A property maintenance worker stumbles across an abandoned 'secret garden' hidden behind a cottage in south east England. He is soon surprised by stickman-like humanoid.
I came across this strange account recently:
"This occurred in April 2019, warm and clear midday. The locations was a walled garden, empty 1940s (rough guess) converted cottages in South East England about an hour out of London. I was working in property maintenance, but did garden design for friends and family (now do it full time). A family friend was paying me in kind to redesign the garden of a property they'd recently renovated. I made the job into a mini break.
Basically, it was a secret garden within a bigger walled garden. Completely overgrown, Wisteria and ivy covered every wall with the mature shrubs encroaching onto the paths and gravel. Tall mature trees cast the whole property in shade.
I was using a hoe to clear back some of the shrubs and ivy so I could define the paths which converged on a vista at the back of the garden which looked out onto fields and a wooded hill.
I'd missed it the first time, but as I walked back I noticed a little secret garden behind a big wooden door. The only reason I clocked it was that there was a sound of what I'd assumed were bees or wasps. It took a grand push but the door eventually gave way. I had to duck to get in. First thing I get hit with a smell like rotten mushrooms plus a shower of brick dust and dried vegetable matter fell on me as I passed through the threshold. The little private garden was about 12ft by 20ft, walled in red brick with a yew or box hedge at the back.
First thing I see is directly in front of me a load of pots of varying sizes filled with dead shrubs and various weeds, ivy and such. I'd expected to see a beehive or something so I was looking left and right and that's when I saw this thing. There was a big old beech tree with a stone bench in front and on it was what looked like a big swathe of ivy, saplings or canes in an upright mass bundle.
At this point I realise whatever are nesting on this bundle aren't bees, I don't know what they were but they looked more like beetles. And so the more I'm concentrating the more I can see this thing is a humanoid, legs, arms and something like a head but no face and the proportions weren't human. If I had to guess a height maybe 6 ft. 5 or 10 seconds later the stickman starts moving, gets up just like a person and in what must have been 2 or 3 seconds it pushed off away from me in the direction of the hedge.
I can't truly convey just how terrified I was in that moment when the penny dropped and I registered what I was looking at. Instinct just took over at that point and I don't recall a huge amount just that my heart jumped into my mouth and I nearly threw up.
So I'm waving my hand out back behind me to the doorway and as soon as I felt the brickwork in one motion I ducked out into the main garden and hurried back to the house.
It took me 20 minutes or so to compose myself during which time I'd typed out a few text messages about what happened, which I didn't send while looking out at the garden from the conservatory. I was going over what it could have been, trying to calm down, rationalise. Later I tentatively returned having convinced myself it was nothing.
I cant quite recall what I'd rationalised it as at the time but I had an idea it had been a deer or some animal which had made a den there. But I knew this wasn't the case and checking the garden confirmed this. The hedge at the back was solid, I used a hoe to try and find a hole to no avail. The mass that made up the humanoid was gone completely, no vines or twig pile left. The insect swarm that I saw covering the thing had dispersed.
Up until very recently I'd forced myself to accept it was just the way the light fell on the tree, that maybe there had been a deer and it'd squeezed through the hedge but as I say above having recently gotten into cryptozoology by chance, the facade I created has started cracking, having wrote this I'm still not sure what I saw." MJ
*****
If you wish to comment on this Phantoms & Monsters post, please go to Phantoms & Monsters Post Comments
*****
Please Consider a Donation to 'Phantoms & Monsters'
Your financial support of Phantoms & Monsters and our other pursuits is much appreciated. This all depends on you, the readers and followers.
Please use the PayPal donation buttons on the blog site and newsletter. You can also go directly to Phantoms & Monsters donation. Thanks again for your loyalty and continued support. Lon
----------
