The Man and the Puppet



I was very young when this event happened to me, young enough to be scarred for life by what I witnessed many years ago. I was probably around 3 or 4 years old I think, old enough to speak and walk to my knowledge, everything is fuzzy from that time, for good reason too.

Currently, I live with my grandparents, I have lived with them since they took me in because my mom wasn't really ready to raise a child just yet. I love my mother, but she is still a teenager at heart, still loving to party, drink, and doing drugs. Just like any person like this, whenever she drank or did drugs, she lost all sense of judgement and made a lot of bad decisions, one of these decisions, one that to this day, she is still unaware about, screwed me up for life.

Back then, my mom didn't really live in a home of her own, she sort of just stayed the nights at her friend's houses, bringing me along with her. I would meet various people and children, but I never had time to make a decent friend since we never stayed long, just a night or two if I remember correctly. This also kind of made this event more unique for that time, I actually did make a friend who actually helped me deal with what happened. Her name was Emma, she was a little girl who was about my age. She was a very kind girl, you could probably say that she was my first official friend.

This event that I keep mentioning is the reason why I'm terrified of the dark to tell the truth, it really screwed me up since, even though I am aware that there is nothing in the dark, there is a subconscious fear I feel every time the lights go off. Another weird anomaly of this event is how well I can remember it, my memory isn't really that good.

It was a dark and empty night in the small town my mom's friends lived in. Outside, you couldn't see anything except for what the street lamps were illuminating. My mom's friends lived in a small house in the middle of what I would call nowhere. My mom, her friends, Emma, and I were all hanging out in the living room. I was in the corner playing one of those educational computer games on the small computer that my mom's friend owned. Next to me was this big wooden TV cabinet that held a pretty big TV for the 1990's. In the middle of the cabinet, there was the TV, and on both sides of the TV, there was the biggest collection of VHS movies that I have ever laid my eyes on at the time, but not being interested in films at the time, I didn't really care for it. In front of the TV on an old, blue rug was Emma. She was laying on her stomach watching TV while my mom and her friends were laughing drunkenly on the old brown sofa behind her.

They continued their merry little party for a couple of hours until my mom eventually became exhausted and decided to go to bed. Before she left though, I remember seeing her turn around in the hallway to her friends and telling them to put me to bed in 30 minutes, then she went off to bed. That is when I got bored with the game and turned off the TV to go watch whatever was on with Emma. But right as I sat down, I heard one of mom's friends tell her to go to bed, and of course, she obeyed, leaving me alone. Once she left, my mom's friends then picked me up and placed me on the sofa. They looked at each other and then laughed.

"I think I have a show you can watch before bed" one friend said as he grabbed a VHS from his collection.

The VHS box was pure white, but a little beat up. He then took the tape out of the box and put it in the VHS player that was in it's own cabinet under the TV. He then whispered to the other friend as he pressed play. His friend laughed at whatever he said.

"Now don't you move" the man said as he and his friend laughed and left the room, leaving me all by myself.

The TV suddenly flared on with a bunch of static for a few minutes, then some faint carnival like music could be heard. Then, the opening credits for this show flashed onscreen with it's many colors and balloon like text. I can't remember much about the opening credits, nor can I tell you who starred in it, though I can tell you that I had a faint feeling of uneasiness as the credits rolled and the music became louder and louder. At the peak of the music's loudness, the music stopped and it cut to a shot in a very colorful living room. The walls were a bright yellow and there was odd blue furniture everywhere. It was a bit obvious that this was just a TV set that was hastily made since some walls were more crooked than others and some of the photos on the walls were tilted. That's when a man in a white lab coat hopped in from the right. If I remember this man correctly, he was a very jolly, skinny man who to me, looked a lot like Bill Nye the science guy, but a bit more crazy. He began to talk to the camera, just like anyone in childrens TV. He began to talk to us about how he is looking for his friend since they are playing a game of hide and seek and such and he wanted our help to find him. Eventually he found him and that's when we learned his friend is actually a ventriloquist puppet who looked sort of like Charlie McCarthy in a way. The episode continued on like any regular kids show, nothing bad or anything. That's when the first episode ended and the second episode began...

The second episode began exactly like the first one, the carnival music, the man looking for his friend, etc. If it wasn't for what happened next, I would have thought I was watching episode one again. But this time, the man approached a yellow door. He turned to the camera excitedly and said "I think he might be hiding in here! But be careful! Monsters lurk in the darkness of the basement! Good thing I just changed the light bulb!". So he entered the basement. He left the door open behind him for extra light as he began walking down the stairs. I could hear the eerie creaking of the wooden steps under his feet as he walked down the old steps. Midway down the steps he turned to the camera and said “I really hope he's down here, basements can be very scary...” then, as he turned back around, the light bulb above him, which was the only illumination in the basement, shattered and the room was swallowed by darkness. The man began to become very nervous, as shown by the fact his breathing becoming faster and faster. He then called out for his friend, voice shaking. We then look over at the doorway as his friend stuck his head out and said “How's it goin?” in a cheeky tone. The man was glad to see his friend, glad being a bit of an understatement though. He begged for his friend to toss him down a new light bulb as the sound of a low, intimidating grumble began to be heard coming from the darkness. His friend let out this maniacal chuckle and in a playful tone he said “ok” and he literally tossed a light bulb at the man. The man couldn't catch the light bulb as he couldn't see where it was heading, but you can hear the light bulb crash onto the ground of the basement. Right as the light bulb hit the ground, everything went silent, like all hope was immediately lost. The man's friend then silently closed the door as the man cried for help. The door then clicked shut and again, everything went silent. What happened next will be stuck in my head until the day I die... The silence was then broken by the man screaming bloody murder as the sound of these....monsters killed him. The show then cut to static for the rest of the video, then to black as I sat there in silence, forever scarred from what I saw that day.

To this day, I can remember almost everything that I saw, and I wonder what it was I saw. I don't remember the name of the show, I don't remember any of the character's names either. If anyone who knows anything about this show or anything related to it, I would love to hear it, I've been looking for this show for years and I cannot find it. It's been tormenting me subconsciously and all I want to do is watch it one more time and confront my fears...