Flannel Man

This particular event happened in the fall, around Halloween in 1991 I believe. It was late afternoon and the sun had already began to sink in the sky. That day, I decided to go for a walk in the woods behind our house. My brother Jason was the only other person home at the time. A little while into my walk through the woods, I started to hear crunching leaves in the distance, as if someone was walking through the woods. I looked around but didn't see anyone. I didn't think much of it and passed it off as being one of the neighbors. At this point, I was probably 50 yards into the woods. I continued my walk, when I heard the crunching leaves again. This time they weren't walking. They were running. Each step grew louder. I remember hearing the twigs snap under each step, and the crackle of the leaves. I whirled around in every direction and saw no one. I started to get an eerie feeling. I turned from my direction and headed back towards the house. The steps in the crunching leaves grew even louder. I quickened my pace. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw someone. I only caught it for a second, but it was there. It was a man running at me from my right. He was many yards away, but I could tell he was dressed in a flannel shirt that was somehow waving with him in slow motion. His face and the rest of his body was a blur. I remember hearing a yell or a scream that was certainly that of an echoing male. I could hear his crunching steps getting closer. So, I did the only thing I could think of. I ran. I ran like hell. I couldn't tell if once I started running the steps stopped, but I do know, that once I cleared the woods and came to the grass in the backyard, there was no one there. I scanned the wood-scape from the yard for a few moments, but there was nothing but silence. Dead silence. No songs from the birds and no chirping from crickets. The crunching steps and flannel man had disappeared without a trace. I knew that woods pretty well. And whatever had been in it a moment before was no longer.

I walked up to the house pretty shaken up to get my brother. At first he laughed and didn't believe me. (I could understand that hearing that sort of thing would've been pretty outrageous.) But he sympathized nonetheless. We grabbed baseball bats and headed back into the woods. We found nothing. We heard nothing. And that was the last time I ever saw flannel man.