Speaker 1: Haunted by himself. In May nineteen seventy four, Finate magazine
published a letter from a woman who lived in the
small community of Bear Creek near Cleveland, Texas. She described
an event that qualifies as strange even by ghost story standards.
According to the letter, many residents of one neighborhood in
Bear Creek spent most of nineteen sixty three being terrorized
by a stranger and a white shirt. The man harmed
no one physically, but would frighten people by appearing suddenly
out of nowhere. No one recognized him, and no one
knew what the trespasser wanted. The mere idea that an
outsider was lurking around their homes and yards was disturbing. However,
when people began talking to one another, they discovered that
there had been numerous sightings. One woman was on her
way home from visiting a neighbor when she spotted the
man standing in her yard. By the time her vehicle
pulled up to the house, he had vanished. Two other
residents reported having shot at the stranger. Obviously, though they
had missed. Everyone had seen them at one time or another,
wrote the woman, but no one had gotten a look
at his face. One fellow, who claimed to have twice
seen the man in his own yard, seemed particularly disturbed
by the situation. He had become nervous, easily shaken, and
eventually was afraid to leave the house on his own.
His family was concerned that he might be having a
nervous breakdown, and their fears seemed to be confirmed by
a strange confession he one day made to his wife
that a short man very suddenly announced that the mystery
man and the T shirt was his own ghost. You
can't be serious, said his wife. Just wait, he said,
Wait until the next time that fellow shows up in
our yard, and I'll prove it to you. A few
weeks later, the wife saw the figure standing in the
far corner of the large back yard. She told her husband,
despite his debilitating agrophobia, strode boldly out to meet the stranger.
The anxious woman watched as her husband made a short
speech and then turned confidently and marched back into the house.
When she saw the police look on his face, she
asked him what he had said. I told him I
know who you are, the husband said, I said, you
are my ghost. I'm tired of you terrorizing my neighbors.
So go away and let them alone. It seemed unbelievable,
and the woman was likely sure that her husband had
finally had the nervous break down that the family had
been fearing. However, the fellow's mental state improved dramatically after
that day, and no one in Bear Craig ever saw
the stranger in white again