My family called me fidgety for always looking over my shoulder, they said I was paranoid. I just always saw people around me just out of the corner of my eye. I would be in the bathroom, looking at my phone when I would see fingers emerge from behind the shower curtains. As soon as I looked up, they would vanish. Or I would be in my room, playing a video game, when I would see someone peeking in my room, but it was always the same story. They would vanish.
The worst time, until now, was burned into my memory. There was a hallway running by my room at the time, and I was sitting in a chair playing some game, when I saw it out of my periphery. I saw a full shadow figure walking up to my room and standing right there. I didn’t turn my head for several seconds, and it just stayed there. Finally I mustered up the courage, looked…and it was gone. That happened when I was 7, and I freaked out. I called my parents who were at Walmart, and they just brushed it off. “You’re just paranoid and anxious”, my dad said. I swore I saw it, but no matter what, they didn’t believe me. So I gave up, and stopped mentioning what I saw.
It only got worse, and it has been constant throughout my life. Seeing someone walk by me in an empty area. Hearing my name called from the next room over. Knowing there was someone standing in my window as I left my house. But they always vanished when I looked directly at them. My depression and anxiety worsened. How was I supposed to live when I was being watched by things I couldn’t see?
Finally, I sought professional help, and opened up about what I was seeing. The doctors assumed it was simply due to my depression, “depressive psychosis” as they called it. They prescribed me antipsychotics and I really, really wanted to believe them. I hoped a cure was in sight for me. And for a time, they did go away. I was left alone and didn’t see any strange movement from my periphery.
Until tonight.
At 8:30 tonight I went on one of my late drives, and given the season, it was pitch black out. As soon as I walked out my door, I had the strangest frightened feeling. Something was watching me. I ran to my car, jumping in and locking the doors. I checked the backseats, making sure nothing was there. Finally I looked up, put my car in reverse and saw it again, just outside my clear vision. A clearly human shaped figure standing directly in my window waving at me. I directed my gaze and it was gone.
Taking some deep breaths, I put my car in reverse, backed out of the driveway, and started down the road. I just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching me. I was 5 minutes down the road when I felt something on my shoulder. I couldn’t tell at first, but then it squeezed.
I could feel an invisible hand squeezing my shoulder. I looked at the rearview mirror, and saw a face. A clear, but distorted, face. There was no nose, no mouth, but two black holes where the eye should be, and that gaze pierced my very soul. I tried to reason with myself. Maybe I forgot my med. Maybe it’s a reflection on the rear windshield. But then a car came up behind me, and its lights shining through the eye holes made clear that this was a very real ghostly thing staring at me. I slammed on my brakes and the car rear ended me. I didn’t feel it. All I felt was fear. I knew that was the same thing I had seen from the corner of my eyes all my life.
“What the hell man?! You could’ve killed us!”, the other car’s driver screamed from outside my window. Turning towards him, I was shaking and I could just feel that I was pale. “Oh God, you okay dude?” His tone shifted quickly. “Ye-ye-ye-yeah”, I stammered out, “F-f-fine.” “I’m going to call police so they’ll come out”, he said.
A police officer came by and investigated the accident. Thankfully it was only a minor fender bender for both of us. I made up a lie about how there was an animal in the road, and I drove back home, constantly checking my mirror.
The car was the least of my worries. I can’t shake what I saw. It’s everywhere. It’s in the darkness. I’ve turned every light in my house on, but I can’t call anyone. They wouldn’t believe me. But I see it. Through the cracks in my bedroom blinds, I see that face. That ghastly pale face. It’s staring at me.
Please help.