A tall shadow figure in a top hat and a blonde little girl named Sarah.
This comes from a small town in western Maryland that, by the account of someone who grew up there, was very, very weird.
Up to age eight the family lived in one house where the oldest child occasionally saw a big shadow slip across a doorway. There was also an imaginary friend named Sarah: a blonde girl of maybe ten or eleven with green eyes and a white and blue Victorian dress.
Then they moved a few streets over, and things got worse. A shadowy figure started following the child around the new house more and more often. The kid named him the top-hat man. He never did anything except follow and watch, but he was terrifying. Our witness can still picture him standing in the corner of the bedroom. And every time he appeared, Sarah wasn't far behind. As soon as she showed up, he left.
It peaked around grade six. The last time both figures showed up, our witness was doing homework at the dining room table. The top-hat man was watching from across the living room, and Sarah was perched on the end of the couch between them, like a guard dog. This time he did something new. He opened his eyes, and they were dark red. He started toward the table in silent jerks. Sarah stood up and put out her hand, and when the two of them touched, both were simply gone.
That was the end of it for the older sibling. But years later, at 15, the older sibling walked into the little sister's room and found her looking terrified. She was 11. It took a while to get the truth out of her: she kept seeing a shadowy man in a top hat, and a little girl she called Sarah. For months she came to her older sibling in tears, in the bedroom, the kitchen, once even at their grandmother's house, saying he was watching her. Around then the family had the house blessed for other reasons, and she never brought it up again. Neither sibling has wanted to talk about it since.
The part that really gets to them both came later, swapping ghost stories at sleepovers and lunch tables through middle and high school. Ten other kids from the same town described the exact same thing: a tall shadow in a top hat, a little blonde girl named Sarah, and the visits stopping around age 11 or 12.
Nobody has an explanation. As the older sibling puts it, how are all these kids seeing the same thing, and does it happen anywhere else?