Ghost Stories

This all happened when I was younger, about seven or so. Night after night, I would have a dream that was almost the same every time, though it changed a bit occasionally. In the dream, it was always me and an old friend of mine, and we would be out in the woods that were about a five-minute walk from my house. I live in New Jersey, so there are woods all over to begin with, but there was always something about these woods that kept me coming back. We had this secret little spot down there, and that's where we would stay to all hours of the night, bringing other friends to tell ghost stories and scare the crap out of them, all in good fun.

One night, in one of the dreams, while we were out in the woods, we kept spotting this man, always just far enough away where we couldn’t make out a face. I thought nothing of it when I woke up, even though the dream seemed much more realistic this time; the trees were so much greener, the colors more vivid, and I could honestly remember the smells when I woke up. Everything I touched made my hand tingle.

That Saturday night, I rounded up a bunch of friends who hadn't been down there, and my buddy and I took them down to scare them—except this time I was scared too. Out of the corner of my eye, I continued to see white blurs. At first I thought I was getting dizzy, like maybe my vision was going out on me, but then I started to see, in the distance, a man in a finely tailored suit, but just like in the dream, he was too far away to make out a face. I ignored it, though—I suspected I was just seeing things because the dream scared me and that kind of stuff happened to me a lot.

The next part of this only my friend and I saw. For some reason, nobody else we brought was able to see what we saw. When we got to our little hangout spot, we saw a pool of blood just seeping out from the bushes. Blood was spattered on the bushes, along with hair and shreds of clothing. We froze up, but everyone else just continued to look around the area. I thought I was going to vomit. I looked away, but then I saw another body impaled up near the top of the tree on a branch. The body looked old; its skin was a yellowish-brown color and the face was half-rotted away. A small nest of birds was living in its mouth. That was too much—I threw up, fell to my knees, and started to cry. Everyone crowded around me.. The next part I didn't see, but something made my friend sprint out of the woods. I weakly followed behind the rest who ran with him.

Everyone went home, and he ended up spending the night at my house. I asked what he saw, and he told me that he saw a man, dressed all in white. His face was a different color than the rest of his body, and he had big sunglasses that hid his eyes. He was standing just behind the bush where the blood was coming from, and he lifted a severed head up from the ground and smiled at him.

I never told my friend why his story scared me so—and I never went back to those woods—but I had never told anyone about the man in my dreams.