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Black Stick Man

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Tell us more please.


This is going back quite a few years now but we wrote it down to make sure we didn't forget.

We were sharing a room, trying to get asleep. My Brother was pretty frantically whispering to get my attention, I rolled over in my bed to see what was up and it was standing in the middle of our room. It was dark but very clearly silhouetted, gave off very bad vibes, what ever it was, was NOT good. Then it walked through the bedroom wall and we never saw it again.

My Brother saw it for a little bit longer than me but we both described the same thing both what we saw and felt. Couldn't have lasted longer than a few minutes before it went
 
This is going back quite a few years now but we wrote it down to make sure we didn't forget ... we both described the same thing both what we saw and felt.
do you still have what you wrote at the time ?
 
Was it just black and featureless?
 
Did you have any sense that it was aware of you?


I was talking to my brother about it last night and he quite vividly remembers it feeling like it was looking at him. I don't remember feeling like it was aware of me though.

I just phoned my Mum and she has a box of my old things still so I'm gonna go rooting through it for the notebook tonight.
 
I just phoned my Mum and she has a box of my old things still so I'm gonna go rooting through it for the notebook tonight.
fantastic ... scan and upload if you have a smartphone
 
This very thread, dating from 2003, may be the source.

This page traces them back only to 2008! :eek:

But! there is a droll elementary school teacher in Northern Michigan who sings a "folk song" to his 7 year old students to start off the school year. It introduces these innocents to a version of Stick Man. I have family members who were duly introduced, and one of them had nightmares for months afterwards. This was about 25 years ago. This version of Stick Man likes to look through windows at night (especially second story windows), and haunts the woodlands. He has ripped apart cows, lumberjacks, and children at regular periods--every 7 years or something like that-- and of course every year when children start school, Stick Man is due to attack again.

While searching for the "folk song" which gave my family member nightmares, I found this interesting page with oodles of fun Stick Man facts going back (reportedly) to Medieval Germany:
https://thespiritseekers.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/the-black-stick-man-phenomenon/
 
I've had this thread on "watch" for a while now, despite its quietness, because this is genuinely one aspect of Fortean weirdness that spooks the hell out of me. Can I just also thank Skrymr for his post(s) and say that someone else here is eagerly awaiting anything further...
 
this thread ... is genuinely one aspect of Fortean weirdness that spooks the hell out of me.
first post on this thread is one of the freakiest and vivid first hand accounts ever committed to ftmb i reckon ... irrelevant that it reads like a fiction ... classic weirdness
 
The classic stick man from The Saint, which Coal employs as his avatar, used to scare the hell out of my little sister. She couldn't even abide to hear The Saint theme music because she knew the stick man would be shown on TV.
With hindsight, it was probably a bit naughty of me to tape said theme music and play it near her at high volume on a cassette recorder when she least suspected....
 
This thread is my absolute favourite and the main reason I've been hanging around here for nigh on 14 years in one guise or another.

I am awaiting Skrymr's next update with baited breath!
 
While searching for the "folk song" which gave my family member nightmares, I found this interesting page with oodles of fun Stick Man facts going back (reportedly) to Medieval Germany:
https://thespiritseekers.wordpress.com/2012/03/27/the-black-stick-man-phenomenon/

Drat! I posted the wrong link. Here's the one I intended, which many of you probably are already familiar with:
http://urbanlegendsonline.com/the-slender-man/

(I should never post anything so late at night.)

As for the actual sightings posted here, I am intrigued as to how and why these figures are perceived where and when they are. I don't mean this to sound or be dismissive, but it reminds me of the clusters of UFO sightings during the Cold War. It makes me wonder if "something's up" in our collective psyche, or if there is just an ongoing phenomenon which, due to the Internet, is easier to share widely.
 
The classic stick man from The Saint, which Coal employs as his avatar, used to scare the hell out of my little sister. She couldn't even abide to hear The Saint theme music because she knew the stick man would be shown on TV.
With hindsight, it was probably a bit naughty of me to tape said theme music and play it near her at high volume on a cassette recorder when she least suspected....

You must be an older brother. That's a classic older brother thing to do. :rofl:

(I was a little sister BTW.)
 
I've read most of what written here, but there doesn't seem to be an answer to what they are. 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.

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 but I never saw anything that wasn't real ever again while drinking. I do not have mental illness. It was real. I've told maybe two or three people over the course of my life.
 
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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.

Great story thanks for telling and welcome to the Fortean Times MB.

What did you think made you so scared in the first place and what was your roommate doing at the time?
 
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