Daddy, Don't Sit on the Man
Anonymous, CA, USA
May 2015
Personally, I don’t recall this event, but recently my father brought it up during a casual conversation, wondering if I was able to remember anything.
Right around the time I had turned four, my family decided to visit my aunt and cousins who had just moved to a new house after my aunt’s divorce. It was a beautiful 18th century styled house; it looked just like a shrunken down version of a church with three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a kitchen with running water and electricity. The catch? It was located a full mile from the closest neighbourhood and my cousins were sure it was haunted.
My father explained to me that it wasn’t until the second day that anything occurred. At was around nine, in the morning, my dad had finally managed to get me into the bath. He had just finished washing the shampoo out of my hair when he realized he had forgotten to grab a towel for me. He left for just a moment, grabbed the towel, and returned. As he bent down to sit I suddenly shouted, "Daddy! Don’t sit on the man".
Startled, he stood back up and looked around.
"What man?" he had asked me.
"Right there" I replied, pointing at the chair he was about to sit in.
Feeling uneasy, my dad decided it was just me and my imagination and quickly pulled me out of the bath.
At around noontime, my dad decided to relax in the living room and watch some TV. The living room, mind you, was also the only room that our 90 pound German Shepard refused to enter. In the center of the living room was an old rocking chair that my aunt hadn’t gotten around to tossing out. My dad gladly took a seat in the old rocker and flipped on the TV. A few minutes later I rounded the the corner and stopped everything I was doing to just stare blankly at him.
"Daddy, why are you sitting on the man?" I asked him.
"What man?" he responded.
"The one in the chair. You’re sitting on him."
At this point my dad had stood up.
"What does the man look like?" He asked me.
"His face is opposite."
"What do you mean?"
"When he’s angry he smiles, and when he’s happy he looks angry" I had explained.
"And what does he look like right now?"
"He’s smiling" I replied.
My dad switched off the TV and decided it was time for all of us to get some fresh air. We ate dinner at the house that night but left directly afterword. We never went to visit my aunt and cousins there again, and they moved out after a short six months. But now I wonder if the house has a new owner or if it is abandoned, with the man who smiles still inside.