The Harlequin by The Whispering Woods

[00:00:00] Listener discretion is advised. Hello and welcome to Scary Time, the podcast that helps you find new, emerging and undiscovered scary and paranormal podcasts. I'm Greg, the host and curator of Scary Time. Today's episode is from The Whispering Woods.

[00:00:19] The Whispering Woods explores the unimaginable and terrifying, relaying tales of the supernatural from poltergeist to cryptids to the hat man to skinwalkers. If you like today's episode, make sure to check out the episode description for links to subscribe. Alright, let's get this show started. Begin!

[00:00:38] Hello and welcome to Episode 3 of The Whispering Woods podcast. I'm Sarah. And I'm Tooby. And this week's episode is about The Harlequin. I'm gonna get straight into it, it's just one story this week. It's a long one and it's really creepy man. Are you ready?

[00:00:58] Yeah, bring it on. Five-year-old Dan Mitchell would be settled in bed with his parents down the hall when the visitor would arrive. Gracefully prancing through the young boy's bedroom, it would communicate through telepathy, theatrics and movement.

[00:01:15] The tall, thin and droginess figure would appear to be in a permanent state of shock with eyes wide open and mouth formed into a large O. His face had an almost ancient look to it but its hands were its most notable feature to the young boy.

[00:01:35] As he felt he recognized them somehow, they were the hands of his ancestors. A damp fresh aroma like that of the summer rain would accompany the visitor and Dan would attempt to tell his mum about the entity but she would put it down to his imagination.

[00:01:54] However, this creature was very real. The cooler ornite fit fashioned from scraps of fabric, hence Dan referring to it as the Harlequin in later years. Though it referred to itself as the Tooth Fairy when he was a small child.

[00:02:15] He was never afraid of these visitations, instead there was a feeling of familiarity. Dan cannot remember the specifics of what the Harlequin would say to him but he does recall that it would tell him about things he'd have to do when he was older.

[00:02:34] As far as Dan knew at that time, his family never saw the entity. Though one night in the spring of 1981, when the family was sat down for dinner, his father became agitated and kept saying that he could hear someone walking around upstairs.

[00:02:53] Dan recalls becoming horrified as being a tough guy he had never seen his dad that scared before. His dad bolted up right from the table with a look of pure terror frozen upon his face as a loud howl permeated through the home, emanating from upstairs.

[00:03:14] His dad with the same terrified look on his face then began to laugh. The rest of the family sat frigid around the table. The next thing Dan remembers is waking up, having spilled milk all over himself. Whilst his family simply returned to eating as if nothing had happened,

[00:03:37] Dan believes the creature walking around upstairs was looking for him and became frustrated when he couldn't find him and that as the episode was so frightening he had blocked out what had happened. More recently, Dan spoke to his father about this incident.

[00:03:56] He turned pale and refused to talk about it and later, Dan found out that the family had known about the creature all along. Although not frightened of the entity at the time, Dan later learned that he may have been tormenting his mother and visiting her through her dreams.

[00:04:15] She would go through a period of having reoccurring nightmares that she was convinced actually happened. She'd be awoken to someone knocking on the door. In her dreams, she refused to answer as she knew the visitor was a man dressed as a woman and he was waiting for her.

[00:04:36] Dan connected these nightmares to his own visitations, particularly because this being was similarly androgynous. Dan has since spoken to other family members about the odd occurrences and his brother recalls a really creepy occasion where both boys were riding their bikes in the neighborhood.

[00:04:58] A bedraggled man was cycling behind them on an enormous tricycle, the kind of thing you would see at a circus. Dan found this particularly unsettling as he also remembers the incident but had always thought it was a dream.

[00:05:15] He was terrified as he thought the man was going to catch up with him having fallen so far behind his brother. More conversations with his mother revealed less dreamlike memories where she during the late 70s, early 80s would hear people in the house

[00:05:33] either upstairs or down in the basement. She would also see people walking around in their garage. The basement was a Polish type apartment which are common in the Milwaukee area. And the only access was through a door on the street.

[00:05:52] On a few occasions, Dan would venture down with his gun after hearing loud noises but there was never anything down there. As his father work nights at a petrol station owned by the family the police were called on a couple of occasions to investigate these sounds

[00:06:10] but having attended they could find nothing and had labeled his mother as crazy. His mum became terrified that this entity was coming for her but the phenomena stopped when they moved out of the house a few years later. Dan was brought up in a very religious household

[00:06:32] and believes his father knows a lot more about the events but refuses to speak about them. He is convinced he remembers the dinner and counter quite vividly and that the entity had perhaps latched onto his family and had been attached to them through the generations.

[00:06:51] He knows his dad saw the Harlequin on at least one occasion as they had been together. As Dan got older, the sightings of the Harlequin lessened and by 1991 the visits to his room had stopped but he knew that the entity hadn't entirely left.

[00:07:10] On this one occasion Dan and his father were travelling from their cabin in Wisconsin to a nearby town. It was about 930 and pitch black. On route there was a steep hill and his dad would often turn off the vehicle lights and cruise down.

[00:07:29] He had second thoughts this time round and turned the headlights back on as they reached the Brav the hill. And with the lights now turned on they saw a man pushing a stroller along the gravel path. The figure was trying to hide its face as they passed

[00:07:46] but there was something not right ahead of it and Dan is convinced it was the Harlequin. His dad saw it too and he could tell he was really uncomfortable but he didn't mention it maybe not to frighten his then 15 year old son.

[00:08:03] Dan couldn't get the image out of his head and really didn't want to return to the cabin as the figure had been heading in that direction. Dan didn't see the Harlequin again until he was 18 years old.

[00:08:18] He was driving home with a few friends after a party late one night when they saw a figure up ahead. The figure was walking in a strange twitchy manner and thinking it was a girl they knew and she was drunk.

[00:08:31] They began to pull over and offer her lift. The girl then started to walk towards them and as she drew nearer they realised it wasn't a girl at all. It was someone wearing a really bad wig and they looked exceptionally angry and began making even jerky of movements.

[00:08:51] One of Dan's friends whispered, oh my God look at her eyes and he recognised those eyes. They were the eyes of the Harlequin and his friend in the passenger seat wet himself there and then. Someone else in the car told Dan to floor it

[00:09:11] and he tried but the car wouldn't budge. The thing was still coming for them and when it got to them it dragged them out of the vehicle. Everything else that happened is a blur and the next thing they remember clearly

[00:09:26] is coming round and they were in the car but a mile further up the street. He dropped his friends off one by one and each of them ran back into their homes locking themselves in. Unfortunately Dan had to drive back along that street to get himself home

[00:09:43] but he didn't see the odd spectacle again. In 2009 and now with a family of his own Dan moved back to Milwaukee and for a brief time they stayed with his mother-in-law not far from his childhood home. He'd awoken early one morning so that he could make a start

[00:10:03] on helping to clean the basement for his mother-in-law. It was around 6.30am and when down in the basement he began to hear tapping noises from up by the back door. At first he just put it down to the wind but then the tapping turned to quick loud thuds.

[00:10:22] The sounds then just stopped abruptly. Dan says that it sounded like a desperate knocking as if someone needed help. Quite alarmed he grabbed a piece of pipe and slowly made his way up the stairs. He could see the back of whomever had been knocking the door

[00:10:39] and they were walking away towards the alley. His heart sank as he realised immediately what he was looking at. It was the Harlequin. It was walking away from the door like an overacting theatre performer wearing a black winter cap, blond wig,

[00:10:57] red deep pink trousers that would pulled up to the knees showing his unnaturally light skin. It also wore a winter coat with ruffles and penny loafers with no socks. As it turned the corner, Dan caught sight of its eyes. The orbits were enormous, its face was expressionless

[00:11:18] and its mouth looked almost too small. Dan stated, these things communicate they aren't human just by their presence. I can't describe this, you just can't mistake it once you see it. His wife had heard the ruckus and came downstairs to find Dan staring.

[00:11:36] His gaze was fixated on the spot where the Harlequin had disappeared from view. Throughout his life, Dan has felt as if something has been replacing his memories with corny movie-like clips that just don't seem to fit. In one of these memories,

[00:11:55] he was sat on his back porch with a friend when something appeared in the sky, blocking out the sun. It was a huge mechanical object and its presence was eerie but also breathtaking. This memory is all a bit jumbled but he distinctly recalls the object

[00:12:14] and his friends' months screaming out for her and all of the other parents rushing onto the street yelling as their children had been taken. Dan was watching this all develop but in a detached state as if watching a movie. Then it's like the memory has been tampered with

[00:12:31] and a huge water balloon fight takes place in his neighborhood with hundreds of people, the children playing with the adults. It was like something out of an Aided's advert. In 2012, he made contact with the friend he'd been sitting on the porch with

[00:12:46] and she too remembers this odd memory and also from the perspective of watching as if it was a movie. She also remembers the sheer panic on their parents' faces. Dan went on to make recordings of her memories but when he approached her

[00:13:04] to Terri wanted to make a documentary about it, she became frightened for her child and herself as she'd begun to get strange phone calls in the middle of the night. The caller sounded like an elderly man laughing or groaning her name down the phone.

[00:13:20] Her doorbell would ring frantically at night and she'd find strange or perverse notes attached to a car. She eventually demanded that Dan destroy or give her the recordings and this is when he too became terrified. When Dan and his wife moved home

[00:13:40] they kept in touch with their neighbours and in 2010, Dan's wife contacted them to let them know they would be moving back to the house in early March. The neighbour advised her that they had a visitor when her and her husband were cooking pizza late at night.

[00:13:56] They heard the timer go off in the kitchen and went to take a look and there was a strange woman stood in their kitchen. She'd thought she'd heard a noise but put it down to their cats and had not investigated. Dan's neighbour described the woman

[00:14:12] as looking as if she were trying to disguise herself. She wore sunglasses and a blonde wig and looked well just weird. The stranger announced that she had a key to the next door property but it hadn't worked and she'd been given the incorrect key

[00:14:28] as it appeared to be the key to the neighbour's house. They demanded she leave and lock the door behind her. They ran round to the window to see if she had a car to note down the licence plate and forward to the police but she just disappeared.

[00:14:45] The ordeal had frightened the neighbours and the landlord changed the locks the next day stating that no one had a spare key to the place. The neighbour was left petrified from the strange vent and found it increasingly difficult to sleep and feel safe in her home.

[00:15:02] Dan fears that the late night caller was the harlequin trying to track him down. Dan wanted to know what this creature had wanted from him and when speaking with others they're told him to try and communicate and ask it. And then one night in late April 2010

[00:15:26] Dan suffered from a number of vivid dreams. The dreams were so profound and powerful and were telling him that he had to be at a certain place at a certain time on a certain day. That day had been the following morning, 29th April 2010.

[00:15:44] His dreams had instructed him to go to a park near to his home and sit on the bench just before sunrise. He half expected nothing to happen and took no weapon or phone with him but did tape his driver's licence to his leg should something unfortunate happen

[00:16:02] and his wife had to identify him. After around 10 minutes he sensed that he was no longer alone and that he'd made a huge mistake in coming. It felt as if something was trying to push into his mind and then he heard the voice. Do you remember me?

[00:16:21] Do you remember when we used to dance and sing together Danny? Danny turned his head slightly and caught a glimpse of the harlequin. It was not 10 feet behind him. The thing no longer called itself the Tooth Fairy and had outdanced to access its mind.

[00:16:39] It became clear almost immediately that I'd entered into the mind of something that exists so far beyond humanity that not even in my most profound moments of despair or spiritual elation have I ever experienced anything like it, Dan said. It has a certain animal nature to it

[00:16:59] even though it is far above the animal kingdom in respect to itself awareness. I am convinced that it has the potential to destroy the world if it wished. This type of being operates by an entirely different set of rules, rules that transcend morality

[00:17:17] in ways we don't understand, he said. At the same time as nonsensical as it may sound there was a genuine care that it had for me this morning. Even though I was completely terrified and was possibly screaming, please don't kill me. As I was running to my car

[00:17:34] it became obvious to me that it felt a horrible sorrow at my response to what it was. It was as if I had rejected it completely. Dan believes there are more of these beings out there and they disguise themselves in the dark corners of the night.

[00:17:50] He believes they have a mission though what it is isn't clear. During this meeting it was also communicated to him that the Harlequin used to be human but it transcended this form by sheer will alone. It told Dan things he hadn't really wanted to know

[00:18:08] and left him questioning the whole of human existence. Not truly knowing if the Harlequin is here to help or is spinning a devious plot what really frightens him to the core is that it now appears to be communicating with his children.

[00:18:31] That's really quite a scary story, don't you think Toby? No. Do you not at all? It's a little bit scary. Yeah, I would say I do. What I reckon if I saw it in real life I would get scared. Yeah, me too. I'd be horrified.

[00:18:47] Do you know what the one thing about that story really resonated with me? When he said that he saw his dad scared you've never really seen me scared have you? That I can remember anyway but I can remember being a child and seeing my mum scared.

[00:19:02] I can't remember what it was. It made me petrified. I was so frightened just seeing that person that you look up to, you know, then you'll protect her. Everything about the makes you feel safe to have them scared is so awful.

[00:19:19] I wanted to just touch on this subject, memories of fear because scientists have done some experiments for, you know, science things and they've discovered that you can pass on memories of fear through DNA. So say my ancestors were scared of something. Actually, what's really interesting

[00:19:40] we're both pretty frightened of water aren't we? Yeah. Yeah? I'm frightened of water and I think through memories of fear I've passed that fear onto you and I do wonder if something happened with one of our ancestors and water. Yeah. You know?

[00:19:57] Also, it makes me think about reincarnation whether those memories are actually reincarnation memories or if they are memories of fear. Definitely something to think about, wouldn't you say? Yes I would. Do you know about the goblin? What goblin? My goblin. No. Okay.

[00:20:19] Your brother and sister know about the goblin so maybe it's time I told you the story. Okay. After I had Maisie after she was born I got quite bad post-natal depression. Hmm. Right. But I think I might have developed psychosis as well.

[00:20:38] I don't like to do things by ourselves as you know. What do you mean psychosis? When you see things that aren't there. Oh yeah. But possibly they are there and that's what this story is about. I had a dream one night when Maisie was tiny

[00:20:54] that there was a goblin in my living room. We lived in this little one up and one down flat and our flat was on the top. Yeah and in the dream, he the goblin came in through the air vents and I tried to ring the police.

[00:21:09] I tried to do everything I could to stop the goblin getting my baby. But I kept waking up and I kept going back into the same dream so it was really lucidry. He kept trying to get Maisie but I kept stopping him. He was like a fairytale goblin

[00:21:27] that used to hide in the flat. Got so bad that my best friend had to go in the flat if I'd been at hers. She'd go into the flat when she was dropping me back home with Maisie and she'd have to check under the beds and stuff

[00:21:42] because yeah, I thought he was hiding there. In fact, I gave her an irrational fear as well. But he couldn't get Maisie. But anyway, fast forward on years and years later and your brother had a nightmare where he saw, guess what? The goblin.

[00:22:03] Yes and he was so tiny and it was leaning over him. I've had that with sleep paralysis. What a goblin. Nah, just a creature. Okay but do you doot doot doot doot doot doot. That was a bit of a bad stutter.

[00:22:20] Do you think there might be something in this then? Because I've either passed this on to my child because he wouldn't have been born at the time or is there a goblin after me and my family? Yeah, there's a goblin after us.

[00:22:35] I reckon I'm going to get a tattoo. No, no because we're stronger than him. Yeah, I'll beat him. He just tries to tempt you. And also the last thing I had with the goblin was about six or seven years ago as opposed to like 22 when Maisie was born.

[00:22:54] Roger bought me a balloon. Well actually he didn't buy it for me. He was given it and it was a big red heart. Roger is my partner for the listeners and I was having a bit of a particularly bad time of it.

[00:23:08] And this balloon, I took it back to my house. I think it must have been for Valentine's Day and it followed me around the house and I'm being serious because Roger didn't believe me at the time so I got him to come over

[00:23:23] and this balloon walked up the stairs behind me into my bedroom, behind me then followed me back downstairs into the living room, into the everywhere I went. This balloon followed me, which was really spooky. But the reason I just pop it, well it disappeared.

[00:23:44] I don't even know where it is to this day. It vanished. The reason I connected it to the goblin is because I had two balloons when Maisie was born. Congratulations, it's a girl type of balloon and I had this other psychosis kind of thing.

[00:24:02] The psychosis was, I had it quite a bit. It wasn't I just had a dream about the goblin but I had John had popped in to see a neighbor and I heard these clitter clatter on the wooden steps that we had.

[00:24:15] We actually had the laminate flore on them and I heard somebody come into the flat and I just assumed it was John. John was Maisie's dad for the listeners but then I was like, no that wasn't heavy enough so I looked around nobody was there.

[00:24:30] I spoke to John after he came back in he said, nope, I didn't come back in and one of the balloons had disappeared completely and that's why I connected it to the goblin. How is it connected to Joe with the balloon?

[00:24:44] I don't know what it is about the balloons but because he nicked one the first time I reckon he did it the second time and he was making it float behind me. Of course this all could just be because I'm mad and I've got an overactive imagination

[00:25:01] but listening to this story, it really reminded me of what happened all those years ago. It's really difficult trying to scare you, isn't it child? So is there anything that really scares you? It's not a lot of stuff that scare me

[00:25:18] but I wouldn't get scared by monsters or creatures. Obviously if I saw it in real life I'd be scared but if I would see something on my phone or something that would actually scare me it would usually be something really uneasy or eerie and Michael Jackson.

[00:25:38] Just tell the listeners about Michael Jackson. One time. That was the only time I've seen you really frightened apart from when you thought you found a dead body up in the woods. No, I did. Basically I was watching TikTok and I was like 10, 9.

[00:26:00] Watching TikTok scrolling through creepy videos and then there's this one video that had a really eerie sound on it and it was like an animatronic of Michael Jackson and it was him just standing like he had a really weird face and he's just staring

[00:26:23] and it's making a really weird sound with the creepy music and he does like this weird creepy dance and it shook me right up. I remember. I dropped my phone. I ran into the kitchen. I just grabbed onto my mum. I was screaming and I was like,

[00:26:41] there's a video that scared me and she was like, oh, let me see it. And I was like, I don't want to see it now. I was still like hugging her putting the phone over her shoulder so her head's backwards. Even the music fight. Yeah.

[00:26:53] You associated it with that. You was like, oh yeah, that music. Amazing was there as well. She was there as well. And she was like, what the hell is that? Yeah, that was one of the things that probably shook me up before.

[00:27:05] And the one when I saw the dead body was with my mate. We was walking through the golf course and there was a couple weeks before we saw this bush. We thought it had like a coffin or something

[00:27:18] because it looked like a coffin that was inside of it. And then yeah, two weeks after that we're walking up it after we've seen the coffin. And then I look around the corner into the bush and I see like, I thought, I don't know.

[00:27:32] I don't know if it was real or not but it looked like just a dead body. It was commando, yeah. She led straight down on the floor. His head, yeah, his head, his hair. He looked like dad so that's the thing that's scary.

[00:27:44] Oh, I know you were in a bit of a state weren't you? Yeah. And I saw it, I pegged it and running off in my belly boots, yeah. Milo's shouting, what's going on? I was like, there's a dead body in there. And then he just started running,

[00:27:57] seeing it all still and he thought I was lying but I started crying. Yeah, you got back here and you were basically pale and then I said, I was gonna go up and check it out. And he started getting, yeah, it's unconsolable. You wouldn't let me go. Yeah.

[00:28:12] And when I was going back to dad's he was in Iceland and I started feeling really sick and I'd go outside and I grabbed a lucasade from Iceland and I just walked outside what I threw up and all I could think of was that dead body,

[00:28:28] whatever it was. Oh dear. Well thankfully no dead bodies have been reported in the woods near us, just for everybody's info. And just to clarify that Iceland is a supermarket in the UK and Toby doesn't mean the actual country. Yeah, the only such stuff that's gonna scare me

[00:28:46] I won't get scared of anything unless I see it in real life. Okay. But if I see something, scare it night. This is a thing about February and Pisces. I'm a Pisces. Yeah, a Pisces. Pisces. Pisces. Pisces, yeah. All the February people, yeah. There's different types of people

[00:29:05] with different star signs, their mindset at night time. There's other ones that are all nice and lovely. But February I could tell you this now, all of them are mindsets at night time are just dark faults and scary faults. And just bad things like of months,

[00:29:25] not months but like, you know like murders and that. Intrusive thoughts there as well. So you do have to try and learn to control them. Yeah I used to get it really badly a couple years ago. One time I was watching TikTok and it said

[00:29:40] it was like one of them things. Yeah their mindsets at night time was like oh yeah. It isn't fake, it is real cause. It's literally just a vaccine. And they put a photo on it, yeah what February Pisces at like in their mind at night time.

[00:29:57] It was like this little, it's kind of like this little guy with like a long like head and his mouth was like really long open. And he was like really short of ears. His body was like a kind, it looked like an egg.

[00:30:11] And he had like really thin legs and his like that. And I've seen that before in my mindset before. So that creeped me out a lot. I bet it did. That brings us to the end of our third episode. Our little request today is if you think

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