Man In The Barn

He.

    So a little backstory, I hardly know the family on my mothers side, I have only met a handful of uncles and aunts. Many of the relatives I had on my mothers side live in mexico, I was born in California and only visited Mexico twice when I was young. So I only met my grandpa (mothers dad) when I was literally in diapers and I don't remember anything about him, other than the occasional pictures that are around. This is his story

     Growing up we would get into these spooky campfire conversations or just talks about creepy things among us kids and then we would run around and ask our parents or any adults present if they had ever experienced anything like that. Of course there was the occasional "oh I think our old place was haunted" or "Ya I think one time I saw/felt something strange" it was all intensely interesting to me due to the fact that when you are a little kid your whole reality revolves around the idea that "grown-ups" can't lie. We would finally reach my mom, her story is what gave me nightmares and still invokes thought till this day. This was told to me all through out growing up, it was always a part of the conversation and always intrigued me, it is a  story I will tell my kids when the night is cold and their widened eyes ask me about something scary. This is the story of when my grandpa met the devil.


     I will be telling the story the way it was told to me, through my mom's narrative, but I will be enhancing the vocabulary and not talk to you like you're 4 years old. We would all huddle up, wide eyed and curious she began:


Your grandpa was always an extremely brave man and never tolerated injustices of any kind. He always lived his life with integrity and pride; this resulted in a stubborn trait and would almost always result in a confrontation. Because of his alpha male attitude he got involved with some bad men in his town in Mexico and they wanted to kill him. 
This was all when he was young before he got married. Your grandpa was brave but not stupid; since he couldn't show his face on the streets or he would be murdered, he had to hide. He went from place to place trying to stay hidden from the bad people; the only thing feeding him was adrenaline. Exhaustion and famine would be taking its toll on your grandpa. When leaving a hiding place, he started walking towards nowhere, trying to get out of town, he then stumbled upon a little house that looked like a barn. It was in the middle of nowhere and looked beat down and abandoned, he entered the barn, his feet barely keeping him up. He laid down to rest and get some sleep, he was extremely exhausted. He was drifting into sleep when all of a sudden he saw a man at the far end of the barn walking towards where he was laying. Your grandpa thought that it was the owner of the barn and he was just going to explain himself. However, with every step this man took it gave your grandpa more and more discomfort and anxiety. Since he was very brave this feeling was quite odd to him.  The man got closer and your grandpa noticed this man was very tall and very handsome, dressed in a black suit, this man was dressed to the nines. This was extremely odd since the clothes back then in Mexico never resembled anything like this suit. The normal town and era attire were plain pants and white shirts called "camisas de manta". This man, your grandpa would say, appeared to be extremely elegant. Then in an a blink of an eye this strange man was at your grandpas feet, grabbing him and trying to pull him away, he was trying to abduct him. Your grandpa started to fight him with all his might, punching and yelling but to no avail. Suddenly through the swinging and fighting your grandpa noticed this man’s face changing, shifting into something grotesque, something not human, it was demonic. In the struggle, with adrenaline shooting through your grandpa's veins he saw this as odd but did not feel any fear. This man struggled to drag him away and pulled his legs over and over again, he dreaded thinking what might happen if he gave up and let this man take him away. Your grandpa reaching the end of his stamina started praying. The instant your grandpa started praying and asking god for strength he felt the man's hands start letting go, and in an instant he felt the man completely let go and start walking away in no hurry at all. While the man was walking away and your grandpa was trying to comprehend what just took place, he looked down and saw something that shook him to his core, he had never felt such intense fear in his life. He then realized this man was no man at all, for his feet were gone and in place there was a horse hoof and a rooster foot. Clear as day he witnessed the animal feet coming out of the pant legs and taking the place of where a human’s feet or shoes should’ve been, these were its feet. That instance you're grandpa felt the presence of true evil, hate that is incomprehensible to anyone in the world. He began to shake from terror on a level too intense to put into words, something he has never felt or even imagined. You're grandpa got extremely sick after this experience, he got a horrible fever for days and wouldn't eat or talk, and your grandpa almost died from terror. In his heart he knew he could overcome this, his stubbornness and braveness helped him get better. That day forward he believed that pure hate existed in the world, he looked at us all and said "I have seen and felt real evil, there is no other way to put it, I don't know how or why but that day the devil tried to take me away".


    When I was little this story just fascinated me. I would hear this story then be freaked out but would take pride that I had a grandfather so brave. As I got older my views on this story changed, I started to become more skeptical as I experienced life throughout the years. Then came a point where I asked my mom out right, is this story real? Thinking to myself, "well I am older and not a little kid anymore, so she could be honest with me". She sat me down and told me that her father’s experience was true.

Fact 1.

She explained that my grandpa was an extremely strict man; he was the kind of person that would be honest to a fault, always spoke his mind. He never had time for nonsense and never really joked or played, he resembled a drill sergeant in a way. What you saw is what you got, never really expressed his feelings, he was in other words a manly man. The only thing that was out of the ordinary and was well out of line from his character was, for some reason, this story. Till this day it was the only thing that did not correspond in the way my grandpa acted or behaved throughout his life. I meant him twice and like I said I was in diapers and barely walking. The last time he saw me was on his death bed in a hospital; my mom had to sneak me in to see him one last time. Upon seeing me he was filled with joy, one of his last request for my mom to always love and take care of me and asked her to refrain from hitting me when I did something wrong. I owe him a lot for that one I skipped on a lot of spankings because of him. My one true sadness is missing out on meeting such a great man, his strength surpasses physical boundaries. I hope to become half the man he was, the way my mom and her brothers and sisters speak about him makes me wish I could spend just a day with him. I hope one day my kids talk about me in such an amazing way as my mom and her siblings talk about my grandfather.

Fact 2.

I am not putting these reasons out there to try and convince you this story is real. I am merely trying to put any relevant information into context and after it is all said and done, you make your own decision. Furthermore, hearing this story now I realize it might sound like some god propaganda. The cliché God vs Satan, good vs evil, I also thought if someone heard this with no backstory that they would roll their eyes and say this is just a made up story trying to convince people to pray to god more. Well I thought this to myself too, contemplating whether they were trying to convey “hey whatever the situation is, just pray" or not. Until something dawned on me, I was never pushed into believing in god. I grew up catholic but we would not go to church on a regular basis, we weren't an over religious family. The only times my parents took us to church was when they couldn't remember the last time they had been. Now don't get me wrong we still believed in god and Jesus Christ, we also prayed to the Virgin Mary, but like I said telling me a story solely on the fact that it was religious or that it would make me pray me really did not fit at all, religion was never forced down our throats. This fact alone is why I am so fascinated with this story, it is way out of the ordinary for my family and it doesn't bear any hidden agenda or underlying message trying to get you to do something. All it wants is to be heard, there was never a lecture after the story was told, never a "remember kids always pray", it was told and when it was over the only thing that followed was awe.