The early July sun beat on 19-year-old Dallas Adams as he pumped gas into his car at a convenience store in Lucas, Texas.
A man and his son stood at the pump opposite Adams, a woman at her car was behind him. When the gas nozzle clicked Adams placed it back onto the pump and went inside the store. Things were different when he came out.
“There was no line in the gas station,” Adams said. “I bought cigarettes and walked out but when I came out my car was the only one there. I had only been in the gas station for maybe two and a half minutes. As soon as I noticed everyone was gone I felt scared but couldn’t figure out why.”
Then he saw the man standing by his car. As Adams walked by him, he noticed a smell, like the man hadn’t showered in weeks.
“He looked like an average guy but when I looked at him I felt scared like my life was about to end,” Adams said. “I went to my car and looked at him – he was staring at me.”
The man came closer to Adams as he stood at the driver’s side door, walking in long steps.
“I need a ride,” the man said, the force in his voice striking Adams like something physical.
“It scared me to death,” Adams said. “I said, ‘what?’ And he said, ‘give me a ride.”
Then Adams saw what frightened him.
“His eyes were completely black. No whites, no nothing, just black,” Adams said. “When I was talking to this thing I could smell its breath, which was horrible.”
Adams worked up the courage to ask where the Black-Eyed Man wanted to go. The man simply replied, “just give me a ride."
“I said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t,’ then he took a few steps toward me,” Adams said. “His walk was kinda odd, but stopped as this conversation was happening.”
But what terrified Adams was the man’s eyes.
“I couldn’t take my eyes off of his,” Adams said. “It was like they were sucking me in.”
As Adams stood, watching the strange man with the black eyes approach him, something broke whatever held Adams’ gaze. Adams hopped into his car and sped away.
What did Adams’ see?
“This is really troubling me cause I’ve had dreams about this man every night since the day it happened,” Adams said. “
Black-Eyed People have been in the popular culture since two approached journalist Brian Bethel as he sat in his car in 1998. The encounters are usually the same. Black-Eyed People are usually children to young adults who use language and assertiveness that would seem to be beyond their means. But the most common thread is their eyes; black, without iris or whites, and dead like a Hollywood vampire’s.
What these people may be – aliens, demons, practical jokers – is a matter of debate. However, the reports continue. Like this report from Omaha, Neb.
A little girl, about five years old, brown hair in a ponytail ran around the play area at the Westroads Mall, but Debbie Rife knew something was wrong with the child.
“I saw her eyes and just thought something was weird, different, off about her, so every time she ran past my way I tried to figure out what it was,” Rife said. “Then I realized that there was little to no difference in the shading between her pupil and iris. So of course I kept staring, only not trying to be obvious about staring.”
If there was any white to the girl’s eyes, Rife said it wasn’t noticeable.
And the odd little girl kept following Rife’s seven-year-old son.
“I was waiting for something weird, spooky or crazy to happen like a scene from ‘Carrie’, but really nothing happened,” Rife said. “She followed (her son) around for a little bit and kept saying, ‘Hi, hi, hi,’ and something about she wanted to marry (him). He said she was funny, but also creepy.”
Then there was the screaming girl.
“I didn't hear anyone else notice the child,” Rife said. “The only thing I did notice was that another little girl kept going up to her and doing this scream thing. She did that to her a couple of times until her mom came and told her to stop that and then she didn't bother the (Black-Eyed Kid) again.”
Online poster Thaisa, saw a Black-Eyed Person on a train in early May – and the horror haunts her.
“I have seen one of them and now wherever I go I don’t look into people eyes,” Thaisa said. “You can see something strange, sense something different. I did not feel scared until I saw this person’s big, entirely black eyes, no white inside it.”
As Thaisa watched, this man, who fidgeted on the commuter train, moving nervously from seat to seat, locked eyes with her, and his eyes changed to black within seconds.
“I turned my head immediately from fear,” Thaisa said. “I tried to rationalize this event. I thought I might have had a hallucination in the middle of the day.”
She looked at the man again and he still glared at her. Big, entirely black eyes stared into hers, and a fear like sleep paralysis gripped her.
“This person was sitting just opposite me in the train and was observing me for 35 minutes,” Thaisa said. “Clearly it wanted to make contact but I did not respond.”
The man eventually reached his stop and Thaisa felt like she snapped out of a spell.
“When he left the train I felt such a relief,” she said. “I felt like the biggest disaster was behind me. I was shaking for a couple hours after.”
Copyright 2010 by Jason Offutt
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, “What Lurks Beyond: The Paranormal in Your Backyard,” is available at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Encounters with Gnomes
Author’s note: A June 2009 “From The Shadows” installment told the tale of “Tammy” whose family was terrorized by an evil, little gnome-like man on their property near the Tule River in Porterville, Calif. Her case is not as isolated as we may hope.
Dan Bortko’s family moved from Wyandotte County, Kan., to Liberty, Mo., in 1948 when he was about nine months old. His family didn’t know it, but something already lived in the house on High Street.
The house, a stucco bungalow built atop a hill in the 1920s, wasn’t the only structure on that site.
“There was a spring in the basement,” Bortko said. “The site of the spring was the site of a large farm from the 1860s through 1914. Our property was the part of a farmyard at some time.”
A barn still sat outside the two-bedroom house when the Bortkos moved there. In that house in 1952, Bortko saw something that has haunted in his mind since.
“I’ll call him a troll because that’s what he reminded me of,” Bortko said.
Regardless of the name – troll, gnome, dwarf, goblin – these diminutive, human-like earth creatures have littered cultural mythology across the globe. And they are known to approach, and sometimes abduct, children.
Bortko, 4, napped in the same room as his two younger brothers, both in cribs, when something roused him from sleep. As his eyes slid open, he realized he and his baby brothers weren’t alone.
“I had just awakened form a nap and was rubbing my eyes and saw what you would call a troll,” Bortko said. “It was an old man with a long beard, large nose, about three feet tall standing at the foot of my bed. And I was astounded.”
The little old man wore German lederhosen and held a smoking pipe in his hand. As the little old man stood looking at Bortko, he smiled through his beard, winked and disappeared through the closet door.
“The only thing I could mutter was ‘goss,’” Bortko said. “My mother came in and opened the closet door and on the top shelf was a toy rubber goose.”
Bortko knows he didn’t say “goose,” the word “goss” had something to do with his troll.
Although Bortko doesn’t think he saw the little man again, later in life his mother told him he often talked about someone no one else could see.
“As a child my mother said I had an imaginary friend and I called it by its name,” he said. “My mother said it sounded like a science fiction movie name.”
During this time Bortko remembers looking out his bedroom window at night and seeing people near the old barn in the backyard – little people.
“That’s what scared me,” he said. “There were fairy tales pictures on my wall. There was a man on the mountain smoking a pipe. And this reminded me of him.”
As a child, Bortko, now an artist with a master’s degree in photography from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, once tried to capture his little man on paper.
“I remember doing a drawing of a picture of a man’s face with large dark eyes,” he said. “And my brother Bill started crying. Every time he saw it he was out of his wits.”
Maybe Bortko wasn’t the only person in his house who saw the “troll.” He certainly wasn’t the only person of that era who saw it.
David Schwab, 52, grew up in Orange, N.J., and is familiar with tales of a similar entity. His friend Jerry saw one of these “trolls” in the early 1960s.
“I remember Jerry always talking about some kind of troll/elf/leprechaun-type critter with a rather long beard being on his steps,” Schwab said.
Schwab met with Jerry in December 2009 before his friend moved to the Philippines and asked him about the story.
“He said that when he was a kid, he was in his backyard and was startled by a small gnome-like man with a long beard, standing by his back porch,” Schwab said. “He said he had funny clothes on and a pointed hat and all.”
The entity, about two or three feet tall, just stood at the steps, staring at him. This wasn’t the last time the gnome made an appearance at Jerry’s house.
When Jerry was in his 20s, his five-year-old nephew took a nap in a converted bedroom his family called the ‘shower room’ because it had once been a bathroom, a showerhead still jutted from the wall.
“His nephew started crying and ran downstairs,” Schwab said. “He said that he was woken by a small man with a long white beard that stood and looked at him. Now that's weird.”
Copyright 2010 by Jason Offutt
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, “What Lurks Beyond: The Paranormal in Your Backyard,” is available at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.
Dan Bortko’s family moved from Wyandotte County, Kan., to Liberty, Mo., in 1948 when he was about nine months old. His family didn’t know it, but something already lived in the house on High Street.
The house, a stucco bungalow built atop a hill in the 1920s, wasn’t the only structure on that site.
“There was a spring in the basement,” Bortko said. “The site of the spring was the site of a large farm from the 1860s through 1914. Our property was the part of a farmyard at some time.”
A barn still sat outside the two-bedroom house when the Bortkos moved there. In that house in 1952, Bortko saw something that has haunted in his mind since.
“I’ll call him a troll because that’s what he reminded me of,” Bortko said.
Regardless of the name – troll, gnome, dwarf, goblin – these diminutive, human-like earth creatures have littered cultural mythology across the globe. And they are known to approach, and sometimes abduct, children.
Bortko, 4, napped in the same room as his two younger brothers, both in cribs, when something roused him from sleep. As his eyes slid open, he realized he and his baby brothers weren’t alone.
“I had just awakened form a nap and was rubbing my eyes and saw what you would call a troll,” Bortko said. “It was an old man with a long beard, large nose, about three feet tall standing at the foot of my bed. And I was astounded.”
The little old man wore German lederhosen and held a smoking pipe in his hand. As the little old man stood looking at Bortko, he smiled through his beard, winked and disappeared through the closet door.
“The only thing I could mutter was ‘goss,’” Bortko said. “My mother came in and opened the closet door and on the top shelf was a toy rubber goose.”
Bortko knows he didn’t say “goose,” the word “goss” had something to do with his troll.
Although Bortko doesn’t think he saw the little man again, later in life his mother told him he often talked about someone no one else could see.
“As a child my mother said I had an imaginary friend and I called it by its name,” he said. “My mother said it sounded like a science fiction movie name.”
During this time Bortko remembers looking out his bedroom window at night and seeing people near the old barn in the backyard – little people.
“That’s what scared me,” he said. “There were fairy tales pictures on my wall. There was a man on the mountain smoking a pipe. And this reminded me of him.”
As a child, Bortko, now an artist with a master’s degree in photography from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, once tried to capture his little man on paper.
“I remember doing a drawing of a picture of a man’s face with large dark eyes,” he said. “And my brother Bill started crying. Every time he saw it he was out of his wits.”
Maybe Bortko wasn’t the only person in his house who saw the “troll.” He certainly wasn’t the only person of that era who saw it.
David Schwab, 52, grew up in Orange, N.J., and is familiar with tales of a similar entity. His friend Jerry saw one of these “trolls” in the early 1960s.
“I remember Jerry always talking about some kind of troll/elf/leprechaun-type critter with a rather long beard being on his steps,” Schwab said.
Schwab met with Jerry in December 2009 before his friend moved to the Philippines and asked him about the story.
“He said that when he was a kid, he was in his backyard and was startled by a small gnome-like man with a long beard, standing by his back porch,” Schwab said. “He said he had funny clothes on and a pointed hat and all.”
The entity, about two or three feet tall, just stood at the steps, staring at him. This wasn’t the last time the gnome made an appearance at Jerry’s house.
When Jerry was in his 20s, his five-year-old nephew took a nap in a converted bedroom his family called the ‘shower room’ because it had once been a bathroom, a showerhead still jutted from the wall.
“His nephew started crying and ran downstairs,” Schwab said. “He said that he was woken by a small man with a long white beard that stood and looked at him. Now that's weird.”
Copyright 2010 by Jason Offutt
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, “What Lurks Beyond: The Paranormal in Your Backyard,” is available at Jason’s blog, from-the-shadows.blogspot.com.
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