Dark Hats

[00:00:00] Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. The following stories are based on events that might be hard to believe can happen. I ask you to keep an open mind. My name is Edwin. Here's a scary story. There weren't that many homes built around my house when I first moved here.

[00:00:26] It was a small town with a river running through my section. I used to raise my children up to the window so that they could see the river from my kitchen window and feel an immense amount of gratitude for being able to live here.

[00:00:39] I used to be scared of a few things before moving in. One of them was that of one of my kids, one two and the other H4, would run out one day and fall in the river and drown. It wasn't an unusual fear.

[00:00:52] In fact, I can't be certain but I think that I used to read about this area in the newspaper and how a sudden swell of the river would carry those who were playing around the rocks and taking them far away from their friends.

[00:01:05] Later to be found floating around the new dam. Their bodies swollen in purple. I thought my greatest fear had come to life one day when out of the blue I saw four of the neighborhood kids running down the dirt street passing my house. They were running so quickly.

[00:01:23] I thought that they had seen a ghost. I of course lost it. I dropped the clothes I was folding and ran after the children, begging them to stop. None of them looked like mine. Where are they ice-creamed, getting angry at them for no specific reason?

[00:01:38] I don't remember exactly what happened but I somehow found myself holding one of them by the shirt, staring down at a little girl. I was wanting to shake the information out of her. Tears were rolling down her face when I asked where Ronnie and Nancy were.

[00:01:55] She turned her head back down toward the street and my heart nearly dropped when she pointed toward the river. That's when I saw both of them. By now obviously not two and four years old anymore, but they still felt that way to me.

[00:02:09] They were knocking on the front door over a house desperately, a place where I was supposed to be. I wanted to keep questioning the little girl about what had happened but seeing my own children cry like that forced me to let go of her. Poor girl.

[00:02:25] I ran half a block back toward the house and when I was just two houses away they saw me and ran up to me. Nancy was struggling to breathe from her own cries but Ronnie stopped sobbing only to start

[00:02:37] pulling me by the arm begging us to please go inside that he would tell me just to please go hide. So many things ran through my mind. A kidnapper, another child falling in the water, something else, but what? The area had a guard station by the front.

[00:02:57] Unusual for houses in the United States to have but fairly common here. Where the start of the road had a toll booth type thing and that's why some of the neighbors of their newly built houses felt safe letting their children go out and play.

[00:03:10] They all had their own set of games I thought and yes, I knew that Ronnie would not lie to me just because. And why did he explain the most bizarre thing to me? And how did he expect me to believe it?

[00:03:26] They were playing by the river, out by one of the large trees, a eucalyptus one. When one of them, a younger kid from next door, froze in place staring deep into one of the crevices that had formed on the base of the large tree.

[00:03:42] Soon the other children stopped chasing each other and looked first to the young child looking straight toward the dark part of that tree. His eyes wide open. He dropped his arms to his side and turned the rest of his body toward that spot, about

[00:03:56] ten feet away from the tree trunk. The other children then turned their heads to the base of that tree and there they could see the strange shape of a hat, floppy and of a dark faded color, the point of the cone shape bent at the top.

[00:04:17] It wiggled, arms like tiny branches stretched out from it, grabbing it by the rim and adjusting it. They saw a wide set of yellow teeth show up from underneath as a wrinkled face of an old man appeared from the darkness. Its right arm stretched out and up.

[00:04:38] It signaled to them, follow me. Like an animal he hesitated to take a first step forward and then turn his body back toward the tree. Follow me he signaled. You could see his teeth moved downward as he nodded, attempting to get the children excited to follow him.

[00:04:57] But when nobody moved, squealed. He lunged forward, his twigs for arms stretching forward this time. They screamed as they ran back toward the street, skipping the part where they had to look both ways and dash for their own houses.

[00:05:14] Rodney knew better and he reminded me that he had indeed looked both ways when he told me the story. When he looked back toward the tree, he noticed a creepy creature hitting the ground with his fists in anger.

[00:05:26] I listened to his story, unable to believe it or perhaps afraid to and I thought about it the entire night. It bothered me to think that all those kids, every single one of them saw someone hiding in the trees and nobody had done anything about it.

[00:05:46] Every night, once everyone in the house had gone to sleep, I grabbed my coat and shoes to walk down to the security booth. I was going to speak to the guard myself. There was some creep lurking in the trees, someone was to be held responsible for it

[00:06:00] and that would be the guard. We all knew him. He was a kind family man but still had been taught to trust nobody. He greeted me with a smile as I walked up to the booth by the gate, walking up to meet

[00:06:18] me a few steps away from the door. I asked him what the deal was that he was supposed to be watching out for the residents and that includes the children but he seemed confused. Carefully, I explained what I had been told that a creepy old man had been

[00:06:35] hiding out in the trees and well the whole thing. The smile faded from his face immediately after hearing what I had described. Mrs. Look, for years me and the other guys here at the booth have talked about strange shapes that we see, he said.

[00:06:53] They're even in our log books, come and see. He ran toward the booth and came back out. He flipped about half way through a brown leather book and turned the page so the light would better shine on it as he read.

[00:07:08] This Saturday, September, dark objects rolling down the hill on the east end spotted by one of the residents. I visually confirmed this fact. No objects could be seen out by the trees the following morning. He flipped a few pages back and pointed out more of these to me.

[00:07:28] For years guards had been seeing strange shapes roll down the hills on the east end. There was nothing there. No houses either, at least at the time that this happened. Just dirt and rocks from the nearby hills.

[00:07:42] But what did these shapes have to do with what my children had seen? The guard cleared his throat. The shapes, Mrs. The shapes it described are dark cones bent at the top as they skid down the dirt road and vanish into the trees.

[00:08:01] All expressions left his face when he looked at me, dead in the eye. You put the book by his side and asked me, Mrs. Do you believe in goblins? Angela's child would wake up and scream in the middle of the night whenever she had a nightmare or something.

[00:08:33] And it was a terrible thing being Angela's roommate. I felt bad saying that because I had moved in with them to help them out with the rent and also because I needed to get away from where I was living.

[00:08:45] But I did not look forward to sharing a space with the screaming kid. The worst part was that sometimes Angela would ignore the poor thing and let her cry it out. Or maybe she simply didn't hear her during the night so I had to usually step in there

[00:08:59] and calm her down until she fell asleep again. I understood, I wasn't complaining too much. Angela worked two jobs and delivered food during her off days, anything to bring in some extra money.

[00:09:13] So the kid would spend the day at the neighbor's house who would take care of a bunch of the neighborhood kids. It would happen until I got home from work where I would end up with a responsibility after that.

[00:09:23] I held a grudge honestly, sometimes I wanted to do something when I got off work but I couldn't because I had agreed to pick up Hannah and give her whatever had been left to her in the fridge.

[00:09:35] But Hannah was nice and quiet so she would sit with her notepad and crayons next to me while I watched TV. That and yes that was helping Angela with the intense workload that she had.

[00:09:47] This quiet kid was also the one that screamed in the middle of the night and that was a difficult thing for me to grasp. One night Angela and Hannah got back home after doing her food delivery gig and they

[00:09:58] showed up digging into one of the paper bags pulling out chicken nuggets and fries. Hannah was excited that they got to keep one of the food orders that night and I was glad to see either one of them smile for once.

[00:10:10] I want to watch a movie Hannah asked. I looked right at Angela who pretended not to hear anything and simply walked off into her bedroom. She wouldn't watch a movie with her own child but how was I supposed to say no? I simply sighed and grabbed the remote.

[00:10:30] Hannah climbed up closer to the back of the couch and saw the first animated movie on the list and asked to watch that one. I casually skipped it knowing that it was one of those animated TV shows that aren't for kids.

[00:10:42] So I picked one with happy fruits and a star in the background on the cover. It was a short episode but to Hannah everything was a movie so she smiled and stuffed two fries into her mouth. I looked up to me and then back to the TV.

[00:10:56] I took out my phone and soon I was dozing off to the sound of whatever song they were singing. And suddenly Hannah let out a scream. I opened my eyes barely catching a glimpse of the box of toys that the fruits were opening on screen.

[00:11:13] Hannah covered her eyes and curled up next to me crying. She wouldn't tell me what was wrong, she had a tough time even catching her breath. From what I could tell her heart was beating hard against my arm.

[00:11:26] I paused the episode and changed it to something else and Hannah turned her face back out toward the TV. Something to see of her oily bag of fries and chicken nuggets was still next to her.

[00:11:38] Then wiping away the tears from her cheeks she managed to get another fry between her teeth. Wasn't long before she fell asleep on the couch and was carried into her bed. For thing something had started her enough to make her cry but not enough to make

[00:11:54] her not want to eat. I sat back on the couch flipping through the catalog of stuff to watch until I found a weird fruit show. The marker about three quarters of the way to the end. Yes I pressed enter, I want to continue watching.

[00:12:10] I skipped between the scenes until I found the one about the toys that one of the pairs had brought along with the toy chest. They pulled out a toy car, a doll with a pink dress, some wooden blocks and a yo-yo.

[00:12:24] The scene came back on where I woke up where they all chant, uh, whoa, in unison. I rewound the scene once more right before they say that. Then I see that the doll stands up, sits on the car and bumps into one of the wooden blocks. Again,

[00:12:43] the strange doll wakes up, stands up and walks over to the toy car while the fruits are looking away. One of them looks at it, points, and the others let out their, whoa. I paused the scene and started to go back one more time.

[00:13:02] When I heard a scream coming from the bedroom, it was Hannah. I walked over to her room not expecting Angela to wake up this time but to my surprise I saw her door open and she stepped out into the hallway.

[00:13:16] It's alright she told me, I'll talk to her. She stepped in there, angrily speaking to Hannah about her nonsense screaming and I heard a cry through the door. I started to walk away when I saw Angela coming out of Hannah's room and out toward the living room.

[00:13:32] She grunted as she put something down next to the lamp and then angrily grabbed the paper bag that Hannah had been eating from and dunked it to the trash can by the kitchen. I did not want to say anything so I pretended to scroll through the

[00:13:45] episodes once again while she walked back to her room. Whatever Angela had done or said to Hannah had worked. I thought about the scene on TV and I was reflecting on the strange things that scared me when I was a kid.

[00:14:02] But no matter how hard I thought about it, there was still nothing that would frighten me as much as whatever had scared Hannah. In those thoughts, I started falling asleep once again. Angela had turned off the lights in the kitchen so the living room was lit only

[00:14:17] by the paused scene of a random episode of that TV show, the one I had never heard of. I opened my eyes to the sound of a distant cry but I was quickly blinded by the brightness of the TV. I started dreaming about Hannah's screams most likely.

[00:14:36] Then I heard something move. I looked to the right by the lamp to see a tiny figure place its arms against the table and stand upright. The doll with the pink dress. I rolled out from the couch from the arm breast part and landed on my knees

[00:14:57] and then stumbled my weight quickly toward the kitchen. I flicked on the light trying to make sense of what I had just seen. Right there, by the lamp, was the doll just like the one we had seen on TV. This one looked a little more worn out.

[00:15:16] Her little white shoes and braided red hair. Her face flat against the table. I got closer. Was she moving again? Following story is about hidden messages and dreams making us wonder if there's something else out there.

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[00:17:27] Some of my best memories growing up were with my grandpa. He was a stereotypical old guy with a sense of humor and always embarrassing us and making us laugh. He lived in a house by a lake that him and his brothers built from the ground up.

[00:17:42] It was a story he would share almost every time I visited with my sister in the summers. It was rude to tell him that he had already told us so we would just let him speak away. And sometimes he would add extra details here and there

[00:17:55] so we would just usually let it slide. He had his own study, like a room on the side of the house where he kept all of his books, papers and guitars. Grandma used to tell him to clean it up so much and so often

[00:18:08] that it turned into an inside joke. When my cousins and I would come over, he would give us $5 each to help put the place in order. The place would stay clean for about a week even before we had to leave the place

[00:18:21] and it was already flipped upside down and we knew grandma would have something to say about it. It was like a routine. We all knew it. Just like another thing I can share with you. You see, grandma loves ribs.

[00:18:36] Especially the way grandpa used to smoke them out in the yard so sometimes he would cook for her just to make her happy and hopefully have her forget that the place was a mess.

[00:18:46] It was always a beautiful moment when we would hop on the back of the truck and drive into the city where the butcher and the supermarket were. It was like a free-for-all and we would end up buying chips, sodas and candy

[00:18:58] all for the famous outdoor barbecue that grandpa was about to make. He would cook for grandma whenever she came back to the house after visiting us or other family members. He cooked a day of my graduation, when my dad bought his new car

[00:19:12] and when grandma quit her job. At grandpa's funeral, we cooked outside and told all his favorite jokes and made sure that we all stayed happy the way he would have liked to see us. But grandma decided to stay at the house by herself

[00:19:29] despite her plans to have her move into our home or the home of someone else in the family. I thought about that recently when I met up with my cousins for one of their birthdays and one of them mentioned casually that they had a dream with grandpa.

[00:19:43] Another one mentioned that they had also seen him in their dreams. It had been about five or six years since his passing. It was interesting the amount of detail that they could share about their dreams. I missed him. I wanted to dream about him too.

[00:19:59] But it wasn't like I could ever dream. I would just fall asleep and wake up unaware of what my dreams had been. And it was like that all the time. I'm not sure if it was a conversation, but that very night he visited my dreams.

[00:20:15] A few of them in the same night. I was in a truck, still wet from a water balloon fight with everyone and we were all going out into the city. The group of cousins and our siblings whispering and enjoying our time listing out the things

[00:20:30] that we were going to convince grandpa to buy for us at the store. I remember looking over through the window to the driver's seat and seeing grandpa looking strong and much younger than I remember. The next dream, he was standing by the grill, smiling at all of us.

[00:20:48] The light of the orange sun sitting in front of him, shining right through his white hair. I was surprised at just how real the dream seemed to be. Like memories I didn't know I had lived. Thinking about the third one makes me cry.

[00:21:06] With a huge smile on his face, he walks up to me as I'm looking through his bookshelves. He bends down and takes out a lollipop from his pocket. Hey, he says. I have five bucks right here for you. What do you say? It was time to clean.

[00:21:23] It was a quiet day. The sun was setting once again, this time behind the enormous trees from his green fields. I could feel the slight breeze of the perfect temperature as it came up to me once more. Hop on, let's go. He smiled again.

[00:21:42] Where are we going grandpa? I asked, knowing full well where we were going. You gotta get some ribs and all the fixings, he said in a whisper. Grandma's coming back and we drove through those empty roads. The wind in my hair.

[00:22:01] I looked up to the sky feeling nothing but joy at just how beautiful the place looked. Bright greens and blues, orange glows and no end in sight. I woke up to my phone buzzing before sunrise. Grandma had passed away in her sleep.

[00:22:37] Scary Story Podcast is written and produced by me, Edwin Covarrubias. If you'd like to get in touch, I'll leave a link to thescarystorypodcast.com slash social where you can send me a message or comment right from your phone.

[00:22:50] If you want to be notified when new stories come out, you can input your email over on scarystorypodcast.com. You can also stay updated by tapping follow on the app you're using. Until next time, thank you very much for listening.