I should begin by saying I’ve never written anything here before. I came upon this forum while doing research into whatever the hell I’ve been experiencing lately, hoping desperately to find someone else who can relate to this. No luck so far.
It started about a week ago with a strange, albeit not very scary dream. In all reality, I should have been scared out of my mind, but I’ve had nightmares for most of my life and I’ve become almost numb to the horror at this point. In my dream, I was lying in my bed, dreaming. Unfortunately my memory is a little hazy from years of alcohol and opiate abuse, but I’ll try to recall the details to the best of my ability. This all gets a little confusing, so keep in mind that everything I’m about to tell you was absolutely part of a dream; I’ll let you know when in the story I wake up for real. So - I’m dreaming about nothing in particular, just about an average nondescript dream. Then this strange looking humanoid man thing scares me. It didn’t do anything in particular to try and scare me, but its mere figure was enough to jolt me “awake.” It resembled a short man, but impossibly thin - like, limbs no thicker than a dry erase marker. It stood with its knees bent outwards, almost like it had deformed legs. Its torso and face, which resembled that of a teenager, were unmistakably human and appeared to be malnourished to the point of starvation, so much so that you could point out every bone in its body with complete clarity. Its eyes were all white, but what would make up the whites in a normal eye seemed to glow. This, along with what looked to be a distinct iris that resembled a cataract ridden eye, was terrifying in its own right. It had a neat row of sharp teeth that also glowed a dim white. Its skin was a pale gray and seemed almost too smooth. Just the sight of it standing there, an unnaturally large grin stretched across its face, instantly threw me out of whatever dream I was having.
I was lying in my bed a little freaked out. That’s when I looked to my side and saw the creature looking right back, silent as if waiting for me to say something, so I did. It went something like this;
“What the hell are you?” I said calmly. In hindsight, this strange calmness is how I’m certain this conversation actually happened in a dream. If I was awake and in the right mind, I would have been shitting bricks.
“Oh, me? I’m the guy who’s been haunting your dreams for the past 8 years!” It said back with too much enthusiasm, almost like it expected I should know the answer. I came to learn it would keep this enthusiasm for every interaction I had with it. The strange part was, I don’t remember ever seeing this thing in any dream or nightmare I’ve ever had before. Maybe I could chalk it up to my bad memory, but I feel like I would remember or at least recognize it.
“Why would you do that? Couldn’t you go haunt somebody else’s for a little bit?”
“Well of course not, silly. You created me!”
Then, in that dream-like manner, I found myself standing outside of my room looking in, not even noticing the change in scenery. Perhaps there’s just part of the dream missing from my memory. Anyway, I look in and through the darkness of night I can just barely make out the creature hunched over in the corner. As if on cue, it turned its head to look at me, its glowing eyes and mouth shining through the darkness. Then it disappeared, and would reappear in a different part of the room and wait for me to notice it again before slowing turning its head towards me. Sometimes it would run past the doorway, which doesn’t make any sense because the door opens up to the corner of my room. It would have to have been running into and through the wall.
Then I woke up for real. I lay there, my sheets drenched in sweat and my heart pounding, but I’m sure it’s not a dream anymore. I usually don’t remember my dreams well, but this one was branded into my memory. I couldn’t get the sight of the creature out of my head, and for the next day it was just about all I could think about. Like I said, I get a lot of nightmares, but I’m lucky if I remember them at all. For the most part, the only indication that I had a nightmare was me waking up drenched in sweat and a little frantic. This one stayed with me. The next few days were pretty uneventful, and although my dreams were once again weirdly vivid, I didn’t see the creature in any of them. I also didn’t have any nightmares.
Flash forward to early this week - I was up to nothing in particular, having just wrapped up a competitive match in CS:GO, and out of the corner of my eye I swear I saw the same creature standing next to me, just staring at me with that enthusiastic smile on its face, its limbs bent outward so unnaturally. It couldn’t have been more than a few feet away. I nearly jumped out of my seat, immediately swiveling over in my chair to the side it was on, but nothing was there. That brief glimpse was enough to get my heart pounding. That’s when the hallucinations began. At least I would like to think that’s all they are.
Without going into too many boring details because it happens about the same every time, I now see the thing in my peripheral multiple times a day and it always scares the absolute hell out of me whenever it happens. It’s far too real and detailed to be my mind misinterpreting some other random thing in my peripheral. I’ve been unemployed for a while now, and usually spend most of my time gaming, so at the very least I can consider myself fortunate to not be having these panicked freakouts in public. I haven’t had time to do much research since this all started happening, but I did come across this forum. It all sounds so cartoonish, and to an extent almost looks that way, but I need you to believe I’m telling the truth. Apart from that, the only somewhat relevant information I’ve been able to find online is about that old urban legend of the Slenderman - some call it the Thin Man. Apparently the whole dream part plays out similarly, but the thing I’ve been seeing bears absolutely no resemblance to it, and I never believed in it anyway so I guess my only lead is a dead end. If anybody knows anything about this, or has experienced anything similar, god please let me know. It hasn’t even been a week since this started and already feel like I’m losing my goddamn mind. If I find anything interesting, I’ll try to keep you updated, but my research has been very dry so far.