I go by the name Bugsy online, and I’m just a 21 year old guy living in America. I’m born to a fairly mixed heritage, with the main sides of my family being of Celtic and Native American descent. Because of this, I often have more insight to these cultures than the average person, and this is important because of where I recently moved to.
I’ve lived in Idaho my entire life, and I’ve explored much of the American west coast but never really gone east much, not much further than Yellowstone. The Native American culture all around this continent is extremely rich, however, in the particular region west of Yellowstone, the stories are more peculiar. When we went to visit Native American settlements around eastern Idaho, my mom would frequently tell me to be careful what I touch and what buildings I enter. She would often speak of legends of shadow people and the Natives of the region believing certain portions of land had a weak barrier between the world of the living and the dead. My mother was always a skeptic when it came to mythos, but whenever I asked her to elaborate on this subject, she would simply say “It’s better if you didn’t know. You’re too young to have that on your plate.” I always found this weird, but as we only visited such places infrequently, it wasn’t much of an issue to me at the time.
Fast forward to 2021 and my mother dies. I could go into immense detail about just how horrid that experience was and everything that came after, but that’s ultimately irrelevant to the story. What is relevant is because she died, both my father and I had major financial issues related to her death and we were forced to move from the valley I lived in my whole life out east, towards central Idaho. When we first got to our new home it always felt off to me. Things would move with nothing around it to do so, doors would lock with no one being on the side of the door where the lock is, but quite frankly I still didn’t care much. I had been through so much that year that having a creepy place with some spooky occurrences was preferable to where I had been previously. However, I soon noticed it wasn’t just our place, this whole town had something off about it.
Not only are the vast majority of folks here Pagan (which is surprising considering how Catholic Idaho is elsewhere), but every single person I met mentioned being careful of the shadow people. Don’t talk to them, don’t try to touch them, just let them be. I hadn’t seen any shadow people around, and I’m fairly skeptical on spiritual occurences after experiences I’ve had and how much I understand of certain beliefs. However, no matter who I asked about when it came to such a thing, everyone that has lived here for longer than a year was in agreement about shadow people very much existing. While all of this is spooky, I just kept pushing it aside as some form of local superstition or a way to scare folks out of town, as smaller more rural places like these don’t like newcomers much.
So I went around applying for jobs and finally nailed one in the medical field, my much preferred field and what I was most experienced in. The place I work is a very unique form of care center. You can compare it to a skilled nursing home for older folks, however the entire facility is essentially just two really big, classic American houses segmented into several rooms. The first house was built in ‘81 and the second was built in ‘87, and after the original owner who had used these as apartments sold it to the new owner, the new owner has turned the place into essentially an old folks’ home and hospital. The decorations are amazing, the place is very much up to state code (a rarity in any medical facility), medications are properly maintained, all staff are vetted in, the entire place feels like home and is lax on employees, what could go wrong? Turns out, I should have thought more about this place before immediately accepting the job, as things couldn’t be worse.
I started off on night shifts, being trained by a wonderful woman we’ll call Vee for the sake of this story. Vee has worked at this place for 3 years, knows it inside and out and is one of their most trusted employees. My first night training under Vee, everything seemed normal until around 2:00 am, when I heard footsteps coming down the hallways with no one there. I asked her if she heard the same thing, and then she looked at me confused.
“I thought you said you lived in Idaho your whole life!” She said to me.
“I have, just on the Western side. What does that have to do with the footsteps though?” I replied.
She just simply laughed and then patted me on the shoulder before saying “Kid, you’ve got a lot to learn.”
After she trained me some more on the cleaning procedures and how to toilet specific residents, she eventually called for a ten minute break. As we both sat down opposite of each other, she began to explain to me about the history of this particular facility and supernatural phenomenon. She revealed that she herself was also Native American, born to a local tribe, and the land the facility is built on was always cursed. The Natives never knew why, but shadowy figures, including a man, woman, cat, and ‘multi-eyed octopus thing’ would always show up in this specific spot.
“Look, ma’am, if you’re trying to sell me a ghost story I’m not buying it.” I told her bluntly.
“Ghosts?” She laughed again. “Don’t be stupid. Ghosts don’t exist. These things though… they aren’t ghosts. They’re something more.”
Her alarm rang for our break time to be over and we both got up, but before I began walking away she stopped me and said this;
“Before I forget, you know the death procedures in these facilities, right?” She asked me.
I nodded my head, as I have gone through the procedure before, and unfortunately many more times than once.
“If someone ever dies here, leave the window slightly open. You don’t want to make it mad.” She said in a stern tone as she just casually walked away.
After that shift, in the morning I talked to my dad about the craziness of the night. When I got to the whole thing with footsteps and keeping the window open, my dad immediately said it was ridiculous and it’s probably just floorboards creaking in a certain way. I believed him at first, because, rightfully, it makes no sense. You’re telling me after hundreds of years of recorded history and scientific documentation of American lands, cities, people and such that this town which isn’t even horribly small happens to house some shadowy figures that make spooky noises in a hospital at night? It’s never been on the news, its nowhere on the city’s website, none of the shadow people showed up when we passed by this place going to Yellowstone, so how is this at all real?
Feeling slightly relieved after my talk with my father, I went to sleep. I woke up around 5:00 pm the next day and talked to a few friends over the phone before heading out to work at 9:30 pm. I told several of my friends what had happened the night before and just thought it would be a funny story down the line. Vee and I trained some more, and around 3:00 am, similar to the previous night, she called for a break. During said break, one of my friends was up uncharacteristically late and messaging me a ton. When I opened my phone, one of my friends was messaging me frantically about the place I worked at being documented as haunted. This friend has a tendency to be a bit overdramatic and come to conclusions very fast, so I said I wouldn’t believe them without some evidence.
Just then, they shoot me several articles about a facility in the town I live in by the exact same name being a common visiting spot for paranormal investigators since the 1930s! Even before the houses that make the facility now were built, the land used to have a mental hospital on it, with some very shocking and horrific records. It was abandoned in 1953 and then demolished in 1960 after drug dealers were using it to smuggle ingredients through, and then someone acquired the land in 1980 and built the first house/apartment building in 1981. Both buildings were then refurbished in 1993 and renovated in 2003, and ever since they’ve been majorly the same.
This was a shock to me. The employer made it sound like this was just some random, small facility made after a landlord couldn’t afford maintenance prices anymore, not that this place used to have a completely different facility here with an infamous history. It also didn’t help that later that night, when I asked Vee about the history of the place, she said she barely knew as the owner is some grumpy old fart who barely even inspects the place he’s owned for nearly 30 years. The last time she spoke to him, he was in a massive fit about things being out of order, and the staff moving some particular decoration he put in the lobby. Vee described the decoration as some creepy, antique doll from the 1800s, decrepit and looking as if it had bloodstains. Our head admin moved it after several visitors complained of its creepiness and refused to put it back, so the owner then put it in a box in the storage room, locked said box, and said if anyone were to move it, there would be hell to pay.
Skipping to my third and final night of training, things were normal until about 2 am when I heard a meowing sound coming from the lobby. When I looked down the hallway, I saw a cat, and I wasn’t surprised as some of the folks in this building have therapy cats and perhaps one just got out. However, when I got within 10 feet of it, I stopped dead in my tracks. It had no face whatsoever, and it was partially translucent, like a literal walking shadow. I said “what the fuck” out loud, and then the thing just jumped into one of the walls, disappearing.
“So, you’ve met the cat, eh?” Vee said before I even had time to move from my initial position.
“What is it with this place? Is there some demonic bullshit here or are y’all playing pranks or-?” I began to ask in a rapid pace.
“Bugsy, calm down. It’s just the way things are.” She said in a solemn tone. “Look, follow me.”
I followed her a couple hallways down, and right in front of room 8’s door was a shadowy man, just staring at the door.
“You see that? That means they’re getting ready to pass. As soon as a resident is past the point of no return, the shadow man will be at their door.” She said in a strangely casual tone.
“That’s… this is impossible.” I uttered in complete disbelief.
“Welcome to the medical field, son.” She chimed. “I give her a week. Don’t be shocked if she dies on your shift.”
After that night, I had issues sleeping. I stayed well up into the afternoon, just trying to piece together the situation. It all made no sense, yet it was happening before my very eyes, and Vee saw it too. During a staff meeting the day after, I asked other employees about the same things I saw and Vee showed me, and everyone had their own stories to share. From the newest employees to the head administration, literally every single employee here knew about these happenings… and yet they don’t do anything about it? They don’t try getting rid of them? They don’t try researching them? They don’t get a fucking scientist out here to verify that shadow people are not only real, but that there’s this whole underlying mythos and lore that this whole time has been true???
Then, it got me thinking about mom. She always said I had to be careful in places like this town. That the Natives believed and saw things that were creepy, unnatural or dangerous. She refused to elaborate for so long, and now I think I see why she did, as learning of this consumed my mind. Almost my entire weekend was spent trying to figure out just what the hell was wrong. Am I insane? Is it mass hysteria? Should I go to a mental hospital? So many questions and so little time, and soon enough I was back on the job, this time all by myself.
My first night by myself went off without much issue. A few spooky noises, no big deal. The second night, I heard random laughter coming from somewhere in the building. As I searched, following the sound, it lead me to an old Christmas doll on a table, with the nametag “Gabriel”. It looked like an angel, so I guess this weird little thing was meant to be representative of the biblical entity of the same name. As I went to touch it, my fingers burned. It felt as if I was touching a hot oven. My mom said mentioned having similar reactions to books of occult origin… clearly this thing was bad news. I grabbed an extra towel, wrapped it in said towel so I wouldn’t have to touch it, and then put it far in the back of the storage room. If I had it my way, I would have burned the thing, but I didn’t want to get fired. After I put it in the room, I saw the shadow man again. However, instead of looking at the door, he was just staring directly at me. At first I felt nothing, but soon it felt like I was losing oxygen, or being choked.
I called upon the name of the God I’ve worshipped since childhood, and the shadow man went away. After taking a break, the rest of the night went off with no issues.
The third night was very calm. Nothing much happened except for the shadow cat appearing in a window and vanishing. However, the house over was having complete chaos. I was frequently called by the staff on the other side of the park in the middle of the facility, and I had to assist them with cares for the majority of the night. Other than that though, nothing major. Now, the fourth night was… well, something else.
Getting used to a night schedule after living on a day schedule really wears you down. At this point, I was super stressed, disoriented, and had a massive lack of appetite, and it was affecting my mental and physical health after 2 weeks of this job. Of course, the fourth night, right before my next weekend had to be the worst night up to this point. Residents constantly getting up, screaming, banging on doors, hallucinating, shitting the bed, it was like I was working on a full moon. On top of this, the shadow people were everywhere. Several shadow men showed up throughout the night in random spots before suddenly disappearing, the shadow cat thing was constantly running through the halls… but then, amongst the chaos, I hear something. It sounds like some form of music, raising up and down in tone rapidly. However, the closer I listened, the more clear it became that this wasn’t music, it was a fall alarm going off.
I sprinted towards the location it came from, room number 8, and I had gotten there just in time. For those who don’t know what a fall alarm is, its a cushion pressure plate attached to a weight detector, often put on wheelchairs or beds for those with horrific injury, difficulty balancing, or broken bones. I had managed to get to the room right before the resident actually got off of the bed completely and falling, and helped her back into bed. However, she started grabbing at me and screaming, which was uncharacteristic.
“THAT BASTARD’S COME TO TAKE ME! I’M NOT GOING TO THE PEARLY GATES UNTIL I’M DONE!” She screamed as she violently tugged at my arm.
“Its okay [name I can’t disclose (HIPAA)], you’re okay, I’ve got you.” But no matter how much I consoled her, she never calmed down.
It became such an issue that whenever I would calm her down enough to leave, I would constantly check the hallway after doing literally anything else, as she got up and screamed, over, and over, and over. I would have to constantly run back to her room when in the middle of something else just to make sure she didn’t fall, and after talking to my administrators, we were able to get hospice to come by and keep her company as I did my job. I went home that night so exhausted that I passed out, in my bed, not changing any of my clothes. When I woke up hours later, I had learned that only 45 minutes after my shift ended, this resident died. Almost an exact week after the shadow man was at her door.
During the weekend I tried to forget about work, and just leave it behind, but every time I slept, I had some horrid nightmare about my mother. Her corpse walking around, haunting me in everyday tasks. Saying things like ‘I told you not to go’ and ‘you didn’t listen to me’. It was… horrifying to say the least, and I refuse to go into any more detail as it’s a kind of dark and disturbing that shouldn’t exist. I cried every time I woke up, and I felt awful, every single day. Its so hard to sleep during the day, especially with recurring nightmares, and there were several times I either refused to sleep or just couldn’t. My physical and mental health was wearing thin, and I had to accept the reality that I work for dogshit wages at a place with spiritual bullshit no one fully knows or understands and due to money I am forced to continue this path despite everything telling me to get out. Believe me, I wanted to leave this job as soon as possible, but I had just come back out of homelessness and the last thing I needed was weeks without a paycheck.
I wanted to leave. I wanted to go back home. I wanted to see mom again. I wanted the entire year I had to endure full of nothing but pain, death, confusion and tragedy to just go away… but I’ve learned all too often that you don’t get what you want in life without working for it. As much as it sucked and I hated it, I returned to work, day after day. The entire second week alone at work I can barely remember. I remember it sucked, spiritual stuff was happening, but at this point I was just so apathetic to it all that I didn’t care for it. Soon enough, I forgot that the sun even existed, as I got stuck in the nocturnal lifestyle, and never saw or felt the sun upon my skin for weeks.
On the fourth day of my third week alone on the job, it was peaceful. It felt nice, nothing crazy happened, I even had enough of a break to write some of my book. I went home thinking I had my weekend, until my boss called me in the middle of my sleep, around 3 pm, saying I needed to cover the night shift as the person scheduled to work that night walked out. I was so angered that I couldn’t fall back to sleep, and so after hours of being awake, I begrudgingly went back to work that night.
This was the absolute worst night I’ve ever worked, anywhere. I would have rather been cleaning up after and fighting drunk, angry moshpit folks at the end of a late night concert like I’ve done in security before. But I digress.
All of the residents were awake. Every. Single. One. Not a single resident was sleeping. 4 of them were constantly wandering, mumbling random words and moving things around, and all of the others were in an almost catatonic state on their beds, simply staring into space. I’ve worked at these facilities a lot before, and I have never seen such collective and uniform behaviors from all residents, let alone at the same time. It was as if a hivemind was controlling them, half of them didn’t even act like themselves. Some of the ones in their rooms would even come out to the main rooms staring at the window, saying hi to random people that weren’t there. As I checked the files on these residents, almost every name any of them mentioned was of someone they loved that died. It was as if I was playing a real life horror game. No matter what I did, all of them would be in this catatonic state, all wanting to act on some random accord.
I was sick, I was tired, I was beyond frustrated, but above all of that I wanted these people cared for and back in bed. Eventually, I did it! Everyone was cared for and put in bed. However, that wasn’t the end of the chaos. As I was enjoying the peace and quiet, writing down observations and tracking behaviors, I started hearing noises. I heard a door open and I immediately jutted up, looking around, but there was nothing. I then heard what sounded like someone barefoot running straight at me. I braced myself, but no one was there.
I then heard what is one of the freakiest sounds and or voices I heard in my entire life.
“Who are you to play in my house?” Echoed a voice, sounding simultaneously like an old woman and young girl at the same time.
The lights began to flicker intensely, and the entire place went dark for maybe 5 seconds. Then, the lights returned. However, something touched my back. I turned around and looked and… remember that multi-eyed octopus shadow figure Vee mentioned? Yeah, that is a heavily oversimplified description. It’s very form was incomprehensible. Its ‘skin’ looked like a black cloud, ebbing and flowing like water in a storm, its ‘eyes’ were like faint, yellow stars off in the distance of space, and they were everywhere. Its tendrils moved and flowed like water spouts, regularly changing how translucent they were, and its shape changed at random with seemingly no rime or reason. It was massive, as if I was looking at a being the size of a mountain, simply phasing through the roof and walls of this facility.
The more I looked, the less I understood. Its color wasn’t just black, it would change shades every millisecond, and it seemed to occasionally reflect purple and blue light from a light source I couldn’t see. It was as if millions of parasites were digging around its stormy sea like skin, and as if its center was null, void, pure nothingness.
I called upon the name of the God I’ve worshipped since childhood once again, and the more I chanted his name, the smaller this being got, until vanishing from view.
Ever since, I put in a two weeks notice, but after having literally no bites on my more than 50 applications to other places in this town, I negotiated for a schedule change and different position instead. While the terrors of the night are not as present in this place during the day (though they are still around, believe me), my greatest worry now is how long I’m going to be stuck in this job. Besides the spiritual hullabaloo, I get paid only 14 an hour, and am often only given enough hours to make 700 dollars a week after taxes. This job is wearing me down so much physically and mentally and I am trying my damndest to get out of this place, but its as if these shadowy figures are doing everything in their power to stop me from leaving.
However, being as stubborn as I am, I refuse to give up, and I’m currently trying to run my own contracting business and study to go into computers, even while I’m working at this horrid place.
I now see why my mother warned me of these places. Why she said it was best to not look into it. The more you try to rationalize it, the more poisoned your mind becomes. They’re like a cognitohazard. If you think about them too much or research them you fell down so many holes that you almost entirely forgot where you started, and you feel as if reality itself doesn’t exist.
I’ve done my best to stay away from these things, and even when they appear again I just ignore it and force myself to not think about it. I’ve got enough on my plate already to try and solve some mystery of eldritch proportions.
I have several other things that have happened to me in this place, but I believe this is a good place for me to stop for now. I’ve been writing about this for three hours, and I’m getting that feeling like something is watching me.
Moral of the story, if a Native American warns you about something in an area they’ve lived in for centuries, you better listen, or you’ll regret you ever doubting them.