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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Educational-Dig1567 on 2025-08-28 22:02:16+00:00.

I grew up in the late 90s, back when everyone’s parents had shoeboxes full of Polaroids and those disposable Kodak cameras. My cousin Josh and I used to sneak into my grandma’s attic every summer. It always smelled like dust and old wood. One year—1997, I think—Josh found a shoebox tucked behind some Christmas ornaments. Inside were about two dozen Polaroids. At first, they just looked like normal family pictures. Birthday parties, camping trips, kids in the backyard. But the more we looked, the weirder they got. In almost every picture, a man was standing in the background. Not close—always just far enough away that his face wasn’t clear. Tall, thin, dark clothes, sometimes at the edge of the woods, sometimes behind a crowd. We asked Grandma who he was. She went pale and told us to put the box back. Said we weren’t supposed to have it. That night, Josh swore he saw someone standing at the tree line by the house. I don’t have the shoebox anymore—Grandma burned it the next day. But before she did, Josh managed to keep a few of the photos. I scanned them years later, and every time I look at them, I swear the man is closer than before.

After Grandma burned the shoebox, things in the house felt different. She wouldn’t let us in the attic anymore, and whenever we mentioned the pictures, she’d snap at us. I’d never seen her so scared. One night, when Josh had already gone to bed, I heard Grandma whispering in the kitchen. She was talking to my mom, and I only caught bits and pieces from the top of the stairs: “…he’s back again… I told him to stop after ’68… the pictures always bring him…” I leaned too far trying to listen and made the step creak. The kitchen went silent. A few seconds later, Grandma stepped out into the hallway, staring right at me. She didn’t yell, didn’t even move for a moment. Just stared, like she wasn’t sure if I was really there. The next day, I asked her who the man was. She finally told me: Back in the 1960s, before my mom was born, my grandparents lived on a farm just outside town. Grandma said a man used to come around—tall, dressed in black, always standing at the tree line. He never came close, never said a word. Just watched. They called the police more than once, but no one could ever find him. The weird thing was, he always showed up in their family photos. Birthdays, barbecues, church picnics… he was there. And then one day in ’68, Grandpa disappeared. His truck was still in the driveway. His shoes were by the door. He was just gone. Grandma said after that, the man stopped showing up—for almost thirty years. Until we found the shoebox. That’s why she burned the pictures. She thought keeping them gave him a way back. But here’s the part that keeps me up at night—Josh still has a few photos hidden away. And last month, when I visited him, he swore he saw someone standing at the edge of the woods again.