my experience with a "Grinning Man"
When I was about seven or eight years old, I was bedridden with some strange childhood malady that left me temporarily unable to walk under my own power, [my mom just tells me "the doctors never could figure out what was wrong." my dad just says that I was lazy!]
One night I lay in bed, not sleeping, just lying there thinking. It was raining outside, and I was half listening to the sound of the rain on the window that was right beside my bed. It was an almost hypnotic sound [but I still swear I wasn't sleeping!]. The funny thing was, the more I tried to concentrate on the sound, the louder and more distinct it became, or to put it a bit better, the more "aware" of the sound I became, the louder it got.
It got so loud that I finally looked up at the glass to see what the heck was going on, and found, to my obvious horror, that there was a man "banging" on the glass!
He was tall alright, tall enough so he filled the frame of the window, and he did have the enormous grin that gave him his name. [if it WAS the Grinning Man, and not just some freak who happened to be grinning.]
When he saw that he had my attention, his grin became even more crazy, and he started yelling at me "Let me IN! Let me IN!"
I lost it...
I started screaming my head off! [remember at the time I couldn't just jump up and bolt, I was just lying there feeling helpless.] Well, my Mom bursts through the door, and comes running in. When SHE sees the figure in the window, SHE starts screaming her head off too! She scooped me up, blankets and all, and runs out of the room with me. Her room had a phone, so she ran down there and tossed me on her bed. At this point all of my sisters [five of them] had woken up and they were screaming and carrying on, even though they had NO IDEA whatsoever of what was going on, so while they are all screeching and quacking like ducks, my mom is on the phone to the police.
Mind you, I had not yet even spoken to my mom about exactly what had happened, she was just reacting to what she had seen.
She called the police and told them there was a prowler trying to get in, and they sent out a patrol car.
It was in either October or November, so they ground was plenty muddy and leaf strewn, but the cops didn't find a single footprint or mark on the glass. They told her they would come back occasionally during the night and check on us, but that they thought it was just a case of nerves.
It was years later while reading Mr. Keel that I had "an epiphany" that it may have been the "Grinning Man" I had seen.
Trace Mann
[at work and typing fast, sorry for any typos!]
