Pale Old Man


What I'm about to share with you, truly did happen back when I was at the age of four years old.

During every summer, my two older sisters and I would spend a week with our beloved grandparents who lived way out in no man's land. In by saying this, I mean where their house was located at, was way out in the boonies, where the nearest neighbor lived a mile away from them. We loved our grandparents, but really prefered to be in the city instead of way out there with them where nothing was nearby, not a store, or a Ice Cream Shop, or any nearby children to play with.

Their home was a pleasant old house sitting on 15 acres of land, with nothing but wooded acreage surrounding their home, and where most children would probably just love to roam and play upon these grounds if they had the same opportunity as us.

It was a place where you could hunt for Frogs and box Turtles, Salamanders, and Butterflies. Go fishing with grandfather, or pick apples and blackberries with grandmother. During the daytime, it was nice to be outdoors and play for hours on end without a care in the world, but when the sun began to set, and soon darkness fell upon us, it was no longer nice to be outdoors, for it was far too dark and spooky to be outside. When darkness fell, you could hear the noises of the night, the call of the wild with the Crickets chirping away in the night, and the Owls hooting periodically, and Toads croaking in sync. And maybe every once in a great while you might hear a Fox'es shrill howl, echoing throughout the woods, or a Bear growling far off into the distance of the woods.

Once it was dark outside, I would never step out the back door for a few minutes onto the carport, nooooo sireeeee! For it was far too eerie and spooky out there for a child to want to be at, and nothing but pitch blackness, for there were no street lights way out there. No telling what you might see out there in the night!

On our first day being there, my sisters and I had just awakened, when we could smell breakfast foods filling the air throughout the house, that grandmother was cooking up on her cast iron wood burning stove in the kitchen. That was enough to get us all motivated and moving that morning. And so we hustled getting dressed, then hurried into the next room to sit down at the dining room table.

It was a bright and sunny morning that summer day, with sunlight gleaming through the windows. We could tell that it was going to be a really nice day for us all to enjoy.

After breakfast was over, grandfather announced to us that we were all going into town to get groceries today. They would buy a month's worth of groceries at a time, since they lived so far away from the nearest Grocery Store, in which was about 30 miles away from their house.

So we got into grandfather's old Buick, and headed on down the road destined for Worthington, Indiana. I always loved it when we drove there, for that would mean being around other people for a little while and not back at no man's land being isolated from all other population on the planet earth.

The country roads back at that time were all gravel, and if another vehicle was up a head of your vehicle...you didn't have your car windows rolled down, not if you didn't want to eat the gravel's chalky dust that the car up a head of you had stirred up into the air.

We were about 5 miles from my grandparents house heading North, traveling down a gravel country road, when suddenly we noticed a pale looking old man a few yards up a head of us walking down the right side of the road. He looked quite old, perhaps somewhere in his 70-80's and had a brown dress hat on, a white long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up half way, and brown trousers, and shoes. We also took notice that he had his hands stuffed into his trouser's pockets and stared down at the road as he walked, without looking up even once. As our vehicle was coming upon the old man, he kept his eyes staring down on the road as if he was in a trance or something.

Most people would look up at whomever was passing them on a road that they were walking along on....but not this old man.

My sisters and I thought his behavior was a bit odd, and so kept our eyes steadfast on the old guy without even once looking away from him. And then something really frightened my sisters and I...we saw his image begin to slowly fade away until he disappeared completely right before our eyes!

We quickly told our grandparents what had just occurred, and our grandmother replied, "I wouldn't doubt that it was probably a ghost children, these hills are much older than we are...it was most likely an old ghost roaming the roads around here." "What...a ghost?....what is a ghost?" We then asked her.

We didn't know anything about ghosts and wanted an explanation or definition of one.

We kept saying to one another, there wasn't any other side roads for the old man to disappear to, nor a nearby house for him to walk up to and go into, so where could he have gone?

The eerie experience had left my sisters and I feeling little less secure in the world, and we've never forgotten all about it to this very day. That's my first experience with the paranormal phenomonon in which made me a real believer...and then after a few more occurrances later on in my life....well, how can I just brush it all off and doubt everything that has happened. It all led me to believe that there's no other explanation and a lot more to this world than we realize.

So...how about you...are you a believer? Does things go bump in the night, or a sudden cool breeze surround you, when it's 59% to 79% in the room you're in, or feel as if you're being watched and take a look around, only to see that nothing is there? Do you hear your name being called out, when you're all alone, or hear voices coming from somewhere when you know that you're all alone in the house?

You just may not be all alone like you thought...somewhere...they're out there!

Happy Halloween and Happy Nightmares!


Credits to: =KoneKod

also to: =resurgere for the Treeline digital image.