Mr. Tall/The Taker nosleep

So I'm not really sure how to talk about this. I only remember bits and pieces of it. Some of the stuff is from my older brother telling me. Because for a good portion of what happened, I was a very young girl. I feel like I need to talk about it though. What if it's happening to someone else? It is happening again.

I guess I'll start at the beginning and give some background information on myself. This will go on for a moment, so please feel free to skip ahead. But the back story is important, I promise. When I was a little kid, I was very weird. Because of the way my teeth grew in and a cleft palate, I didn't talk coherently until I was in the third grade. I did however, like to make weird little songs and hum a lot (e-i-e-i-o I'm told was my favorite). I made lots of weird sounds that my brothers describe as a combination of creepy and cute. I was also very small and thin so I found my way into anything. I liked to climb or hide in cabinets or on the refrigerator. I'm told this made it hard at night time, because I was an avid sleep walker. I have three older brothers, so they always looked after me. The middle one and me are particularly close, so he was always the one to be able to find me. To this day, we're still very close. Now back to what I was saying about being weird. I made lots of "friends," and it was usually just me running around acorn trees, collecting rocks and making weird sounds at animals all while song-talking. I was also very sensitive to how people felt. Not on an empath level I don't believe, but to a point of being eerily on point with being able to figure out how a person was feeling.

Now, my brother, Joseph (not his real name, but it will do), was and is to this day, very spiritual. He's very, very in tune with what's happening around him. He's done paranormal research, seen a ton of things, and most of what he's seen happened when he was a teenager. He believes that like him, I've inherited it from our grandparents. Its very diluted now, but we have Native American blood in our geneology. With me it's more blurry though. It wasn't always though. I could sense when something was there, but not see it; while Joseph could see what was there but not sense it. I hope that makes sense Now, back to what I was about to talk about. I'm stalling, I'm sorry.

We lived in a three story house with a giant yard. Swamp property with lots of woods. It was suburban enough but there was good distance between homes. My bedroom was on the second floor (all the bedrooms were). One particular evening I had gone to bed early for some weird reason. I was about eight at the time, so this was unusual. My bed was on the opposite wall of the window, but it never scared me looking out it into the dark. There was a big tree near my window, and we had an owl that liked to roost there. So I wasn't scared. For some reason I was scared though. I managed to lull myself to sleep somehow, but after a bit, I felt myself waking up. I sleep on my right side and always have, so I was facing the window. My eyes slowly opened to the sight of a man looking in at me. He was old. Older then my father (he was in his late 40s), and had a very shaggy beard. But it was the way his face was contorted and the way the darkness clung to it.

Sixteen years later and I'm still afraid to think of that face. I'm nearly in tears writing this down.

He had - what I now know is called a stove pipe hat - on his head. I didn't move, I didn't breath. I was so frightened. So I closed my eyes hoping that if I counted to 3 he would go away. It got worse though.

It got so much worse and I wish I had just ran out of the room right then.

I felt the bed shift and something touch my side through the sheet. It was like twigs made into a hand. But long and very, very cold. I opened my eyes to his face near mine speaking words I couldn't understand. I screamed and ran to Joseph's bedroom, crying the whole way. My other two brothers were with him playing a computer game when I came screeching through the door and onto the bed. They were confused at first, but managed to hear me say something along the lines of, "Mr. Tall won't go away and he's in my bedroom! He's scary I don't want him in my room anymore!"

Now, Mr. Tall was what I called a homeless man that lived in our community. He was a very nice man who often would let the kids play in the woods he had set up his camping equipment in, as long as we left him alone.

Here's the problem. That year, Mr. Tall had been hit and killed by a drunk driver. The people who cleaned up his campsite found loads of child pornography. It was believed that he had never acted on his urges and had tried to isolate himself as best he could. It was a big controversial scandal for my little community that the adults loved to talk about.

Anyways, my brother Joseph went right to my bedroom with our mom while my other two brothers stayed with me. When they got back, our mom said it looked like someone had tried to shut the window from the roof because the screen was messed up. So obviously we were all pretty freaked out. We all calmed down though and mom said she took care of it.

Weeks went by. Around that time, my sleep walking increased. My brothers and mom had a hell of a time keeping me from walking out of the house at night. On one instance, I actually managed to get all the way across the yard. When one of my brothers grabbed me, I began screaming profanity and kicking. Telling him that I wanted to go. It got bad.

We started locking me in my room at night. Which ended up damn near costing me my life.

Things had quieted down, so my family started sleeping again. We kept the door locked for my safety, to which even I had agreed was a good idea. It was the kind of door lock that was push, so all you had to do to open it was push a q-tip in the hole of the door knob. It didn't seem unsafe. Anyways, I had gone to bed for the evening. The next thing I know, my brother Joseph is screaming at me, tears running down his face, hugging me and shaking. I'm in the middle of the woods?

Now, from his point of view, he was in his room playing a computer game, heard a window slide open and paniced. He thought I had climbed on the roof in my sleep. When he got the door open, he saw the tail end of a large adult's hand closing the window. And a bearded smile through the glass. He tried to open it, but something had been jammed in the window. So he ran down stairs and out in the direction I always went in my sleep. Mom didn't think anything of it because he was sort of a delinquent. He got on his bike and took the short way to the woods through the gravel road. There was this river that ran under the road way farther down that went a very long stretch into the woods. Its not a strong river, but it is still a river. People have nearly drowned in it. He tells me that I was skipping along the stones that are near the deepest parts of the river, holding the hand of something tall. I guess it looked like a very tall shadow with a stove pipe hat on. Joseph screamed my name and the thing went to turn around. It got about three quarters the way and vanished before he could see it's face. I stopped, mid-skip and sort of started laugh-crying? He's told me it's very hard to describe. It wasn't a noise of comfort, that's for damn sure. Anyways, he ran down into the ravine slope and grabbed me and pulled as hard as he could off the rocks and onto land.

All I remember is seeing my brother's face. He was so upset. Once we got home, he explained to me and mom that I had sleep walked right off the roof and across the yard. He left out the part about what he saw and didn't tell me about it until I was well into highschool. That's the weird thing though. I never remembered any of it, even the things I was there for, until I was 16. And it was because I saw Him again. I was waiting for the school bus, watching the news, and on the corner of our street I saw a man smiling and waving at me. He looked the same. After that the memories started coming back slowly. It's why my brother told me what happened. Because I asked. I thought maybe I was going crazy. Maybe my brain was just playing tricks on me. Joseph thought it might be better if I forgot about it completely. That maybe it meant I'd be safe.

Every now and then I would see him. Far away in the distance, always smiling and waving at me. A few times, I've asked what he wants. He always just smiles and mouths what I've decided is, "Not you anymore."

It had been nearly four years since I'd seen him. Now I'm twenty four and live with my husband in a manufactured home park. There are small kids, ages ranging from 4 to 15 all over the place. I'm well liked by the children here, because I'm seen as an adult they can talk to about anything. I frequently let the kids play with my pets and use my porch. In return I get to make sure no harm comes to them. I cannot have biological kids of my own, so to me, every child is mine to look after. I'm handicapped also, so i don't work anymore as my body is weak and I use a cane. The kids like to help me bring in my groceries.

One little girl in particular likes to ride her barbie bike up and down my stretch of sidewalk and draw colorful chalk pictures all over. She doesn't like to be around the other kids because they pick on her for having a sort of rough family life. So I'm especially protective of her and let her hang around my yard and stretch of the neighborhood. I've told the other kids they need to treat her better, and for the most part they've listened surprisingly. She insists on being alone though. About a week ago she began acting sort of strange. She sits on my porch and doesn't want to walk home alone. I have no problem walking her a block, and my husband doesn't either, but it's very unusual for her.

Two days ago it was getting dark so I asked her if she needed me to walk with her. She said she didn't want to go home because there was a man with a scary face who watched her through the window. She's nine years old.

I immediately spoke to her grandmother, who says that isn't possible as they have motion sensing lights (which I didn't think of at the time), attached to that side of the house. Then I thought of what happened. How she described him. I took Ceci (again, just what I'm calling her here) home and waited for it to get very dark out. I told my husband I was going for a walk and proceeded to walk down the block.

There he was. Standing there across the street to Ceci's house, smiling that fucking smile.

I probably looked crazy to anyone watching, because I yelled something profane and walked into an area where the houses haven't sold yet. It worked, because he followed me. I told him that if he wanted the kids here that he'd have to go through me. I told him that I'd rather die then let any of these kids be hurt. That if he so much as laid one of those decrepit hands on Ceci that no shadow or darkness would protect him from me. He seemed to get the message and I haven't sensed him or seen him since.

I was alarmed because every time I've seen him, it's been around children. Do any of you know what he is? How do I make him leave? Help me. I don't want my kids to get hurt.

Submitted September 28, 2017 at 07:41PM by Wolfie621 http://ift.tt/2k5zkB7 nosleep