“Man who claims his apartment is haunted by a dead child provides chilling proof”
Whether or not you believe in supernatural beings, ghost stories have a way of captivating even the biggest skeptics. Though most of these tales are outlandish, a specialty of frighteningly believable, such was the case for one New York cartoonist named Adam Ellis.
Adam recently took to Twitter to tell his followers about a haunting experience. At first, his friends weren’t sure if they believed him. But when he showed them the bone-chilling evidence, they were left stunned.
Everyone loves a good ghost story. Whether it’s told well sitting around a campfire or during a middle-school sleepover, still, part of the fun includes the knowledge that it’s not real. Unfortunately for Adam Ellis, it was.
Most people will quickly brush off those who claim they’ve had encounters with supernatural beings. Ghosts and UFOs are simply just figments of your imagination, they’ll say. But Adam, who makes his living as a cartoonist in New York City, was not imagining things.
One day, Adam posted a strange photograph on Twitter. His cats had been gathered by the door around midnight. No one was in the hall, and Adam worried something else was drawing them to that spot. Was his apartment haunted? His followers were skeptical, until he produced proof.
Adam’s haunting tale began with a single tweet: “So my apartment is currently being haunted by the ghost of a dead child, and he’s trying to kill me.”
Over the course of 4 months and 361 more tweets, his story would unfold in a convincingly terrifying fashion. Adam, who often experienced sleep paralysis, began having strange dreams involving a disfigured boy. In another dream, he was approached by a girl at a library. “You’ve seen Dear David, haven’t you?” she asked. “He’s dead. He only appears at midnight, and you can ask him two questions if you say Dear David first. Oh, and he’d murder anyone who asked a third question.” Adam was obviously horrified.
A couple of weeks later, he saw the boy, Dear David, again in a dream. David sat in a green rocking chair in Adam’s room. Remembering the girl’s instructions, Adam asked about the boy’s death. David said that he was killed in a store after someone hit him over the head with a shelf. Then Adam asked who murdered him, the forbidden third question. David went silent, and Adam woke up in a panic. Was he going to die? He wasn’t sure.
After that dream, weird stuff started happening, especially once he moved into the apartment upstairs. Adam’s cats began to stare and meow at the front door each night around midnight. What started as a series of dreams suddenly became very real, as Adam heard random noises or saw objects moving. He documented everything on Twitter, and his followers asked what the boy looked like. The cartoonist drew this.
Adam eventually installed a security camera, which ended up capturing something strange. His cat seemed to be interacting with something inside the apartment. By now, his Twitter followers were captivated, and his audience grew with each eerie update.
Adam’s followers suggested a number of ways to ward off evil spirits: salt, burning sage, all to no avail. David continued to haunt his dreams too. Even when Adam traveled to Japan on vacation, he felt Dear David follow him. For instance, while he was out sightseeing, he saw a statue that looked eerily similar to the boy.
When he returned home, Adam took photographs of the front door. Even though the lights were on, the hallway always appeared darkened. He also noticed loud sounds coming from his apartment, despite living on the top floor. He noticed a trapdoor in the ceiling above the stairwell, so he decided to investigate. Adam purchased a long pole and attempted to push the door open. That was when something suddenly fell from the hatch to the bottom of the stairs. When he walked over to it, it stopped him in his tracks. It was a child’s leather shoe.
Terrified, Adam asked his landlord to help. Armed with a tall ladder, the landlord opened the hatch and looked at the crawlspace above the stairs. He found nothing, except, you know, this old marble.
After that, things only became creepier for poor Adam. Hoping to gather more evidence, Adam downloaded an app that would take a picture from his phone every minute. Then he set it up facing his bed and went to sleep. The next day, he woke up with an uneasy feeling as he sifted through the hundreds of pictures the app had taken. That was when he saw it: a little demonic boy watching him while he slept. It was Dear David.
Adam continued to look through the pictures, wondering if any others would show the boy. In another photo, the figure looked up to the ceiling. Then, just as quickly as he arrived, Dear David vanished, only to return moments later, this time looming over Adam on the bed.
But it was the last photo that really terrified Adam. Dear David’s head could be seen as it moved toward the camera. In response, Adam tweeted: “I’m at a loss for words. That malformed ear, that stringy hair. I don’t even know what to think.”
Adam’s followers were floored by the story and the photos he captured. Yet, that night seemed to mark the ending of Dear David. He began tweeting less about him and even claimed that he hadn’t seen him since, although he still got weird feelings on occasions.
While many people have debated whether or not Adam’s story was true or simply an attempt to further his career as a cartoonist, the story continues to attract both believers and skeptics all over the globe. Perhaps we’ll never know the absolute truth about whether Dear David was real or simply the creation of a bored cartoonist.
That doesn’t make the photos and story any less haunting. Who’s really to say whether Adam really saw Dear David or not? At the end of the day, his story is captivating. And when it comes to ghost stories, that’s really all you can ask for.
