The Hooded Specter

My friend and I love to go on long walks, to be outside, and we also love to try to communicate with spirits. So when we saw the opportunity to do both, we jumped on it.

It was a place that we went to rather frequently when we were in high school. We always felt this odd pull to this place, and always talked about going back just to see if the feeling was still there.

When we heard people having some odd occurrences at the site, it was our final little push out the door. We got in my car, with a few things for our trip: a camera, a recorder, some flashlights, and drove across town to The First Bride's grave.

As soon as we parked the car we immediately felt that pull. Because we got there so early we walked through the area like old times, even climbed one the trees that seemed to call out to us.

We did this for hours. My friend got tired so she lay down on the ground. Still too energized to accompany her I climbed one of the hills and started to take some pictures. For some reason I glanced back and saw a male standing back in the trees. He was wearing all black and had the hood of his sweater pulled up so I couldn't see his face, but somehow I knew he was about our age.

I looked back down at Amaya and then over where I had seen the guy but he was gone.

So I just shrugged it off and carefully climbed back down the hill to where my non biological sister still lay. I didn't tell her about the guy I had seen, I just figured I hadn't seen correctly.

Soon our play area was becoming dark, so we took out our flashlights and left the recorder turned on on the picnic table before once again roaming.

I distinctly remember the feeling of being watched, which is the norm, but it wasn't the same person, this was by someone else.

No matter where we walked we could hear twigs snap up in the trees next to us. Coming back down a little slope our feet slipped on the loose dirt, making us laugh and causing some of the tension to dissipate.

From there we grabbed the recorder and headed up the steep hill towards the actual grave. For those of you that have never been there, it is a b*tch to get to the top. The hill is very steep, and it's quite some time before you get to there.

Finally making it to the top we turned right down the path, feeling a slight presence.

We stayed for some time, asking questions and just talking in general, but nothing happened. We decided to call it a night and head back down the hill.

As I've mentioned before, this was not our first time to The First Bride's Grave, and it was not the first time that we had climbed that steep slope at night, but somehow, we were lost.

Confusion set in pretty quickly as we glanced around at our surroundings, though this is on the hillside swarmed with trees, we could tell we had been turned around.

We had went down the same paths we had come up on, the same ones we always took whenever we went there, yet we were in the middle of the woods with our sense of direction spiraling out of control.

We're not ones to be deterred simply because we had gotten lost in some way or another, but for some reason we became nervous, even slightly intimidated.

I couldn't, for the life of me understand why we would feel intimidated because we were lost, we always found our way out of situations like this before with no problem, but then I saw them.

People peaking out from behind trees, watching us.

Amaya and I glanced at each other with the same question in mind: Do you see them?

With a frightened nod we looked back around, knowing they were still there but no longer able to see them. They had hidden themselves in the darkness.

What should have been a short walk back to the open field below, took an hour. An agonizingly long hour of being watched.

No matter how far we went they were there, peaking around the trees before slipping back into the darkness.

A couple of times we could feel them right behind us, feel them practically pressing into our backs. We never looked back, just pretended nothing was happening.

Once we finally reached those crumpled old stairs down to the opening a slight smile graced our lips, until we felt arms around our legs.

However, it wasn't malicious, almost calming.

These weren't the same as the spirits still watching us, these were children.

We slowly pulled ourselves away, not looking back until we were safely in my car.

With a sigh we went back to my house and sat on my bed, covered in a blanket and began to talk about our experience.

Taking out her phone Amaya clicked on an app we liked to play with every once in a while, just a silly ghost radar.

Obviously we know that it's fake, but that night, it had some very odd coincidences.

At around two thirty in the morning Amaya left to head home.

Not even five minutes after she had left she called me.

She explained to me that once she was on the main road, I live out in the trees a ways out on some dirt roads, she had to slam on her brakes because someone had ran out in front of her car.

She explained in detail what the guy had looked like, a guy about our age wearing all black, his hood up to keep anyone from seeing his face.

And he was running towards the cemetery, which isn't even a block from my house.

I was shocked. I had to recall whether or not I had told her about the man I had seen at the grave, but I already knew I didn't.

That night we did some research on The First Bride's Grave, hoping to understand why there was a man in all black showing himself, but there was nothing.

The only thing we found was that we weren't the only ones to suddenly get lost while trying to leave.