Stories of the Untold...

Never going to a graveyard at night again (True Story)

New here & have been lurking stories on occasion. What I'm about to tell you is a personal experience which fueled my interest in the "creepy"/"abnormal". This happened to a few friends and I close to 14 years ago.

I went to a university in northern California right out of high school. During my college days, I spent a fair amount of time "expanding my mind," if you know what I mean. I had a girlfriend for a few years during this period who I frequently shared such experiences with. One such night occurred in October / early November.

A few blocks from her place was the city graveyard. We visited there a few times before in the early morning to watch the sunrise. It was always so peaceful there - nobody would bother us, we could just lay in the grass and take in the pastel colors of the sunrise, fresh morning air, dew soaked grass and the sounds of birds awaking at that hour. In fact, for the Astronomy classes at school, it was one of the recommended places to go at night to watch the stars. We never heard of any issues here.

Back to that night though - it was a new moon and it was raining lightly. We decided it would be fun and interesting to go out for a walk in it. So we ventured out, not intending to go towards the graveyard but it just happened to be the direction we were headed. Everything was great - we were laughing & joking around down the street, just talking about the absurd things that were going through our minds. Eventually we get to the entry to the graveyard and turn into it. The goofy fun and laughs we were having stopped abruptly after entering.

The graveyard has a main, paved road that runs diagonally through it that we were walking on. To the left and right of the road are the graves and large trees shading them. The lights that followed its path were out & there was no light from the moon, so it was fairly dark out.

We were arm in arm with each other as we entered and as I mentioned, we clammed up within seconds of entering the site. It was very quiet. In my mind, I just had one of those "feelings," as if something or someone else was watching us and whatever it was did not welcome us. So I just hushed up, held her close and whispered to her "Do you feel that?" She quickly responded with "SHHH." So I shut up and we just made our way nervously to the other end of the road and exited the graveyard.

Although nothing had happened, after we were a decent distance away from the graveyard, my girlfriend brought up my previous query.

"Remember what you asked?"

"Yeah?"

"Yeah I felt that too. Like something just did not want us there." Our mood was changed from that walk, we were definitely shook by just that feeling alone. As I mentioned previously, in our times visiting the graveyard, nothing had happened like that & it had always been a pleasant experience. In fact, I visited the same graveyard a number of times after it with other people and it was just as peaceful as it was before.

So, moving on to the real part of the story...

About 3 years after that experience, I had graduated and it was the summer when I was going to move back home. I was surfing couches for a week while I waited for family to arrive and move to Phoenix. There was a girl from where I was working who had offered me a place to stay for a few nights. I hung out with her during this time. We were out one night, but mostly sober unlike my previous experience. Neither of us had cars so we decided to hoof it to a friends place to visit to see what they were up to. This was on the same side of town the graveyard was at. We stopped by our friends, hung out for a bit, then decide to head back to her place.

On the way back, we approach the graveyard. She's fairly new to town, and I ask her "hey, have you ever been through the graveyard here?" She says no, so I decide to take us on a slight detour through it.

As we enter, I mention that I had been there on several occasion, but tell her the story of my previous experience. Unlike the last time, the roadway through this night is lit, so we were able to see our way through and the surrounding the path clearly. By the time I'm done telling the story, we are about halfway down the same path I had walked down with my ex years ago. She responds to the story, "Yeah, its really weird how sometimes we pick up vibes of being watched like that."

No more than maybe 5 seconds after saying this, I hear her gasp and yell "OH MY GOD!"

I turn to her and ask her "What?" She's turned, looking behind me, so I look as well.

Theres a man, maybe 5-10 feet behind us, following us. Approximately 6'-6". Every piece of him is covered in a hooded piece of clothing so you could not see any of his skin. Face, completely covered by the hood pulled over his face. Arms are covered, hands in his pockets. But definitely following us and his location and timing is impeccable.

I yell, "whoa WHOA WHOA WHOA!! WHATSUP?!?! WHAT DO YOU WANT?"

The man stops, replies, in a low, quiet, and creepy voice, "keeep walking"

"whaa whaa whaaa WHAT?"

"Keeeeeeeeep walking"

I turn to my friend, both her and my eyes are totally bugged out, scared. I was carrying a skateboard which I had been using on the way there and the thought of clocking the guy over the head occurred to me. But the fact that I did not know what he had holding in his pockets was a quick deterrent. So we do what he says.

We turn and continue walking. She motions to me to book it a few seconds later. I nod, and make an exaggerated motion with my skateboard to let her know when to go (She was walking with her bike, btw). I jump on my board and just bolt. I look back to make sure she's getting away as well. She later told me she also looked back on her way out saw the man disappear behind a tree.

We both get out of the graveyard fine, but we don't stop. We both are flying back towards her place and finally stop to rest at a 7-11, probably 1/2-3/4 mile away from the graveyard. I decide to call 911 and report what happened - I was so shook up it was hard for me to form coherent sentences to the dispatcher (jumbling words, mixing up sentences). Not wanting any harassment from the police, I keep the report anonymous and we both head towards a mutual friends place to just deflate and talk about what happened. It took me hours to calm down from it - in fact on the way back to her place, the sound of sprinklers going off was enough to make me jump and start to run (there were sprinklers watering the lawn at the cemetery, she reminded me).

I've shared this story with friends over the years and nobody has been able to give an explanation of the circumstances. Sure, it could be some random guy with some crazy timing. But the coincidence of the previous story, the timing, same location, plus the fact that this man had every piece of himself hidden has been enough to leave me convinced this was not "normal."

The girl and I visited the graveyard the next day in the middle of the day to just see the surroundings completely lit and confirm what happened where with each other (ie, seeing the tree she said he disappeared behind). And years later, after I had lost touch with her, I was able to track her down via Facebook... mainly just to confirm with her that experience and ask her how she felt about it. She had no explanation either. Since then I haven't been able to visit the resting place of the dead at night again.