Shay Davitt, an Irishman.
“I come from a small village in Ireland. When I was growing up, its population was somewhere around 900 people, and it is over 1600 now and continues to grow. That is, this is not the most remote place.
In the early 90s, when I was a child, almost every adult in my environment knew some kind of stories about ghosts or other creatures. Sometimes they were scary and sometimes funny. And I myself also had some similar experience.
I know it sounds weird, but these experiences have had a profound impact on my life and I still sometimes shake when I think about them.
Fairy tree
Outside my village, there is an old road called Stump Lane, and at one point on the side of the road there are the ruins of an old house. Only two strong walls and a large tree next to them remained of it. And this tree was known in the area as the Fairy tree.
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A little further away is a residential building in which a woman lives, who, according to her, lived in a destroyed house when she was a girl. She says that her family was kicked out of their old house by angry fairies.
Her father's name was Mr. Bolger and the little people were angry with him for building his house next to their sacred tree. Moreover, Mr. Bolger tried to cut down this tree too, but each time frightening events forced him to retreat.
The fact is that a red liquid, similar to blood, oozed from the tree, and it was definitely not tree sap. It protruded from any saw cut or ax strike.
Changeling
If you go further along the road, after two fields you will see a place, also named after fairies, Fairy Fort. And a little further from it there is an old farm where the Dunbar family lives.
This family is one of the oldest in these places, they lived on their farm back in the 1930s and it was then that this strange story with a changeling happened. One of the many Dunbar children went into the forest to pick berries and disappeared.
The children never lingered, so it was accepted in the family. But this guy still did not return home, it was even already completely dark. And everyone immediately sensed that something had happened. The worried mother sent her husband and other sons to find the boy, but they found nothing.
3 weeks have passed and it was already decided that the guy disappeared without a trace somewhere in the wilds of the forests. And suddenly he returned home. In general, the boy looked normal, apart from a badly deformed hand, but when asked where he disappeared, he said that the fairies took him to their place.
They immediately believed him and after that the parents went to the forest several times to ask the fairies to cure their son's hand. But the hand was never healed. The guy then lived a normal life and died at the age of about 80 years. And his wounded hand was still mutilated and small like a child's.
And all these years there were rumors about him that he was not a man, but a changeling. The real person was either killed or left by the fairies, and instead of him they sent evil spirits, which were given out by an anomalous hand.
The woman who told me this story about the Dunbar baby was 100% sure she was a changeling. And she also told another story about the changeling.
A young woman once gave birth to a child and took him with her to the field when she was harvesting cabbage. The child was lying in a basket at the edge of the field and everything was quite normal. The woman sometimes went and checked how things were with him.
But when she came home with the child after work, she suddenly saw that he was very different from her child. The baby was covered with strange wrinkles, which made him look like an old man.
And his behavior also changed. He constantly cried and cried and could not calm down in any way. And he didn't just cry, he shouted at his mother with obscene words (!) And insulted her in every way.
When the woman's relatives came to the house, he attacked them with a shout and laughter, and even threw pieces of bread at them. And when everyone had left, he began to scream like a banshee and then the woman's father told her that this was not her child, but a changeling and that a priest should be called.
When the priest came, the child started yelling at him too. And then the priest said that the woman should take the child back to the field and leave it there for three days, no matter how he screamed, cried and asked to come to him. Because it's actually a baby fairy.
The woman obeyed and took the baby to the field and left there alone. And then the child began to beg her to come back. He asked, “Mommy, don't leave me, don't go, I'm afraid!” And so it went on for three days and three nights.
And after the third night, there was silence when the woman went to the place where she had left the basket with the baby. she found there no longer a changeling, but her real and most ordinary baby. When she took him in her arms, she smiled at her and pressed against her chest.
Man with hat
When I grew up and started surfing the Internet, I realized that the legends about the Man in the Hat are spread all over the world. But as a child, I thought it was an exclusively local horror story.
When I was about 8 years old, I had a friend who once played at my house and said that he constantly felt that something was watching him.
He said that one day he managed to feel something very close and when he turned around, he managed to notice a dark man in a hat and cloak flashed by. Nothing else was visible, including the face. It was just a thick black silhouette.
When my mother heard his story, she unexpectedly joined the conversation and said that our family saw him too, or rather my grandmother, that is, my mother's, saw him.
My grandmother did not live in a village, but in a town 9 miles from us. And her house was on a small street behind the store, where it was always very dark, since there were no street lights.
Late one night, my grandmother was returning from a club where she was playing bingo and was late. It was very dark and she was already scared to walk along the gloomy street. And suddenly she heard that someone was following her. She turned around. Nobody. She went again. And again I heard footsteps behind.
And when she turned this time, a tall black man in a hat came out of nowhere to the side and blocked the only source of light, a small lantern at the end of the street. The frightened grandmother asked, “Did you want to ask something?”. But the man was silent.
Then the grandmother turned slowly and walked on, trying not to look back. She was one of those people about whom we are now talking "old school" or "special training".
When I was already twenty years old, I again heard the story of the man in the hat. My friends and I then hung out in our pub and we drank beer there and had fun. And once one of my friends told this story.
Like my grandmother, he once walked home late at night and it was also very dark. And in the same way, he suddenly heard someone following him. But I didn't tell him my grandmother's story. He stopped three times and looked back and saw no one.
And then he turned around again and, as if out of nowhere, this very tall black man in a hat appeared. It was coal black, as if woven from blackness itself. No face was visible either. My friend froze in place with fear, as if frozen. Shivers ran down his spine.
And the man in the hat just walked past him and again disappeared somewhere, as if he was not there. My friend, he said, was terribly frightened by this incident."
