When you’re a child, it’s difficult to be honest about the things that scare you. Hell, some of them are still difficult to talk about as an adult, hence why I prefer talking about my fears online instead of in person. I’ve been having trouble sleeping the past week due to being reminded of my scariest childhood experience, so I feel like this would be a good time to talk about it.
I wanna say I was nine or some adjacent age, and we were living in Nevada at the time. It started on a Sunday when we decided to visit this small museum that had just opened up in our town. There were taxidermied animals, a section dedicated to indigenous tribal artifacts such as pottery, and tanks of live trout and other similar fish. Nothing that special to an adult, but child me thought it was the coolest thing ever.
We were looking at some models of historical trains when I excused myself to use the restroom. I did my business, and once I stepped out, I noticed something strange sitting on the bench by the restroom door that I didn’t remember being there before.
It appeared to be a human-sized doll, and at first, I thought it was Smokey the Bear. But the more I gazed at it, the more I had no idea what it was. It was wearing a white T-shirt that reminded me of one of my dad’s football shirts, but with an image of a cow’s skull on the front. It was also wearing denim jeans, and had a cowboy hat on its head.
Its body was covered in dark orange-brown fur, and each of its arms and legs ended in bear-like paws. But what weirded me most out about the figure was its face.
It reminded me of a mix between a sloth and a furby. It had big round orange eyes like an owl’s that stared straight ahead, and a short rounded monkey-like muzzle that was halfway open; I could see a tongue, but no teeth. I didn’t see any ears either.
Curious, I reached out my hand to touch the fur on the thing’s face. And that’s when it suddenly swept its head in my direction.
“Hey kid, whaddya’ think you’re doing?!” the thing shouted angrily in a raspy nasally New York voice.
I leapt back, letting out a few frightened yelps. For a brief period of time, I just stood there, not moving, as me and the thing exchanged eye contact.
“What’s the matter, kid? Somethin’ botherin’ ya?” it asked, blinking its big orange eyes as it stared at me.
Then it did something I hoped it wouldn’t do.
The thing stood up and began to slowly walk in my direction.
I screamed again and sprinted down the hallway back to where my family was. My parents noticed I was out of breath and on the verge of tears, and asked me what was wrong.
I didn’t tell them about the thing on the bathroom bench. I just told them I wanted to go home and begged them to take me back to the car.
Wondering what it was that had freaked me out so much, my father dragged me back to the bathroom while my mother stayed with my older sister Katy to continue looking at the train models.
I screamed and demanded Dad not to take me back there, struggling to escape his arm before ducking behind his back so I wouldn’t have to look at that thing again.
“There’s nothing there? See?”
I peeked out from behind Dad, and let out a massive sigh of relief when I saw the thing was gone. However, as he took me back to Mom and Katy, I continued to nervously look around just in case the thing decided to pop out of its current hiding place.
The rest of the museum trip went on fine without any new incidents, though I’d be lying if I said I didn’t spend the rest of the visit on edge. It wasn’t until we drove away in our car that I finally felt safe.
Little did I know, my problems were only just beginning. The rest of the week was awful. On Monday, I came home from school to find that Dad wasn’t there, and Mom told me that he’d been rushed to the hospital after having a heart attack. While he had survived, he was going to stay at the hospital for the rest of the week.
On Tuesday, Katy came home with her eyes red from crying. Someone had slipped a piece of paper with a threatening message written on it into her school locker. She was so frightened by the message that she pretended to be sick for the rest of the week to avoid going to school.
On Wednesday, our dog Max, a one year-old Cavalier, was found dead in the driveway. Mom presumed he had escaped from the yard, been hit by a car, and dragged himself home before dying.
As if one sudden pet death wasn’t enough, on Thursday, I found Katy’s kitten, Kiki, laying on a rock by the front porch, not moving. It looked like he had fallen off the porch and broken his neck on the rock.
I struggled to sleep that Thursday night. I couldn’t get my mind off of everything that had been happening lately. No matter how hard I pressed my head against the pillow and squeezed my eyes shut, I just couldn’t drift off.
Just when it looked like I was making progress on finally falling asleep, I was jolted awake by a familiar-sounding voice.
“Hey kid…remember me?”
I looked around my darkened room nervously. Was it just my imagination?
The hair on my arms stood up when my ears detected the sound of breathing. I glanced at the closet at the far side of the room, and felt a knot form in my gut when I noticed a humanoid figure standing right across from my bed.
The light switch was right by my bedside, so I flicked it on and relaxed when I saw no one there. But my relaxation was short-lived, and my heart stopped when the switch suddenly flipped off on its own.
“Don’t do that again, kid. Understand?”
My blood ran cold as I slowly realized where I had heard the voice prior. I stared at the figure at the end of my room, and shuddered as I made out a familiar cowboy hat and round orange eyes.
I pulled the blanket over my head and curled up as I heard the figure approaching my bedside, then felt a large paw touch my back.
“I know you’re there, kid. You don’t have to hide.”
My breath was caught in my chest. What did this thing want from me?
As if reading my mind, the thing continued.
“Remember everything that happened this week? Your dad’s heart attack? Your sister’s threatening letter? The dog? The cat? That was all me! I did it all!”
I felt like vomiting. The thing sounded proud of its actions, as if it thought heart attacks and dead pets were a funny joke.
“But you’ll be happy to know that’s only a preview of what I can do,” it continued, its tone sounding increasingly gleeful. “I can give your dad another heart attack, and I’ll make sure it kills him this time. I can make you an only child, or even an orphan!”
I finally gained the courage to speak.
“Leave me alone!” I cried. I could feel my eyes welling up with tears. “Why can’t you just go away?”
I cried in my bed for about a minute as the thing just stood there, continuing to breathe. I could both hear and smell its breath, and it was one of the worst things I’d ever smelled in my life.
Finally, the thing spoke again.
“Do you have any oreos?”
I paused for a second.
“Oreos?” I replied.
“You heard what I said, kid. Do you know what oreos are?”
I knew full well what oreos were. We had a carton of them in the kitchen pantry. But they were specifically for school lunches, and I was worried I’d get in trouble if Mom found out I’d been sneaking them during the night.
“Tell ya what, kid…gimme a few oreos, and I’ll leave your family alone forever and ever. The thing at the museum will be water under the bridge. Deal?”
“Deal,” I said meekly. I decided getting in trouble for sneaking snacks at night would be a better option than becoming an orphan.
I peeked out from under the blankets. I couldn’t see the thing anywhere, but I knew it was still in my room, hiding out of sight.
As quietly as I could, I slowly opened my door and tiptoed upstairs to the kitchen before peeking into the pantry. There it was, the open package of oreos.
I carefully grabbed four oreos from the package before tiptoeing back down to my bedroom and quietly closing the door. I then placed the oreos on the dresser by my bed before crawling back under the covers.
While under the blanket, I heard a sucking sound, followed by loud slurping, chewing, and smacking. The sounds made me uncomfortable, and I couldn’t help but picture my fingers in that thing’s mouth instead of oreos.
I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. As soon as the sun shone in through my window, I drowsily got up, and shuddered when I saw the dark oreo crumbs on my dresser, reminding me of what had happened last night.
Thankfully, things quickly began to improve that weekend. Dad came back from the hospital, Katy gained the confidence to go back to school, and we even adopted a new cat from the shelter to make up for our double pet loss.
But every time my parents asked me about going back to that museum, I would do my best to politely say no. I didn’t care if that thing stuck to its promise or not, I did NOT want to take any chances by going back to the place that started it all.
It’s been fifteen years since then. We’ve moved from Nevada to Oregon, and me and Katy have our own house. Katy’s been dating this guy named Colin, and I’ve been going to the gym every day. Things are pretty good right now. I’d completely forgotten about that frightening incident until just last weekend.
We had decided to go eat at our local IHOP to celebrate Dad’s birthday as a family. While there, we started talking about cryptids and paranormal stuff for whatever reason, and Mom decided to tell us about something strange that happened to her when we were living in Nevada.
The night after Dad was rushed to the hospital, Mom had gotten up in the middle of the night to get a drink of wine. While drinking, she peeked out the front window, and saw some movement in the front yard. She initially thought it was a deer or some other animal, but as she looked closer, she saw what appeared to be a man dancing drunkenly through the yard.
As she watched the figure dance, she noticed some strange things about him, like that he appeared to be wearing a furry costume of some kind, and could also see a pair of big round orange eyes beneath the rim of his cowboy hat. She opened the door to get a better look at the figure, only to see that he had disappeared completely, and she spent half an hour wandering the yard unable to find any trace of him. She then chalked it up to some sort of trick and completely forgot about it until now.
Well, the mention of the cowboy hat combined with the big orange eyes jogged a LOT of unpleasant memories that I wish I could forget, and now my childhood paranoia is starting to come back.
My logical side says that thing is probably keeping its promise, and if it hasn’t come back now, it’s probably long gone. But I’ve spent the past week sleeping with the lights on and a package of oreos by my side just in case.