A NIGHTMARE COMES TO LIFE
By Rose

     The following account is still a mystery to me. I don't know, with the exception of the last encounter, if any of it was real or not as I was quite young at the time. I don't know what possible connection that I could have had with this man.
     One of my earliest childhood memories, or perhaps it was a recurring dream, was of a house painter in my West New York - New Jersey neighborhood back in the early 1950's. I remember passing by a man on a ladder painting the outside of a building. I looked up at the man who stared back at me with an evil expression on his face. I was about three or four years old at the time. The man was of a slight, thin build, wore wire rimmed glasses and had a mustache. He appeared to have dark brown hair from what I could see of his hair below his painter's cap. Every time I saw this man painting, he looked back at me with an evil look and he may have uttered a few words which I didn't understand.
     Time passed. When I was about 10 years old, I lived in Jersey City, New Jersey. I lived near the railroad tracks on a dead end street facing the railroad tracks, the Jersey wetlands and Bayonne Bay just beyond the wetlands. One night I dreamt that a man parked his car near a tree just between the railroad tracks and the wet lands. It was the dead of night. He removed some debris just under the tree to reveal a hole which he'd dug earlier. He went back to the car and from the trunk he took the body of a woman and brought her over to the ditch. I noticed that the woman was barefoot. Then, the man looked up and saw me. He appeared to be startled and frightened and muttered something. I ran away, back into my house and watched him from my darkened bedroom window. I recognized the man - he was the "house painter" from my early childhood. Only now, he was heavier. He was short, and slightly chubby with a slight paunch. He was balding on top, but still wore wire rimmed glasses and a mustache. I woke from my nightmare and soon forgot about the "house painter".
     Fast forward to about three years later. I'm living in the suburbs and attending St. Cecilia's School in Iselin, New Jersey. I'm on a class trip to the Museum of Natural History in New York City. Near the end of the trip, I find myself in the Hall of Primates looking at the stuffed apes. I think that I am alone in this area but I get the feeling that I'm being watched. I look down the corridor of display cases, and looking back at me, with an evil grin, is a short, pudgy man dressed in a dark blue dress coat and a grey Homburg hat. He is wearing wire rimmed glasses and sports a mustache. It is the painter/murderer of my childhood nightmares.
     I run, in a panic, to one of the school buses parked outside of the museum. Once safely inside the bus, I recount the tale to a classmate who tells me that "it must all be my imagination." I'm sitting in a seat next to a window and look out the window. Standing on the sidewalk, not far from my window, is the man in the Homburg hat. He is staring directly at me with that same evil grin on his face. I turn to my classmate and ask her to look out the window. She gasps and says, "Yeah, he looks weird alright". He stands there staring at us until the bus pulls away.
     That was the last encounter, real or otherwise, that I had with this man.

Copyright (c) 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012  The Night Watchman - All Rights Reserved