty years, but it's been long
enough that I've tried to forget about it, and I
convinced myself that it was just a hallucination or perhaps
even my imagination from being in a stressful situation. Now though,
(11:37):
on to my next occurrence. My parents, uncle, and cousins
were outside of our house tonight. I lived with my
parents and my uncle and cousins were visiting. I was
inside when I heard some sort of noise outside. My
mom said it didn't sound like any animals that would
be around here, but more like a person celebrating and
saying woohoo or something similar. It sounded like it was
(12:01):
coming from the front yard, so they shined a flashlight
in that direction and saw nothing. But that's not the
weird part. They had ordered a pizza delivery earlier that night,
and shortly after hearing this noise, the delivery driver shows up.
She seemed a bit shook up, and she told my
mom that she saw some sort of shadowy figure run
across our road just moments earlier. We live on a
(12:23):
gravel road, may be half a mile away from a
county highway, as well as the nearest neighbor. She described
it almost the exact same way that I did, abnormally
long limbs, dark and shadowy, even with the headlights directly
on it. It moved very quickly across the road, and
moved so smoothly that it looked like it was floating.
It scared the absolute crap out of her. I don't
(12:47):
know if that noise that we heard is actually related
or not, but it's weird that they said it sounded
so close. All our neighbors are elderly folks and farmers
and aren't close enough to hear that. Clearly, some animals
around here you make weird sounds, so I'm choosing to
believe that it was just an animal. However, it really
does freak me out that this woman saw the same
(13:08):
thing that I did, and it's closer to my house now.
It's literally less than a half a mile away. My
mom is also a pretty hardcore Christian, and she made
a comment about how this thing may have followed me home,
which I don't necessarily believe, but at this point I'm
considering all the options. This next experience I'm going to
(13:34):
call the Wandering Orb. This is my account of a
very strange encounter I had in Grand Lake, Colorado on
June fourteenth of twenty sixteen. I have only been driven
to share it now because I very recently happened to
learn about the nineteen eighty four Isidora Furree encounter while
watching a random YouTube video, and what was described in
(13:57):
that encounter was roughly exactly what I and the others
with me had seen on this particular day. Me, my
roommate at the time, my girlfriend at the time, and
my girlfriend at the times friend drove to Grand Lake,
Colorado from Boulder, Colorado for an overnight camping trip. All
four of us were twenty years old at that time.
(14:18):
I suggested Grand Lake because it wasn't far, plus I
was familiar with the area from having lived there for
a while. As a kid. We drove up through Estes
Park and Rocky Mountain National Park, and we ended up
camping at what is now known as the Green Ridge Campground.
That evening, some time after ten PM, but exactly when,
I'm not sure, we walked down a dirt road from
(14:40):
the camp site to the area where Shadow Mountain Lake
drains into the headwaters of the Colorado River. There was
an incline that went down to where the river started,
and we walked down there. One thing that I'd also
like to mention is that the area was significantly much
more heavily wooded at that time, as it was completely
ravaged by wildfire in twenty twenty. None of us had
(15:02):
a flashlight or anything like that, and it was incredibly
dark except for how the moon illuminated the river when
you'd look downstream. I remember that very specifically because I
also very specifically remember coming up to that river looking
downstream for a bridge or a fallen tree or something
that could be used as a crossing, neither of which
I could see. And again I did have a very
(15:25):
good view of the river. The next thing that I
remember we see from across the river what looks like
a very tall person wearing a headlight. The light was
particularly bright and clean, looking like a very clean looking
white light. I'll also note that no human or humanoid
figure was actually visible. It was just the light, though
(15:46):
it basically appeared as if it was a human or
a humanoid with some sort of light source on their head.
I remember that it was briefly moving and then stopped
and then started quote unquote staring at us. My roommate,
who was drunk, started calling out in a friendly way,
like hey, buddy. However, the light just stayed there without responding,
(16:08):
but it still seemed like it was observing us. I
don't remember how long it was staring at us, but
it was extremely weird and uncomfortable. Eventually it started moving
downstream a bit, and this is where everything started becoming
extremely strange and honestly scary, because the light was moving
in a very steady and fluid way. It wasn't bobbing
(16:30):
up and down like you'd expect to see from a
headlamp someone was wearing while walking across rough mountain terrain
at night. I mean, it was very steady and fluid,
and then it disappeared. At this point, we were all
weirded out. By what had already happened, and we were
talking about heading back, and the next thing that we see,
the light is now on our side of the river,
(16:53):
and there was still no shape or form of anything
else visible, just the light. I'd like to emphasize again now,
I looked downstream on the river, which was the only
clearly visible part of the setting for a crossing, and
I didn't see anything, including as far back as where
the light appeared. I also looked at old satellite images
on Google Maps, and there doesn't seem to ever have
(17:14):
been any evidence of a bridge being there, So basically
it did not make any sense how it could have
crossed over the river and then reappeared like that. At
that point, we all decided that that was enough, and
we walked back up the incline to the dirt road.
Once we were back up there, we looked down the
incline and we saw the light still staring at us,
(17:35):
but it was much closer now and there was still
no obvious figure or shape other than the light. My
roommates started belligerently screaming obscenities at it, and then the
light charged at us. The speed and way in which
it moved was very non human, as in, it was
moving way too smoothly to have been just a headlamp.
It also moved a little too fast, not impossibly fast,
(17:58):
but just a little too fast to be a human.
At this point, we were all terrified and we booked
at the hell out of there. I was always a
very gifted runner, so I ended up being way ahead
of everyone else. I looked back once and I just
saw the others running behind me and nothing else. After that,
the girls were crying and they locked themselves in the car.
(18:19):
Once we got back to camp, my roommate went from fun,
boisterous drunk to completely terrified and paranoid. He grabbed a
hatchet and started telling me that it was alien technology,
and he was trying to convince me to go back
with him and investigate it. I had to talk him
down from that and eventually coax the girls out of
the car. We hung out outside for maybe another hour
(18:41):
after that and kind of just not saying much. We
eventually went to sleep and woke up the next day,
and we then drove back to Boulder. I was always
skeptical about what happened, but my roommate and ex always
said that something weird happened that night. Whenever it was
brought up, my ex ended up having recurring dreams about it,
(19:02):
and my roommate had a bit of a mental decline
in the year that followed. It ended up sticking with
me as well, and in recent years i'd been less
and less able to rationally explain it. I don't claim
to know what it was, only that it wasn't normal,
and it has stayed with me ever since. This next
(19:26):
encounter is called the hat Man is Watching. The hat
Man was in my bedroom as a twelve to thirteen
year old in the nineteen eighties. It was in the
corner by my closet. I was almost convinced that it
was just something casting a shadow in my room, but
then he moved towards my bed. All I could do
(19:47):
was close my eyes and pretend I never saw him.
In terror, I refused to open my eyes, even as
I felt something lean over me and hovering over my face.
I did not open my eyes until daylight creeped in
through my curtains. Though I stopped feeling the terror sometime
before that, I was still afraid that he was waiting
for me to crack and peek. Decades later, I was
(20:10):
living up north and married with kids. My youngest was
taking a nap in his crib, but he kept fussing
like something was bothering him. So I went and laid
down in his room to read while he slept. Once again,
in the corner, I see the same shadow. I keep
the corner of my eye on it, and I pretend
to keep reading. I was trying to deny what I
(20:32):
could see, and I was jumping through hoops in my head,
trying to again make a rational reason for this specific shadow.
Then he moved. He began to lean over the crib,
and I now knew why my baby wasn't sleeping. I
yelled at it to leave him alone and to never
come back. I grabbed my son and I went to
(20:52):
tell my husband, and then proceeded to listen to all
the reasons why I was not. Three weeks later, though
my husband saw the same thing. It wasn't until that
kiddo was in his teens that I learned about the
hat man. At that point, I was at a family
gathering and I started talking to my cousins about how
odd it is that our generation is very consistent about
(21:15):
our fear of having exposed windows at night. None of
us will allow anything from outside to be able to
see into our homes at night, especially the bedrooms, even
on high floors. The older generation doesn't know why we
all do this, but we've all done it since we
were all very small children. We are also all weirdos
(21:36):
about mirrors as well. This next experience is called three creatures.
This happened to me on the evening of Monday, May thirteenth,
twenty twenty four. I had some more weird crap happen
last night. I took my two dogs for walks. I
(21:57):
normally walk Thin, a large all black German shepherd, toward
the park where I have had these experiences, and then
I walk Booger, a shy terrier mix, to the other direction,
toward downtown. On my walk with Finn, about a block
away in the direction I was headed, I saw three
or four deer, calmly walking toward the park. Most nights
(22:18):
where something weird happens to me starts like this. The
deer seemed completely unbothered by me as I approached. They
kept walking toward the park, but would stop every few
steps to look back at me, kind of as if
they wanted me to follow them. Then, as Finn and
I reached where the deer were, I noticed about ten
or more other deer waiting as well. They all started
(22:39):
walking together, calmly but still looking back at me. Every
few feet. On my way toward the park, I smelled
the stench of rotting meat. I know the smell very well,
as I used to be a butcher. It was strong,
like someone plugged my nostrils with rotting ground meat or something.
At the same time I smell this stench, I get
the chill. Finn's hair also stands up and he gets
(23:02):
more nervous. I can then feel the air around me
getting colder. As we continue walking, I looked down an
alleyway that cuts the block in half, and what I
saw I tried to convince myself wasn't real, or maybe
that I just saw something else, and my brain tried
to convince me it was this. It was a large, muscular,
(23:23):
pale and hairless creature that was moving fast. It was
so fast I could barely see it. I'm positive that
what I saw wasn't a deer or something normal because
of something that I saw later that night during my
other walk with Booger. It solidified that what I saw
was something I wasn't supposed to see. In the meantime,
(23:43):
I convinced myself I was making stuff up. As we
approached the tree line of the park, the large group
of deer moved to the side of the street where
the neighborhood is and I was on the side with
the tree line. Then I noticed something in the clearing,
a lone deer that was separate from the large group
across the street, and it was staring directly at me.
(24:03):
I have my flashlight pointed at him, and I even
hung up my call with my wife to use my
phone to take the video of this moment. This lone
deer doesn't even have micro movements from breathing, and the
other deer across the street were constantly readjusting. Now you
might be thinking to yourself, oh, deer do that when
bright lights shine on them. Deer in the headlights always
(24:23):
act like that. But just wait, Finn starts to pull
really hard and acts anxious, nearly knocking me over. I
turned to look across the street toward the large group
of deer for at most three seconds before quickly turning
back around to face the lone deer once again. In
those three seconds, that lone deer was easily thirty feet
(24:44):
closer to me, still not moving, and still staring directly
at me. I felt weird and I felt unsafe. I've
lived in rural Iowa my whole life, and I've always
lived outdoors. This didn't feel normal. I was scared. I
backed away while shining my light at the deer, and
once I got a block or so away, he finally
(25:05):
turned around and calmly walked into the tree line. The
whole way home, I felt like I was being stalked,
not just watched, but like something was following me now.
I went home and sat for a bit, and I
tried to talk myself into believing it was all coincidence.
After nearly twenty minutes, I started to walk Booger, my
smaller chy mix. The entire walk was nice and very enjoyable. Actually,
(25:30):
I had my earbuds in and was talking to my
wife about what I saw in a joking way. At
the end of the walk, I turned to go down
our alleyway as I leave from the garage on our walks.
I then stopped speaking because I saw something on the
opposite end of the alley, and my wife heard me stop.
I then saw two large, muscular and pale, hairless creatures again.
(25:54):
They were walking like apes at the end of the alley.
It was the same type of thing I saw with Finn,
but this time they were not going fast. They were
much closer, and it felt intentional. I saw them walk
across the street very slowly, staring directly at me. These
were not deer. They didn't have long faces like deer,
(26:15):
they didn't have fur or tails, they didn't walk like deer,
and they weren't slender like deer. I stood there, paralyzed
with fear, well after they had left my sight. Fifteen
seconds later, I finally got the courage to walk the
few feet into my garage, and when I took my
first step, I saw a third one. It was slowly
(26:35):
meandering across the street and staring at me. Booger noticed
him too, and started growling. I then ran to the door,
and I watched the garage shut all the way. The
rest of the night, Finn guarded the bedroom door. He
never does that. He sat staring at the door all night,
and Booger stared at the windows. Before I continue. Please
(27:03):
consider showing your support by subscribing, sharing, and given the
podcast a positive review. You can also visit me on Patreon,
buy me a coffee or PayPal and make a donation,
or become a member starting at just a dollar a month.
You can even join my Patreon membership for free and
get access to all of my future updates. And of course,
(27:23):
just listening to the show is the best support of
all and I'm grateful to have you here. Now, please
stay tuned and I'll be right back after these brief messages.
I found this next experience in an article on Mysterious Universe,
and it's entitled The Haunted Demon House of Detroit. The
(27:48):
story here takes us back to nineteen sixty two and
a William Adams, who was a normal working class man
who worked the graveyard shift at the Cadillac plant in Detroit, Michigan,
and had just moved into a rented house with his family.
They were pretty ordinary people, with nothing particularly odd or
special about them, Yet they were about to become the
center of one of the strangest and most intense hauntings
(28:11):
the city had ever seen. It began with the nightmares
when they moved into the house. William took to sleeping
during the day in a tiny secluded bedroom in the
back of the house in order to not be disturbed
by the noise of his five young children, and shortly
after settling in he began to have horrific nightmares. These
(28:32):
dreams were incredibly realistic, featuring all manner of grotesque imagery,
to the point that he would wake in a cold sweat,
screaming so loudly that the neighbors could hear him. These
nightmares would come to him every night, and every night
he would wake in a terrified panic, never remembering exactly
what had happened, but in a complete state of dread.
(28:53):
He had never experienced anything quite like it, and it
got so bad that he was running on very little sleep,
unable to function at his job, and he was starting
to think that he might be losing his mind and
in need of mental help. He decided that he could
not stand sleeping in that room any longer, and oddly enough,
when he went back to sleeping in the master bedroom,
(29:13):
the nightmares ceased. At the time, William did not attribute
any of this to the paranormal. However, this was only
the beginning of the strangeness. It soon became apparent that
this back room had a certain sinister atmosphere to it.
The family dog refused to go anywhere near it, and
the children claimed that they sometimes heard strange noises coming
(29:35):
from within, so they avoided it as well. William checked
out the room several times and noticed that it felt
very cold when he was in there, even in the summer,
and there was always an indescribable air of dread. He
could not figure out why this would be, as the
room was just a tiny little space, barely big enough
for a bed in a closet, and by all appearances
(29:56):
there was nothing else menacing about it. Yet the dog
and the kids were terrified of it, and he could
not deny that there was definitely a strange and slightly
threatening ambiance when he was in there. Despite this, when
William's grandmother came to visit, he offered the room as
a guest room, but she too was immediately aware that
there was something off about the place. She nevertheless slept
(30:19):
in there, but during the night she heard noises in
the floor and walls that she described as sounding like
someone trying to break in, and she refused to sleep
in there again. She was so scared by the experience
that she cut her trip short and she hastily went
back to her own home, thinking that there had been
an intruder trying to break in. William contacted the police,
(30:41):
but they could find no trace of a break in
or anything suspicious. It was now starting to dawn on
him that, despite his unwillingness to believe it, there was
possibly something paranormal going on. He looked into the history
of the house, but all he could find out about
that room was that it had been added onto the
house after the original structure had been built, and there
(31:01):
was nothing that would explain why there was so much
strange phenomena within it. When William's cousin, Shirley came to visit,
he stayed in the room as well, and it didn't
take long for things to get weird. Shirley was not
told anything about the strange things that had been going on,
and in a way, it was sort of an experiment,
since he was always known to be a practical individual
(31:22):
who would not be prone to making anything up or
having his mind play games with him. However, that night,
he would feel himself being turned over by an unseen force,
and he was then confronted with the image of what
looked like a woman standing in the doorway and facing
the other direction. She had long hair and was wearing
what looked to be a short fur coat over a
(31:44):
blue dress. He at first thought that it must be
missus Adams, but as he studied her, he realized that
it was not, and at the same time, he was
suddenly overcome with a sharp, irrational fear that paralyzed him. Later,
he would say this regarding his experience. I didn't know
anything about the room. There was no reason for me
(32:06):
to suspect anything, no reason to be afraid. It seemed
that I was in the bed for just a few minutes.
I don't know whether I was asleep or not. I
was facing the wall, and then I felt something turn
me over. Don't ask me to describe the feeling. All
I know is that it rolled me over. And then
I saw it standing outside the bedroom door. At first
(32:27):
I thought that it was Lilian, but I started to tremble.
It was a woman with long hair, and she had
her back to me, looking into the kitchen. She was
wearing a short fur coat and a kind of blue dress.
His fear became so intense that he screamed out, and
when he did, all the lights in the house went
out surely, then stumbled around in the blackness and eventually
(32:51):
found his way to the kitchen, and this is when
the lights abruptly turned back on to show Missus Adams
standing there, and there was no sign of the woman
in the blue dress. As he talked to her, they
could hear what sounded like groans coming from the bedroom,
and a foul stench wafted through the house that made
them feel sick. As they tried to figure out where
(33:11):
the smell and the sound were coming from, there was
a sudden, loud, wailing scream that sounded like the mournful
scream of something half human and half animal. Then a
trap door in the utility room opened and then slammed
shut with great force, sending both of them into a
state of abject terror. When William came home from his
(33:32):
light shift, they told him about what had happened, and
the police were called once again. However, all the doors
and windows were locked and there was no sign of
a break in or an intruder. At this point, William
was thinking that enough was enough, and he decided that
he would go back and stay in that room the
following evening to see for himself what was going on
and confront whatever was in there. Unfortunately, though, he would
(33:55):
get more than he bargained for, and he explains what
happened next. I'm not the kind of guy who believes
in ghosts, at least I didn't back then. I'm a
grown man with a family, I've been in the Army.
I just couldn't convince myself there was anything to it.
I had to try again and see what would happen.
I don't know how long it was, but I was
still awake. I heard a noise in the room. I
(34:18):
turned over to look, and there was a face only
inches away from me. It was the most horrible thing
I've ever seen. The eyes stared past me and the
mouth moved to talk, but only a hissing noise came out,
as well as a terrible stench. All I could think
of that next morning was that if the bedroom door
had been closed that Sunday night, I would have killed
(34:40):
myself beating against it to get out. The sight of
that face hovering in front of him in that dim
room sent him into a hysterical panic. He was in
such a terrified state that Shirley and his wife had
to wrap a blanket around him. And throw him into
a chair to calm him down. As they did this,
the sickening stench they had se smelled before came back,
(35:02):
saturating the air with the most repugnant smell they had
ever experienced, and it made surely vomit. This was enough
to send the entire family packing, with them hastily grabbing
their children and immediately leaving to go and stay at
a neighbor's house. The very next day they would move out,
never to return to that cursed house and its paranormal weirdness.
(35:24):
Not long after this, Missus Adams's brother Leo and her
sister Virginia came to check the house out and help
the family move some of their things out because they
were too afraid to go back in there again. Curious
as to whether there was anything to the stories or not,
Leo decided to go to that back room and see
what all the fuss was about. He did not believe
in any of the stories that he had heard, but
(35:46):
this was about to change. And Virginia explains what happened.
I was standing out in the kitchen and Leo said
that he was going to go and lie down on
the bed for ten minutes. In the dark. A few
minutes later, I heard this, this awful groan coming from
the bedroom. If it was Leo, I have never heard
him make a sound like that before. Then he came
(36:07):
rushing through the door and into the kitchen with the
most horrible look on his face, like he was scared
out of his mind. I asked him what he saw,
but he wouldn't tell me anything. Leo never would tell
anyone about what he had seen in that room, but
it was bad enough that he had nightmares for weeks afterwards,
and he also refused to ever step foot in that
(36:28):
house again. After this, the house remained empty even after
its notoriety grew, and the landlady forbade any paranormal investigators
from entering. This next experience involves an encounter that I
had never heard of before, and I came across it
(36:49):
in an article on Mysterious Universe. And I'm going to
call this experience Pumpkinhead. One of the strangest of all
encounters of the monstrous variety occurred on the night of Saturday,
November eighth in nineteen fifty eight. The unlucky soul who
had the misfortune to encounter the odd beast was named
Charles Wetzel, who at the time was driving his green
(37:12):
two door Buick Super along North Main Street in Riverside, California,
near the Santa Anna River. As Wetzell reached one particular
stretch of road that had flooded, the radio of his
car began to crackle loudly. With the water levels high
and Wetzell trying to figure out what was wrong with
the radio, he slowed down simply to ensure that he
(37:32):
didn't find himself driving off the side of the road.
As Wetzell continued to slowly negotiate the road, he was
shocked to the core by the sight of an extraordinary
creature that surfaced from the shadows and stood in the
middle of the road, preventing Wetzell from going any further.
Wetzell could only sit and stare in a combination of
fear and awe as he tried to take in and
(37:53):
comprehend what stood before him. It was humanoid in shape
and in excess of six feet in height. It had
a large round head described as being pumpkin like, with
glowing eyes and a prominent mouth that had beak like
qualities to it, and scaly skin that resembled leaves. The
(38:13):
legs of the beast did not extend from beneath its torso,
but from its sides. What began as a bone chilling
stand off quickly mutated into something else. Entirely. The terrifying
creature issued a loud, high pitched noise that was described
as being part scream and part gurgle, after which it
suddenly charged at Wetzel's buick. He could only sit paralyzed
(38:37):
with fear as the scaly thing raced towards the hood
of his vehicle, then lunged even closer and violently clawed
at the windshield. Although it was good fortune that led
Wetzel to have a rifle with him, by his own admission,
he was fearful about using it, not because it might
injure or kill the animal man, but because he was
worried that if he fired through the windshield and failed
(38:58):
to kill it, the shattered glass us would allow the
monster to reach inside and haul him out of the car,
possibly to tear him to pieces. With his body flooded
with adrenaline, Wetzel took the only option he felt was
available to him. He floored the accelerator, spun the wheels
and shot away. In doing so, he ran the beast down,
(39:19):
which was evident by the fact that Wetzell felt the
car go over its large body. Now, while some might
consider a story like this to be nothing more than fiction,
many believed his story to be true. The reason for
this is that Wetzel quickly reported the affair to the
local police, who then launched an investigation. The article then
goes on to say that it's most unlikely that a
(39:40):
hoaxer would run the risk of being charged for wasting
police time or for filing a bogus report. In fact,
police took Wetzel's story so seriously they sent not just
officers out to the scene, but a pack of bloodhounds
as well. The monster, whatever it was, was never found
dead or alive. There were, however, two pieces of evidence
(40:02):
that corroborated Wetzel's amazing experience. Police found vicious looking claw
marks on the windshield and on the underside of the buick.
These were both calling cards that Wetzel preferred to forget about. However,
it was unlikely that he ever would. The mysterious account
(40:24):
of the Pumpkinhead creature remains a mystery even to this day.
And like all of tonight's experiences, it proves that although
we see Halloween as a way to celebrate the unexplained,
you never really know when you'll actually encounter it for yourself,
and in many ways, I think that's the most unsettling
thing of all. As always, though, i'd like to hear
(40:45):
about your experiences and when they occurred, and you can
find all my contact information in the show notes as
well as at Paranormal Mysteries podcast dot com. Until next time,
thank you so much for listening, and I hope all
of you have a wonderful and safe Halloween, and of
course I hope you'll join me for my next episode
(41:05):
as we continue our journey into the unexplained right here
on Paranormal Mysteries
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Ruthie's Table 4
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home. On River Cafe Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers. Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt, and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks. Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation. For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/ Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/ Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/ For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com