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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/rclark141 on 2024-09-12 23:43:40+00:00.
As a child I was fascinated by urban legends. Each and every one of them is a snapshot of the culture of an area, and these outrageous stories are told for one of several reasons. They can be based on a true story, the babysitter and the man upstairs was based off of a murder in the 1950’s and was widely spread during the 60’s. They can be told to showcase the culture in an area, the couple who eats KFC because the wife is tired which turns out to be Kentucky Fried Rat is a story told to punish women who shirked their so-called “womanly duties” by joining the work force instead of homesteading. They can be told to scare children into behaving correctly, and listening to their parents. As the grandchildren of Eastern European immigrants, my brother and I were terrified of the The Black Volga, a black car that kidnapped and murdered children who talked to strangers.
These stories can encompass and consume entire countries and cultures, large swaths of the world all telling the same anecdotes around campfires, children all cowering in fear as similar tales are regaled. Growing up on the South Shore of Massachusetts there was the Whispering Man.
The Whispering Man was a story that I had first heard from my uncle, it was the summer before I started kindergarten, prime time for scaring a child into behaving well. My mother had brought us out camping by a lake in New Hampshire with her brother and his family for labor day weekend, sending off the summer with a “last hurrah”. The first few hours were spent by the adults setting up the campsite, while my cousin and I were tasked with gathering firewood and kindling, my younger brother was excluded from our expedition due to him being deemed too young to join us.
My cousin and I wandered the forest around the campsite finding sticks and twigs that we used to battle one another in a mock Star Wars style light saber duel before ultimately putting them into a basket to bring back to our campsite. Our laughs and giggles echoed throughout the forest, ultimately letting our parents know that we were safe and sound.
Living in the suburbs, I had become accustomed to buildings lining the streets, small shops and strip malls scattered about main roads, plant life such as trees and grass only belonged in the front and backyards of houses on side streets. I was enamored by the forest, the way the trees stood sturdy and strong, the grass was overgrown, untouched by tools like lawnmowers and weed whackers. I could have never imagined the Sun could be entirely blocked out by the natural parasol that the leaves from the trees provided, and yet, there it was, infinite shade.
During our journey my older cousin, Ivan, asked me if I knew about the Black Volga, I nodded as it seemed our grandmother educated all of her grandchildren about the dangers of strangers in strange cars.
“Babusia made that up you know?”
“Nuh uh,” I responded, “she wouldn’t lie to us, why would she make that up?”
“That way we don’t talk to strangers, think about it. She never talks about anybody that she knows who got taken by one, and do you even know what a Volga is? I’ve never seen one.”
As easily swayed as my child-mind was, I started to put stock in what my cousin said.
“Do you wanna hear a real scary story?”
Fear and excitement danced in my eyes, before a small wave of apprehension washed over me, “How do I know that it’s real? If Babusia tells a fake story then why would you tell a real one?”
“Because my dad will tell it, and he says that he actually knows someone who it happened to.”
Later that night we gathered around the campfire where Ivan and I were able to enjoy the fruits of our labor. The sun had set hours before, leaving our campsite illuminated solely by our fire, and the stars above us, untouched by light pollution. I caught myself staring into the sky, craning my neck allowing myself to feast my eyes on the stars that dotted the heavens above me.
“If you stay like that your neck will get stuck, and you’ll look like that forever.” My mother warned, sitting beside me. My brother was fast asleep in her arms, leaving myself, my mother, uncle and Cousin sitting around the campfire, wide awake and enjoying the nature that engulfed us.
The darkness of the night crept towards us as the fire ran low on fuel, suffocating as it ate away at the logs, sticks and twigs I had so diligently gathered. The warmth it provided waned as the chilling wind from the trees forced itself on to my back causing the muscles to convulse as I shivered. In this moment my cousin looked at his father, “Dad, tell the story about the Whispering Man.”
My mother cocked her head and spoke to her brother in a language I didn’t understand, despite her best efforts I never quite picked up the language passed down to her by her mother. My uncle responded in the same language, leaving Ivan and I completely out of the loop. My mother smiled and urged her brother to indulge his son’s request, “Go on Kolya, tell the story.”
My uncle smiled and nodded, “When Lyudmila and I were little, we grew up near a small patch of woods that was in our friend’s backyard, his name was Travis. The trees in the woods weren’t nearly as big as the trees here.” He gestured all around us, pointing towards the still giants that loomed over us. “The trees there stuck out of the ground like fingers that were ready to grab you at any moment.” He grabbed onto his son who sat next to him, Ivan nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Lyudmila, Travis and I all played in the woods together often enough, we even made a small fort one year, it took us the entire summer. One day we stayed out too long playing in the forest, it was dark out, and the three of us were playing around the fort, deep in the woods. Suddenly the crickets stopped chirping, and the wind stopped blowing, and we heard a voice. A child’s voice. ‘Come play with me’ it said. Lyudmila and I were terrified, we ran out of the fort, and we ran home as fast as we could, but when we came out of the woods, Travis wasn’t with us.”
My uncle bowed his head and sighed before continuing, “The voice we heard in the woods at night was that of an evil in this world, ‘The Whispering Man’. He walks around the woods at night looking for children to play with him, he draws them in and tricks them inviting them to play.”
My shivering persisted, no longer was it motivated by a change in temperature, instead the rapid muscle contractions were fueled by pure, unadulterated terror. I spoke up, a frail voice that shattered against the progressively chilling air, “Where was Travis?”
“He was with The Whispering Man, we never saw him again, aside from the ‘missing’ posters that were put on all the telephone poles in our neighborhood.” He paused for a while, the chirping of the crickets and the crackling of the dying fire were the only sounds emanating from the forest. “If you boys ever hear voices from the forest, you don’t follow them, understood?”
Ivan and I emphatically nodded in agreement, and my uncle poured his water over the fire, finally putting it out of its misery. A plume of grey smoke was released from the blackened logs and twigs, its dying breath wafted into the air before dissipating into the sky above.
That night I spent the majority of the time listening as the wind gently swayed the branches of the trees. The leaves whistled almost as if they were trying their hardest to speak, but their own anatomy simply wouldn’t allow it. My eyes were forced open by my overactive imagination, as I watched the faint shadows waltz against the tent I could have sworn that some of them shifted and morphed into the shape of a man. The chirping of the crickets combined with the whipping of the wind created unintelligible whispers in the night, whispers that I feared belonged to The Whispering Man. I cowered in fear allowing the sea of horror that had been built up inside of me to thrash me around.
My head spun, The Whispering Man isn’t real, I thought.
"Play with me"
The voice penetrated through the thin plastic that acted as my sole line of defense. I retreated into a ball, deep in my sleeping back, keeping one eye fixed on the zipper that acted as the only point of entry. There against the plastic I saw a hand reach down towards the zipper outside the tent.
My heart raced. I held my breath for as long as my still developing lungs would allow, and when they failed me, my breath become shallow and fleeting. The sound of the zipper forced itself into the tent and the moonlight seeped into my tent.
He isn’t real, he isn’t real, he isn’t real.
The thought repeated countless times. Reprieve washed over me as enough moonlight gave way to illuminate Ivan’s face. He began to laugh and he whispered “Got you!”
Before I could respond he quickly zipped the tent back up, encasing me in darkness, and he returned back to his tent.
The years passed and gave way to several changes in life, my family had moved away from my early childhood home and into a small apartment after the housing crash in '08 caused us to lose the house after my Mom was laid off and our house went into foreclosure. Luckily for myself and my brother, James, we were able to stay in the town that we grew up in. Although we lost the friends that we knew from our old neighborhood, James and I were given the opportunity to make new friends in our new home.
Once we moved in our new neighbors were quick to meet us and incorporate them into the fold that they had built o…
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