Four Dark Figures: Hauntings in the Midwest

And I look up and I see these four figures. The face area was so dark, I just couldn't see a face even when the headlights went in that direction. I kind of looked at him and I'm like, did you see that? In homes across Iowa and Illinois, Aiden has faced chilling in encounters with the paranormal, from terrifying sleep paralysis to unexplained footsteps and face to face meetings with the unknown. My name is Edwin and here is Aiden. It's true scary story. My name is Aiden. I'm originally from Illinois, a little small town called Warsaw that's spread across the border from Iowa. But my mom was a teenager. They would play the Ouiji board and my grandparents house. They've had some interactions here and there, light flickering, running up the stairs, knocking on doors, but as far as I know, they've said goodbye. Everything's been fine. When I was little, we weren't as well off as most other people. We kind of found ourselves jumping back and forth from house to house. I was living at my grandparents house at this time. My dad told me a story right before I was born two thousand and three to two thousand and four. He was staying in the house with my mom. They were really young. He would have his clock on top of the TV. When he woke up in the morning, you could see what time it is. He said, he'd always wake up and the clock would be flipped turned totally around to where the time and everything he couldn't see. It got even more interesting when he said that sometimes he'd be in the bedroom and you would hear like legitimate running up the stairs. Mind you, this is an older country house. The stairs are gonna be kind of loud when you're running and walking up. When you run up the stairs, you go down this hallway. There's one room at the top of the stairs, and there's two rooms. If you go down the hallway, there's one to the left and one in the right. You'd hear the door slam upstairs. He'd come downstairs ask my grandparents, were you guys coming up and down the stairs. My grandparents never really ever go up the stairs. My grandma go up and down occasionally unless she's cleaning something or whatever. And I don't remember last time my grandpa has ever actually been upstairs. But that kind of brings it to my experience. Now, this would have been around two thousand and nine, twenty ten, I would have been four or five years old. I had this room where you go up the stairs of this two story country house. You would go down the hallway to the left, and that would be my bedroom. I know, even as a kid, going up and down them stairs, I always have to turn the light on because I always felt this weird energy. It was almost ominous. Something was definitely watching me tight. So even like at night, I have to turn the light on to go up the stairs. Even now, I would always sleep with my parents. I never really knew why. My mom would always tell me that I would be scared and that I would go and sleep in their room with them. I guess now this makes sense because after what I seen. I'm almost twenty years old now and this still scares me to this day. My grandpa, I would always go out with him on these late night drives. He had this air refreshener hanging from his mirror, a grizzly bear with red eyes. It always freaked me out. It kind of made fun of me for it a little bit. I try not to think about it. It's pretty traumatic. So there's this one night where I was having this dream. Like I said, it's a country house. You go outside, there's going to be an open field to the east side of the house, large open cornfield. You can see quite a distance I want to say a quarter mile distance probably, But in my dream this looked different. There's a gravel road that runs along the end of this cornfield. You can see it run along. But in my dream everything was very very dark, like if you're in a really really dark space, like your eyes are covered. It was the blackest black like I've ever seen. I go outside, there's this tree line. All of a sudden, this doesn't look like my grandparents house. I can look back in my dream and I'm like, okay, well, I'm at the front porch of this house. I'm looking off. You see the trees, you see the outlines, but you can't see the trunk of the tree. You're not seeing the leaves. It's just the whole outline, and they're all black figures. Like it's so weird, but you can only see, like the sky as just a lighter color, just barely let you see it. So I'm looking out there and then I see these figures running along this tree line. You see these red eyes in the distance, glowing red blood color of just bright bright red, just running and running, and you can tell that they're big bears. They're running along this tree line and then they run up close to me. They're running and they're running, and then all of a sudden, there's tons of them, maybe forty fifty, these dark figures. They were all bears with the red eyes. You could not really see their facial features. You could tell that they had their heads, just the little round ears. They're on all four legs, and they were all dark, dark, black figures. And in my dream, I'm scared. So I'm kind of making my way back into the house, into the front door, and I'm looking out the window and I can still see them emerging up to this house. One had just put its pall on the porch. And then that's when I woke up. It was so scary. I don't understand. I'm trying to process the dream. But when I woke up, I realized I couldn't move. All I could do was look around my eyes. I could hear myself breathing, and I'm trying to like scream almost because I'm like, why can't I only see with my eyes? And my eyes and I can't move there as my body and you could hear like the nastiest snarl of a bear. It's mad, it's growling. And you could hear the huffing and puffing echoing down the hallway like it was coming from where my room was, and everything just went quiet. There was a hallway light on. The door was barely cracked open to where you could see the light come through, but the room was still very dark. You see this black cloud like mist emerged through this door and pop up into this figure. It was a bear, just like I'd seen in my dream, and it was the darkest dark I've ever seen, piercing red eyes. You could see its ears, you can see its head shape. You could hear it breathe and just like huff and I'm seeing that real heavy animal like breathing. It just stood there at the foot of the bed and it's two piercing eyes, just sitting there staring at me. I don't know what this thing wanted from me. I think I just wanted to scare me. I just sat there and stared at me and this thing, I want to say, it's about ceiling high. It got down and you could hear its two front palls hit the floor like there was an actual animal in there, and it just got down. This thing walks up to the side of the bed or whatever, and you can hear it breathe and huff and puff. And it had gotten up about a foot away from my face. You could see its claws if that were on. Its paws just kind of go onto my mom's hand and it reached like way in and all I could hear was like this exhale, just huff. After that, it disappeared, gone into thin air. I still can't explain it to this day. Right after it left, I can move, and I tried waking my mom up or whatever, and ton I'm like, hey, hey, I seen this in my dream or whatever, and she's like, Oh, it's okay, just go back to sleep. We'll talk about it in the morning. I want to say, I probably didn't sleep for a couple hours after that, and finally i'd fallen asleep and told her about it the next morning. And my grandparents they're kind of skeptics when it comes to ghosts. They're not total believers in that kind of stuff. My dad and mom they have their own separate stories they've seen things, so they're kind of like, it's okay, it's just a dream, It's okay. It was horrifying. I've never seen anything as scary as that night. Oh my, kind of getting the chills now just talking about it because I can see it. The energy upstairs does not feel right. When you go downstairs, everything's fine, you know, there's family, the energy's cool, it's lifting, but just something about that upstairs is just eerie. We actually had ended up getting a house. I was probably about six seven years old. Now this house was it was a small, decent house, but it had a very large yard, which was awesome. There's rumors about this house. Kids would tell me like, oh, there was this guy that hung himself down here, and I don't know if they're trying to scare me or that's creepy, but okay, in that house, I can't say I've ever really seen anything in that house, but like, you would definitely feel a presence downstairs at night, and you would hear these weird clicking noises or tapping on things. It was always cold. I don't know if that's just basement being a basement or that place. It was always eerie. Nothing was really like crazy crazy in that house, but it was off fast forward. It moved into the second house. This one pretty big house. It had an upstairs attic that was finished that my parents would sleep in. I slept downstairs. This is an older house, so you know, you got your wood floors, big, big dining room, kitchen. The basement was really old and unfinished. I never actually found out how old this house was, but I'm assuming it's at least bill probably early nineteen hundreds, kind of by the way, the woodwork was really simple house. I had this night where I was just doing my own thing in the living room. I was up really late. Let's say it's a weekend. I'm a kid. Everybody in the house they were asleep. It was probably twelve o'clock, one o'clock in the morning at least. I was just kind of sitting there watching TV, sitting on the floor in the living room. All of a sudden, you hear these footsteps. I mean, this is a good sized dining room, it's wood floors, it's echoey. I hear these footsteps. I went towards me, and they sound like these large work boots. You can hear the heel hip first and then the front of the foot, one step after another, and it was loud like I had thought my dad had came in or something after a work shift, because he worked at a foundry at that point in time, so he had really large work boots. They were steeled to work boots, and it was like loud, and I was like freaked out. I ran upstairs and the moment that I realized, I looked into my parents' bed and both of them were there sleeping. I was freaked out. My prior experiences, I have seen things. I had seen that one thing, and I have heard things. I want to say, that was the second that holds the crown for a second right there. That was horrifying. Just hear something like approaching you, but you can't see it. We had our last house and this was twenty fourteen to seventeen. There's a four four way intersection there, a really small one and it was at the corner of this intersection. This is a nice two story house. Older house, really creepy basement and how it was built. I would sleep upstairs, my parents sup downstairs. So if you walk in, the stairs are to your right. There. The first thing you see other than the living room to your left, and then straight down that hallway that leads to the kitchen, and then their bedroom to the left of that hallway. I had some weird, weird things happen, Like I'd be sleeping at night, all of a sudden, I had this little speaker tower. I would wake up and it would fall over. There's no no way this thing just falls over. Just to make sure I had this done, like a second time, I made sure this thing it was standing up. I made sure like there's nothing around it, nothing to make this thing fall over. Went to bed that night. My phone was on this It's almost like my body just knew to wake up at that moment in time. But right when I woke up, I just watched this tower straight up just fall right over. Face first. I heard my screen protector on my phone. It freaked me out. I ran downstairs being as little told my mom. I'm like, mom, mom, my speaker tower, like it just fell over. I don't even know what's going on, Like it just fell over all of a sudden, and it's freaking me out. He was like, Okay, that's fine, you can sleep down here with me or whatever. I don't even know how to explain that that was the weirdest thing. Fast forward again here in Iowa, Cedar Rapids. I went to the well known Ranger house. This thing is known for being haunted. You hear things at night, kids running, things being moved. You hear that clang and knock at the horse barn door. You hear that open and shut. I skeptical first, so I go there. I'm there with my aunt and we stayed there before the nighttime. We had this guy kind of showing us around the house. He's like, I got these ghost readers and everything. This is like what we found in this house. These weird figures that you can see. They're like shadowy figures. You can see them in like the corners of the house. So like you'd hear the water turn on, like when we were in there. How does the water just turn on while me and this guy are like just talking. Everything in this house. I swear they just kept original from the eighteen hundreds. They're said to be like the first settlers of Iowa in that region. They had some things happen. The Grangers and their kids got sick and they had died. Mister Granger and missus Stranger. They ended up passing away from some illnesses. At the time. We go out to the horse barn. We're looking around. They've got the carriage still in there and the chain links. We're talking and then all of a sudden, you hear the door shut behind us. And it's like a big old barn door. You could hear them like kind of slap against the wood when you close it. That's what we heard. We heard the door shut and those things like slapped against the door. Nobody's there, nobody's around the door. They were kind of looking at each other like, Okay, this is a little weird, like what is going on here? We keep going on. We go into the night and we're kind of just sitting in this living room with this high a couple of my aunts with the spirit box, and we were trying to make out some words. It's kind of hard to make out some words under that, but we heard a couple of names, David or like how is he? Or where is he? But the weird part was the little boys room, which is upstairs. It's a two story house. You go up to his room. It's the first one the the left of these stairs. They kept a piece of hair of his in there, which the spirits make attachments to things like this. I think that little boy is still in that house. We was up in that room, me and one of my aunts before we had went to bed that night. We had decided that we were going to put a flashlight down and we were going to ask the spirit if they could dimn this flashlight. Oddly enough, the flashlight like actually dimmed. We set it down facing up towards the ceiling and you could actually watch it dim down, and it got solo to the point would almost shut off, and then it turned back on like just all of a sudden. I'm like, there's new batteries or whatever in this flashlight. Like how we're trying to go to bed, you hear like something walking throughout this house really light, and it freaked us out. I ended up falling asleep. My aunt said, say, like two three am. She said she was awaken. She could hear the footsteps of people walking in there, and nobody was awake at this time. It felt really cold in there. I didn't notice it at first until I, like I actually thought about it. I'm like, it is cold cold in this bedroom, Like this is weird, So this makes sense. There's got to be something in here. This was Schoeyville, Iowa, two weeks ago. Me and my friend, my best friend, actually I had to drive around listen to music. We're driving into this town. We get down to these houses. We come around this curve. It's his house, a very dimly lit driveway. It was pitch black outside. It was dark. My headlights were on, all that kind of stuff. This driveway was very very dim had the two brick pillars at the end, but it was super dimly lit, but lit enough to where you could see enough down there. We come around this curve. We're listening to music. We're like, we're into it. And I look up and I see these four figures. They look like if they were newish clothes, like just like a sweatshirt like thing that weired me out. Though that I noticed is they were all the same height, and each and every one of them, all four of them were just staring right at the vehicle. You could tell they were staring in our direction, but the face area was so dark. I just couldn't see a face even when the headlights like went in that direction. I paused, like I trucked the music off. I kind of looked at him, and I'm like, did you see that? There were four kids standing there? They look like maybe they were trying to scare us or whatever. And he kind of turned back around. He's like, no, I didn't see that. He turned around and looked at the dryway and nobody was there. Of course, like I'm thinking I'm crazy now because he's not seeing this. Oh Lord, don't make me feel like I'm crazy now. He's like, dude, I didn't see anything back there. I don't know what you're talking about. I think they're just kids trying to scare us. They're just standing at the end of the driveway. But not even a couple of minutes later, we turn around. I'm like, I want to go back. He's like, I don't believe you. I'm not seeing nothing or whatever. And there's this dip down from the road right next to these people house. There's like four or five trees just in a perfect line. We're driving by. I see it again and it's just one of them as time, maybe I want to say, about like six foot tall, standing there with they had their hood up over their head. I could not see their face again. They just stood there behind that tree, just barely so I could see them poking out. I'm like, look now there's something there, and he looks over and then this thing is gone. It had literally just disappeared. I had looked over there for a little bit. I didn't see anything run away. I seen nothing. We had went past his house four or five times after that, and I seen nothing, and neither did he. I did not know how he could not see that. To me, they were clear as day. They looked like they were just kids trying to scare us. But no, they were gone. Even when I looked back and he's at the four that were there the first time he looked back, they were gone. You would have thought he would have seen one runoff. You thought he would have seen the four if he would have just looked back and seen him. But no, didn't see him whatsoever. It is totally impossible for them to just not be there when he looked back right after I said that, and them just not be there, like you're not moving that fast without somebody seeing you run across the driveway through the woods or something like that. Like there's just no way their most death was something there that day. I'm still thinking about that. Is there a meaning to this. Why did I see four all about the same height beings is staring at me when I went around this corner. I'm still trying to figure it out. I don't know why I seen what I seen. I've had some pretty interesting moments, for sure. When I see these things, they're like random, like they just just happened, Like it just all of a sudden. In that moment, something wants me to see it, and then I just don't see it again after that, like I don't understand. To share your story with us, fill out our form over true scarystory dot com and if you want me to read your true story instead. I am looking for submissions for my new podcast, Paranormal Club. Just email me at Edwin at scarystory dot com. That's E d w I n at scarystory dot com and type in paranormal Club in the subject line so I know that it's for that. And if you haven't checked it out yet, it's available on YouTube and wherever you're listening now. This episode was edited and sound designed by Sarah Vorhees Wendel of Vwsound, with additional production by me Edwin Karubias and the Scary FM team. Thank you very much for listening, Keep it scary, everyone soon