(A) Slender Man, The Watchers & The Rolling Calf | Archive Ep168

[00:00:02] On today's show we'll be covering bizarre humanoids, spirits, strange creatures, and much more. All coming up on this episode of Paranormal Mysteries. Thank you for joining me and welcome to another week of Paranormal Mysteries. I am your host, Nic Ryan.

[00:00:34] I hope you all had a great weekend, and before we start today's episode, I'd like to thank Leigh-Anne for their support and generosity. And if you enjoy the show, please consider following, sharing, and reviewing the podcast. This supports us by helping new listeners to discover the show.

[00:00:49] You can also support us at patreon.com slash paranormal mysteries or at buymeacoffee.com slash paranormal. And if you'd like to have your paranormal encounter shared on the podcast, please contact me at paranormalmysteriespodcast at gmail.com or on our website at paranormalmysteriespodcast.com.

[00:01:10] Or if you'd prefer to send me a voice message regarding your experience, you can do this on our website as well, or at speakpipe.com slash paranormal mysteries. And all of these links can be found in the show notes.

[00:01:24] And with that in mind, let's get to our first story of the night. This story comes to us from Julia, and Julia's story is called Skeptic's Stories. Julia says, Hi Nic, my sister and I discovered your podcast while on a road trip to Colorado last year

[00:01:42] and have been avid listeners ever since. She and I are skeptics and have never really considered ourselves believers of the paranormal. However, we both have had some pretty interesting events happen to us that we can't easily explain. I've included a couple of them here.

[00:01:57] I apologize for the length of this email ahead of time, but I think the extra details are necessary to include. My first strange experience was when I was in 7th grade and living in Connecticut. I was in Washington DC with my classmates.

[00:02:12] I should also explain that we were on our annual school trip, so we did a lot of tourist activities. One activity was an evening tour of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. The tour consisted of traveling to different 18th century buildings and houses and hearing about other people's ghostly encounters.

[00:02:29] The tour includes walking along the dirt roads that lead to the Governor's Palace, and all along the road are 18th century houses and businesses. The tour had stopped outside one big building or house. Because this happened 17 years ago, I can't really remember which building it was, but

[00:02:46] I looked at pictures of various tours on Google, and the house in my memory matches the George Wythe House, and others like it. The George Wythe House is a two-story rectangular brick house with nine windows that all have white trim, a typical colonial manner.

[00:03:03] Anyway, the tour guide and my classmates were standing on the footpath about 100 yards from this house. Most of the class was engrossed in what the tour guide was saying, but my friend and I, being the troublemaking tweens we were, had distanced ourselves from the group and were

[00:03:17] looking around at the historical dirt path road that the house sat on. As we were busy goofing off and mocking the tour for being silly, I noticed a strange man wearing a British colonial-era military uniform, complete with a red tailcoat and white

[00:03:32] pants tucked into his shin-high boots, walking towards the house. It's important to note that people on these tours dress up in period costumes to add to the spookiness and authenticity of the tours, so initially I didn't think anything of this

[00:03:45] man, but he was strange because he wasn't interacting with any of the tour goers and was making a beeline for the house. Because of that, he caught my attention, and I was mesmerized as I watched him walk towards the house.

[00:03:57] It seemed like I was the only person who had noticed him, as the rest of my classmates were paying attention to the tour guide. I watched this man for probably ten seconds walk across the grass from about 50 yards away from me, all the way to the house.

[00:04:11] The strangest moment came when he arrived at the house and kept walking, straight through the brick wall. I freaked out and immediately asked my friend, we'll call her Brittany, if she saw what I had just seen.

[00:04:23] She was just as freaked out as I was, and when I said, did you see that? She just yelled, yes. I double-checked that she saw a colonial-era soldier. I didn't know at the time that he was a British soldier, and she confirmed this by saying,

[00:04:37] yes, and then he walked straight into that building. I have had other bizarre experiences in my life that I have been able to rationally explain, but to this day, I still can't 100% explain this experience.

[00:04:50] The only plausible explanation I've been able to come up with is that Williamsburg uses holograms or something on its tours to show fake ghosts to tour goers, to further increase the spookiness and belief that the town is haunted.

[00:05:03] But this happened back in 2003, which was 16 years before holograms were used for music concerts, and the tour was outside at night, so it seems unlikely that they had the kind of technology for a tour like this, and that it looked so believable.

[00:05:17] I tried to investigate if ghost tours use holograms or something similar to trick tour goers, but I couldn't find anything. Maybe one of your listeners knows something about this. Even though I am a self-described skeptic and don't believe in ghosts, I know what I

[00:05:32] saw, and it is the most compelling evidence I have that the universe is filled with unexplained phenomena. My second story is from when my sister used to work at a donut bakery as the head baker.

[00:05:44] She has given me permission to tell this story, but she doesn't know that I'm submitting it now, so to protect her identity, I'll call her Sasha. When Sasha was 18, she worked at a donut bakery in downtown Indianapolis before she went to college.

[00:05:58] The bakery opened at 6am, so she had to go into work at 2am to start baking donuts so they would be ready by the time the bakery opened. She was the only person who worked this late shift.

[00:06:09] Keep this in mind because it is an important detail later in the story. For about a year, my sister would sleep in the afternoons and then wake up at 1am to drive to the donut bakery from her house in another town.

[00:06:21] Shortly after she started working at the bakery, she had been alone one night like usual when she heard a knock on the door. Like I said, none of her co-workers worked at night, and the owners had keys so they

[00:06:31] could just come in if they wanted to and wouldn't have needed to knock. So she knew it wasn't one of the other employees. Even though it was around 4am and more likely early morning than the middle of the night,

[00:06:43] she was scared of opening the door to someone that she didn't know, so she tried to ignore the knocking. But the person kept knocking, so eventually she agreed to open the door. She was relieved to find that it was just a delivery truck with some supplies.

[00:06:56] Because the local delivery service had a lot of clients and not all clients are able to receive deliveries so early, they prefer to drop off at the bakery first to get it out of the way.

[00:07:06] But since she was a young woman working in a city by herself at night, she asked her bosses to let her know about deliveries ahead of time in the future, and they agreed. Things were fine for her for about the next 10 months.

[00:07:17] However, after she had been working there for almost a year, she started having nightmares every night before waking up at 1am. These nightmares were very vivid and involved episodes of sleep paralysis.

[00:07:29] She would know that she was in her bed, but she would think someone was in the room with her, or she would dream that she was in the bakery for her shift like normal, but wasn't alone.

[00:07:38] Someone would be in the bakery with her, even though no one else worked at that hour. It got to the point where she was terrified of going into the bakery for her usual shift

[00:07:46] because her dreams were so frequent and realistic that she didn't feel safe in the bakery anymore. One night, after she had been having these nightmares for several weeks, she was working in the donut bakery by herself.

[00:07:58] It was around 3am in the morning, and still dark enough to be considered the middle of the night. All of a sudden she heard a knock on the door. Even though she had never gotten a delivery at 3am before, she hoped it was a delivery

[00:08:10] and decided to check the notice board that her bosses had made for her. However, she did not see any deliveries scheduled for that morning. It's important to note that the donut bakery was in a converted garage, so the baking and

[00:08:23] the customer areas were really one big room rather than smaller, separate rooms. While baking the donuts, Sasha was still visible from the front door, so even if someone wasn't bringing a delivery, they could easily see that the bakery wasn't empty.

[00:08:37] And Sasha could see the front door from where she was making the donuts. When she realized that there was no deliveries scheduled that night, she peeked around the counter and looked at the front door.

[00:08:47] And what she saw scared her enough that she quit the donut bakery soon thereafter. The figure standing at the door asking to be let into the donut bakery at 3am was unnaturally tall and slim, wore a top hat and suit, and didn't have a face.

[00:09:03] She was so scared that she hid in the boss's tiny office for 30 minutes until she felt that it was safe to come out again. When she came back out, the figure had gone, and she did not see the figure again.

[00:09:15] This event terrified my sister, but she didn't tell me or anyone else about it right away. She thought she was being foolish to be afraid of going to her job, working at night, and mythical creatures that weren't supposed to exist.

[00:09:27] However, years later she told me about her experience after she found out that the figure she saw matched the description of the Slender Man. We were talking about Slender Man, perhaps in response to listening to this podcast or something similar, when she said,

[00:09:42] Oh, I've seen the Slender Man. When I told her that the Slender Man was invented by some people on internet forums, and the young girls guilty of carrying out the Slender Man murders were tricked by these forums because Slender Man doesn't actually exist. She shrugged and said,

[00:09:57] That's what I saw. I reiterate that in general my sister is not a believer in the paranormal. She and I aren't religious, and we tend to view every situation with skepticism. However, we are superstitious, and figure that we shouldn't take unnecessary chances

[00:10:12] when dealing with the paranormal, just in case it turns out to be real. And when it comes to the Slender Man, or whatever you want to call the entity that tried to get into the bakery that night, my sister is 100% convinced he is real.

[00:10:27] Thank you for bearing with me. I know my stories are a bit long. Thank you also for sharing my stories on the podcast, if you choose to do so, and for providing people with a forum to share their experiences.

[00:10:38] I have some other experiences as well, but I won't share them now. If you'd like me to send them, let me know. Take care, and keep up the good work. Julia Our next story of the night comes to us from Mia, and Mia's story is called,

[00:10:56] I am being watched constantly. Mia says, Hi Nick, I've listened to your podcast for at least a year now, if not more, and I have loved learning from and hearing other's stories.

[00:11:08] I want to reach out to you in the hopes that someone might know more about what I am experiencing. I'm desperate. Ever since I can remember, I'm almost 24 now, I have felt that someone is watching me.

[00:11:20] Sometimes it's over my shoulder, other times it's directly in front of me, and it's worse at night. As a young child, my parents would have to rub my back until I fell asleep. Eventually I would wake up with a jolt, panicking.

[00:11:33] I would always end up in my parents' bed, and my dad, who was a saint, would sleep in my bed instead. This continued until I was 13, and my mom, my parents were divorced at this time, decided I needed to sleep on my own.

[00:11:46] I still woke up every night in a panic, and ended up sleeping on the floor outside of her door in the hallway. Eventually she let me back in where I slept on the floor for a few more years, and this

[00:11:56] was the same for my dad's place on the weekends. At 16, my parents and my therapist thought it was time that I slept in my room every night, all night.

[00:12:07] In order to do this, I had to move my bed so that when I slept on the floor beside it, I could not be seen through the window, and that's how I sleep to this day, despite living on the 12th floor.

[00:12:17] I attempted to close the blinds, but I would be overwhelmed with a sense of anger, like whoever was watching me was upset that I blocked them out. Once I slept over at my best friend's house, and her parents were out on a solstice party.

[00:12:30] I couldn't fall asleep, and quickly descended into panic. She called my dad who came over and stayed with us until her parents returned. I also have visions of death during the day, and nightmares of death during the night.

[00:12:43] During the day, it only happens when I am out and about. I pass a street, or a house, or a corner, and I see something. Sometimes it's a violent car crash, and sometimes it's a house on fire. The best example I have of this comes from college.

[00:12:58] There was an unfortunate accident when a man swerved onto the sidewalk and ran over a couple of girls. The news released what street it was on, but not the exact location. One day, I walked past one of the parking garages and saw a car running over me.

[00:13:12] I found out later when I became an RA and friends with the campus police that the accident happened outside that very parking garage. The dreams are similar versions of the visions, but international, like they aren't tied to a specific location.

[00:13:26] For example, I had dreams about people dying in a genocide in Africa during middle school, when we didn't learn about the Rwandan genocide until high school, and my parents knew little to nothing about it.

[00:13:37] Of course, I became interested and did my own research where I read stories, not images, about particular massacres that mirrored those which I saw in dreams. The most prominent dream would be the reoccurring one I had from elementary through high school.

[00:13:51] Now, I lived across multiple states and moved around a lot, so it wasn't tied to a particular house. In this dream was a house I knew to be haunted. At its core was a tree similar to the Tree of Life, except somehow it was darker.

[00:14:06] The walls were circular and lined the edges of the branches, while the floor was made up entirely by its roots. The most notable of the branches were two that stood separate from the others, twisted around each other with an old, frayed-up jump rope between them.

[00:14:19] I was always called to pull the jump rope, and every time I did, the roots rose up and overtook me. The other one that sticks out the most is one I had while visiting my aunt.

[00:14:30] I was staying in the guest bedroom, and the dream I had took place in that very room. I woke up in bed and sat up to the feeling of being watched. I looked around slowly and saw an elderly black woman staring at me.

[00:14:42] Her hair was in black and white dreads, and she was blind in her left eye. I had this particular dream multiple nights in a row, and immediately went out to a crystal store where I purchased selenite and labradorite.

[00:14:55] The dream ceased, and I keep those same crystals in my room to this day. Once I told someone about this, they mentioned something about a watcher. All I can find out about this refers to a biblical term for angels, but this feels somehow darker.

[00:15:10] Does anyone know anything about this term or perhaps about what I am experiencing? This isn't the extent of what I have seen, just what is relevant to my question.

[00:15:20] And I guess I would like to know if I am in danger, or what I need to do to protect myself. Thank you so much. Mia If anyone has thoughts or advice on what Mia is experiencing, please contact me, and I'll forward your information on to her.

[00:15:39] Our next story of the night comes to us from Anthony. And Anthony's story is called The Rolling Calf. Anthony says Hello! I found your podcast a week ago and I have been listening daily whenever it's convenient to do so.

[00:15:53] Firstly, I am Jamaican, and our culture is literally woven around magic and the supernatural. When I was a boy of about 7 or 8, my mother asked my half-sister's father to give us a ride to a relative's house about 3 miles away to attend a children's birthday party and

[00:16:09] to collect us in about 4 hours. This was in the 1980s, and home phones were few and very far between, and cell phones were non-existent. He picked us up in his 70s VW Beetle, took us to the location of the party, and dropped us off and left.

[00:16:25] The party was fun, and everyone was having a good time running around in the semi-darkened yard, which was separated from the road by a barbed wire fence embedded in a hedge. The adults were off to one side as we ran wild, playing, laughing, eating, drinking,

[00:16:41] the whole nine yards. From inside the yard, one could see through the hedge to the road's surface, in random patches where the thick green foliage thinned near the ground level. As it got later and later, he didn't return, and my mother became rather agitated as my

[00:16:56] sister was only 5 and wasn't normally awake, much less outside the home at this hour. At some point around midnight when most of the attendees had already meandered away, it seemed that all the dogs in the yard started barking furiously at something approaching.

[00:17:11] They then fled as if on cue to seek refuge beneath the house. An elderly lady who had been quietly sitting on the veranda the whole time got up and yelled for everyone to come inside the house immediately, after which she locked and bolted the door behind her.

[00:17:27] As we began to ask and wonder what was wrong and why she called us into the house so suddenly, she put an upright, wrinkled index finger to her lips and said, And that's when we heard the sound of what sounded like a large animal walking along

[00:17:41] the road, dragging a chain and snorting just outside the fence. Needless to say, we were all petrified. We didn't even want to breathe too loudly, much less make a sound which might draw the attention of whatever was outside the fence.

[00:17:56] It was then by the dim light of a ubiquitous home sweet home that I saw the old lady close her eyes and start whispering what sounded like a hushed prayer, but which quickly became

[00:18:05] a series of unfamiliar words, and then changed into what sounded like a long and repetitive, subdued chant. The creature outside paced the entire length of the road-facing fence, and its back-and-forth walking, snorting, coupled with the sound of the chain dragging rhythmically on the

[00:18:22] gravelly road's surface, was downright terrifying. This continued for what seemed like almost ten minutes, and to say that we were all scared out of our wits was a gross understatement. Overcome by curiosity, I made my way to a window and sneakily shifted the curtain ever

[00:18:38] so slightly to get a peek outside, between the rather large gap between the lowest frosted glass windowpane and the wooden windowsill. At first all I could see was the greenish-blue glow of peony walleys, which are like fireflies,

[00:18:51] but with glowing eye spots, instead of the luminous abdomen of the North American variety, and they were flying in random patterns in the darkness of the yard. Then I saw the dark outline of the lower abdomen and legs of what looked like a huge bowl through

[00:19:05] the gaps in the hedge, dimly lit by a distant streetlight, but sharply outlined against the dark gray surface of the tar and gravel road. What I saw wasn't abnormally huge nor monstrous, it just looked much bigger than a normal animal.

[00:19:20] I suppose I had inadvertently made a sound, because someone firmly yanked me away from the window and gave me a rather stern, disapproving look. And then as suddenly as it came, it left.

[00:19:31] It seemed as if all the usual nighttime noises returned at once, and we all stared at each other with a mixture of fright and disbelief, not knowing if it was okay to move, speak, much less breathe normally.

[00:19:43] Someone moved toward the door, but was stopped by the old lady who was no longer chanting, but had been saying something unintelligible for what seemed like a few minutes now. In the distance we heard the telltale approach of the VW Bug and became increasingly excited

[00:19:57] as it got closer. However, the old lady told us not to open the door or attempt to leave, as the rolling calf might still be out there. And here is the amazing part.

[00:20:08] The roar of the beetle is quite distinctive and was much louder now as the car approached the gate. It slowed down and passed the gate ever so slightly, proceeded a short distance down the road, turned and cruised past the gate a second time before going a short distance,

[00:20:23] turning and repeating yet another pass of the gateway. He must have passed the gate six or eight times before he drove away in a rather hesitant manner. Our hearts sank and the burble of the exhaust faded into the distance. He had gone and left us there.

[00:20:39] As my mother glared at the old lady, we heard a tinkle of what sounded like a chain just outside the perimeter fence and we all froze in place, wide-eyed and utterly petrified.

[00:20:50] After what seemed like an eternity, the old lady directed us to a sofa and a cot as we most definitely would not be going home tonight. After a really long time I fell asleep and woke up the next morning.

[00:21:02] We were each given a cup of bush tea and a thick slice of hard dough bread with margarine. Someone opened the door and the cool fresh morning air swept in. The daylight never looked so good and the crisp, bracing early morning air never so welcome.

[00:21:17] My mom started complaining about how stupid my sister's father was to have been unable to remember where he had dropped us off, but the old lady interrupted her and said that it wasn't his fault because she had hidden the gate.

[00:21:29] I never really understood what she meant until years later, but I clearly remember my sister's father telling my mom that he was 100% sure that he was on the right road, but didn't

[00:21:39] see a gate nor a house as he drove past the spot where it should have been, before getting frustrated and finally driving away on the assumption that the party had long ended and we'd most likely found our way home.

[00:21:51] To be honest, as terrified as I was of the rolling calf, as an adult I'm far more interested in how exactly that old lady was able to make the house and gate invisible to both human eyes and a supernatural creature alike.

[00:22:05] I do hope the listeners found this story interesting, as I do have a few more that I'd like to share. Our next story of the night comes to us from Joe, and Joe's story is called My Father's Story. Joe says,

[00:22:21] Hey Nick, today is the day I caught up with all 153 of the episodes. It took a lot of binge listening while at work, and I cannot say any more than I love your podcast. With that being said, I am no stranger to the paranormal.

[00:22:35] I have seen a couple of things myself that I can't explain. But there is nothing like my father's story, in which he would always tell my sisters, myself, and those he trusted while we had a family reunion.

[00:22:47] And every time he tells it, it always gives me the creeps. I will try to do my best to make it fast. My father is from Mexico. Thirty years ago he was a volunteer firefighter who usually got to take the late shifts.

[00:23:00] One night at about four in the morning, he and two other firefighters, who we will call Oscar and Daniel, were cruising along a cliffside road maybe 25 to 35 feet up, when they saw a lady frantically telling them to stop. He noticed the lady was covered in dirt.

[00:23:15] They stop, and the lady tells them that she and her son had just had an accident and went over the fencing down the cliff, in which her son was trapped in the car and needed help.

[00:23:25] So they asked her to sit in the truck while they prepared to descend. My dad grabs a rope and harness. Him and Oscar descend while Daniel supervises the descent itself. Getting down there, they notice two people trapped in the car.

[00:23:39] My dad gets the son out of the car and slowly and steadily gets him up onto the road. And while he starts to descend again to help out Oscar with the other person, he sees Oscar making his way up without the other person who was trapped.

[00:23:52] My dad looks at Oscar, and Oscar tells him that the other person is dead. So they make their way back to the fire truck, and Oscar tells my dad that the other person trapped in the car was the lady who told them to stop.

[00:24:04] I will finish this with no context and leave it up to everyone else to think whatever they want to think. I love the podcast, and I hope you all stay safe. Joe After contacting Joe, he had a little more information to add, and he said this.

[00:24:19] I just wanted to add that when my father came back up, he and Oscar had a blank stare. Once Daniel supervised the descent, he went to give the lady first aid, and no one was there. Daniel, of course, was confused because the lady was no longer there.

[00:24:34] So when Daniel saw my dad and Oscar, he ran up to them to tell them that he didn't know what happened to the lady. So my dad told him that the lady was on the side of the road, and she was dead.

[00:24:44] Daniel, then shocked, sat down and gathered his thoughts, and helped with the lady's son who was injured. They all spent about three to four more years in the department before eventually going their own ways.

[00:24:58] As we bring tonight's episode to an end, I'd like to thank all of you for tuning in, and a special thank you goes out to Julia, Mia, Anthony, and Joe for sharing their experiences. If you've witnessed something paranormal, I'd like to hear your story.

[00:25:13] You can share your experience with me through email, voicemail, or on our website at paranormalmysteriespodcast.com, and all of these links can be found in the show notes. Until next time, I hope you all have a great beginning to your week, and I look forward

[00:25:28] to seeing you back here on Wednesday as we continue our journey into the unexplained, right here on Paranormal Mysteries.