Man in Red: Encounters with Santa Claus

When I was about four years old, my mother and I were looking out the bathroom window at the night sky on Christmas Eve. We were hoping to see Santa Claus rocketing across the sky on his magical sleigh, and for far longer than I perhaps should've, I believed that we saw just that. What we actually saw was a shooting star - but this brief sighting kept me believing in the Jolly Guy in Red for far longer than other kids. What can I say? I was gullible and it was Christmas. If a sighting of a shooting star convinced young me of the reality of Santa Claus, then I can't imagine the degree of cognitive whiplash the people involved in these four stories must've felt when their parents told them that Saint Nick wasn't real.

As I'm writing this, it is Christmas Eve - and so it only feels right for me to dive into some stories in which people claim that they have encountered the fictional figure of Santa Claus. Some of you might be tempted to label these as being screen memories for alien abductions, or perhaps thought-forms generated by childlike belief. Whatever your view on the weird world of Saint Nick, sit back and grab a cup of hot cocoa for four of my most festive spooky stories.

## Claus Encounter of the Fourth Kind?

Andy W. was eight or nine at the time, and it was Christmas morning. I can imagine that he was so pumped full of adrenaline from the excitement of being able to go downstairs and open presents that he would've thought anything was possible. Well, almost anything. Probably not what was about to happen. It might've been a noise that stirred him from his bed, or it might've just been '*a feeling*' - but whatever the cause, he was compelled to leave his bed, heading past the bedroom door and towards the steps. Getting out of bed early on Christmas morning was considered to be a severe violation of Christmas tradition in his house, and so he was conscious that he was breakiing the rules by doing what he was doing, but still the urge proved too powerful.

Andy's house had a two-tiered staircase, and he couldn't see around the first level of it. This is the part of the story where it gets weird - and the line between dreaming and being gets rather blurry. Andy claims that he doesn't remember walking down the stairs, so to speak - and says instead that he simply floated. He floated down the first level of the stairs and came to the landing in between the tiers - from which point he could see the Christmas tree in the living room. Next to the tree, he was astonished to see his sister talking to a large man who wore a red suit and had a thick, white beard. It was unmistakably Santa Claus. Exhilarated (and perhaps a little vindicated in his belief in the Man in Red), Andy ran down the second flight of stairs into Santa's arms. Saint Nick then showed the children their presents and told them to go back to bed, which they promptly did.

He woke up later with the flame of childish wonder still flickering in his chest. He would never see Kris Kringle again, and as he grew up he began to doubt whether or not he had just been dreaming. Until he started watching documentaries and reading stories about alien abduction, he had no other rational theory to explain his experience. He chose not to ask his family about it, and Christmas Day unfolded in its normal fashion. He often thought about asking his sister if she remembered the same bizarre happening, but he couldn't summon the nerve until he was a teenager. He eventually asked her if she had ever had anything '*weird*' happen on Christmas Day - but she unfortunately couldn't confirm the exact details of their aberrant encounter. However, she did say that she remembered '*hearing a noise and getting out of bed*' only to wake up back in her bed a few hours later. This sounds a lot like a classic description of the missing time often reported by alien abductees. Andy didn't tell his sister any of the details that he remembers, and as of my source being published in 2014, he was still planning to take his sister to a hypnotist to try and unlock some of the baffling memories that he is certain she has.

## Claxton and Claus

The previous story was kind of charming, don't you think? Well now consider what Santa Claus visitations would be like in practice. A mysterious man is supposed to be breaking into your house every year and leaving presents for your children. There are stories of children seeing this man, and this man being extraordinarily friendly towards them despite not knowing them. It really doesn't sound very festive now, does it? This next story is one that might send chills down your spine despite its topic. The witness in this case goes by the name of Claxton Kalmbach - or at least he did on *About.com*, where he told this story and swore up and down that it was true.

It was Christmas Eve of 2002, and Claxton's parents had invited a group of friends and relatives to their New York home for dinner as a kind of Christmas Eve celebration, but he quickly got bored after the main festivities were over. He decided to go up to his bedroom to watch TV, but unfortunately found that there was nothing that he wanted to watch. He ultimately ended up purposelessly pacing back and forth in the hallway. Everyone else was in the living room watching a movie that Kalmbach didn't want to watch, and his house was notably large and so there was nobody else up there with him. He had been pacing for about seven minutes when he suddenly caught sight of a tall, fat figure in the corridor 20ft away from hiim. It seemed to be crouched down, and was wearing '*some sort of Santa Claus suit*'. Claxton didn't believe in Santa, and so this experience was rather horrifying as opposed to comforting. There seemed to be a strange man in his house.

Frightened, he ran down to his parents and told them about it - but they just grinned and jokingly suggested that it was Santa Claus. Claxton of course didn't believe that, and so he just numbly sat down and watched the movie - relishing the safety of company while a sense of dread grew in his stomach.

Two years later, Kringle made another appearance to Kalmbach. It was once again Christmas Eve, this time in 2004. Claxton was lying on the couch in the living room, and his parents were away in the kitchen talking amongst themselves about a business blog '*or something*'. Suddenly - and he remembers this instance better than the first one - he saw a giant man of about 7-8ft in height crawl underneath the Christmas tree. It turned to look at him and said '*shh*' before vanishing from sight. Similar events would occur around Claxton for the following Christmases. There was a notable incident in 2007 in which he saw another tall figure wearing a Santa hat trudging past him. It was visible for a few seconds before disappearing.

## Ho Ho Hovering

Mrs. Wages grew up in a suburban neighbourhood in Memphis, Tennessee. It was some time in the 1980s when she and her parents had a rather extreme encounter with the Man in Red. She was only eight or nine years old, and she and her parents were just coming home from a Christmas party on Christmas Eve. As they were pulling up into the driveway of their house, the three of them were astonished to see Santa in his sleigh hovering over their house. The sound of sleigh bells was deafening, blocking out any other sound. The sleigh seemed to be illuminated, meaning that they could all see Santa - decked out in full red regalia - sitting atop the floating sleigh. She can even remember seeing the reindeer, but she can't recall exactly how many there were. Santa waved at them from his sleigh before flying off.  She says that she will never forget it, and especially won't ever forget her dad's look of '*total shock*'. He was an air traffic controller, and so he presumably thought that he knew everything which should've been up in the local airspace. When he went back to work after the holidays, he asked his colleagues about it but heard that nothing had come up.

Mrs. Wages would later find herself waiting in a queue at a local Target store on Black Friday of 2009. She was talking to another woman about Christmas shopping, when suddenly she mentioned out of nowhere that her brother had seen Santa Claus in his sleigh two years previously. Mrs. Wages was gobsmacked. She couldn't believe that her experience hadn't been some unique fluke of the imagination. Every Christmas Eve, she still thinks about him and looks up at the sky - hopeful of catching a glimpse of him and his magical sleigh.

## Rooftop Marks

It was Christmas of 2006, and the anonymous child witness involved in this case was crying because one of their cousins had told them that Santa wasn't real. They were just coming home from their aunt's house - where they had just had a riotous Christmas party. As they rounded the corner of their street, the witness was astonished to see a '*big red sleigh*' complete with reindeer on the roof of their house. A figure described simply as being Santa then emerged from the chimney.

The next morning, the anonymous witness asked everyone about what had happened that night to see if they could remember the bizarre event, but the answers were all negative. However, a few days before they wrote this account for *About.com* (presumably in 2009 judging by their reference to their original encounter having taken place three years ago), their dad went up to the roof to fix a leak - and was confronted with long, straight lines running along the roof. The witness took a photo, and has since shown it to their baby cousins to reinforce their belief in Santa Claus.

## A Festive Glow

Sarah A says that, although her encounter with Saint Nick happened when she was quite young, it has stuck with her into adulthood as if it were yesterday. On the fateful evening in question, her aunt had been visiting her house and so had taken her bed, leaving Sarah to sleep on the floor. She was thus unable to achieve a really deep sleep, and at approximately 2:30am she noticed a dim glow coming into the room from under the door. Curious, she got up and walked over to the door, opening it and staring out into the hallway. Something bizarre confronted her on the other side. When she had fully opened her eyes, she could clearly see a figre stood in the doorway with a '*mystical, magical glow*' around him. He was clearly Santa Claus, and was surrounded by a glittering silver and gold haze. Santa looked straight at her and spoke without moving his mouth. '*Now you know you are supposed to be asleep while I am here, don't you?*' Captivated, but perhaps worried about being put on the naughty list, Sarah answered and said that she knew she was supposed to asleep but that she couldn't. To this, Santa told her to close her eyes and '*at least pretend*'.

She was stunned. Eventually she came to accept that there was a possibilty that what she had seen was just a dream, but on some level she knew that she was awake when it had happened. People have also told her that perhaps she saw her father, but she is unable to reconcile this possible explanation with the fact that the hallway around Santa was '*glittery like a parade, but the pieces were not falling to the ground*'. As of the account being written, she was 41 years old and she still believed that it was '*100% the spirit of Santa Claus*'.

## 'He was Staring into my Soul'

When Ana was five years old, she was in her bedroom when she heard a 'shuffling' noise from the living room. She quietly got out of bed and took a peek around the doorway - whereupon she was confronted by the sight of a man in a Santa costume in front of the Christmas tree. She claims that Santa must've felt her presence, because when she looked at him he turned around and stared at her. Worryingly, he didn't look 'jolly or kind or happy' like she had expected - he had an eerie air about him. Ana described it as feeling as if he was staring into her soul.

She was suddenly terrified, despite being a young child who had presumably been told all about Santa's famous benevolence. She ran to her parents' room and instinctively hid under the covers. She can't explain why she felt so scared at the time, but eventually she wrote it off as a dream before forgetting it entirely. She only remembered it years later, and she came to the rational conclusion that it could've perhaps been a burglar - but when she asked her parents about it she discovered that nothing had been found to be missing from the apartment and that the only time they had ever been robbed was after they had moved house. She says that the only explanation she can think of is that she saw '*some kind of apparition*'.

## I Want a UFO for Christmas

Jade was seven years old in 2003, and it was approximately midnight on Christmas Eve of that year when she had an encounter with... something which may or may not have been Santa Claus. She had stayed awake with the sheer excitement of Christmas being the next day, and she saw something that she perhaps shouldn't have. She was in bed when a bright red light suddenly beamed down from the sky through her window. This light was dazzlingly bright, and Jade somehow knew that the light was Saint Nick's doing. Craning her neck up to see where the light was coming from, she found that the bright red light was coming from a small object that she couldn't identify. She couldn't hear a helicopter '*or anything*' - but she could hear the sound of bells and hooves tapping on the roof. The light soon disappeared, but the odd sounds remained behind for a few minutes before following the light's lead and disappearing.

## Conclusion

From this delectable little smorgasbord of festive frighteners, I think we can all agree that people are at least claiming to see *something*on Christmas Eve. This something generally fits the commercialised description of Santa Claus as popularised by Coca Cola, and is something which logically cannot exist. Santa Claus just isn't real (sorry, kids) - and if these accounts refer to an objectively real Saint Nick then what does he do? Parents leave the presents under the tree on Christmas Eve - and someone would've noticed by now if perfect gifts really did anomalously appear under the tree overnight. If Santa was real, he would be an accepted part of our society by now. And so of course that leaves us with some questions as to what it is that people are seeing. Are these mysterious entities thought-forms created from childlike belief in Santa Claus? Possible. Are they screen memories for alien abduction? Maybe. Do shapeshifting entities take the form of Santa Claus so that they frighten child witnesses less? If so then why would one of them have chosen to terrify Claxton in the second story I told? What was the purpose of appearing to the anonymous child witness in 2006? Then again - what's the purpose of little green men from space buzzing random farmers? The phenomenon rarely makes sense, and so sightings of Santa Claus fit this nonsensical modus operandi perfectly.

## Sources

'Claus Encounters' by Ralph Betters

'The Incredibly Weird World of Santa Claus Sightings' for *Mysterious Universe*

'Childhood Memories of Santa Claus Sightings' for *Liveabout.com*