It all happened when I went to get some hair product I ordered at my barbershop, you can’t get it anywhere else. The owner of the shop was Terry, a sweet (or so I thought) elderly man who had owned the shop for over 40 years. It was usually only him working there, along with a few odd others that came and went. I had been going there ever since I moved to this town a few years back, he always gave the best haircuts.
When I arrived to pick up my stuff at Terry’s Barbershop, I saw that he wasn’t at his usual post, sitting in a chair at the register. Instead I saw silhouettes in the back room, behind a curtain. I heard some pretty unsettling choking noises coming from behind the curtain. I thought Terry might have been choking, so my hero instinct kicked in and I rushed to the back room to assist what I thought was choking Terry.
As I was about to pull back the curtain, Terry comes out at an extreme speed and said that he was “choking on a sandwich for a second”, but it came back up. I felt relieved but also a little confused, terry looked frazzled, unkempt and sweaty, like he had just gotten into a fight or had been lost in the forest for a couple days. He brushes it off and he gives me my usual haircut. I also threw in a shampoo and it was enjoyable, until it felt like Terry was digging into my scalp really hard with long, sharp nails.
When I went home, I checked in the mirror to see if Terry had done any damage, and sure enough, there were a few scratches, they were almost like cat scratches, nothing too major. I doused the top of my head in isopropyl alcohol and it burned like hell. I hoped that I didn’t get any infection from that old man. I processed the strange occurrences at the barbershop I had that day as I drifted off to sleep.
The second occurrence is when things started getting real strange. It was my next appointment at the barbershop, about a few weeks after my previous appointment to grab my hair product. I came in expecting Terry at his usual spot, but once again he was absent. I noticed there was no one else in the shop, except Terry, sitting at one of the chairs, looking into the mirror with a maniacal look on his face. I went up to him and called his name to try and get his attention. He didn’t move. I put my hand on his shoulder and took a closer look at his face, his eyes looked very bloodshot and his pupils were extremely dilated, I shuddered looking at him.
Soon after I put my hand on him, he suddenly lunged out of the chair towards me, knocking me to the floor. He almost had me pinned to the ground. His eyes were murderous and his smile grew even bigger as he brought a pair of scissors he had in his hand closer to my neck. Then, suddenly, he froze. I too, was frozen from sheer terror, so I was just stuck there for a bit, staring into the lifeless eyes of this old man. After I finally came to my senses, Terry was still just frozen there on top of me. I got out from under him and ran as fast as I could out the door.
After I got home that day, I was high-strung. I was cursing, throwing things across my house, and pacing back and forth for hours. “What the fuck should I do?” I asked myself. The cops surely wouldn’t believe that this sweet old man, always kind, smiling and telling stories while he cut your hair, would act like Chucky from Child’s Play. Hell, most of the police force probably had their hair cut by him! As there were only three barbershops that I knew of in town. Then the thought of the paranormal popped into my head, “This isn’t the movies, no way shit like that can actually happen.” Maybe he had gone senile, his brain had rotted and he had gone mad. I tried to stop thinking about Terry’s delirious behavior and finally got to bed.
I ended up doing it anyway, I phoned the police the next day and told them the gist of what happened, how Terry had tried to assault me with a pair of scissors. They had me come down to the shop for their investigation, cause I was the only witness. When I got there I told them in great detail what had happened the day before, when I finished my story I could tell there was disbelief on the cops faces. Terry was the only one at the shop when the police arrived, and he seemed to be back to his sweet old man-self. Contrary to the demon I encountered on my previous couple of visits.
For the safety of the public, I had them try and get a search warrant to search the shop. I mainly just wanted them to search that back room, where I had heard those odd noises. They succeeded and searched the shop, but they ended up finding nothing incriminating, even in that back room. I knew that this would happen. They wouldn’t find any dirt on Terry and I would look like a suspicious fool. And bringing the police into this probably just further influenced Terry’s unprompted rage against me. I wondered if when I heard those noises from the back room and went to investigate, that maybe I saw or heard something I wasn’t supposed to.
When all was said & done in the shop, I was in an interview with an officer outside. I abruptly felt the piercing gaze of something and averted my eyes from the officer’s. Standing in the shop window was Terry, with pupils the size of dimes and an unnatural, cannibalistic grin. It made me let out a shriek and the officer looked at me, concerned. “You alright, son?” The officer asked. “Yep, just had a sharp pain in my leg.” My eyes again drifted back to the spot where Terry was standing, he was no longer there. The officer then looked to where I was looking, “Watcha looking at, son?” The officer asked. “Nothing, I just thought I saw a reflection of something, but it’s not there anymore.” I wrapped up the interview as quickly as possible as I knew it was just a waste of time. At that point, I knew that terry wanted to settle this man to man, I was going to have to take matters into my own hands.
I went home and began planning & building up the strength to go back to the barbershop from Hell. When I was finally ready, I grabbed a camera for capturing evidence, and a knife for self-protection. I didn’t want to bring anything else as to remain a little inconspicuous. I went late at night, as I had a feeling that Terry knew I was coming, he would leave the door unlocked for me. I knew now that whatever Terry was, he sure wasn’t human, or wasn’t anymore at least.
When I arrived at the shop, my intuition proved correct, the door was unlocked. As I entered the shop, thoughts on what had happened to the sweet old man that used to cut my hair crossed my mind. What had happened to him? Was he faking it all along, or had something done away with the kind old man I remembered? I quickly brushed those thoughts off when I saw the shop was pitch black, except for a faint, glimmering light coming from behind the curtain leading to the back room. I regretted not bringing a flashlight. The atmosphere was very eerie and gave me chills. I slowly walked back to the red curtain, expecting something wicked on the other side. I cringed as I quickly pulled the curtain back.
There was nothing, the lone light source was coming from a few candles on a table, melted wax all over it. I began searching in the back area, it had a wooden floor with a couple stalls, dirty rags and hair scattered all on the floor. After searching for a few minutes and finding nothing, I was starting to think about calling it quits, which looking back now I should have done.
As I was about to leave the back room, I suddenly heard faint banging noises. As I went to investigate, I found that the noise was coming from the floor of one of the stalls. I kicked the dirty rags & hair covering the floor to the side and lifted up a rug. Underneath the rug was a small trap door, cut to look flush with the floor. “Wonder how the police didn’t find this.” I said as I snapped a picture. I lifted up the hatch to find a narrow, dark pit staring back at me. The only way down being a rickety ladder.
As I descended the ladder, I realized it was taking quite a long time. I wondered how Terry, or whoever made this place, had managed to dig a pit so deep underground. As I continued thinking, I was interrupted by my feet hitting the ground. I turned around and was met with an almost pitch-black hallway. The only light being let in through the window of an industrial steel door at the end of the hall.
As I made my way down the hall and reached the door, I braced myself. I took a deep breath and quickly entered, my soul froze. It was like a butchers shop, dried blood covering the steel walls and tile floors. There were two tables on either side of the room, covered with blood, hair and giblets of some animal. I started frantically taking pictures, trying to fight the sheer terror and shivers I was experiencing. After a few minutes, I heard a motor turn on.
There were conveyor systems on the ceiling of either side of the room, like ones you would see at a dry cleaners. They both began moving. This alarmed me and I put away my camera and drew my knife. After a short while, clothing began coming out of the conveyor systems from behind a wall. At first, they just looked like poorly-made fur coats, but upon closer inspection, they were not made of fur. They appeared dried with blood, the fur was sewn on in splotches and you could see the hide underneath in some spots, I spotted a nipple on one of them and I revolted. That’s when I realized that these coats were not made from animals, they were made from humans. The “fur” on the coats was human hair and the “hide” was skin from a torso.
That’s when I let out the shrillest scream I had probably ever made. I became frantic, as I was running to the exit I slipped in a pool of flesh & blood and dropped my knife. As I was stumbling trying to get myself back up, I heard the door that was on the other end of the room open, my scream probably alerted whatever was coming. When I thought my heart couldn’t race any faster, I saw what had came through the door. It looked like Terry, judging by the uniform it had on. It had a mask on made of hair, with bloody teeth lining the mouth hole, like a mangled bigfoot. It was also armed with a pair of massive shears in one hand, a straight razor in the other.
We stood still and looked at each other for a second. I was freaking the fuck out at that point and was frozen in place, I wanted to leave as fast as I could, but my body wouldn’t move. Then, the thing started sprinting towards me, my adrenaline must’ve really kicked in then, cause I got up and ran faster that I ever had before in my life. I got to the other side of the steel door I came through and slammed it before the thing could get to it. I bolted down the hallway and started climbing the ladder, afraid it would break with how fast I was climbing it. I heard the thing breaking down the door I had slammed in its face.
I finally reached the top and threw down the hatch to the trap door, I moved a cabinet that was in one of the stalls on top of the trap door to hopefully trap whatever was down there. I ran out of that shop in a dazed frenzy, I kept running until I reached home. I passed out that night and the first thing I did when I woke up was phone the police, I still sounded panicked then and could barely begin to explain what was going on. The police sounded confused, saying “There’s not a barbershop in this town that’s owned by someone named Terry.” I thought they were playing some sick joke and I got furious with them, I convinced them to launch another investigation at that address and they had me meet them there.
When I got there my mouth gaped, there was no barbershop sign, nothing inside the shop and no Terry. The place looked like it had been abandoned for decades. I felt like I was going insane, and I bet the cops also thought I was looney. I didn’t even want to try and explain to them what had happened because they seemed absolutely oblivious to it. I then remembered I had the camera with the photos and decided to show it to them. They took it as evidence and had the film developed, however, the film had somehow been exposed to sunlight and the pictures didn’t show up. Even though I had bought the film a day before I went to the shop that night. The police wrote me off as just some paranoid lunatic and thought nothing of the whole thing.
That was almost 5 years ago and now I’ve moved back to my hometown, trying to escape the torment of being in that town. Where I almost lost my life in that barbershop from Hell. I had to leave. What is making me write this, however, is that I received a letter in my mailbox today.
“Hey Mike, it’s Terry! I sure do miss ya, when is your next appointment? I really look forward to seeing you again.”
It was sent from a “Terry’s Barbershop”, with an address in my current town.