I am an amateur paranormal researcher. My favorite thing to do is check out abandoned buildings, especially hospitals. I found this letter at McLean’s hospital a couple of months ago and thought this sub would be a good place to tell this guy’s story. It was folded up and shoved between two boards of a window sill in a patient room. I believe his story.
“This happened back in the summer of 1968. My little had brother begged me all week long to go check out an old treehouse he found in the woods behind our house.
‘It is SO cool. It’s got toys and books and everything inside. And I made a new friend that also likes to play there!’ he had said. I finally gave in on a Saturday morning and followed him down the path he and his friends had spent all summer making. It was pretty far back into the woods, and I scolded him for being back there. He knew he was not supposed to go past the tree our dad had marked with a bright red ribbon, but we had passed that tree almost a mile back.
When we finally got to the treehouse, I immediately felt uneasy in its presence. It looked like it was 100 years old, but that couldn’t be possible. My own friends and I used to sneak back past the red ribbon tree when we were younger and play back there. I had never seen this treehouse before. I stood and gazed at the treehouse for a few moments before working the nerve to approach it. My brother was already up inside by the time I went near it.
‘My friend said he only likes to play with kids our age,’ my brother said. He then kicked the ladder back and it clattered to the ground.
‘James, what the hell?’ I asked.
‘Sorry Adam. Mikey only wants to play with me today.’
‘James, who is Mikey?’ I asked, feeling even more unsettled.
‘My new friend! I found him playing in here earlier this week. He’s in the back right now! Let me see if he wants to meet you.’
James then turned to apparently go get his new friend, but I was not waiting for his permission. I bent down to pick up the ladder and stood up to find, to my absolute horror, that the treehouse was gone. It just vanished without a sound or a trace. I stood there for what felt like forever, but it was probably only a few seconds. I started having trouble breathing and realized I was having a full-fledged panic attack.
I ran. I didn’t know what else to do. I ran back down the path to our house and found my dad in his woodworking shed. I tried to tell him what happened but I was out of breath, so he led me to the house where my mom gave me a glass of water and made me sit at the kitchen table to catch my breath.
After I calmed down, I explained to my parents what I had just witnessed. They were skeptical, but my dad finally agreed to come with me. I led him back to where the treehouse was, but all that was there was the ladder I had left on the ground. We searched for nail holes or scraps of wood, but found nothing. No trace that the treehouse had been there.
We went back to the house and my parents starting getting upset, asking me where James was. I kept telling them that he disappeared with the treehouse, but they didn’t believe me. They called the police and filed a missing persons report. A whole volunteer team came to sweep the forest to look for my brother. I lay curled up on my bedroom floor.
After months of investigating, they finally declared James as assumed dead. I moved states away to try and forget. My parents wouldn’t speak to me. They’d never forgiven me for losing him. They didn’t believe my story. I went back to that spot every single year on James’ birthday. I don’t know what I expected to find. I didn’t tell my parents I did this. I don’t think they’d want anything to do with me even if I’d let them know I was in town. I didn’t expect to see it magically appear or anything. I’d almost convinced myself that I was in fact hallucinating or dreaming and James just wandered off too far into the woods to be found. I almost accepted that… except that the 28th year I went to the clearing in the woods, what would have been 34th birthday, the treehouse was there.
I guess I was looking down at the ground as I walked down the path, because when I got to the clearing and finally looked up to see that tattered treehouse 15 feet in front of me I almost fainted. I just stared at it. 28 years of convincing myself it wasn’t real, and there it was right in front of me. I probably stood there for 10 minutes before moving toward it. The same homemade wooden ladder than James had pushed off the landing 28 years earlier was propped up against the tree where I had left it, untouched after all this time.
I shuffled forward and moved the ladder to rest on the doorway of the house and very slowly started climbing. As soon as my head reached above the landing, I stopped climbing and peeked in. I could see into a large room with children’s toys scattered around. There was another doorway that led to a smaller room but I couldn’t tell what was back there.
‘James?’ I called out. Nothing. No sound. Not even the birds and bugs were making noise. It was utterly silent. I hesitated, but then called out ‘Mikey?’ I heard shuffling in the back room and a small boy with spiky blonde hair poked his head around into the doorway. I almost fell off the ladder at the sudden movement. He looked mostly normal, but his eyes were totally black. i was scared.
‘James used to talk about you all the time,’ Mikey, I assumed he was Mikey at least, called out. His voice was unnaturally low for a boy that age. It gave me the chills. I took another step up.
‘Are you Mikey?’ I finally asked. He didn’t answer that, but instead said ‘You left him in the woods. All he wanted to do was spend time with his big brother and you let him get lost. How could you have done that? How could you be so careless, Adam? How could you lose your baby brother?’
Mikey continued his ranting, but the longer he talked the higher his voice rose. I realized after a moment that it was my mother’s voice coming from this child, and he was saying all the things she said to me the night before I left. I’d replayed that conversation in my head countless times since I left home. I realized that his face had morphed into hers as well.
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ I tried to say, but he just kept at it, staring at my from the doorway still unmoving.
‘It wasn’t my fault!’ I finally screamed. Then, suddenly, the treehouse vanished again. The ladder was leaning against it and pitched forward, knocking me to the ground. I started crying uncontrollably. After a moment I heard footsteps coming down the path and saw my father emerge. He stopped in his tracks.
‘Adam?’ He called out. I looked at him, still sobbing, and couldn’t move. ‘Adam what are you doing?’ He asked as he approached me.
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ I sobbed.
I woke up in a hospital room. My parents and James were sitting in chairs around the room. James was reading a book and my father was absently watching TV. My mother had a ball of yarn in her lap and was crocheting something.
I looked over at James again. I couldn’t believe he was here. And he was a child still. How was that possible, 28 years later? He should be a 34 year old man but still looked the small, fragile 6 year old boy as I had seen him last.
‘James?’ I called out hoarsely. My throat hurt badly. My parents snapped their heads up and jumped to the bedside.
‘Oh honey,’ my mother cooed. ‘We were so worried about you!’
I was confused. Why was she being kind to me? She still hated me the last time we spoke. And why was James here? My father stood next to her, smiling down at me. They looked so young. James jumped up onto the bed next to me.
‘James when did you get back? Where have you been?’ I asked him. He looked at my parents, seemingly confused.
‘We’ve been here for 3 days, Adam! You’ve been sleeping! I don’t know how you slept so much. I wanted to wake you up to play but mama wouldn’t let me.’
I looked from James to my parents and back again. ‘What’s going on? Why am I in a hospital?’
‘You took quite the tumble, Adam,’ my dad started to explain. ‘You took James into the woods to check out a treehouse he had found. He couldn’t find it, so you climbed a tree to find a good place to build him one and fell out of it. Hit your head pretty hard. James came and got us and the paramedics took you in. You’ve been knocked out for 3 days, son.’
I was speechless. This didn’t make any sense. Those 28 years were a lie? I didn’t watch James disappear into nothing? I looked down at my hands and noticed they were young. I was still 17 years old, not a 45 year old man that had lived a long and hard life. My parents could see that I was struggling to understand what was going on.
‘Let us go get a doctor honey,’ my mom said as she and my dad left to find someone. James looked at me and grinned.
‘That was a scary fall, Adam. Maybe we won’t build a tree house after all. We aren’t supposed to go that far back into the woods anyway. We wouldn’t want all our hard work to… disappear… would we?’ His grin flickered into something more menacing, and I swear his eyes flashed black for a moment.
I’m writing all of this from my dorm at McLean’s Clinic. Yes, the mental hospital. After James’ eyes flashed black, I knew that it was really Mikey. He had somehow either brought me back to 1968 after I found him in the woods or he gave me 28 years worth of fake memories while I was knocked out at the hospital. I started screaming and shoved Mikey off the bed. Apparently he gashed his head open. They had to sedate me because I was trying to rip my IV’s out and run out of the room. I now am staying at McLean’s for a while. No one believes my story. I am hoping that this letter reaches someone who does believe me and can help.”
That’s it. It’s not signed and no last names are mentioned. I don’t think the records from McLean’s are stored at the hospital because I couldn’t find anything. Anyway, I wanted to get this guy’s story out to someone who would believe him. That may have been his last wish.