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Kindly submitted by :Ellis Byrd
Description
I am a former paranormal investigator, TV researcher, and tour guide at places such as Alcatraz and USS Hornet. I now write books for fun. Here is a story I got earlier this week.
Private Residence, Dawsett Ave, Galion Ohio
A small single-story home sits off of the street. With an attached garage and a mailbox beside the road, you could not even notice the house as you passed by as it blended in nicely with the surroundings. With a spacious front lawn and a backdrop of trees, this house looks like the perfect spot for a family moving to the area. Many years ago, the house was splendid white with a manicured front lawn, and the house felt comfortable. But it is not the outside appearance that made its way into this book, it’s the hauntings from the past that happened inside.
Teri was a five-year-old, and living with her parents and her brother, who was 2 years older, when things started to happen. Teri was proud that she had her own room, but even though she had her independence, she had to have a night light on at all times, and the bedroom door open. Every night before being put to bed she would reach a few feet from her bed and twist the nightlight to the on position, casting a gentle warm orange glow throughout the room. After being tucked in, her main bedroom light was switched off and she would drift off to sleep.
But one night, out of the blue and for no apparent reason, she was startled awake to see a man standing at the end of her bed. The man did not stir and stood there motionless in the hue of the darkened hallway and the mild glow of the nightlight. In a state of shock, not knowing if she was dreaming or actually seeing this featureless entity that stood before her. Described as being very tall and wearing an Abraham Lincoln-style high hat, also called a cylinder hat, topper, dandy, beaver, chimney pot hat, or stovepipe. Terrified, Teri watched the shape slowly make the four or five paces to the wall, bending down and switching off the nightlight.
With the darkening of the room, all Teri could then see was that of her empty bedroom. The ghost had disappeared. At that moment, Teri let out a scream, that woke her father. Rushing into her room, he asked what was happening, expecting a childhood nightmare to be shared with him. He was surprised the nightlight was off, but he sat on the bed and held his daughter close. In a calm voice asked what was disturbing her. She told the whole story of what had occurred before her eyes. She asked for him to sleep the rest of the night with her. Not believing her story, he agreed and after a while of parental comforting, she drifted off to sleep.
Weeks pass and the house seemed normal. Kids playing, dad and mum trying their best to keep their sanity while the children ran riot and found joy in tormenting each other. But then one night, roughly 3 weeks after the first sighting, Teri went through her normal bedtime routine. Nightgown on, nightlight on, and tucked in bed. The child’s bedroom light was turned off and the bedroom door was left open so the hallway light could also support the feeling of safety for the little 5-year-old. After a few hours of childish slumber, Teri was once again experiencing the feelings from weeks before. Once more, she was awoken suddenly, and once more, she saw the same specter in the same location at the foot of her Queen size bed. As many people experience, they are unable to cry out or scream when they are awoken from a dead sleep and with a scary image in front of them. So, the child lay there, once more in fear. This time, the “Shadowman” took the same amount of steps toward the nightlight. Once more it bent down and flicked off the light. Instead of disappearing as happened weeks before, this time, Teri could then see the entity turn and without a sound, walked down the long hallway past the parents’ bedroom. It then stopped and turned to look back into the child’s bedroom before continuing its walk and turning left into the kitchen, not to be seen again that night. As before, a piercing scream came from the small child’s room. Not for the first time, the father wandered back into her room. As he had done many times before, he told his daughter everything would be OK, but this time adding that there is no such thing as ghosts.
As the years passed, there was often the feeling of being watched or the feeling that something moved just out of the vision of whoever was in the living room or in the hall. Over time, the family came to understand there was something in the home apart from themselves, and seeing it never harmed a soul, they let it be itself. As the kids grew older the interaction started to make its way to the mother. It was said that the males in the home were never bothered by whatever shared the home with them.
Now aged about 9 years old, Teri still had her room to herself, and the memories of years before had faded. Still needing the nightlight on, no one ever visited, until an unspecified night and for no reason, memories came flooding back as she was awoken from a deep sleep to see yet again the same shape she recalled from her younger days. It was like a recording from the past, but able to think for itself. It is confusing as its movement is that of a residual haunting, but the ability to turn off a nightlight allows for poltergeist activity, then you have the ability to move freely from room to room and seem to notice people and places, which is often called intelligent haunting.
A while later, a story was revealed to Teri that her mother had also experienced the Shadowman firsthand. When Teri was about 17 years old, she said that her mother was ill with diabetes and had lost her legs. One thing that the family did to make her life slightly more bearable, was to have a portable toilet placed by the door of the bedroom, so she would not have to travel so far to the bathroom fixture in the house. Teri was told by her mother that she made her way to the toilet chair and proceeded to do what was necessary at that time in the early morning hours. While sitting on her chair, she felt a presence near the bedroom door. Gingerly looking over her shoulder, she screamed as the outline of a man in a top hat turned and walked so quietly out of sight. The scream that her husband heard was enough to wake him. Asking what had happened, she explained her first official sighting of the spirit. The father and husband then wandered the house to find nothing out of the ordinary and returned to bed.
The following year, at the age of 18, Teri moved out of the home. Not being too adventurous in the move, as she was only a few streets away. Not long after the move her mother passed away, leaving a feeling of sadness throughout the family.
A while after the passing, the father started dating a lady who would spend some time in the house. The two children were now grown young adults and had moved away. But Teri’s father told her of the future stepmother’s encounters with the Shadowman of Dawsett Ave.
When Teri was visiting the home, her father shared a few tales with her. Admitting he was not a believer in the paranormal, he said a few things remained unexplained. He said one night while sleeping, yet another female scream came from the kitchen. He said the lady friend had gotten up to get water from the kitchen sink. While waiting for the cup to fill, she had a terrible feeling there was an intruder in the home. Looking slightly over to the living room area, she screamed bloody murder, dropped the cup, and ran back into the bedroom. In a frenzy, she said there was a man in the house. Doing what he had done many times before, the dad took a quick look around the house and returned to an emotional, shaken woman. Climbing back into bed, he told her not to worry, as she had just experienced “The Black Man.”
As the years passed, the father remarried and the new stepmother said she was getting used to the presence of the “Black Man” wandering the house. Sometime after the house of 3, Husband, wife #2 and ghost all gotten used to each other, the house was sold and the family has not heard about any more hauntings. In my younger day, I would not have had any concern walking up to the front door, and asking if the place was still haunted, but people now-a-days are not as open to anything they don’t understand, especially in this area of the State, so I thing I will say there is a possibility of a haunting to this day, as long as there are females in the home.
