It was Halloween night in the year 2013. Each year we’d go up to my grandparents to show off our costumes. This year in particular, we chose to go trick or treating there. I was with my little bro and my cousin in my grandparent’s neighborhood. They live in a hilly forest area with a lot of wildlife such as deer, foxes, chipmunks, squirrels, etc. We headed down the street from their house. At the end of the road, there’s a T. Going left would lead you to the end of the neighborhood, heading onto the main road. If you went right, you’d go deeper into the neighborhood. We chose to go right.
It was a steep slope of a street, with multiple houses spread across, one taller than the other, almost as if the roofs made a giant set of warped steppingstones. It was empty and dark. Not a single person was answering their doors, and all the baskets out front were vacant of candy. There was no one in sight, all the trick or treaters we saw go in and out were gone. It was just an empty, dimly lit, wooded street.
After the 5th door that didn’t answer, the vacancy really started to settle in. I started to pay more attention to my surroundings. Something felt very off. I looked up at the dark sky, starlight barely visible through the gaps in the trees. The wind was howling, roughly shaking them. I saw a group of birds fly above the trees, their black silhouettes making it hard to make out, but based on the noises they made, I could’ve sworn they were crows. I had this sense of dread wash over my whole body. I felt a strong sense of uneasiness, as though there was someone watching me. I looked over to my brother and cousin who probably felt the same thing given the looks on their faces. Then it happened.
Everything just stopped. The force of the wind against my face vanished and the trees that were blowing froze in place as if some force had stopped them in their tracks. There was nothing but pure silence as if time completely froze. I turned around, looking back over to the street. There it stood, a shadow, a black figure, flickering as if it wasn’t made up of solid matter, in the middle of the street, just standing there. Instantly after we saw this figure we heard a blood curdling scream; we looked over to where the sound came from only to see the neighborhood filling up again. The wind picked back up, the forestry noises of nature returned, trick or treaters were coming back, but the figure was gone.
It all happened so fast, just seconds. I’d say I imagined it, that I was crazy, but I looked over to see that my little brother was bawling his eyes out and my cousin was just as shocked as I was. We called it there. We went back to my grandmas after that, we were done for the night. No one ever believes me when I tell this story, not even my parents when we came back that night. Even after I call up my cousin or brother, put them on speaker, and have them recount their take of events. Our stories always line up, but it’s rare people fully believe it. They probably think; “ooooh, it was halloween, and they’re kids, their imagination got the best of them” or something like that, but it happened, and it was horrifying to the point where here I am, 9 years later, recounting the story as if it happened just yesterday.