My friends and I went to visit somewhere in southern Germany, it was only for a short while but it still was an experience to remember. For relatable reasons, memorials and majestic villages, to the more paranormal reasons that even three years later, we still can’t piece together. I’ll quit with all of the backstory, I’ll just get started so I can be done.

One of our bucket-list items to do while we were in Germany was to visit a true European castle. Most were off-limits, privately owned by their government or to billionaires, we weren’t sure. This one was the only one we could find, a small little castle built into the hillside just a few miles from the closest road and even more miles from the nearest town. The castle on the outside was abnormally small, but it was a labyrinth inside. It was full of twists and turns, one second you’re in the dungeon, next you’re in the king’s kitchen or something.

Anyway, we walked inside the dark tunnel to enter, at the time we weren’t entirely sure what we were doing or where we were going, we just knew that this was a castle and we were headed in. About halfway in, there were two ways to go, we couldn’t see into either one, so we just decided on the right one through a coin flip. It took a bit before the cold of this medieval corridor overcame us, we began to shiver as we walked down. As it got darker, a person in our group pulled out their flashlight so we could see where were going. We constantly kept hearing rats talking and little bats chirping in the distance, deep in the tunnel. There were five of us, the friend with the flashlight was ahead and the majority of us were just a few feet behind him to try and warm up together. Suddenly, a person at the back had twitched and yelled loudly, it echoed throughout the tunnel as we asked him what happened, apparently he felt something hit him in his back, or, in his words, “had thrown a rock at me.”

Now I’m not one to believed in ghosts, when people die, they get sent off to someplace but I know that if I were dead, I sure wouldn’t want to stay here. We decided to head back to the entrance, as we kept walking, a different friend had punched the air a few times before we could calm them down, she said just about the same thing the other person said, except it felt like someone “running her fingers through her hair.”

We had finally made it to the entrance until we heard nothing. Dead silence after half an hour of chirping and squeaking from the creatures, all for these seconds of silence. We all stopped in our tracks and inspected the tunnel.

Still silence.

My friend with the flashlight was having difficulties finding the button to turn it back on, since we had light coming from the entrance we had decided to turn it off. In that time he was looking for the button, a distant friend in the group yelled down the empty hall, “Anyone with us here?” He yelled.

Still silence.

Finally, they got the flashlight on and turned it on into the tunnel. For a second or two, a man stood just about twelve feet from us. He stood with his head on his shoulder, legs straight, slouched over with a metal suit and a rusted up helmet topped with a gold crown and a red jewel on the front of it. He only stood there as we panicked down the tunnel, running swiftly out, yelling and screaming in terror and confusion. I was about the second to last person to get out but as I left, an ear-piercing screech from the castle behind reached us, it yelled in an aggressive manner, scared the life out of us and turned my legs into wet noodles.

It was pouring rain by the time we got out, we all made it to the van and yelled for whoever was behind the wheel at the time to get out of this demonic place. Most said it in different words, words I’d be best off not saying. I got one last look at the creature in the light as we drove off. It stood at the entrance up right, like a statue or guardian, watching the car as we drove off.

I have never been back to that area of Germany or village ever again after that vacation. Probably for the best. My friends weren’t the same afterwards, they became more paranoid in unfamiliar places, nothing too extreme, most of us got off easy. Until this point, I can’t completely piece things together, was it a ghost or just some high hobo who found the castle’s wardrobe? Could we have just been crazy? I might just be trying to hide the truth away from myself, lying and deceiving myself until I can actually do believe that it was nothing. Nevertheless, I am happy to be here telling this story now then be having some German detective crew try to piece it together over our corpses.