The Silhouette of Dried Corn

I’ve carried this with me for forty years, and the internet hasn’t given me a single answer, only a few others who’ve seen something similar and then gone quiet. It happened in the summer of ’79, when I was nine, in the flat, endless farmlands of central Illinois. My family had just moved to a small town called Hollow Creek, named after the dry creek bed that wound through the cornfields. Everyone knew not to go into the fields after dark, but we kids, we thought we knew better.

My best friend was a boy named Tommy. We were inseparable, always exploring the edges of the fields, daring each other to go deeper. One evening, just after sunset, we were playing a game of hide-and-seek near the old, abandoned granary on the edge of the Peterson farm. The granary was a hulking silhouette against the dying light, its tin roof peeling, its wooden walls groaning. Tommy dared me to go inside. I hesitated, but he called me a chicken, so I went.

Inside, it was pitch black and smelled of rot and dust. I moved slowly, my hands out, feeling for walls. I stumbled over something—a broken crate—and fell. As I got up, I heard a sound: a soft, rhythmic rustling, like dried corn husks rubbing together. I froze. The sound was coming from deeper inside, beyond the shadows. I wanted to run, but my legs wouldn’t move. Then, I saw it.

A figure emerged from the darkness, but it wasn’t a person. It was tall, impossibly thin, its limbs like twisted husks, its head a shapeless mass. It moved with a lurching, dragging gait, and as it came closer, I saw that its skin was the color of dried corn, cracked and brittle. Its face had no features except for a single, wide eye that seemed to glow with a dull, sickly yellow. It didn’t make a sound, just that rustling, as if its whole body was made of corn leaves.

It stopped about ten feet away from me, and I felt a cold dread wash over me. I couldn’t breathe. Then, it slowly raised one arm, pointing a long, gnarled finger at me, and I saw that on its wrist was a worn, leather band with a single, rusty bell. The bell let out a faint, dry jingle, like the sound of wind through dead leaves. That was when I screamed and scrambled backward, knocking over crates, and burst out of the granary.

Tommy was waiting outside, laughing, but his face went pale when he saw me. I told him what I saw, but he didn’t believe me. He laughed it off, said I probably saw a scarecrow in the dark. I wanted to believe that, but I knew what I saw. I never went near that granary again.

Years later, after I moved away, I tried to forget it. But it never left me. I’d have nightmares of that rustling sound, that single eye. Then, when the internet came, I started searching. I found a few forums where people described similar encounters—mostly in rural areas, near old farms. They described the same thing: a tall, thin figure made of dried corn, a single eye, a bell. But no one had answers. They just said, ‘You’re not alone.’ And that scared me more than the thing itself.

Last year, I decided to go back to Hollow Creek, to confront it, to find closure. The town had changed—the granary was gone, replaced by a housing development. But as I stood on the edge of the cornfield, which was now a soybean field, I felt that same dread. I walked to the spot where the granary once stood, and there, in the dirt, was a small, rusted bell. I picked it up and turned it over. Inside was inscribed the name ‘Tommy.’ I haven’t been able to shake the chill since.

I don’t know if what I saw was real or some kind of curse, but I know this: the rustling hasn’t stopped. Even now, as I write this, I hear it from my own backyard, where my neighbor’s corn stalks sway in the wind. But I know it’s not the wind. And tonight, when I looked out the window, I saw a tall, thin silhouette standing at the edge of the field, its one eye glowing, pointing at me. It’s not done with me yet.