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The Climbing Creature Or Childhood Imagination?

 

As I have mentioned in other submissions, I have experienced paranormal encounters most of my life from the time I was quite young. There is one experience / memory that still has me confused from a paranormal context and I can't decide whether it was actually paranormal or just a confused memory.

Until I was three, we lived in an old Victorian style house in Teaneck, NJ. The house had been built around 1900. None of my surviving sisters has ever talked about any unusual experiences in the house. I have very vivid memories of the house and the rooms and could probably draw a reasonable floor map of the layout to this day, even though its over 40 years since I lived there.

The house itself was quite small for a Victorian and with six children in household, sharing bedrooms was a given. The bedroom where my crib/bed was located was shared with two of my older sisters, both of who were over 10 years older than I was. From the crib, I could easily see out the bedroom window and see the tree and the yard outside. The bedrooms were all on the second floor of the house.

I have always had this very vivid memory of looking out the window and seeing what I thought to be a monkey or ape swinging or crawling up the side of the house near the window. I don't remember any specific details about the creature, except that it had long dark hair and moved quickly up the side of the house. However, the memory is very vivid and I can still see the bedroom layout and the windows, and know it was summer because the trees had leaves on them. I can see the old fashioned latch screen on the window and the blue colour of the shingles on the outside of the house.

I mentioned this to my sister recently and she remembers me always talking about "the monkey" when I was little. Sometimes it made me laugh but very often it was something that frightened me into tears. I don't have any other memories of the creature other than the one I described above. When we moved to our new house, my sister says that I stopped talking about "the monkey" creature.

What puzzles me is that if it was an "imaginary friend", why the memories are so distinct and vivid to this day. Does anyone have any insight or similar experiences?

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The following comments are submitted by users of this site and are not official positions by yourghoststories.com. Please read our guidelines and the previous posts before posting. The author, CA_NJGirl, has the following expectation about your feedback: I will participate in the discussion and I need help with what I have experienced.

Bella199967 (5 posts)
 
13 years ago (2011-07-21)
this reminded me of the time I had a nightmare and went into my parents room, and my mirrors where criss crossed to see the kitchen and I saw an imp thing cawl up the side of the table, the next day at the top of the table there was a like, black mark. Yeah sorry that I'm not helping here o.e
HardToScare432 (1 stories) (72 posts)
 
14 years ago (2010-07-27)
I'm guessing there is no monkeys where you live, unless a monkey escaped from the circus, haha 😁 it. But I think it was a monkey I mean, it make a lot of sense!
CA_NJGirl (6 stories) (31 posts)
 
15 years ago (2010-03-04)
Boldylocks, yes that is remarkably similar to what I remember!
Boldylocks (13 posts)
 
15 years ago (2010-02-06)
Was the hairy being you saw like the hairy being described in this following encounter?:

Http://paranormal.about.com/od/fairieslittlepeople/a/tales_10_02_19t.htm

"On October 12th, 2009 in Lake Ariel Pennsylvania, a strange incident occurred. I enjoy building little forts in the woods near my house, and I was gathering straight, four-foot-long branches, which are hard to come by. I had gathered about 15 of them, then it was time to go inside to do my homework (it was 4:00 p.m.). I piled the branches neatly in a stack in the middle of a clearing in the woods. I walked to the house and began my homework on the patio.

Once I was finished, I went inside to watch my favorite daily cartoon on TV. At 6:30, the show finished and I got bored. I went on my computer and heard a rustling in a few leaf piles outside my open window. I excused it as one of several of my outdoor cats, and went on with my computer time. At 7:00 I ate my supper and watched the news. I went to bed to read at 9:30 after folding some laundry. I fell asleep at 10:30 and woke up at 8:00 a.m.

I ate my breakfast at 8:15 and watched a cartoon at. At 9:00 it finished so I got dressed and went outside. I had my binoculars for bird watching, and a notebook and pencil to record the birds I saw. I noticed the leaf piles were scattered around the yard and they had to be re-raked. I ignored the fact that more helping my mom rake the yard was coming, and I set straight out to the woods.

I came to work on my branch pile, and saw that about 50 branches, perfectly 4 inches around, and four feet across, had been placed there. I gasped, wondering who found these perfectly straight branches. I was planning on extending my ground bird-watching fort as I hauled several branches at a time to my site. Once I had updated my fort, I sat on the old rickety swing set and read for an hour. I walked around the front of the house for 15 minutes, just poking around ant hills and messing around with grasshoppers.

I came to the backyard to go back to my fort when I saw at my stick piling site, believe it or not, a little human-like creature! It freaked me out just looking at it. I noticed it was piling sticks in the piling site for me -- those perfect, four-inch-around and four-foot-across sticks. The perfectly straight ones. The ones without fault. The little man was climbing trees and snapping out branches. I gasped as it nimbly hopped out of trees and dropped sticks onto the pile.

He was about four feet tall with a hunch in his back and brown hair all over. All I could make out of it is that it was creepy. He had such long hair that it covered everything on its body. Its hands had no hair and they were white. I saw no visible nose, but black beady eyes. He walked like a monkey. I freaked out and stood rooted to the spot. Suddenly, my legs felt ice cold and I ran away, trembling. As I ran, my legs heated up and felt like they were on fire.

When I was in the house with my shade and window closed, all doors locked and shutters closed, I relaxed in my room, cuddling my big golden retriever, Sudsy. We both fell asleep, but we both woke up to the rustling of leaves outside. I cracked open my shutter the tiniest bit and saw the scary human-like creature racing through the leaves, bouncing up and down, and speeding around in circles. It took handsful of leaves and threw them in the air as it danced under the decaying shower. Sudsy growled and the animal stopped dancing, rooted to its spot. It looked shame-faced at the messed up leaf piles and slouched away. My eyes followed its progress as it made its way to the woods. It hopped nimbly into the trees and gathered sticks (presumably for me). It laid them in pile and, suddenly noticing me, it straightened up and grinned at me with crooked, rounded, stubby teeth. It waved its left foot at me, as if it was a greeting, then left, disappearing into the treetops.

For the next few days, it left me sticks until my mother screamed at the sight of my helper. I had started leaving him grapefruit halves, which he ate gratefully, but after the screaming, he peeped through my shutters and then never returned. I have always remembered this unusual creature finding the perfect sticks, but never had Shingle (which I named him) return again. Although Sudsy finds Shingle's footprints in various places in the mud, I have never, ever seen my woods buddy ever again. (Although I occasionally leave out grapefruit, hoping Shingle may one day return.) "
Ghostgirl007007 (3 posts)
 
15 years ago (2010-01-15)
hey I can totally defenitly relate to that expeirence because I also remember that happening in my green bay home which is very wierd because I was at an orphanage, and I can still remember seeing it behind my mistress and all through the night so if you're crazy than we all are! 😆 good bye and I hope you can figure it out soon! ❤ 😊
CA_NJGirl (6 stories) (31 posts)
 
15 years ago (2009-12-08)
The entity was definitely attached to that place because when we moved, the encounters stopped completely.
KoltenAspen (39 posts)
 
15 years ago (2009-12-07)
This sort of creeps me out not needing to scare you but it sort of sounds like the grudge
CA_NJGirl (6 stories) (31 posts)
 
15 years ago (2009-11-22)
Its nice to know I'm not the only one. I've always had a feeling that it wasn't quite an imaginary friend experience because the details were so precise.
Trudy (92 posts)
 
15 years ago (2009-11-21)
Dear CA NJ Girl,

When I was 7 I saw a fury creature as well. I was in bed and it was night time all of a sudden I saw a creature. For many years I thought it was an ape. This creature was sitting at the foot of my bed looking out of my window. I stayed awake for the whole night and then when the sun came up it disappeared. This happened in Germany. I have been thinking that I did not see an ape but rather a bear because Europe has never had any apes. Europe has been home to bears. I really don't know what kind of creature it was.
CA_NJGirl (6 stories) (31 posts)
 
15 years ago (2009-11-21)
So I talked to my sister more about this tonight. She said she never saw the being, but if she leaned out the window and told it to "go away", I would calm down and say it was gone.

Now my sister is very, very psychic--she has had some really wild experiences and visions, including one with the Oujia board, which I should write up sometime. I don't doubt she could move spirits away by sheer force, lol.
CA_NJGirl (6 stories) (31 posts)
 
15 years ago (2009-11-19)
I'd be interested in anything else you've read or heard!

I spent most of my formative years in NJ--I grew up in Wash Twp, near Westwood, btw.
O-Ren_Ghost (1 posts)
 
15 years ago (2009-11-19)
Ive heard about monkey or ape type creatures. They usually aren't the type to hurt or attack people though. And I found it interesting that you used to live in Teaneck, because live in fair lawn, only a few miles away from there =p

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