Real Ghost Story: The Ribbon Man – I know that many people won’t believe me. That’s alright, whether you believe me or not doesn’t matter, the facts are still facts. I am going to tell you the story of the man who gives me ribbons.
Over the course of a year, this man started leaving ribbons on my doorstep. Sometimes, they are neatly tied on my doorknob, and it is so neat, it looks cartoonish. The ribbons vary in color, from white to red, and recently polka dots. But they are the same length, at ten inches. These ribbons started showing up after I was released from a mental ward in California. I was in the institution for about a year, because my depression on top of my crippling anxiety caused a lot of issues involving suicide. I was a mess, but I came out a better person.
The first day I came home, everything was normal. No ribbons at all, just my bedroom and picture frames adorning the walls. The morning after I got home, I found my first ribbon, tied on my front doorknob. I noticed it when I drove passed my house after coming home from work. I still have the ribbon, because I thought it was a girl scout thing. It’s a white ribbon, thick and velvet strands. It was very lovely. I felt the need to keep it, because despite my rugged appearance I actually like girly stuff sometimes.
I will not really tell you much about me for the sake of my own privacy, but I am a woman and I am very tall and strong from being an athlete. I am always ready to fight. The ribbons kept coming, and it got weirder and weirder. The ribbons would move from front door, to back door. The back door is right next to the woods I live in, and there’s no reason for a girl scout to go back there and tie a ribbon on it.
So this is where I called the police the first time. I told them what was going on, and how it was freaking me out, and if they could search the area and ask around to see if anyone had seen anything. I initially hypothesized that I had a stalker of some kind, as did the police. I asked them to take the ribbons for evidence, and offered to pay them to try and lift fingerprints off them, to which they declined. They said to just keep the ribbons until further notice. They also said to hide a camera in my rose bush to see if I could catch anyone in the act, or just stay up and wait.
I am not scared of anything, so I opted to spend the next night awake, and waiting for the guy to start something. I went to a gas station, got a lot of red bull, and came back to my house and parked myself beside the window behind the couch. I got a blanket and put it behind the couch, turned all the lights off, and went through my night routine as I figured the creep was going to watch me. I climbed into bed, waited ten minutes, then slowly and quietly crawled down the stairs to the window. I parked it and waited. I was ready, my dad’s hunting rifle in my arms. It had blanks in it, because my dad was too scared to give me actual bullets in fear I’d try and kill myself. I stayed awake the whole night, watching both the back door, and the front door. And I saw nothing. Nothing.
I went to sleep in the afternoon the next day and woke up at 5:30 to the sound of my alarm. I got up, got dressed, and decided to go out and get some take out instead of wasting time cooking. As I got my phone out to call them, I stopped with shock. Looking inside my car window, there was a ribbon on my gear shift. A red, silk ribbon tied so neatly it looked drawn on. I was freaked out, and I didn’t touch anything as I called the cops. They came, observed the car and gave me looks. They thought I was lying, and just messing with them at this point.
I couldn’t handle it, and started to scream at them. I cursed them all out, throwing my keys down and screaming for them to help me. One officer, we will call him John, walks up to me and calms me down. He gave me his card and filed a report. They took pictures and everything, and now with John’s personal number, I felt more safe. John ended up staying over for a while I made dinner to help me relax. It was midnight before John finally left my home, reminding me to call if I needed anything or saw anything. I immediately went to bed after that, and focused on forgetting the car incident. But I wouldn’t forget it.
I remember waking up the next morning with a horrible sense of displacement. I had no idea where I was, and for a moment, I had no idea who I was. And as I scrambled to get out of bed, my hand rested down on my pillow and I felt a soft fabric. When I looked down, my stomach dropped to my feet. There was a red ribbon laying perfectly straight on my pillow. I immediately called John, and he came over in less than ten minutes. He searched the whole house with his hand over his gun, me behind him with a baseball bat the entire time. There was no sign of any kind of entry, forced or not. John looked confused as he examined the ribbon.
“You said you just woke up with it on your pillow?” He asked. I nodded.
“I don’t know what’s going on!” I was in hysterics. I was genuinely scared. John thought for a moment. I could tell he didn’t believe me. But he relieved me by offering to stay the night. I don’t know if it was to make me feel better, or if it was just to confirm I wasn’t messing with him, but I was happy he was staying.
That night, I went through my routine, and offered him some clothes to sleep in. He told me that he wasn’t going to sleep and he wasn’t going to take off his uniform in case anyone tries to break in. I made him a pot of coffee and curled up on my mattress, covering my nose and mouth with the blanket.
This was the night it all became clear that we were not dealing with a stalker. John was standing in my room, looking out my window through the blinds when I woke up. It was 3 in the morning, and I called to him and asked if he saw anything. He raised a finger, motioning for me to wait a moment, and I had to see. Outside in my parallel neighbor’s yard stood a tall, broad man wearing all black. He was completely motionless, standing directly under the old street lamp in the yard. The shadows covered him, but not enough to hide his apparel. Long black trench coat, black scarf tucked into the coat, a dimple on his sharp chin, scruff, Caucasian. He was wearing a French fedora, like that weird kind of racing hat with the flat cap? One of those. John whispered to me to not move. I wasn’t going to. The man walked slowly, step by step, and stopped in my yard. He was just staring forward, not looking up or down. Just blank. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of scissors, and John took out his gun. The man took a gloved hand, and pulled out a reel of ribbon from his other pocket. He cut it and put away the scissors. John was waiting for the man to reveal how he has been getting into my home. The man walked towards the front door, blocked by the windowsill. We lost sight of him. We listened for the door to click open. But we never heard it.
John went downstairs, telling me to hide under my bed with my thumb on my phone. He talked into his talkie on his chest as he walked, flashlight and gun armed and searching. I didn’t hear anything, no gunshots or screams. Eventually I got worried and went downstairs to see John in my kitchen, flashlight pointing outside a window. John turned around, and he clearly looked startled.
“He’s gone. He’s not in the house.” John breathed. I turned on the light and gasped. On my kitchen counter was a straight and perfectly placed red ribbon tied in a bow. The police were at my house quickly as John made a full report of what happened. We didn’t hear a damned click. He didn’t enter my home. And what’s bad is that I have an alarm system on my house that sounds off when windows and doors are open. There was no footprints, no dirt tracked in. Nothing.
John told me to leave my home and go somewhere safe. I felt safe nowhere, so I decided to go to an old friend of my father’s. We will call him Jim. Jim was about as burly as my dad, mechanic grease monkey with a tough demeanor. He was strong, and I trusted him. I told him what happened, and he gladly gave me his son’s room. His son is as old as I am, and we have known each other since birth. So when I asked him to sleep in the same bed, he was willing. He held me close and I won’t lie, I cried most of the night.
When I woke up the next morning, I felt better. There was no ribbon. Obviously a guy who is stalking me. I felt relieved as I went downstairs to the smell of bacon. We had a lovely breakfast and I felt much more safe. As we ate, Jim walked over to the backyard porch to let the dog in, and got a weird look on his face.
“Hey Carla?” Jim called to his wife.
“Yeah hon?” She called back. Jim bent down and fiddled with Duke’s collar.
“Since when do you tie ribbons on Duke’s collar?” My heart froze. Jim looked at me, and the fear set in on him as well, and he immediately sprinted to his gun locker in the basement. He came back out with a fully loaded military shotgun and walked outside. The backyard was fenced in, so the only way someone could get in was to climb the wooden planks. There was NO easy access. Jim was serious, his military background showing. He had some freak follow me to his home, and now tie a ribbon on his dog. We were in danger. I told Jim that I couldn’t stay there and bring them into it, and Jim took my keys away and insisted I stay. But he was going to keep watch tonight to be safe. The rest of the day was tense, with Jim and Carla being very observant. I wasn’t going to sleep tonight. I felt sick.
I was tense as I crawled into the bed. I figured I was just going to have to stay awake, but my heavy eyes were fighting me. I decided on an hour nap to gain my bearings, and set my alarm and put in headphones so I wouldn’t wake my friend. The alarm went off, and, yet again, I felt that severe sense of not knowing where I was again, and remember wandering down the stairs in a groggy haze. I don’t remember what happened, but Jim does.
He told me that I walked to the porch door and opened it. He asked me if I was alright and got up to follow me, as he was watching TV in the family room. I walked into the grass and lifted my arms to the fence. He thought I was going to climb over and he grabbed me and ushered me inside. He said I was mumbling. “Take it.” I kept saying, “Take it. Take it.”
The next day I awoke to a ribbon on the porch door, tied neatly. Carla called the police, and I called John. He said he was going to personally pick me up and do a full on investigation. I don’t remember the drive with John. I only remember waking up on an unfamiliar futon. I was in John’s house, his father there as well. I learned then that his father also was a police officer, with over 30 years on the force experience. And, John, if you’re reading this right now, I am sorry for what happened to him. It was all my fault for even being there.
I stayed with them as they swept through my house, taking fingerprints, snapping pictures, and setting up hidden cameras in bushes around the perimeter in case he came back. John’s father set up cameras in their house too, which would be monitored in a spy van down the street. They had the guest room I was staying in completely wired with cameras. John told me that they would stay in the basement to observe the house and see how this man got in. I fell asleep that night feeling like they would finally catch the man. But they didn’t. Instead, something much worse happened. I can’t talk about what I saw when I woke up, because it even now still causes me to have a panic attack. I know that may sound cliché. But it was too horrible.
John’s father had rushed to the room to detain the man, who had appeared after the camera experienced severe static. The man was tying a ribbon around my ankle gently when John’s father kicked the door in. He just stood there saying nothing, not responding to John’s father’s yells to get on the ground. The man faced him full on and walked up to him. There were gun shots. I don’t know how I didn’t wake up. The man just touched his hand to his shoulder. That was it. And John’s father died. I won’t say how. There was so much blood. The doctors said he died from massive internal trauma. His organs had all ruptured. Now do you understand why I can’t explain how he looked on my floor when I woke up?
John was out for blood after that. The man never came to his house again after I had left. John would call me constantly, telling me of new information and how they think they had a lead on the man. John became obsessive. He would come to my house in the small hours of the night, banging on my door with bloodshot eyes and the camera footage from my house. He would point out where the man was, and how the static would disrupt how he got in my home. He was tampering with the cameras. He began receiving ribbons the next day.
This was 8 months ago. The investigation has run cold. John has been having nightmares since I left his house. And one neighbor has frequently told him that he will be standing out in his backyard late at night as repeatedly say “Take it” over and over, before walking back to his home. It has been going one for now two years. This why I decided to sit down and write this down.
I have posted vaguely on Reddit, and tried to go on creepypasta. But I don’t know what else to do. Nobody believes me. I have tested if this man is human by leaving all my lights off and barricading my door with chairs, and yet he has found a way in my home without making a noise. He has been leaving them in my bed now, or tied either on me or my lamp. I have left my house at 4 am and sped down the street, watching to see if anyone was following me. I took back roads, went in circles. Nobody followed me.
I am now in a small town called Hudson, using a friend’s laptop. I am going to post this story on every blog website I can until I relocate. I have done research, and a story similar to mine is the Hat Man. Although the Hat Man is just all shadow, while The Ribbon Man has facial features.
Listen to me. If you encounter this man, DO NOT APPROACH HIM. Do not accept his ribbons. Do not keep the ribbons. Do not try to reason with him. He isn’t human. I don’t know if he’s a demon or a ghost. But he is not human. Please, if you receive the ribbons, burn them. Bless your household. Don’t go over to anyone’s home for safety. He will follow you. If anyone has any information, or has ACTUALLY EXPERIENCED this man, please message me. His description is below, also a picture I drew will be linked below.
He is between 6’5 and 6’6. Weighing maybe 250 pounds. Solid muscle, he isn’t fat. He is very broad. Caucasian, with light stubble on his chin with a deep dimple in the middle of his chin. French fedora, black scarf and coat. Black gloves.
Source: yourghoststories