When i was a little kid, i often saw an eerie woman, cycling around our neighborhood. She looked like any other middle-aged woman, dark brown long hair, adult-like face and about 35-50 years of age. But she was really, really short. Approximately 4’9 to 4’10, about the same height as me when i was like ten years old.
She didn’t look like she suffered from dwarfism, or any kind of medical condition, just very short and slim. What made her creepy, was that she also behaved like a child. She always wore a pink, floral patterned cycling helmet, and rode a children’s bicycle. Like a really small kid’s bicycle.
She looked way too big for that bike, even though she was the size of a ten-year old. Best way to describe her appearance, is that she was a ten-year old, girl who had adult woman’s head and voice. It was quite disturbing, especially as a young child. I was never really scared of her, but seeing her always gave me goosebumbs.
She never communicated with anyone and she was alone every time i saw her. She was always softly crying and looked desperate. It wasn’t child-like crying, more like adult’s quiet grieving. It seemed like she was ashamed about crying and wanted to hide it. I felt sorry for her but never had the courage to say anything.
One day when i was about eleven years old, i was walking home from school, along a little shortcut path i used to take through the woods. Suddenly, i saw her cycling towards me fast. She always cycled around fast, as if she was in a hurry, but this time she looked even more distressed than usually.
I heard intensifying crying as she was getting closer. It looked like she didn’t even notice me, so i stepped further to avoid a collision with her. When she was only a few feet away from me, i opened my mouth to finally ask what’s wrong, but before i could say anything, she screamed at me.
She didn’t say anything, it was only a short, loud, high-pitched scream, as if she was trying to scare me away from her. It worked. I jumped and felt chills go down my spine. What the heck was that? As i was walking home, thinking about the scream, it started to annoy me. I was just being polite.
After that incident, everything went on like before. I saw her maybe twice a week and never tried to talk to her again. She became a joke in my friend group, just a creepy weirdo who screamed at me when i was eleven. Years went by and i moved to another town to study. I didn’t see her anymore and memories about her faded.
Recently, i finished my studies, graduated and moved back to my hometown. I had been in town for about three weeks, before my mom recommended me a new, good restaurant that located near my childhood home. One evening, i was driving around with my old friend, and suggested if he wants to try the new restaurant with me.
He had never been there and accepted the suggestion. At about 10pm, after eating and having a drinks, we got out of the restaurant. Weather had gotten bad, it was pitch-black, windy and raining heavily. As we were getting in to my car, i saw someone approaching in the corner of my eye.
A woman, riding a kids bicycle, crying very quietly. I recognized her immediately. I hadn’t thought about her even once, in years. She looked exactly the same as she did a decade ago. Literally hadn’t aged a day. Even the same clothes, same helmet, and same bike. Riding around, in the middle of the night in a storm.
I got chills seeing her.
It was a dream-like feeling, i wasn’t even sure if my memories of her actually existed. She passed us by, crossed the empty parking lot and disappeared in to dark, stormy night. I slowly got into car and turned to see my friend’s reaction. I was sure he remembered her too.
He was scrolling through his phone and didn’t say anything. I asked: ”Did you see the woman?” He slowly raised his head in confusion and answered: ”Yeah, i saw her, what?” Turned out he had no memories of her, which was odd, because i clearly remember our jokes about the weirdo screamer woman.
I dropped my friend to his apartment and went home. I sent messages to my other childhood friends, asking if they remember the woman that screamed at me. No one remembered, except one, who only remembered me talking about a woman, but claimed to have never seen her.
It made sense to me, because none of them got screamed at by her, and it had been almost ten years since the event. Still, i couldn’t understand how people are not interested in that mystery. She was even creepier sight as an adult. Very weird. Why is she always crying? What is she doing? Who is she?
Next day, i asked if one of my old friends wants to come and observe her with me. That friend didn’t remember anything about the woman, but was a hardcore horror fan, who had already made up all kinds of theories about the woman.
We drove to a parking lot, close to our old primary school.
A place where she could be seen. We sat in the car and waited for only like ten minutes until i saw her. My friend got excited and frightened about her actually looking like a fifty year old woman, because at first sight, she looked like any little girl. She cycled past us, pretty close to my car, and quickly glanced at me.
It was first time ever when i had eye contact with her. Usually she was looking down, hiding her sadness and avoiding eye contact with everyone. As she looked at me, for a fraction of a second, i could already in that time sense her weird, dead appearance. Her watery eyes had nothing behind them.
She looked at me without any emotion or reaction. I was shocked and i quickly looked down. My friend didn’t get eye contact with her, he was just super excited that we had found her. He said we should follow her and see where she lives. I refused to do that. I got way too bad feeling about her.
It almost looked like she instantly realized we were stalking her. I just wanted to forget that and continue life. But my friend convinced me to follow her. Curiosity won. She was cycling fast and had already gone pretty far. I caught her though, and we started following her, slowly and pretty far from her, hoping she doesn’t notice us.
We kept up with her for about ten minutes. Many turns and weird road crossings later, she turned to a little path in the woods, the same one where she screamed at me years ago. We lost her. We just laughed to our weirdness and stupidity, U-turned and went back to the parking lot where we started the chase.
We opened soda cans and talked about how random that was and that she’s just some poor woman with some kind of illness, we shouldn’t have followed her. Couple minutes later, i saw her again. Coming from the same direction than before. That was super odd. She cycled past us and glanced at me again.
This time she looked even more emotionless than before. I looked down and waited for her to pass by. We watched her from the rearview mirror, crossing the road and disappearing. What was that? Is she just cycling around without any destination? Now that i think of it, i’ve never seen her in any other place than this neighborhood.
And it’s always one of like five different places. We decided to wait if she comes back third time. And she did. Now this got super weird. We were laughing and joking about her being an NPC. We wanted to follow her in to the forest shortcut to see her full route, but it was impossible with a car.
We finished the investigations and decided to continue them next day.
My friend had to work late, and it was already dark when we started looking for her. This time my another friend had joined us, and was curious about the ”real-life NPC” we had found. We went to the same parking lot where she passed us by last time.
She didn’t come. Our interesting discovery seemed just boring now. We promised a real-life NPC who doesn’t stop cycling. My friend who hadn’t seen the woman, joked that her batteries are being charged somewhere over night. We left the place and continued our saturday night. Next weekend, i cycled to my friend’s home.
I cycled there, because my car had broken down earlier that week. Our plan was to just spend the evening and chill there. At one point, my friend suggested that we should go and follow the woman in to the woods, since we both have bikes here and we are close to the place where she can be found. We left and pretty easily found her again.
We started following her, far back so that we wouldn’t be seen. There was nothing interesting about her route, but what was odd, was that she really, actually cycled the same route over and over again. It made zero sense. We followed her cycling trip probably more than five times. Always the same.
At this point it was already late evening and starting to get dark. We decided to follow her one more time and then stop. We both thought she had some kind of mental illness and didn’t really believe she would be an NPC. We were far away and talking to each other when my friend noticed that she took an unexpected turn.
She turned straight to the dark woods, to a little trail, unlike any other time before. We picked up the pace and followed her in to the woods. It was dark, and she was far, but we still managed to keep up after her. We followed her for atleast five more minutes. After a long ride in a dark little path, we arrived to an old neighborhood.
The woman got off her bike and walked it to the last house on the street. The house looked like a normal, white, wooden house. It didn’t look creepy at all. The woman quickly disappeared in to the side of the house, it looked she was going straight to the backyard.
The house had no lights on the yard. There was no lights on the inside neither. As we got closer, we noticed that the grass on the yard was strangely long and untidy. It looked like no one lives in the house, or atleast the owner is currently on a long trip.
The windows had no curtains, and the whole house looked empty, from what we could see on a dim light from the street lights and other houses. The house was also fully surrounded by a tall, dense hedge. At this point i, as the brain of our duo, was ready to leave. I’m not going to trespass into someones yard.
But after all, the curiosity won again.
We left our bikes to the side of the road and sneaked into the backyard. The backyard was small, pitch-black and had a little playhouse in the middle. Being there instantly felt like a bad idea. A light with a motion sensor would immediately expose us, i thought.
There was two large windows facing the backyard. It was hard to guess which rooms those were, since there was no light, or furniture. My friend tried to carefully peek inside through the other window, but after a while, got frustrated of the darkness. We sat there, in the dark, under the window and negotiated about leaving.
As i was getting bored, fidgeting with a ring i had in my finger, i found myself staring at the playhouse window, about ten feet away from us. Some dirt or reflection on it formed a face-like shape. I poked my friend, pointed at the playhouse window and said: ”Creepy, looks like a face”. At the same second, i realized it’s too clear.
It is a face. I’m never forgetting that sight. That woman, staring at me with a hostile look on her face, crying again. Standing alone in a dark playhouse on the backyard of apparently abandoned house. All these minutes she had been there. We got up and away in seconds and went to my friend’s home. We didn’t sleep that night.
We were scared, but maybe even more, embarrassed. We talked it through and decided we wouldn’t tell anyone, since we were the ones doing illegal stuff. Days and weeks passed by and i didn’t go to that neighborhood again. I asked my friend couple of times, if he had seen the woman, but he had stayed away from her ”area” too.
Life became normal again, and i tried to forgot the whole thing, even though it was impossible. After couple of months, when i had moved out of town again, my friend sent me a news article about an unidentified dead body found from the river, close to my childhood neighborhood.
The article said that the found body belongs to a middle-aged, unusually short woman. It also said that the case doesn’t seem like a crime. These kind of news, found dead bodies, are not common in a small, peaceful town, so it became a big thing that everyone talked about.
The body was on the news for weeks, but was never identified. No one had been missing and no one recognized the body. Even the DNA test didn’t give any match or information. That case is still a mystery that remains unsolved. I’m 100% sure it was the same weird woman. I’ve heard she disappeared from the area at the same time.
It was already hard enough memory to forgot before finding out nobody actually knew her. Where did she live? Someone really should have known her, it makes no sense. There was something very unsettling and disturbing about that woman. And we will never find out. But i’m gonna remember it, especially during the darkest nights.