So this is a true a story that happened to me a few years back when I lived at a yoga community in California. It doesn’t have much back story but it really creeped me out when my sightings were later confirmed by others.
The community was relatively remote and in the countryside. There were neighbors, but most of them were ranchers or growers so we didn’t really talk to them or go near their property. The land we were on used to be a cattle ranch and was about 80 acres, with lots of dense woodland and open prairies. There was also an animal pen with llamas, goats and alpacas.
I used to visit the community periodically and each time I would be put somewhere different to sleep. Sometimes I was camping alone and sometimes I had a spot in the staff men’s dorm.
One time I was camping in a tent across from the animal pen in a small clearing. Nobody else was camping near me. At around 3AM at night I woke up and really had to pee.
So I got out of my tent and walled grogilly to the porta potty, which was about 15 feet from my tent. I didn’t bring my flashlight because the moon was out and it was bright enough to see where I was going. As I approached the porta potty, I saw a human shaped blurry shadow kind of hover at a walking speed to my right and pass right through the porta potty door. My heart was racing but I figured I was half asleep and still in dreaming mode.
I didn’t know if what I saw was real… I had hallucinated before when I was very sleepy and just woke up, or when I was very sick with the flu, seeing shadowing human like figures or shapes that then dissolve into a coatrack or other objects as I regain consciousness.
I also did a lot of psychedelics when I was younger, so for a while I had HPPD and there were times at night that I would see weird faces, shadows or shapes at night when stoned in the woods. But those times, even though it was creepy, I knew it was just my mind or just the drugs lol
So I didn’t think much of it but I did mention it to one of the directors at the community. It kind of felt like I was going crazy because it was an intense experience and it was also a dark time in my life and my mind was not in a good place. He told me not to dwell on it too much, and that it was just my own mind playing tricks on me.
I had never seen a ghost or anything like that, and that was the only time I had that type of experience
About a year later, someone asked one of the monks living at the community about spirits. The monk told a story about a shadow spirit that used to live in the men’s dorm. People would see a shadow against the wall of a man running up and it used to push people down the stairs.
They did a puja ceremony to remove the spirit. The priest on site somehow got the spirit trapped on a plate, and they took it to the river and released it.
After she told this story, one of the fellow staff members spoke up and said he once saw a shadow walking around by the animal pen at around 3AM at night. I got tingles up my spine - that’s when I confirmed that I wasn’t hallucinatinh, and that something was indeed with me that night.
There are several other strange stories from that community. Some that happened to me, others that were told to me by others. I remember the energy there was very intense, and sometimes that would could be very good or very bad. I both heard about and witnessed things that were supernatural, mystical, and sometimes downright creepy. Maybe I will update with another post with more stories if people are interested.