Real ghost stories from real people. This is Into the Paranormal with Tony Bruske. It was supposed to be just another day.

A new town, a new backyard, and a curious kid eager to explore the woods beyond his home. But what he found down there hidden in the thick brush along a swollen

riverbed wasn't something you'd expect to find in daylight, or any time for that matter. He was nine

years old, too young to understand what fear really was, until it stood across from him,

silent and still, black from head to toe.

Watching. What you're about to hear is a firsthand account.

There are no embellishments, no retellings, passed down over years of faded memory.

This is one voice, one letter.

And a single moment that's haunted someone well into adulthood,

a presence no one else saw, a presence that didn't move, didn't speak, but never looked away.

So what do we do with that kind of memory? A hallucination, a figment of youthful imagination? Or did something truly step out from the

shadows that day? Drawn to someone who could see what others couldn't? Let's get to the letter.

They write, this happened a long time ago. But I remember it like it was yesterday. I was nine.

My family had just moved into a small house at the edge of town. Quiet neighborhood, plenty of

trees, and a big stretch of woods out back that all the neighborhood kids talked about like it

was their own secret world.

It was the kind of place where you felt like something could happen,

even if nothing ever did.

Until one day, it did.

I didn't know anyone when we first moved in, but that changed fast.

Brian and Danny lived two doors down, both my age,

both the kind of kids who always had scraped knees and wild stories. We became fast friends over bikes,

...