In My Mama's House...

3. The Man in the Conductors Hat

So, this one kind of freaky. It took place even before my mamas first marriage. Sometime in between 1970 and 1990.

My grandma, who i'll call Lisa from now on, was washing dishes and she looked up and the window she saw a man. She described him as a black man with grey hair who was wearing an blue overall and a striped conductors hat. She said it look like he was a real person standing outside the window watching her. But then she noticed that she could see he had his hand on the table in the reflection.

So she thought there was a man inside the house with her (she lived alone at the time). So Lisa reached into the sink and found a knife, but when she turned around the knife pointed towards where he was, he was gone. 

A couple of days later she told her neighbor about the man and he told her that the woman who lived there before her had done something out of character.

The lady who'd lived there before her was a quiet old lady who was friends with everyone in the area pretty much. He told Lisa that one night in December the old lady had come running out of her house late at night in nothing but a night gown, through the snow, screaming bloody murder that "THE BLACK MAN'S BACK!" and "HE'S TRYING TO ROB ME!". You know stuff like that. The neighbor had his wife help the lady home and he and his oldest son came to keep watch while the old lady talked about the black man. 

The lady had said, "That man, I saw him through the window in the back of the house the other day and I yelled at him, he ran off for his own good after I caught him peeping in on me! Oh, but then last week he was out under the pine tree watching me on my porch and I ran inside for the gun I keep under the couch, but he was gone when I came back! And today! Oh, I was getting into bed when I saw him come out of my closet! I swear honey! He didn't leave! Please check again!" 

Soon after ward the lady moved away and has since then passed away. But my grandmother said she'd seen him and the neighbors just wished her the best. She never did see the man again, but her youngest son, my mom's younger brother did.

Okay, so I have three uncles and 4 half uncles, along with my mom. The ones I know by heart are, In order, My mom Erica, my uncle Micheal, my uncle Trey, and my Uncle Ryne. So my uncle when he was about 19 or 20 still stayed at my mama's house and at the time still had asthma. He played the drums for a band and one night he started playing. My grandma was listening, because he'd ask if it sounded okay.  

All of a sudden, it stopped. Every little noise in the house stopped. Until Daisy, my mama's dog, jumped up and started growling up the stairs. Suddenly my uncle came running down the started she slipped on the last one and went tumbling into my mama. She thought he was having an asthma attack because he wasn't able to talk and he was breathing really hard and he was pale. But when she went for his inhaler he stopped her by saying,

"Mom, mom stop! There, there's a man in my room!"

My grandma ran upstairs with my uncle behind her and they found nothing. She asked Ryne what the man looked like and he described him perfectly to match the description of the black man with the train conductors hat. My grandmother had never told him that story so he couldn't have know about it. To this day it haunts my grandma and my uncle to talk about it, but no one has seen the black man since the incident with Ryne.