There’s something alien at the cemetery in Norwalk, CT.

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I bought a house across the street over the summer, and now that the leaves have started to fall, I have a clear view of the graveyard from my living-room window. A week and a half ago, I saw something tall and white moving among the headstones. Something that glowed with dim light, even when it was pitch black out.

I told Denise, who said, and I quote, “well that’s pretty fuckin’ cool.” We started staying up late to see if it would come back. On Thursday night, it did. Through the binoculars, I could see it was shaped more-or-less like an upside-down tree. It didn’t have feet, but rather hundreds of small tendrils that shuffled it through the rows of headstones. Its body was erect and unremarkable, save for an opening at the top where different, longer tendrils hung.

It moved silently and ceaselessly for almost 20 minutes before disappearing into thin air.

When I got to work on Friday, I told a couple guys about it. They said I was full of shit, so I invited them over to see it for themselves. Dan was the only one who took me up on my offer, so I told him to come for dinner. We could eat and wait for the thing to show up.

Around 1am on Saturday morning, it came back. Dan was speechless. He took out his phone and started recording. I told him there was no point; it hadn’t shown up on anything Denise and I had tried to record with, but he insisted on trying anyway.

We were out on the front porch, so the thing was about 100 feet away. Maybe more. Dan wasn’t having much luck getting it in focus, so he crossed the street and stood on the edge of the cemetery property.

“I wouldn’t go near it, Dan,” Denise advised. Part of me agreed with her, but another part wanted to join him and get a better look.

“It’s cool,” Dan replied over his shoulder. He kept walking in its direction.

I stayed on the porch with Denise and watched Dan get closer.

“Can you hear that?,” Dan called. “It sounds like it’s singing or something.”

Neither of us could hear what Dan heard, but I was growing increasingly uneasy at his cavalier attitude in the face of something completely unknown.

Before any of us could react, one of the tendrils from the top of the creature shot across the cemetery and whipped Dan in the face. He stumbled and fell on his back. Denise gasped and I started running toward my friend. The thing evaporated. I reached Dan, who’d already gotten up. He looked no worse for wear.

As we headed back for the house, Dan began to limp. He started to complain about a weird feeling in his feet. I helped him across the street and back into the house. He immediately took off his shoes and started to rub his heels and arches and toes. It was obvious he was in pain.

Without warning, with a series of sickening, wet cracks, Dan’s feet split in half. He and Denise screamed. They split again. And again. Denise fumbled with her phone to call 911 and I could just watch, horrified, as Dan’s feet continue to bifurcate until there was nothing left but bleeding tendrils that jerked and twitched, flinging blood across the living room.

Dan passed out as further bifurcations turned his feet into noodle-thin, then hair-thin, filaments. I heard an ambulance approaching. We live only a quarter-mile away from the hospital. The filaments knotted and unknotted as the EMTs entered the house. They gazed, wide-eyed, at Dan’s injuries.

As they loaded him onto the gurney and began exiting the house, two cracks like gunshots rang out, making everyone jump. His shins, knees, and femurs had split. Blood poured down the sides of the gurney and cascaded down our front steps. Denise and I heard more cracks after the ambulance doors had closed. Then, with sirens blaring, they were gone.

Dan died not long after. I attended his funeral this morning. There’s no explanation for what had happened to him, and the news report on his death simply called it an “accident.” I want to come forward and tell the police what’s going on in the cemetery, but the thing hasn’t shown up at all since that night. If anyone else lives in Norwalk and can claim they’d seen something like what I described, please do so. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt. Dan didn’t deserve what happened to him.

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