Hello, Maynard, and thank you for your interest in my story about the Eyeless Man. I hope I don’t disappoint, but I only recently encountered the idea of this cryptid/supernatural creature/whatever-it-is under that name. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m squarely ensconced in the so-called Skeptical movement, and I tend to scoff at ideas that present themselves as supernatural even as I find myself fascinated by them for folklore value. Things like the Mothman, Slender Man, Bigfoot, UFOs and sightings of the Virgin Mary are great windows into the human brain and our need to create an ordered universe out of the pile of chaos with which we’ve been given to work.

But as I looked into it, something about the Eyeless Man legend stirred an old memory of mine. One I tend to avoid dwelling on because it’s surrounded with so much personal pain. It happened when I was a teenager. My parents, hippies who’d turned into yuppies and were facing middle age and a failing marriage, attended a series of seminars that were an outgrowth of the so-called Human Potential movement. Your request led me to dig up some old journals and reconstruct the events I witnessed and in which I unwittingly participated. I don’t know if this is about the Eyeless Man (although some of what I recall does line up with stories about him), or if this represents something else entirely, but upon reflection I think it’s about the most disturbing thing I can recall experiencing, and it might even explain why I have found science and skepticism to be as comforting as I do all these years later.

—Ben Rock