The terror of the black stick man
Have you ever seen something so far outside your normal, everyday experiences you are at a loss to explain what you saw? What follows is the true story—in that nothing is made up, though I cannot vouch for what is real, or waking dream—of an extraordinary encounter with an apparently alien presence in urban surroundings.
In the early hours of a weekday morning when I was living in London as a student, back in the early 1990s, I was walking back from a friend’s house where another friend, Sue, and myself had spent the whole night talking and revising with a group of other people. No drugs or alcohol had been involved other than coffee. Sue lived some way away, so I’d offered to let her crash over at my place. Dawn was just breaking as we turned onto my street. We were very tired and didn’t say much to each other until I spotted a man walking up towards us on the same path, some distance away. I didn’t think anything of it; in a city like London, people are up and about at all hours and besides, weren’t we? He could have been a milkman, a refuse collector, a night-shift worker heading home.
We walked towards the man. He walked towards us. My home was between us. I began to feel uneasy. I still, to this day, don’t know why I said what I did but I turned to Sue, and the following conversation took place in whispers:
“Sue, see that man?”
“Yes.”
“Well, this is going to sound weird. He isn’t a man, is he?”
“No. Did I just say that?”
“You did. And he isn’t.”
The figure we had taken to be a man had changed, as if a glamour had been lifted, or had failed. What we saw was humanoid in shape, about five feet tall and with very long arms but short legs. It was a black silhouette, very thin-looking. I’ve often described it since as being similar to the stick man which is often used on bathroom doors to tell you that you’re entering the men’s room. And when I say black, I mean black – no light, no shade, nothing but a void. It was as if someone had taken a cookie cutter and had shaped a hole in reality in the shape of something almost, but not quite, human. The creature seemed to be, well, I’ve used the word ‘lolloping’ before now, which isn’t really a word but denotes the dancing, jolly steps it was taking as it walked. It stopped. Both Sue and I felt the creature had realised we could see it for what it really was rather than what we were supposed to see. It turned, or seemed to turn, ever so slightly and it was then we could see the creature wasn’t three-dimensional. It was flat, so much so that turning made parts of it vanish from before our eyes until it turned back to fully face us once more.
We freaked. We ran without discussion. I got my key out and fumbled with the front door of my home, which was a big Victorian house converted into flats. I lived on the middle floor. Sue behind me urged me to hurry. We were both terrified. I got the door unlocked, we dashed inside, closed and locked it again. We ran up the stairs and hid round the corner, like little children peeping at the big front door, which had two big glass panels through which we could see the front garden.
The black stick man approached the door and we could see its dark shape pressing up against the glass. Neither of us breathed. The creature looked – I say looked, it had no eyes – through first one pane, then the other. It waited for what felt like an eternity before vanishing. One second it was there, the next it wasn’t. It was a few minutes before either Sue or I could find the will to move and get ourselves into my living room to discuss what we had seen. We knew whatever it was, it was alien – either from ‘up there’ or ’sideways’ but definitely not of the world we knew and felt comfortable with.
It was over ten years later, through a forum post on the Fortean Times website, that I discovered our experience was not unique, that there have been sightings of this creature all over the world.
Perhaps the fact that dawn was breaking was significant. Maybe our having gone all night without sleep left us open to senses not usually engaged being switched on, so that we could see things ‘not there’ in ways similar to genuine mediums, or maybe it was a shared hallucination – but if it was, there’s no explanation of how two people can share a hallucination, or why. I don’t buy into the hallucination theory and not because I don’t want it said I imagined the creature; as a writer, I inhabit the imagination more frequently than most, and feel no shame in saying so. The imagination is a wonderful thing but this being was not imagined. It was real. It was something unexplained, some aspect of the natural world, the universe, which was revealed to us most likely through a conjunction of environmental and other factors – the time, the place, the weather, our lack of sleep, and so on. Was the being friendly? I don’t think so. I think our instinct to run and hide was primal. The creature had affected us emotionally throughout the encounter. We had not only experienced great fear but we both felt the being had been arrogant, superior in attitude and angry that its glamour had been pierced or had failed to operate.
I never want to see this creature again. Whatever dimensions it came from, I hope I never find myself walking in them. My belief as to what it was has come to me over a decade. It was no spaceman. It was closer in behaviour and perceived threat to those goblins and elves of folklore than any little green man. Where was the spaceship? There was none. Besides, parking in London is always a bitch. Seriously though, the shape of its outline whenever I draw it – its oval head, its long arms, its short legs – always makes people think of shows like The X Files or the film about Whitley Strieber and his encounters with aliens, Communion. Ultimately, I don’t know what we saw, man from Mars or shared hallucination brought on through tiredness or inter-dimensional pixie, but I do most sincerely hope none of you ever encounter this creature or, if you do, never do so alone.
tags: aliens, black stick man, elementals, fear, fey, Fortean, nature spirits, phenomena, sightings, strange, unexplained, unknown, weird
6 comments on “The terror of the black stick man”
July 14th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
Wow! I am actually glad to be reading this with my morning cup of coffee and not late at night when I usually am at the computer.
Ghost reports do not disturb me .. probably because I view them as a natural extension of the human experience … but these “alienish” ones do on occasion.
You are definitely not alone in seeing these “beings” and no I do not think that you both suffered identical hallucinations. In my opinion that can easily be discounted.
Would you say this experience with the “stick man” changed you? Your outlook perhaps? I am just curious.
I am going to email you with some questions if you don’t mind.
July 14th, 2006 at 6:44 pm
I don’t think it did change me because, although frightening, I had many experiences from being a little boy that weren’t at all scary although sometimes uncomfortable - by that, I mean for example a visit when I was in my teens from a WWI soldier who gave me the impression of choking on mustard gas, what it was like for him.
I was lonely at the time - isolated - and he was too, so I think he came to me because of a sense of being kindred; that, and I also came away from seeing him with a sense that he was a gay man and I was on the verge of coming out myself.
He was only a young man of around 18 and appeared in my room. I told my parents about him. I learned afterwards to take or reject sensations given to me from the spirit world or whatever the place is these things come from, and whatever they are. I’m open to them being something other than spirits; I always say I just don’t know.
This stick man, as you suggest, wasn’t a spirit or didn’t feel like one. Although completely alien, it felt real but disturbing because it wasn’t part of the reality I’ve always operated within. He wasn’t the first negative encounter I’ve ever had, though - I would be surprised if you’d never heard of a man being seen dressed in black with a stovepipe hat, thin to the point of skeletal? He had a huge black dog with him. That was another scare, with several witnesses, and that was some years before the stick man. He was spotted over several nights, materialising around a university campus next to a large area of waste ground.
Then, the entity did, in fact, try to do harm - I was visiting friends in Manchester who were doing youth theatre at the time, and a girl woke in alarm and couldn’t breathe; her roommate switched the light on and saw this boney man choking her friend for a second before he vanished.
I hadn’t seen the Poltergeist films at the time - this was around 1988, 89 - but since then I have, and tell people the evil religious figure in those films is EXACTLY like the man who I and others saw. Interestingly, the man’s appearances were accompanied on at least two occasions with lights in the sky. I recall we phoned the meteorological office at the time and were told there was a Prince gig going on. It was NOT the gig which was responsible for the rotating lights in the sky!
Of course I don’t mind you dropping me a line with some questions. I’d be happy to answer them. x
July 14th, 2006 at 7:29 pm
Thank you A…! I will e’ you shortly. Yes, I have heard of this skeletal apparition with the black stovepipe hat.
A dear friend who presently is a psychical investigator in British Columbia, Canada also encountered an identical “being” along with four other young women many years ago.
That would have happened maybe 20 years ago now and she is still haunted by it in the sense that the experience is burned into her memory.
It is interesting how these “beings” pop up world over and are witnessed by varied people of differing cultural backgrounds.
I often wonder if they exist alongside of us at all times, and just under certain circumstances as you’ve suggested in the blog entry are they visible or able to interact with us….
July 15th, 2006 at 10:07 am
The man in the stovepipe hat does seem to have a thing for young girls, mostly. I was in the company of teenage women every time I saw him. I’ve now written up the experiences. Let me know your thoughts, as always.
I think that our world co-exists with others in parallel. Sometimes, by design or accident, the veils between them develop ‘holes’ through which other beings can cross over or, judging by how many people disappear every year, we can fall into. x
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:52 am
A year or so ago in the park across the street from my house here in Kitchener Ontario Canada, me and some friends were in the forest where a friend had told us earlier he had seen a ghost. We did not believe him,we went there over 20 times and nothing at all happend. At this point I thought he was lying. Then one day around dusk the sun was still setting my best friend wanted to see this forest we talked about so we all about 5 of us went to show her. Nothing was scarey so me and her decided to run off on the others and play a joke to scare them. My best friend and I completely sober when started to slowly jogdown a path next to an open field with tall grass; the sun was still up at the time, as we were running one way a tall “stick man” a blalck silhouuette ran like a leprochaun over the grass the only sound was its feet hitting the top of the grass. At that point I turned around in shock and awe to ask my friend if she had seen it to, she responded “yes” as quickly as I had asked I tripped she fell on my and my arm and broke it. I didn’t even feel it at the time time all I could say was ” what was that”, we screamed for the others. It had already dissapeared by this time it was no where in sight. ** If anyone knows anything about what this was .. or what it means.. contact me .
thanks.
xox
May 23rd, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Wow! You are actually about an hour away from me Shea. I am intrigued! Please contact me via my email addy sue at psican dot org I research this type of phenomena and am well aquainted with your neck of the woods.
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