This happened a while ago so some details are fuzzy. The emotions of being afraid are still with me even as I write this for you all.
As a kid, I always believed that my childhood house was haunted. My first experience happened when I was around thirteen years old. My mom drove me home after school and I immediately ran to the bathroom. As I was sitting there I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. The door knob moved slightly, and my heart skipped a beat. I peered under the crack of the door but saw no one there. Suddenly, the knob began to turn slowly, and I felt a wave of terror wash over me. The door creaked open, paused for a moment, and then slammed shut. I was frozen with fear, unable to move or comprehend what had just happened.
Little did I know, this was only the beginning of a series of chilling events that would haunt me for years to come. I always felt that something was watching me, following me wherever I went in the home. One day, while taking a nap on my living room couch, I was startled awake by a tall, shadowy figure in the doorway. It was solid black and three-dimensional, with a skinny, emaciated appearance. After a second it came at me as if it was in stop motion, think claymation, and it was gone. The shadow figure began to make constant appearances in the house. I would see it from the corner of my eyes or in the darkness.
Imagine this: You’re practicing the piano, deep in concentration, when suddenly you feel like you’re being watched. Your heart starts pounding in your chest as you turn to look towards the doorway, only to see a solid black head-shaped figure staring back at you. I froze in terror, unable to move or look away. The thing’s head then twists back into the hallway. Out of sight. It only lasted a moment, but it was horrifying. It felt like I was living in a horrible movie. I was trying to keep this to myself and things got worse when my mom and dad left town, which they did often. My friend’s dad dropped me off back home and looked towards the window confused. “I thought your dad wasn’t home?”. He did a double-check and told me how he saw a tall shadow figure. He described, in detail, exactly what I saw. It was scary and also validating to know I wasn’t going crazy.
The strange occurrences in my house had everyone on edge. My family started accusing me of inviting something sinister into our home because they too had started seeing unexplained things. The person most affected by this was my mom who heard the basement door slam shut while she was alone in the house. I did everything I could to get rid of whatever was haunting us, but nothing seemed to work for long.
At the age of eighteen, I had my first boyfriend and we would always sleep in the spare bedroom in the basement. Both my parents left town. That night, as usual, my boyfriend put on a podcast to help him sleep. But when I woke up in the middle of the night, I heard a strange voice speaking from across the room. I was terrified and immediately checked his phone. His phone was off. My phone was off too. I could still hear the voice of a woman speaking, and I woke up my boyfriend in panic. He was half asleep and told me to turn off the podcast, but when I explained that the phones were already off, we both froze in fear and stared at the door, wondering what was happening. It was winter, two in the morning, and no one was outside. The voice went away and we both decided we had to investigate. We opened the door and saw nothing. We checked everywhere and there were no footprints in the snow outside. It didn’t make sense.
I went to college that summer and didn’t have anything happen after. When I came back home for winter break my sister put my niece down for a nap in the spare bedroom. My niece woke up screaming and was inconsolable. The next day she told my mom about the scary skinny shadow figure in the doorway. It’s been over six years now with nothing new happening. I can now say that frankly don’t miss anything about whatever it was that was in my home.
If anyone ever had similar experiences or knows about shadow figures I’d be glad to hear it!