Don’t Ever Play Hide and Go Seek Outside at Night

This happened to me so long ago, and I have been wanting to post this for a while… I just never found the words for what I saw before now…

I was about 8 or 9 years old at the time. Maybe younger. I was partially living with an older lady and her teenage kids in a big city suburb. I was originally from the next town over, so it wasn’t that far from my parents.

The lady’s house was basically the ‘it’ place for parents to dump their kids for prolonged amounts of time, so there were a bunch of kids there at all times.

I’m not exactly sure when my brothers and I started being babysat by this lady, it just sort of started.
I don’t think she was an actual nanny or even a certified child care provider, she was just the lady whom you could leave your kids with.

My father and mother had divorced a few years before and my mom had just remarried. She was living with my oldest brother and my stepfather, who was an ass, lived in his own apartment halfway across the city. Yeah, that marriage didn’t last very long.

So, that left me and my two younger brothers, I’ll call them A and B, with our father.

Anyway, my complicated home life aside, the point is, my father would often leave us with this lady. She was sweet, but her kids were… Lets say, they had their ‘unkind’ moments, but for the most part, they were good kids. Before I get to the actual event, let me share some info on the lady’s kids.

The eldest of the lady’s three children was a girl, I’ll call her 1, (I used to go to her room and play with her beauty supplies, she hated that lol), she was sort of aloof with us since she was a senior in high school and we were all kids, she was rarely at her house and when she was, she was in her room.
The second oldest boy, 2, was cool and calm. He would sometimes be left with us kids, which we all loved, when his mother went out shopping or the like. I think he was a junior, but I never really asked. I just knew he had a lot of school work to do when he came home after school.

The last boy, 3, was a sophomore, but he acted like a kid. he would often play with us, hold competitions, sometimes he would walk us to the boys and girls club behind his house and we’d be there for hours. He was a jokester as well, turning off lights and locking doors just to scare us kids. He’d dare us to do stupid things, and we’d do them just because he dared us too. (Like once, he dared me to run across the field behind his house barefoot. In the snow. At night. But hey, at least I can say that I did it now.)

This leads me to the event.

One night, 3 had asked me and my brothers if we wanted to play hide and go seek. Naturally, we said yes. (He had asked us three because we were the only children awake at the time, but I thought it was because I was the best hider lol.)

I had already had a good hiding place in the basement of the house where I was sure no one would find me, but he surprised me by announcing that this particular round of hide and go seek would be played OUTSIDE. He snickered as I so readily pointed out that it was nighttime and it was April, so it was cold.

“You’ll be fine! Just wear a sweater!” I hesitated but obliged with his crazy game.

Of course, in hindsight, I should have said no, but its more than 13 years too late to start regretting it.

Anyway, I ran down the streets of the suburb and found a quiet place near the playground to hide. It wasn’t too cold, but I could still see my breath.

Alone, I looked around the playground. Normally, it was a fun happy place to play with friends. But at night, I just felt creeped out. I felt something behind me and rubbed the back of my neck, thinking it was bugs. I shivered.

I was found within a matter of minutes, and followed 3 to find my brothers and 2, who suddenly joined the reckless game.

B, my youngest brother, was hiding at an apartment building 6 or 8 blocks away from the house. I remember walking up to the apartment, staring at its orange lights and wondered how my brother, who was like 5 or 6, got this far without crying for mommy.

A (who was 7 or so) and 2 were closer to the house and 3 found them after an hour of looking.
We went back to the house and I remember looking at the clock strike 11pm. I was flabbergasted with how late it was and began to complain to 3, who just shrugged it off.

I enjoyed the game, but I wasn’t cool with making my younger brothers walk around at night alone.

3 didn’t care for my ramblings and shoved me and A out the door, locking it behind us. A frowned and looked at me angrily, because he had been kicked out for no reason except that he was between me and the front door.

I just instructed A to bang on the door till 3 gave up and opened it.

We banged and banged until I felt something behind me, like I did at the playground. Then I felt a chill. Not just the normal chill you feel on an April night. But, a sort of otherworldly chill. A felt it too, because he looked at me and frowned deeper.

I rubbed my arms in an attempt at getting warmer, but to no avail. The chill pierced through me, leaving me in wonder. Had it been this cold all night? Would it snow maybe?

Still lost in thought, I looked towards the empty street. I scanned up and down the road, seeing no parked cars or anything. Thinking it a bit odd that none of the driveways had cars, I turned to A and pointed it out.

We looked to the street again and that’s when we saw it.

To this day, my brother A and I have the exact same description of what we saw. We often bring it up to each other, just to remind ourselves that it happened. That it was real.

There, at the place where the sidewalk and the walkway of the house met, was a man. It was dark, so we couldn’t see the facial features of the man, but we did see him wearing a long coat, like a trench coat and a hat, similar to a fedora.

He was standing shock still, and the area around him was shadowy. Like, it was hazy with a black smoke. I turned to A and said, “He wasn’t there before, I swear!”

We then knew that it couldn’t be human.

The man, after several long agonizing minutes of silence, began walking towards the house slowly. Towards us.

We screamed our little lungs out and turned to the door and began banging frantically.

“Let us in! Let us in!”

Slowly, slowly the man approached. I have never been more scared in my life. If I hadn’t insisted on emptying my bowels before the hide and go seek game, I honestly would have released them then.

A was crying, I was screaming, banging, terrified all whilst the man came closer.

Eventually, thank God, 3 opened the door and A and I spilled inside. I shut the door with such force, I almost broke something. Locking it, I turned to 2, 3 and B and told them what had happened.

3, not believing me, opened the door and peered out into the street.

“There’s nobody out here! You just want to get me into trouble!”

I looked, and saw he was right. There was no one. In fact, there were even cars on the street, something that wasn’t there before.

“No way, I saw it! A saw it!” I kept insisting that I was telling the truth, but 3 rolled his eyes in disbelief. 2 lead me and my brothers upstairs to bed, thinking that it was the tiredness that made me this way.

I gave up and went to bed. But, I never forgot what happened to me.

Will it happen again? What was it exactly that I saw?

Maybe the more appropriate question is, who exactly did I see?

I pray I never find out.

 

Credit: Shichibukai7