The Thing In the Apple Tree

 Originally posted in 2013:

 It was approximately two in the afternoon. Since my sister and father worked nights and generally didn’t wake before 3 PM my mother was the only one around. At the time in question she was on her laptop in a chair facing the front window of the living room overlooking the old apple tree in their front yard. At some point she looked up from her computer and was sort of just spacing out when something in the apple tree suddenly caught her eye. There, up in the middle branches, sat a cat-sized humanoid dressed in a black-and-white, horizontally striped t-shirt. According to my mom the being’s features were somewhere between that of a monkey and your stereotypical garden gnome, but that the creature disappeared so quickly once spotted that any further details were lost. As for the disappearing act itself, my mother says she got the sense that the being chose to do so specifically because she had spotted it, like they were startled to realize that they weren’t invisible to her. However, my mother could also tell that the being, despite disappearing, hadn’t truly gone away. Whatever it was could still be observed moving about the tree by following the considerable pressure they were placing on the bows as they jumped from limb to limb. This she watched for a bit until finally movement in the tree ceased, implying the creature had finally moved on for real. 

Humanoids in miniature have been linked to a whole mess of strange phenomena, from fairy folk and their kin (gnomes, leprechauns, sprites and what have you) to extraterrestrials (such as the so-called "hairy dwarfs"). It could've been any of these, or it could've been none of these. It could've been something we haven't even begun to speculate on or it could've been a trick of the light. Unless the entity in question makes itself known again we will probably never know and hell, even if it does make itself known again we may still be no closer to knowing just what exactly it was my mother saw hanging out in the apple tree that day.

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