When TikToker Haley (@autumn.in.appalachia) was five or six years old, living in Tennessee, she came face-to-face with a mysterious, tall, dark figure that she couldn’t see in the woods.
For some backstory, her grandparents had lived on their property in Tennessee for years until her grandfather passed away. Her grandmother stayed there for a while, but she eventually sold the house. Haley’s parents bought it and moved in there.
Before her grandmother moved out, she had insisted on burying her grandfather on the property. He was initially buried at the edge of the woods near the shed in the backyard. After Haley and her parents moved in, his body was relocated to a cemetery.
One day, she was outside picking wildflowers for her grandpa’s grave. Her mom was doing dishes and keeping an eye on her from the kitchen window. All of a sudden, her mom was overcome with a creepy, eerie feeling.
At the same time, she saw Haley stand up, look toward the woods, and scream loudly. Haley had just been placing flowers on her grandpa’s grave when a surge of fear rushed through her.
She immediately sensed that something was wrong, but she didn’t know what. When she turned and faced the woods, she didn’t see anything. She felt rooted to the spot and couldn’t move for a minute.
Her mom yelled out the open window, telling her to run. She saw a tall human figure standing behind the huge oak tree at the edge of the woods, right by the grave.
The figure wore dark clothing and carried some sort of thick staff or pole. It was silver and glistened in the sunlight. Her mom could see the seven-foot figure clearly from the shoulders down, but couldn’t make out any facial features.
Of course, she thought there was a man hiding on the property, trying to kidnap Haley or break into the nearby shed. Haley started booking it back to the house.
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Her mom ran onto the back porch, but the figure had disappeared. Then, she thought maybe Haley’s dad was up at the fishing pond, and his truck had broken down, so he was walking back through the woods.
But Haley’s dad pulled up to the driveway in his perfectly functioning truck, proving that theory wrong. So, her mom screamed for him and told him that someone was in the woods.
“So, my dad takes off in that little pickup truck through the yard, all the way up to the wood line,” Haley recalled. “He gets up there, he jumps out, he’s running around through the woods, looking in the shed, like there’s nobody. There is not a trace of anybody.”
Her mom had seen the figure duck behind the big oak tree, and he never came back out. It wouldn’t have been possible for him to walk away without her seeing. To this day, they still don’t know what that figure was.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
