A listener writes “In the school year of 1995/96 we were living in the Northern Catskills in the town of Hensonville, Greene County NY. We had moved there in 1993 from NYC and found ourselves living in a house that was much more remote than we were used to.
It was a true departure from what we have previously known. The first year we had 4 feet of snow fall overnight. As a 10 year old it was heaven. I jumped off the roof over and over.
Our driveway was over a tenth of a mile long and VERY steep and curved. Every winter after it snowed the afternoon sun would melt the fresh snow and the nightfall would freeze the melt water into a solid sheet of ice. There were many nights of walking up what compared to a luge track to get home.
The 1995/96 school year we had an 18 year old young man from Germany stay with us for a year. I don’t know why my parents decided this was a good idea. I suppose it may have been because my father was gone from Monday to Thursday in the city for work and having a man in the home during his absence was prudent.
No one liked this poor guy. I feel for him now but truly he was a terrible person. The kids in high school really despised him. He didn’t seem to care. He stewed in the bedroom just below mine. The house was an alpine-raised ranch hybrid kind of home so his window was at ground level but from inside was at head level. My window above was about 8 feet up or so. Right outside the windows was the driveway.
Our house as mentioned was remote. There was a house to the south through the woods a couple hundred yards but it was a vacation home and maybe there were people there 10 weekends per year. In the other direction was a “spring house,” a building that held water. You couldn’t drive to any of these places and up the steep driveways without us seeing headlights and because it’s so quiet there, we could hear cars at night coming from at least half a mile away. We had a view down towards the only road in. The road was a gravel road and a dead end. The address is 22 Reservoir Rd if you’d like to look on a map. If you do so, you’ll see that if you were to head into the woods towards the north, you can walk in nothing but forest for at 15 miles for hitting even a backroad. The area is now a NYS Wilderness Area.
One night in spring around 9pm I was laying in bed when I heard a car door shut outside my window, which was odd because I didn’t hear a car coming up the driveway nor did I see headlights. I didn’t think much about it until I heard it again. I looked out the window and only saw our line car sitting there but the motion flood light was on. I could tell it had just come on because I saw moths coming from the woods towards the light. I thought I had heard footsteps but can’t be sure. I heard the car door again and thought I saw something flash out of sight but didn’t think much of it. I was only 12-13 at this time so I didn’t suspect anything strange.
Shortly thereafter I went out into the kitchen when the exchange student from downstairs came flying upstairs looking pale and terrified. He had finished up his evening workout and gone to his window to open or close it and said “there was a face looking in.” He would say it was a man’s face but couldn’t describe it. It really scared him. This window was right by the car outside. My mother called the state troopers who were 40mims away. When they arrived they drove up the wrong driveway but we could see them and yell to them to come over to us. They took our report and said they didn’t see any tire tracks in the other driveways. It was mud season and tracks are unavoidable.
This happened all over again the following evening. The local cops came but couldn’t offer an explanation other than perhaps it was kids from school pranking the exchange student. He was disliked so this explanation suited my parents for the time being. My father thought was still in the city. He would come home the next night and when the face once again scared the hell out of our live in guest a third time, my father burst out the door in a bathrobe with a baseball bat in hand screaming a string of utterances that are for mature audiences only. I had followed right behind and distinctly remember being struck by the sound of heavy footfall running though the woods. The runner was FAST and without any light was moving through thick forest in the direction of the wilderness area. I was expecting to see flashlights and hear laughter. Neither were observed.
Nearly thirty years have passed and it’s only recently that I’ve recalled this strange three nights and wondered who on earth was the prankster. The more I thought of it the less it made sense.
First of all- this was 96. We didn’t have GPS and just finding where we lived would be a challenge.
Secondly- why would anyone waste their time to do this to someone they didn’t care about. And for three nights?
Third- what kid would case the scene and park nearly a mile away and walk through pitch Black Forest alone and without a flashlight just to look into a window?
Fourth- why would they slam our car doors repeatedly?
Fifth- why didn’t our exchange student recognize the face? There were only 20 kids in his grade. And why was he so freaked out by the sight of it?
Sixth- who can sprint at an Olympic level through dark forest without a light and toward nothing but more forest?
Lastly- I’ve asked several people who were in his grade at that time about this and who would have done it. They never heard anything about it. If a student or students had done this, EVERYONE would have heard about it. This was on school nights too. Our school was K-12 and had maybe 500 kids. The class he was in had 20 students and the juniors below him totaled 18.
I’d like to hear your thoughts on this. I’m certain you will pick up on something from this account that will be revealing to you although still hidden to us.”