I was reading a fun thread on Quora about the unexplainable, and a commenter mentioned black stick figure men, and I remembered my encounter with them. I hadn't thought about it in decades, but I suddenly needed to know what it was that I had seen. And now I'm here.
I've read most of what written here, but there doesn't seem to be an answer. Anyway, here is my experience. Maybe it will help someone figure out what they are???
Early November 1978, Idylwild California. Idyllwild is a forested town on top of a mountain range, very beautiful, perhaps there was an Indian/Native American history, I don't know. I was twelve. I'm 51 now.
My family was wealthy and falling apart, so I was sent to boarding school in Idyllwild. It was a good school, strong academics, but a lot of the kids came from a similar broken background. There was drinking going on, but drugs weren't an issue, or maybe I was too young to be aware of it.
That day a senior coerced my roommate and myself into hiking up into the hills and drinking Southern Comfort. I was very nervous about the whole thing. I hadn't had alcohol before and I worried that I would become alcoholic. I have no idea why i was so sure that would happen, but it actually did, which is not as weird as the black stick men but close enough. (I've been sober 30 years now)
We drank, I got drunk.
In my drunkenness I ran back through the forest to the campus alone. I was scared of something, I don't remember what at all, but I ran faster.
For some reason I turned around and in a clearing I saw six or seven black stick figure men. I froze and and burst into tears, staring at them.
They stopped. One stepped forward, and I started running again while looking backwards, crying.
I thought they were devils, but they didn't seem evil. Maybe it was their shape or posture?
But the one that stepped forward seemed boyish to me. He looked my way but I didn't sense he was that aware of me even though it seemed like they had been chasing me before.
This is weird... but I found him attractive (in a twelve year old girl way). Something in the way he moved.
I was terrified and my mind definitely thought they were devils but in retrospect and perhaps even then, they didn't seem evil. Maybe they were lost.
I ran back to school, and that was that.
I was drunk and i would drink a lot for eight more years but I never saw anything that wasn't real ever again. I do not have mental illness. It was real. I've told maybe two or three people over the course of my life.
My life wasn't great for the next eight years. I don't know if that has anything to do with the stick figure men or not. I'm just trying to give all the information so that maybe someone can figure out what they were.