ALF

ALF is a funny creepy story about a young boy who gets phonecalls from a stranger who is obsessed with ALF the TV show. It is based on a true story.

When I was a kid, I won a competition. A photographer took a picture of me and it was featured in a national newspaper, along with my name and address. A few days later, a man called my family out of the blue. He said his name was Alf and he was a Christian minister. He told my mom he wanted to talk to me about God and prayer. For some reason, my mom handed me the phone and let him talk to me.

As it turned out, the guy didn’t want to talk aout God at all. Instead, he just seemed to want to talk about ALF. You remember the TV show ALF, about the wise-cracking alien furball? The guy was obsessed with ALF and he kept going on and on about it. He must have gotten our address from the newspaper, because he started sending me tons and tons of ALF merchandise… ALF toys, ALF T-shirts, ALF pencils, ALF figurines, ALF books… ALF everything.

For some reason, whenever he called, my parents would let him talk to me. I suppose they trusted him because he said he was a minister and they liked how he sent me all the ALF merchandise. He actually sounded a bit like ALF. I had never seen him. He was just a voice on the phone, so whenever I wondered what he looked like, I pictured ALF. This went on for about a year until my room was filled with stupid ALF crap. The strangest thing about it was that I didn’t even like ALF.

One day, the man wanted to talk about something different. He asked me if I had ever heard of someone called John Wayne Gacy. When I said I hadn’t, he proceeded to tell me that John Wayne Gacy was a serial killer who preyed on little boys. He lured them into his house, tricked them into putting on handcuffs and then murdered them and buried their bodies in his crawlspace.

He told me that when he was a boy, John Wayne Gacy had tried to kidnap him as well, but he managed to escape. He said I should tell my parents that they shouldn’t trust strangers, “because you never know who you could really be talking to”. He didn’t sound menacing when he said it, just matter-of-fact.

Of course, when I told my parents what he said, they freaked out and called the police. They also changed our phone number and started escorting me to school every day and picking me up afterwards. They were worried because the man knew our address and they were afraid he would try to kidnap me. We ended up selling the house and moving away.

10 years later, we lived in a new house, in a different state and our phone number wasn’t listed in the book. I was 15 years old and I had forgotten all about the man and his creepy phone calls. Then, one day, a package arrived in the mail. It was addressed to me. I opened it up and what do you think I found inside?

You guessed it… An ALF coloring book.