The Tall Men

This is something that I experienced over the course of the 2 years that I was with my ex boyfriend. I honestly do not know how to explain much of this. I’d appreciate any feedback or information on the topic. It is a long story and requires a lot of exposition, but I’d love to understand it one day.
So when I was 17, almost 18, I met this kid (we’ll call him Rayn). My friend had dated him previously for about a month. They mutually decided they were a bad match, so she set me up with him. He was a musician. I was a musician. We both had contemporary clothing styles. According to high school law, we were a match made in heaven.

The first few months of our relationship was great. I knew pretty early on that we weren’t going to get married, but I liked his company a lot. We got along really well. After about our third month together, we decided to take a little trip to his parent’s cabin. I THINK I was 18 at this point, but my parents still wouldn’t have allowed it. I was going into my senior year of high school and my parents were very religious. A weekend getaway alone with my boyfriend was a hard no. Instead I lied to them and said I was going to a Cabin with my friend Taylor. I was often surprised by how easily my parents believed me. I got away with a lot.

The Cabin was in the middle of this tiny town in Utah called Manti. If you’ve ever been to the lesser populated parts of Utah, you know what I’m talking about; antique Stores, churches, farms and Polygamists. There was just one ancient Wal-Mart within a 30 mile radius and a massive Mormon Temple. I suggest you google it. Fortunately, we didn’t plan on spending much time out of the cabin, if you know what I mean wink wink. Ultimately, we wanted alone time.

The first day was pretty uneventful and by the evening we found ourselves mildly bored. We’d watched everything decent on cable and had resorted to old VHS tapes. I decided something had to be done to cure us of our boredom, so I asked Rayn if I could hypnotize him. I could tell he thought it was stupid. My friends and I dabbled with such things when we were in middle school. I was pretty atheist, so I really only viewed it as a fun way to pass the time or a strategy to quit smoking. It had been a very long time since I’d done it. I had forgotten the method and resorted to looking it up on google. I quickly found a ten step guide on wikihow. It seemed to be thorough enough and for my purposes, I wouldn’t need anything all that in depth.

I started the session by guiding Rayn into relaxation. After fifteen minutes or so, I talked him into hypnosis. The first ten minutes didn’t prove to be interesting. I was doing my best to explore his subconscious. I was asking questions about his hopes and dreams, what he wanted out of life. He’d respond in a monotone voice. Somehow we got to discussing his childhood. He starts describing this scene from when he was a child on Christmas. He says he’s running down the stairs to get his presents when suddenly… and I mean fucking suddenly, he snaps. I don’t know what it was or why this happened, but Rayn starts full on sobbing, eyes still closed. Obviously this freaks me out, so I start asking him what is wrong in an attempt to fix the situation. All he can say is “They’re here with me”. I asked him who is there, but instead of a response, I get a very strong image in my head of three, tall, grey ambiguous figures. They look like the aliens from Signs and Slenderman combined. That is the best way I can describe it. They didn’t have a face or any form of clothing. They weren’t even entirely opaque. I’m not exaggerating when I say that the most intense feeling of fear literally surrounded me. It was time to end this hypnosis. I tell Rayn that when I clap three times, he will wake up. I clap three times. His eyes flash open and the creepiest, joker-like smile stretches across his face. I’ve never seen anything like it. It chilled me to my damn core. As I’m sitting there about to shit myself, he looks past me towards the window behind me and says, “They’re here”. That’s when I lose it. I tell him once more that when I clap my hands three times he will wake up. I clap my hands three times.

“Boo!”

Absolute rage courses through my body. Did he really just say boo? Was he fucking with me that whole time? I start berating him with questions. “Why did you do that?” “How did you make yourself cry?” “Why the fuck were you trying to scare me like that? It’s not funny at all!” His only response is, “What are you talking about? You counted down from ten, you clapped and I said ‘boo’”. This stopped me in my tracks, but I wasn’t entirely convinced that he wasn’t still messing with me. “You better not be joking!” I half threatened. He didn’t say much after that. He just sort of stared off into space for the next hour. He didn’t move from his seat, he wouldn’t respond to me. I was scared.

The next day he seemed to be fine. I shoved the incident to the back of my mind. He wouldn’t talk about it anyway. We simply went about our day until we found ourselves bored again around 3:00pm. Rayn was tired so I suggested he take a nap. While I sat on the couch watching a Brad Pitt movie, he napped with his head resting in my lap. Ever since I’d known him, Rayn twitched in his sleep. This time was no different. As he napped, he twitched. I would rub his back a bit to soothe him into REM, but I mostly ignored it. Half way through my movie, I started to notice the light above me flickering occasionally. I paid it no mind and attributed it to the age of the house. However, there came a point where Rayn twitched quite violently and at that same moment, the light followed suit with an even more intense flicker. This caught my attention, but I quickly brushed it off… until it happened again, and again and again. At this point Rayn was practically convulsing while the light behaved in a fashion that nearly resembled a strobe. Without any warning he jumped up under the light, tears streaming down his face and said “I did that!” The same terror that I had felt the night prior returned. “You did what?” I stammered. “I did that to the light!” he shouted excitedly! “I left my body, flew around the town and came back through the light.” I was dumbfounded. Had he turned our trip into a massive prank on me? Still, I couldn’t explain away the light, so instead of rejecting it, I decided to ask questions. Apparently there wasn’t much to tell because Rayn quickly clammed up and stopped responding to me.
The next couple months went like normal. Nothing odd or out of place happened. Not until he went to college. Now, this is the point where I need to explain something very vital about Rayn.

About four months before he met me, Rayn almost died. At that time he was on an antipsychotic. I no longer remember the name of this medication. It’s pertinent to the story, so if any of you know what I’m talking about, please tell me the name of the drug. Anyway, he was on this drug because when he was a baby, a babysitter dropped him on his head. Yes, he was literally dropped on his head as a baby. This caused some pretty substantial damage to his brain stem. Because of this he couldn’t really produce chemicals such as dopamine, serotonin and testosterone on his own. I honestly don’t understand how that works, so I’m sorry that I can’t give you more insight. While he was on this medication, he decided to smoke some weed with his friends. Apparently the combination of this drug and weed is a bad idea. When Rayn did this, his body temperature dropped so low that his body thought he was dead and released DMT into his brain.

For those that are unaware, DMT is a hallucinogen that naturally occurs in our brains. When we die, it’s released. Many theorize that this is the afterlife. The release of DMT in Rayns brain triggered one of the most intense, most terrifying trips I imagine anyone has ever experienced. It was so intense that a phenomenon called the “ego death” occurred in his mind. The ego death can happen on many different scales. It can be small scale or large scale. In Rayns case, he separated from himself mentally. He knew who he was and remembered his life, but it’s like he had watched it all from someone else’s perspective and was now forced to wear a human suit and go about his life like normal. Sadly, he developed PTSD from this experience. He would often say it was like living an eternity in hell and then in heaven. It would cycle for millennia until he was finally swept back into reality. In his mind he had experienced millions of years over the course of fifteen minutes. He never sought treatment for this trauma. I think this is where the problems really started.

When Rayn went to college, he became very strange. I later found out he was using and dealing oxy, which I’m sure was part of it. First, he became very secretive. I’d stay over every couple weekends since he was an hour away from me. While I was sleeping he would just get up and leave at all hours of the night. He’d never explain this. He’d completely ignore my question and change the subject most of the time. He’d also get very despondent and stare into space for hours. On the reverse side, he would just become a different person. When I say a different person, I mean he would make these creepy fucking faces and talk in a different voice. This always scared me. It honestly made me wonder if he’d ever harm me. Once in a while he’d sit and stare at me with a creepy smile on his face for like a half hour. He wouldn’t stop no matter what I did. Sometimes he’d even stand up while keeping eye contact, walk over to me with that fucked up smile on his face, come about an inch away from my face and then walk back… backwards.

I’m sure you’re wondering why I was even with him. Our relationship was great and most of the time so was he. These instances were periodic throughout the week, but I had convinced myself he was messing with me. (I’m an idiot. I know). It wasn’t long until his grades dropped. Rayn graduated high school with a 3.98. He was a bright kid, but for whatever reason, he completely failed out of college within the first semester. After this he moved in with his cousin Natalie and her boyfriend. He was only 19… maybe 20 at the time, but they had booze constantly available. Every night when I got off work, he was drunk. I’d come over for an hour or two and he was always wasted. I hated it. I like drinking as much as the next person, but he was an alcoholic at this point. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the only strange behavior. One night when I was sleeping over, I woke up to him staring out his bedroom window. I asked what he was doing and he said there was a man standing under the street light outside. I got up and looked. There was nothing. I caught him doing this a few more times over the 6 months that he lived there. Oddly enough, as time went by, the grass under the lamp died. It died to the point that there was only a circle of dirt under the light. All the grass around it was green. I guess the sprinklers could have been missing it, but it was odd.

I think it was two months after he moved in that the first really alarming thing happened. I had gotten off of work and decided I’d pay him a visit. When I got there, he was wasted. Nothing out of the ordinary. I was pretty irritated with the situation. He couldn’t even say a sentence properly. I decided to leave after no more than thirty minutes. I was over it. Well Rayn, being the hammered gentleman that he was, wanted to walk me out to my car. It was late and he was worried. I tried to convince him not to, but he insisted. We walked outside. He was falling all over himself. He could barely stay vertical. I was half contemplating dumping him right then and there when he said something strange.

“The tall men.” I froze. In that instance, an image of three, tall, grey, ambiguous figures pops into my mind.

“What did you just say?” I asked.

Rayn quickly stands up straight and cracks a smile, “Nothing.” I pressed for a few seconds, but he wouldn’t elaborate on what he’d said. I went home.

I don’t know what it was, but I couldn’t let it go. The next day I asked him about what he’d said, but he claimed he didn’t remember.

That wasn’t the last time he brought up the tall men. It happened two more times, both when he was hammered. He’d bring them up briefly, but he’d never elaborate. Finally, after months, he brought them up sober… or nearly sober. We were at one of our friends house’s. He was throwing a little kick back, so we’d come over to drink beer and listen to music. I can’t remember how we got into this conversation, but Rayn jokingly brings up the tall men. I was ecstatic. I’d been trying to have a lucid conversation about them forever, but he never wanted to talk about them. I still don’t really understand what he was trying to do with this conversation, but he kind of turned them into a joke.

“Yeah the Tall Men. They follow me around. If you tell three people, they will follow you too.” This was the most he’d ever said about them and the last thing he’d ever say. I decided it was time for a little experiment.

That night when I got home, I sat alone in my room and asked the tall men to follow me. No, I taunted them. To quote myself directly, “Get at me Tall Men.”

Nothing really seemed to happen for the next year. At least nothing with Rayn. I remember having a conversation with his cousin before he moved out. She said he was staying up all night and would wake her up so she could keep him company. He was scared to sleep. When he moved back in with his parents, this problem dissipated. At least to my knowledge. Instead, something very odd started to occur with me.
I was getting in my car after leaving Rayn’s parents house and I was hit with an unsettling feeling. In an attempt not to sound insane, I felt two “entities” in my back seat. You know how sure you are of a person’s face when you’re looking at them? That’s how sure I was of the presence of these beings. I felt them so intensely that I could almost see them. It was crazy. Obviously, this creeped me out, so I told them to leave. I straight up said “You’re not welcome here. Please leave” and they left. It just wasn’t permanent. Occasionally when I’d leave Rayn’s house, they would be in my car. I’d ask them to leave and they always would, but they’d always come back. I dealt with this for about a month. I brought it up to my mom a few times. She only had very Mormon answers to my questions, so I stopped mentioning it. I really didn’t want these things following me for the rest of my life.

Everything came to a head in the spring of 2015. Let me give you a quick rundown of the timeline so far. I just realized that the time frame for this story is pretty confusing.

May 2013: I’m at the end of my junior year of high school. Rayn and I start dating August 2013: We go to his parent’s cabin September 2013: Rayn moves to college December 2013: Rayn fails out of college and moves in with his cousin February or March of 2014: Rayn brings up the Tall Men for the first time while drink Summer of 2014: Rayn talks about the Tall Men at a kickback and I invite them to follow me. Rayn moves back in with his parents Fall of 2014: I start feeling entities in my car.

That brings us to the spring of 2015. I got home pretty late from a friend’s house and went to the bathroom to wash my face. The second I started splashing water on my cheeks, I got the most blood curdling, bone chilling feeling I have ever felt in my life. It was like I could see through the back of my head. In that moment, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that there was a hulking, evil entity standing behind me. I frantically dried my face and looked up to the mirror to see what was behind me. There was nothing. It didn’t matter. At the top of my lungs, I screamed “You are not welcome here! LEAVE!” I don’t know how my parents didn’t wake up, but they didn’t. I then ran to my room and locked my door. I never felt anything in my room and never felt any entities again. Instead, there was this lingering darkness that you could feel sometimes in the hallway from the living room to the bathroom. My brother even brought it up once.

I never thought the entities and the tall men were connected. I didn’t even think about it until Rayn and I broke up and I was speaking about it with a friend. I’m not sure if the two incidents were related, but I definitely invited something strange into my life.

We’re finally reaching the end of my story. I’m sorry this was so long. I just felt like it was time to get some answers. Rayn and I broke up in July of 2015. We broke up for reasons unrelated to everything I’ve just told you. However, before we broke up, something happened. Before I continue, I want to say that I didn’t experience the next thing I’m going to tell you, so it could be bullshit. Nonetheless, it’s pertains to the story, so I’m telling you.

Two weeks before I broke up with Rayn, he had a dream. In this dream he awoke to a knocking on the wall next to his head. Rayns bedroom was on the third story of his parents’ house. The wall next to his bed faced the front of the home. It was not a shared wall with another room. Once he acknowledged the knocking, it began to travel along the wall, towards his feet until it reached the window. When it got to the window, it paused, and then knocked. Rayn sat up in bed and hesitantly lifted the blinds on the window. As he lifted the blinds he saw something. A long, grey, ambiguous figure looked at him from the other side of the window. It appeared to be floating, or perched on the side of the house. Rayn and I never discussed what I saw in my head. When he told me this dream, it perfectly described what had popped in my head during the hypnosis. This creature that he saw in his dream spoke to him. It asked him to let it in. Rayn told it no. This is the part of the dream that’s confusing to me. At that point the creature either turned into me, or made Rayn perceive that it was me. It again asked if he would let it in. He almost did, but noticed that something wasn’t right about my face and stopped. The creature turned back into itself. It did this few more times. It turned into his mom, his sister and his dad. Each time Rayn would reject its request. Finally the creature reached the end of its wits and in a demonic voice screamed for Rayn to let it in. Rayn told it no again, jumped back into bed and woke up. This time for real.

He became very obsessed with this dream for the remainder of our relationship. Unfortunately I have no knowledge of what happened after. The thing is, I would deduce this to him being mentally ill or a drug addict, but a conversation with a co-worker really cemented it for me.

January 2016 I’m at work telling my co-worker the same story I just told you. I only get to the part where I mention Rayn’s terrible DMT trip when she says, “Did he see the grey men?”

Apparently this is something that happens to a lot of people who trip on DMT. They see either a blue man, or multiple grey men, but they never follow them out of the trip. They don’t “haunt” people, so to speak. I don’t know what happened to Rayn. I don’t understand most of it myself, but whatever happened, it freaks me out.

If you have any insight or information into this, please let me know! I’d like some explanation.

 

Credit: Fedora Slayer 420