The story of the smiling man is quite an unsettling one. This modern urban legend surfaced on the web about two years ago – the first sighting was posted on Reddit by a (presumably) young man who's name we don't know. This reportedly happened in 2011, and is a basic recounting of this young man's experience.
In his account of the story, the young man states that at the time he was living in a major metropolitan city (it seems that it is now known that the city in question is Seattle). He describes himself as a night owl and says that he had gotten into the habit of frequently taking walks at night to pass the time and to clear his head. He had done this for close to four years and never had an issue, not even in the twilight hours – this is despite the fact that he lived in a major city. The encounter happened on a quiet night, and the street that the young man was was walking on was basically devoid of cars and other people.
He had already been out walking for some time, so he decided it was about time to turn around and start heading home. It was as he was turning around when he first saw silhouette of a stranger who appeared to be dancing – more specifically, he looked like he was waltzing. At the same time, he was slowly edging his way towards the younger man. Every three or four steps of the stranger's dance was punctuated with one step towards the storyteller.
The young man decided that the stranger was probably drunk, and he so he gave the drunk stranger a wide berth and moved to the very edge of the sidewalk to avoid any interaction. As the stranger's silhouette became more and more visible in the dim city streets, the young man realized that this odd stranger was actually moving very gracefully – almost like a trained dancer – and was unlikely to be inebriated. He noted that the stranger was unusually tall and lanky, and was wearing a faded suit.
As this tall stranger came closer still, he stepped under a streetlamp and the young man finally caught a proper glimpse of his face. His head was tilted backwards, his eyes were wide open, looking upwards at the sky, and he had a unnaturally large, cartoonish grin on his face.
The young man, clearly (and very understandably) unsettled by this odd stranger, decided to cross the street to avoid getting too close to this clearly deranged man. He crosses the street, and when he gets to the other side, he takes a glance back and finds the stranger gone. For a moment, the young man is relieved, but he spots the stranger again out of the corner of his eye, on the other side of the street, directly opposite him – with the same expression, eyes wide open, head tilted upwards, ghoulish smile on his face.
The young man starts to panic – he starts walking at a brisk pace, all the while keeping his eyes on the stranger, who doesn't move from the spot that he's standing. Our storyteller glances forward only momentarily to get his bearings, and when he looks behind him again, he sees that the smiling man is looking straight at him from a crouch – the two of them are now on the same side of the street again.
The young man is shocked and how fast the smiling man seems to move – he stands there in shock, and the smiling man starts to tiptoe, with large steps, like the ones cartoon characters do when they're trying to sneak around – except in this case, the stranger is moving fast.
For whatever reason, the storyteller doesn't just GTFO– he stands there, and tries to scare the smiling man off by swearing at him, but apparently he was so tense that barely any sound escaped his throat. The smiling man at this point is a half a block away from the storyteller, still smiling and half gazing at the sky with his head tilted backwards. At this point, he slowly turned around, and started dancing away, moving in the same way as he was before. The young man watched him intently as he faded in the distance. Just as his pulse was finally starting to slow down, he sees the distant silhouette getting larger and larger – the smiling man is not dancing anymore – he is running, straight towards the storyteller.
At this point, the young man basically bolts – he runs as fast as he can to an area where there were more people and some car traffic. He gets home safely. But he says he longer enjoys taking long walks at night.
This account of the smiling man is in fact not the only one, although it was the first. In fact, there is a whole subreddit dedicated to the sightings of this strange, unsettling figure (). As of yet, it's unclear it's not totally clear who or what The Smiling Man is – he could just be a guy hopped up on some drugs, or an insane person.