It was warm the night Carris Holdsworth walked to her apartment from a friend’s house in Lisburn, a city of 71,465 in Northern Ireland near Belfast.
Then 18-year-old Holdsworth didn’t know terror waited for her at home.
“It was about 10:45,” she said of that night in 2009. “I was only 18 and had a small flat in a very rough part of the neighborhood. That’s why it unsettled me when I saw two boys standing in my small patch of grass which I called my yard.”
The boys one about 16 years old the other 13 or 14, stood with their backs to Holdsworth.
“I edged around the corner, and as if they knew I was there, both turned around to face me at the same time,” she said. “They were just merely boys.”
As the teenagers turned to face her, she felt more than just unsettled.
“I felt raw fear when I laid eyes on them,” she said.
Holdsworth stopped a few yards from them, a fist in her handbag wrapped around a tin of pepper spray.
“I was ready to defend myself if one of them made any sudden movements,” she said.
But they didn’t. They seemed to know what she was thinking.
“No need for that,” the older one spoke, calmly and maturely. “We just want to borrow your phone, miss.”
Her knuckles began to turn white as her grip tightened on the pepper spray.
“They looked like any other teenager around these parts,” she said. “Hoody, jeans and grubby trainers (running shoes). But while the older one spoke I zeroed down on his eyes – they were pitch black. No trace of white or pupil at all.”
Further depths of terror rushed through her.
“I made a silent gasp,” she said. “It was as if I was in terrible danger; that I had to get away. My heart rate went off.”
All she knew at that moment is that she had to get inside her apartment.
“I didn’t know exactly what to do, so I marched towards my flat door, ignoring the two boys,” she said. “I fiddled around quickly in my bag trying to find my keys.”
“Please miss,” the younger boy said from behind her. “My mother won’t be happy if she doesn’t know where we are.”
Something pulled at her mind, to let them in, to help them.
“I wanted to obey them at first considering that they were young,” she said. “But seeing their eyes took me away. I just had to get away from them both and I knew if I obeyed them I was going to seriously regret it.”
“No. I, I, I …” she stammered.
“I couldn’t get my words out,” she said. “My hands hit my keys and I swiftly opened my door and slid in. My heart was banging against my chest.”
Shaking, Holdsworth fixed a cup of coffee, sat on the sofa in her living room, turned on the television and tried to calm down.
“I didn’t bother to check if they were still there in case I stared into those soulless eyes,” she said.
A knock sounded on her front door.
“I ignored it. It knocked again,” Holdsworth said. “I felt in real danger.”
She stood and padded to the front door. Everything was silent for one second, two, three, then knuckles on the other side of the door rapped out three loud knocks.
“It scared me, making me jump back a few steps,” she said “I was grateful that my door was completely made of wood. I looked through the peep hole and almost died.”
The boys’ faces filled the peep hole.
“Both of them staring at me with those pitch-black eyes,” she said. “The horrid feeling of dread completely overwhelmed me.”
“Miss, we won’t hurt you. We promise,” one of the boys said.
Anger momentarily overwhelmed Holdsworth’s fear and she threw open the door. The boys stood in the doorway, grinning at her.
“What do you want?” she demanded.
“We want to use your phone,” the older one said.
“No,” she yelled.
“Just let us in to use the phone,” he said. “We won’t hurt you. We have no weapons to hurt you with.”
“Get away from my flat,” she shouted, then slammed the door in their faces.
Safely behind her solid wooden door, Holdsworth looked back through the peep hole. The boys still stood there, but they were no longer smiling.
“That feeling of utter terror and danger ran through me,” she said.
She went through her apartment, made sure every door, every window, was locked, then picked up the telephone.
“I called my friend to come around that it was an emergency and I needed her help,” she said, calling a friend other than police because she didn’t want to draw attention to her apartment.
Holdsworth’s friend arrived 10 minutes later.
“When I opened the door I couldn’t help but hug her,” Holdsworth said. “She told me two boys were standing in my yard but they left once she arrived. She said they made her feel in danger.”
Holdsworth has since moved to a different neighborhood, but the terror of the night of the Black-Eyed Kids stays with her.
“I always check through that peep hole before I go to sleep,” she said. “I don’t know exactly what those boys were, but I do know they meant me harm and that they weren’t human in any way. I still get scared thinking about it.”
Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”
Jason’s newest book on the paranormal, “Paranormal Missouri: Show Me Your Monsters,” is available at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Terror of the Evil Little Man -- Part Three
Author’s note: Last week I gave you the second of a two-part story of a California family terrorized by an evil, gnome-like creature. It was the same story I had reported two years before – with a different family. Last week I asked the question, did they live in the same house? This week I have the answer.
The evil, little man only came at night, and although its origin wasn’t clear, its intention toward Charlie Thomas’ family was – it meant them harm.
Thomas, her husband and their two-year-old twin girls moved out of the two-story country house in Porterville, Calif., by the Tule River in 2010 to escape the cackling imp. Thomas’ story seemed familiar, because it was. I had heard the story before, in 2009 from a woman named Tammy who moved to Porterville, Calif., into a two-story home nestled amongst a few other houses by the Tule River. A gnome-like creature terrorized her and her family as well.
I asked both women if they had lived in the same house; Thomas wasn’t sure.
“It does sound like the house we lived in, only there were no other houses close to us,” she said. “But the description of that barn and everything else sounds just like it, and the Tule River runs behind the house. I don’t know what to think about it all.”
But she wanted to know. Her experience was too terrifying for her be at peace.
“It’s too creepy to think that there are more of those creatures,” she said. “I would like to speak to those other people and find out if we were in the same house or close to it. Thanks for not telling me that I lost my mind.”
I put Thomas in contact with Tammy. Tammy didn’t think it was the same house, either.
“Charlie sent me an email and she described the house that she lived in but it didn’t sound like the same place because the place where I lived had other houses on the property,” Tammy said. “But then she started naming some of the side streets and then I knew it was the same house or really close to it.”
Overwhelmed with curiosity, the women met and drove to the property.
“We decided to go over there to make sure that we were talking about the same place,” Tammy said. “It definitely was the same place. I guess whoever bought it from my landlord had had all the other homes moved off of it.”
As Tammy stood, looking at the house where a three-foot tall man with pointed teeth and an evil cackle stalked them in the night, something seemed wrong – the barn was gone.
“We thought that we might get the nerve up to go and take pictures of the barn to send to you but it was gone,” she said.
Someone had torn down the shed – a place of refuge for the gnome-like creature. Thomas was happy of that.
“We had talked about the possibility of looking inside the shack,” Thomas said. “I really don’t think I would have been able to get close to it; forget about going into it. Even with that shack gone the whole place still had an eerie feel to it and I don’t know if that is because of what we dealt with while living there or just the place itself. I don’t think I’ll be going back there again.”
Before they left, the women approached their old house and knocked on the door. The current resident was not happy to see them.
“I’m not trying to be nasty or anything but the lady that owns it now could very well be an old troll,” Tammy said. “She was just hateful and when we tried to ask her about the barn she pretty much told us to get lost and not in those nice words.”
Thomas was equally taken aback.
“We tried to ask the woman who lives now there about the shack and if she had ever experienced anything while it was there but she didn’t want to talk to us,” Thomas said. “In fact, she told us to leave the property. She didn’t have to tell me twice. I was happy to get away from there.”
The visit brought back other memories to Tammy – memories that rang of the gnome.
“One of the old houses that were on the property when I lived there; the people that lived in the smallest of the houses had some paranormal things going on,” she said. “They would get up in the morning to find huge piles of feces on their kitchen and living room floors and they didn’t have dogs in their house.”
They would also hear their names called when no one else was home, and televisions and radios would come on in the night.
“When they turned them off they would go right back on only louder and when they tried to turn them off again they would hear a really nasty creepy voice yell at them to ‘leave it the F word alone,’” Tammy said. “Could it be that creepy gnome thing in the house? It was just too weird.”
Thomas just hopes the evil little man is gone.
“Hopefully that creepy little creature didn’t move to another barn or shed or shack and is not terrorizing someone else,” she said. “One thing I would like to know is where did it come from and why was it there other than to terrorize everyone who lived near that old shack?”
Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”
Jason’s newest book on the paranormal, “Paranormal Missouri: Show Me Your Monsters,” is available at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.
The evil, little man only came at night, and although its origin wasn’t clear, its intention toward Charlie Thomas’ family was – it meant them harm.
Thomas, her husband and their two-year-old twin girls moved out of the two-story country house in Porterville, Calif., by the Tule River in 2010 to escape the cackling imp. Thomas’ story seemed familiar, because it was. I had heard the story before, in 2009 from a woman named Tammy who moved to Porterville, Calif., into a two-story home nestled amongst a few other houses by the Tule River. A gnome-like creature terrorized her and her family as well.
I asked both women if they had lived in the same house; Thomas wasn’t sure.
“It does sound like the house we lived in, only there were no other houses close to us,” she said. “But the description of that barn and everything else sounds just like it, and the Tule River runs behind the house. I don’t know what to think about it all.”
But she wanted to know. Her experience was too terrifying for her be at peace.
“It’s too creepy to think that there are more of those creatures,” she said. “I would like to speak to those other people and find out if we were in the same house or close to it. Thanks for not telling me that I lost my mind.”
I put Thomas in contact with Tammy. Tammy didn’t think it was the same house, either.
“Charlie sent me an email and she described the house that she lived in but it didn’t sound like the same place because the place where I lived had other houses on the property,” Tammy said. “But then she started naming some of the side streets and then I knew it was the same house or really close to it.”
Overwhelmed with curiosity, the women met and drove to the property.
“We decided to go over there to make sure that we were talking about the same place,” Tammy said. “It definitely was the same place. I guess whoever bought it from my landlord had had all the other homes moved off of it.”
As Tammy stood, looking at the house where a three-foot tall man with pointed teeth and an evil cackle stalked them in the night, something seemed wrong – the barn was gone.
“We thought that we might get the nerve up to go and take pictures of the barn to send to you but it was gone,” she said.
Someone had torn down the shed – a place of refuge for the gnome-like creature. Thomas was happy of that.
“We had talked about the possibility of looking inside the shack,” Thomas said. “I really don’t think I would have been able to get close to it; forget about going into it. Even with that shack gone the whole place still had an eerie feel to it and I don’t know if that is because of what we dealt with while living there or just the place itself. I don’t think I’ll be going back there again.”
Before they left, the women approached their old house and knocked on the door. The current resident was not happy to see them.
“I’m not trying to be nasty or anything but the lady that owns it now could very well be an old troll,” Tammy said. “She was just hateful and when we tried to ask her about the barn she pretty much told us to get lost and not in those nice words.”
Thomas was equally taken aback.
“We tried to ask the woman who lives now there about the shack and if she had ever experienced anything while it was there but she didn’t want to talk to us,” Thomas said. “In fact, she told us to leave the property. She didn’t have to tell me twice. I was happy to get away from there.”
The visit brought back other memories to Tammy – memories that rang of the gnome.
“One of the old houses that were on the property when I lived there; the people that lived in the smallest of the houses had some paranormal things going on,” she said. “They would get up in the morning to find huge piles of feces on their kitchen and living room floors and they didn’t have dogs in their house.”
They would also hear their names called when no one else was home, and televisions and radios would come on in the night.
“When they turned them off they would go right back on only louder and when they tried to turn them off again they would hear a really nasty creepy voice yell at them to ‘leave it the F word alone,’” Tammy said. “Could it be that creepy gnome thing in the house? It was just too weird.”
Thomas just hopes the evil little man is gone.
“Hopefully that creepy little creature didn’t move to another barn or shed or shack and is not terrorizing someone else,” she said. “One thing I would like to know is where did it come from and why was it there other than to terrorize everyone who lived near that old shack?”
Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”
Jason’s newest book on the paranormal, “Paranormal Missouri: Show Me Your Monsters,” is available at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.
Friday, August 12, 2011
Terror of the Evil Little Man -- Part Two
Author’s note: Charlie Thomas contacted me in July 2011 with a story of a gnome-like creature that terrorized her family in their two-story Porterville, Calif., home by the Tule River. I had heard the story – at least a similar story – before, in 2009 from a woman named Tammy who moved to Porterville, Calif., into a two-story home by the Tule River. A gnome-like creature terrorized her and her family. I’m investigating to see if they lived in the same house. My guess is they did. This is the second of two parts.
The noise outside the Thomas’ window may have been singing, or chanting, but whatever the noise was, it was terrifying.
“It was 3 a.m. and we were woken up by a sound that I can only describe as a raspy gurgling sound,” Charlie Thomas said. “It was without a doubt the most hideous sound I have ever heard. It freaked us out.”
Thomas and her husband looked out their bedroom window and saw something that froze their blood.
“Standing by my pond holding one of my garden gnomes was what I can only describe as something out of a Grimm’s fairy tale,” she said. “The thing that was standing in our yard was hideous and grotesque.”
The “thing” stood illumined under the motion detector light. It was less than three feet tall, had a long gray beard, wore maroon pants, a baggy yellow shirt, brown vest and a dark waistcoat.
“I couldn’t tell if it was wearing shoes or not but it was wearing a reddish brown pointed hat,” she said.
Thomas stared at a gnome.
“The thing that made this creature really hideous was its eyes and teeth,” she said. “It looked like it was grinning and its teeth were jagged and pointed. The eyes were little beady and dark and mean.”
And it knew they saw it.
“That thing, gnome, troll, whatever it was, knew we were looking at it and it reached into the pond and grabbed a coy,” she said. “Right there in front of us it dropped it in its mouth and swallowed it. We had noticed that every time we put fish in the pond they disappeared and we thought it was cats or raccoons eating them. After seeing that I think that creepy little creature was the guilty party.”
Her husband pushed the window open a few inches and screamed at the creature, telling it to leave their yard or he’d call the police. The gnome simply grinned, laughed and shot them the bird.
They called 911.
“We just said that we had an intruder in our yard but we honestly didn’t think he was going to be there when they arrived,” she said. They didn’t tell the police what they’d actually seen.
When lights from the police car shown down their lane, the gnome simply disappeared.
“We told the officers that the person ran off when it saw the lights coming up the drive but they looked around anyway,” she said. “When they were satisfied that it was gone they came to tell us they had only found some small shoeprints like a kid’s. We knew it was no kid.”
The gnome came back night after night, holding a yard ornament and eating their fish.
They eventually moved the ornaments and put the fish into a tank in the house, then realized they’d made a mistake.
“One night after we had removed the fairies and gnomes and fish from the yard the creature showed up at the usual time, 3 a.m.,” she said. “When it showed up and found that the yard ornaments were gone and the fish were gone it went crazy. It was yelling and screaming something that we couldn’t understand – but we did understand that this thing was pissed and wanted us to know it.”
The gnome ran around the house again and again, screaming and gurgling, its feet hardly touching the ground. Then Thomas realized something terrifying.
“We had put a doggy door in the back door and it was big enough for our dogs to go through and it would be big enough for that creature to go through as well,” she said. “I took off running down to the kitchen and as I got there the dogs had started barking like crazy at the doggy door.”
She shut and secured the dog door, then realized the upstairs windows were open.
“If that creature can half run/half fly around the house it was probably capable of flying up to the windows,” she said. “A fear hit me than like nothing I had ever felt and I ran back up to the twins’ bedroom where they were both sound asleep in their cribs.”
Neither parent slept that night. They soon realized their days in Porterville were short.
“The last we heard of that creature was a very loud screeching cackling sound,” she said. “It was under one of the living room windows and when my husband went to check it out he saw the top of that creature’s hat under the window. Right then we decided that we were out of there. We couldn’t stay there with that creature.”
They soon moved.
Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”
Jason’s newest book on the paranormal, “Paranormal Missouri: Show Me Your Monsters,” is available at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.
The noise outside the Thomas’ window may have been singing, or chanting, but whatever the noise was, it was terrifying.
“It was 3 a.m. and we were woken up by a sound that I can only describe as a raspy gurgling sound,” Charlie Thomas said. “It was without a doubt the most hideous sound I have ever heard. It freaked us out.”
Thomas and her husband looked out their bedroom window and saw something that froze their blood.
“Standing by my pond holding one of my garden gnomes was what I can only describe as something out of a Grimm’s fairy tale,” she said. “The thing that was standing in our yard was hideous and grotesque.”
The “thing” stood illumined under the motion detector light. It was less than three feet tall, had a long gray beard, wore maroon pants, a baggy yellow shirt, brown vest and a dark waistcoat.
“I couldn’t tell if it was wearing shoes or not but it was wearing a reddish brown pointed hat,” she said.
Thomas stared at a gnome.
“The thing that made this creature really hideous was its eyes and teeth,” she said. “It looked like it was grinning and its teeth were jagged and pointed. The eyes were little beady and dark and mean.”
And it knew they saw it.
“That thing, gnome, troll, whatever it was, knew we were looking at it and it reached into the pond and grabbed a coy,” she said. “Right there in front of us it dropped it in its mouth and swallowed it. We had noticed that every time we put fish in the pond they disappeared and we thought it was cats or raccoons eating them. After seeing that I think that creepy little creature was the guilty party.”
Her husband pushed the window open a few inches and screamed at the creature, telling it to leave their yard or he’d call the police. The gnome simply grinned, laughed and shot them the bird.
They called 911.
“We just said that we had an intruder in our yard but we honestly didn’t think he was going to be there when they arrived,” she said. They didn’t tell the police what they’d actually seen.
When lights from the police car shown down their lane, the gnome simply disappeared.
“We told the officers that the person ran off when it saw the lights coming up the drive but they looked around anyway,” she said. “When they were satisfied that it was gone they came to tell us they had only found some small shoeprints like a kid’s. We knew it was no kid.”
The gnome came back night after night, holding a yard ornament and eating their fish.
They eventually moved the ornaments and put the fish into a tank in the house, then realized they’d made a mistake.
“One night after we had removed the fairies and gnomes and fish from the yard the creature showed up at the usual time, 3 a.m.,” she said. “When it showed up and found that the yard ornaments were gone and the fish were gone it went crazy. It was yelling and screaming something that we couldn’t understand – but we did understand that this thing was pissed and wanted us to know it.”
The gnome ran around the house again and again, screaming and gurgling, its feet hardly touching the ground. Then Thomas realized something terrifying.
“We had put a doggy door in the back door and it was big enough for our dogs to go through and it would be big enough for that creature to go through as well,” she said. “I took off running down to the kitchen and as I got there the dogs had started barking like crazy at the doggy door.”
She shut and secured the dog door, then realized the upstairs windows were open.
“If that creature can half run/half fly around the house it was probably capable of flying up to the windows,” she said. “A fear hit me than like nothing I had ever felt and I ran back up to the twins’ bedroom where they were both sound asleep in their cribs.”
Neither parent slept that night. They soon realized their days in Porterville were short.
“The last we heard of that creature was a very loud screeching cackling sound,” she said. “It was under one of the living room windows and when my husband went to check it out he saw the top of that creature’s hat under the window. Right then we decided that we were out of there. We couldn’t stay there with that creature.”
They soon moved.
Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”
Jason’s newest book on the paranormal, “Paranormal Missouri: Show Me Your Monsters,” is available at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.
Saturday, August 06, 2011
Terror of the Evil Little Man -- Part One
Author’s note: Charlie Thomas contacted me in July 2011 with a story of a gnome-like creature that terrorized her family in their two-story Porterville, Calif., home by the Tule River. I had heard the story – at least a similar story – before, in 2009 from a woman named Tammy who moved to Porterville, Calif., into a two-story home by the Tule River. A gnome-like creature terrorized her and her family. I’m investigating to see if they lived in the same house. My guess is they did. This is the first of two parts.
The house seemed perfect. Charlie Thomas, her husband, their two-year-old twin girls and two golden labs moved into the two-story country house in Porterville, Calif., in March 2010.
“The house was perfect for us,” Thomas said. “Exactly what we were looking for, and we couldn’t wait to move in. There are three bedrooms, a huge kitchen, dining room and living room and lots of windows all around it.”
The deck that poured from the back door opened to woods and the nearby Tule River. A deck in the front overlooked a pond. Thomas placed fairy, gnome, and toadstool yard ornaments around the pond, and stocked it with Japanese koi fish to make it more like their home.
But they would soon find it wasn’t their home.
Thomas began taking her daughters and the dogs to the river in the afternoon. The dogs loved the water, and the girls enjoyed throwing in sticks for them to fetch. One day at the river, Thomas heard her husband shouting for her.
“I heard my husband calling my name from the house,” she said. “He sounded kind of frantic and it worried me so I hurried the girls as much as two-year-olds can be hurried and started for the house.”
As they approached a rickety structure on the property Thomas calls “the shack,” the dogs grew defensive.
“As we got even with that shack the dogs went crazy,” she said. “They were barking and snarling and the hair on their backs was standing up and something told me to run so I grabbed a twin under each arm and ran for home.”
In the house, she slammed shut the door, locking it. But her husband wasn’t there.
“He was nowhere in the house,” she said. “I called his phone but he said that he hadn’t been home.”
Thomas’ thoughts went to the shack.
“There are two sheds on either end of the house,” Thomas said. “The shed on the west end is newer and we use it for storage and the one on the east end is just an old shack that looks like a strong breeze would blow it down. Something about that shack gave me the creeps, especially at night but I don’t know why.”
Thomas served in the Army, her husband in the Marines. They were both engaged in firefights in Iraq and Afghanistan and didn’t frighten easily, but something about the shed terrified them.
“After we had been here for a week or so I started noticing that none of the animals would go near that shack,” she said. “Our dogs, the stray cats and the wildlife gave that shack a wide berth when walking past it.”
Doing yard work one day, Thomas and her husband heard a fight coming from inside the shack.
“It sounded like a cat was in a fight with something way bigger than it was,” she said.
Her husband went into the house, grabbed a flashlight and ran to the shed.
“Just as he got to the door the noise stopped,” she said. “He went in and looked around with the flashlight. Just as he turned to go back out of the shed something in a corner caught his eye. There was something moving and sounded like it was struggling to breathe.”
He shone the light in that corner. It was a cat.
“He ran out of the shack and thought he was going to be sick but after a few deep breaths he was OK and told me what he had seen,” she said. “There was a cat and it looked like it had been in a fight with a meat grinder. It was totally skinned on one side and its neck looked as though some thing had taken a huge chunk out of it.”
Once he caught his breath, he ventured back into the shed – the cat was gone.
“There was no way that cat moved by itself,” she said. “We were standing right there. Where did the cat go?”
Next week: The evil little man.
Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”
Jason’s newest book on the paranormal, “Paranormal Missouri: Show Me Your Monsters,” is available at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.
The house seemed perfect. Charlie Thomas, her husband, their two-year-old twin girls and two golden labs moved into the two-story country house in Porterville, Calif., in March 2010.
“The house was perfect for us,” Thomas said. “Exactly what we were looking for, and we couldn’t wait to move in. There are three bedrooms, a huge kitchen, dining room and living room and lots of windows all around it.”
The deck that poured from the back door opened to woods and the nearby Tule River. A deck in the front overlooked a pond. Thomas placed fairy, gnome, and toadstool yard ornaments around the pond, and stocked it with Japanese koi fish to make it more like their home.
But they would soon find it wasn’t their home.
Thomas began taking her daughters and the dogs to the river in the afternoon. The dogs loved the water, and the girls enjoyed throwing in sticks for them to fetch. One day at the river, Thomas heard her husband shouting for her.
“I heard my husband calling my name from the house,” she said. “He sounded kind of frantic and it worried me so I hurried the girls as much as two-year-olds can be hurried and started for the house.”
As they approached a rickety structure on the property Thomas calls “the shack,” the dogs grew defensive.
“As we got even with that shack the dogs went crazy,” she said. “They were barking and snarling and the hair on their backs was standing up and something told me to run so I grabbed a twin under each arm and ran for home.”
In the house, she slammed shut the door, locking it. But her husband wasn’t there.
“He was nowhere in the house,” she said. “I called his phone but he said that he hadn’t been home.”
Thomas’ thoughts went to the shack.
“There are two sheds on either end of the house,” Thomas said. “The shed on the west end is newer and we use it for storage and the one on the east end is just an old shack that looks like a strong breeze would blow it down. Something about that shack gave me the creeps, especially at night but I don’t know why.”
Thomas served in the Army, her husband in the Marines. They were both engaged in firefights in Iraq and Afghanistan and didn’t frighten easily, but something about the shed terrified them.
“After we had been here for a week or so I started noticing that none of the animals would go near that shack,” she said. “Our dogs, the stray cats and the wildlife gave that shack a wide berth when walking past it.”
Doing yard work one day, Thomas and her husband heard a fight coming from inside the shack.
“It sounded like a cat was in a fight with something way bigger than it was,” she said.
Her husband went into the house, grabbed a flashlight and ran to the shed.
“Just as he got to the door the noise stopped,” she said. “He went in and looked around with the flashlight. Just as he turned to go back out of the shed something in a corner caught his eye. There was something moving and sounded like it was struggling to breathe.”
He shone the light in that corner. It was a cat.
“He ran out of the shack and thought he was going to be sick but after a few deep breaths he was OK and told me what he had seen,” she said. “There was a cat and it looked like it had been in a fight with a meat grinder. It was totally skinned on one side and its neck looked as though some thing had taken a huge chunk out of it.”
Once he caught his breath, he ventured back into the shed – the cat was gone.
“There was no way that cat moved by itself,” she said. “We were standing right there. Where did the cat go?”
Next week: The evil little man.
Got a scary story? Ever played with a Ouija board, heard voices, seen a ghost, UFO or a creature you couldn’t identify? Let Jason know about it: Jason Offutt, P.O. Box 501, Maryville, Mo., 64468, or jasonoffutt@hotmail.com. Your story might make an upcoming installment of “From the Shadows.”
Jason’s newest book on the paranormal, “Paranormal Missouri: Show Me Your Monsters,” is available at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.