Written Confession: The Phantom Family of Florida
The following written confession was submitted via email:
My dad moved to Florida from West Virginia sometime in 1971 or 1972 but had hitch hiked all over prior, and he was living in Longwood and hadn't been in Florida but maybe a little over a year year and a half tops, and had a place, a job as a parking lot striper and lived a seemingly normal life, he has always liked to take walks alone to clear his mind or walk to the corner store for some smokes, a soda, or or a snack, on this day he decided to go for a walk and before he knew it he was in an an area of Longwood he hadn't previously been to, and as he walked down the street he looked around and noticed he was in a residential area and the streets were lined with Spanish style Florida homes, as he walked through the neighborhood he heard someone yell his nickname he was given as a child in West Virginia, "hey hog, hey hog Ryder" … he sees a vaguely familiar face on a man that is sitting on his front porch, children running around and wife close by yelling at them, he approached the home and said "how did you know my nick name?"
And the man he wasn't really sure he even knew or not explained that he was originally from the small town my dad was from and left Florida for, as he explained this and some other details to my dad he had indeed remembered this man from West Virginia as my dads step-dad used to drink at the same bar as the man my dad just ran into, and it's interesting to note that my dad has ran into more than 5 maybe less than 10 people over the years who he knew from his childhood in West Virginia, same town and all, which isnt really to wild because around that time alot of people were moving to central Florida as it was growing rapidly, it an be chalked up to coincidence or whatever, nothing to miraculous, so as my dad spends more time at the home of this man and his family (he has a hard time remembering this man's first or last name) as I did ask this for research purposes, he does remember a family dog and 3 kids 2 boys and 1 girl, it was early to mid afternoon and time was starting to pass and the sun was going down, he was invited to eat dinner and he accepted and stayed for maybe minutes after dinner was finished, he said he goodbyes ( he has a memory of the kids insisting that he stay and play in the front yard for just 5 more minutes as kids do) and told the family that he didn't live all that far away and would return in week or so and bring his girlfriend that he had recently started seeing. He also said he would call home and tell his family he ran into his step-dads buddy from the bar he frequented years prior.
A week maybe two later he found himself close to the home he had been at only a week or two earlier and this time he was with his girlfriend he found the street and they made there way down towards the home ( they were in his girlfriends car this time) and as they got close to the home my dad started to get kind of confused as he told his girlfriend to turn into a driveway to a house that was dilapidated, with over grown grass, weeds and most shocking of all completely and totally EMPTY. Like know one had lived there for years, he knew it was the same exact house only this time it was revealing itself as a home that hadn't been occupied for quite some time, he tried to explain to his girlfriend that he had been there and ran into a man who now has a full family that was from the same small town in West Virginia, he decided to have her park on the side of the street and asked a few neighbors one neighbor had no idea and another said that a family did indeed live there but it had been about a year maybe a year and a half prior and not anyone since the tragedy that took place my dad tried to ask about said tragedy but the neighbor seemed a little off about and only told him that someone died there and now no one is there and bye have a good day basically, so now my dad is seriously wondering what the hell is going on, because everything around him was the same on that street in that part of the neighborhood on that day he had taken a walk and ran into the man and his family, so he finally is convinced to go back home by his girlfriend and maybe they could go to the library and look at some newspaper articles from around that time, instead my dad called back home and asked about this man and the family he had built in Florida, there had never been any talk of this man or his family in previous phone calls home or letters written as his step-dad had left his mom a little while before he had left for Florida, but during this call his jaw dropped and the hairs rose, his family back home told him that that man had indeed moved to Florida and wanted a fresh start with his wife and children, something terrible happened shortly after moving to Florida and was being talked about all over the small West Virginia town, it didn't make national news that anyone knows of, if it did my dad would have probably seen it but I'm not sure if he would have put two and two together had he, he didn't even remember the man until the man mentioned my dad's step-dad and yelled his nick name to get his attention, so anyway my dad is on the phone with family and says he saw this man and family down here in Florida and talked with them, had dinner and chased the kids around the yard, his family thought it was a joke because he also said he went back again and the house was abandoned, well my dad's family didn't dispute the house being empty but my dad actually seeing the family a week or so earlier was impossible as short time after my dad had left and the man with his family, the man murdered all 3 kids, dog and wife and then shot himself dead and it had been quite the talk of the town for a few weeks after it has happened, so my dad is basically left with the reality of interacting/ even sharing dinner with a dead family, to this day it sends chills down his spine because as he put it to me it was as if they were as real as you and me, but seemingly impossible.
