Shadow Visitor
As a teenager I hadmany experiences that just couldn't be explained. Some of themcould be dismissed as the overactive imagination of a depressedteen. There was one event, no, a series of events that spannedseveral years, that were witnessed by people other than myself.These I hold, to this day, as evidence that supernatural eventsdo occur. There, I said it. If I ever run for office, this willprobably turn up and cost me votes. But so be it. It is a truestory, elements of it were witnessed by others. So here it is.
Background info:
There is a spare bedroom in the house I lived in from age 13 to18. The house was built in about 1973. We bought it from thebuilder, who lived there with his family until 1980. As far as Iknow no one has ever died in the house. I doubt anyone is buriedunder it, because the water table is so high; the pond that isnext to the house was meant to be a basement. The girl who usedto live in my room committed suicide in 1992, but I don't thinkthat is at all related.
There is also an old wrought-iron bed in the spare room that myparents found in an abandoned house by a dry river bed. I almostalways felt uneasy in that room at night. About that same time itwas not unusual for my friends that stayed over to wake in themiddle of the night only to find that we had had the same dreams.
Age @16.
Once a dream was had about that room. In this dream, a largehairy hand reached through the window and pulled me outside. Iawoke in fear and went to my friend to see if he was OK. He wasstartled to wake, and then, reluctantly, told me of his dream. Hewalked into that dark room, and looked in the mirror. There wasan old old woman whose skin was so thin you could make out thebones of her skull through her face. Her skin was stretched sotight as to force a wide grin. An unfelt wind tossed her hair anddirty white linen gown, and her whole body was glowing with aneerie blue light..
I ran to get my dad. "Dad, there's a ghost in here."But he only laughed at me as he looked into the completelyordinary mirror. He left. Wondering if I had imagined it, Itouched the mirror lightly with my fingers. Nothing out of theordinary I thought.
Then a skeletal hand, made of smoke, glowing with the same bluelight shot out and grabbed me. It was huge. From fingertips towrist it was about two feet (60 cm). It started to pull me intothe mirror. I woke up panting and with a heart rate of about 200beats per minute.
One night C. came over. As always holds true in the horrormovies, my parents were out of town and my brothers were offdrinking and carousing. Our yard is rather large, 4 acres, andthe nearest neighboring house can't be seen. It was a typicalMississippi night: humidity about 600%. No moon. No streetlights.Pitch-black, but you could see a little when your eyes adjusted.Cicadas sang quietly because of the uncomfortable heat.
We sat on the trampoline discussing this book, or that girl,whatever. C said he could hear a high pitched whine in thedistance. I couldn't hear it, but followed him. We walked to oneof the corners of the yard that bordered some woods. We bothstopped when we saw... something.
It was solid black, about two feet high. I thought it was a bushat first. When we got close enough to see it clearly, we noticedthat it was a humanoid shape. Its face had no features, just pitswhere its eyes would be. From the waist up was showing, from itswaist down it was sticking into the ground. It's hands restedpalms down on the earth as though it was supporting his weightwith his hands. (Forgive me for attaching gender at this point,but I definitely think of it as male.) As though he realized wecould see him, he turned his head to the left and sunk into theground.
I said, "C., did you see that?" "Yes," C.answered. "Well what do you say we GET THE $#%& OUT OFHERE!!!" I started running like an animate golf ball inArnold Palmer's back yard, but C. insisted that we walk calmly,but quickly, back to the house.
The three dogs we owned, and two or three of the neighbors dogsjoined in on the fun, and started barking out in the corner ofthe yard where we had seen him. C. and I compared notes on whatwe had seen, to verify that we hadn't gone insane. We haddefinitely seen the same thing. I drew a sketch of him. It scaredus both just to look at the picture, so we burned it in a candleflame. However, there was one section that wouldn't burn. I heldit with tweezers in the candle flame, but the paper, where I haddrawn his hand, wouldn't burn. I was never able to destroy it.The whole time we discussed this the dogs were getting closer.
C. is a rather silly person, and when our conversation hadshifted to other topics he started making silly faces in a fulllength mirror, near the spare bedroom, at the end of the hall.Then all of a sudden, he looked, as Shaggy always said of Velma,as though he'd seen a ghost (Ironically Velma is my grandmother'sname).
He looked behind him, got up and ran around the living roomsaying, "I gotta get out of here. I have to go." When Icalmed him down enough to tell me what was going on, this is whathe said: "I was looking in the mirror, and I could see thebricks of the fireplace behind my reflection. I saw a blueskeletal hand creeping across the bricks." I asked him if itwas attached to any creature, but he said that only about halfthe hand appeared because of his limited field of vision.
After a while he returned to the same place and started lookingmore closely into the mirror. He made the scooby doo face againand ran to the den about twice as hysterical. I calmed him downand he said he had seen the same giant skeleton hand, but thistime had seen up the arm to the shoulder. Both times when heturned around to look back at the fireplace, it wasn't there.This time I never calmed him down all the way, and he left. I wasin the middle of our Mississippi farmhouse, all alone for thenight. I did not sleep well.
I don't think C. ever saw the Shadowman again. However, I saw himon quite a few occasions. On some nights I would wake up, and hewould be standing over me, now the size of a full grown man,looking down at me. I was shocked, of course. I would stare, rubmy eyes, and he would just stand there. Then I turned on thelight and he would cease to be. From that point forward I alwaysslept with a bedside lamp.
If a friend would spend the night. I always slept in the guestroom and let them have my bedroom. When I slept in the guestroom, he appeared almost every time. I got used to waking up andseeing him and just kind of accepted it as my own personal curse.Then, as if his presence wasn't enough, things started movingaround. A book would fall off a shelf. A pen would slide across atable. Then the next step. Things started happening away fromhome.
Once I was at the home of a girl I had been out with about threetimes. I was 17. As the conversation drifted from one topic toanother, I told her that I sometimes had seen weird things.Furthermore, that there had been strange occurrences on datesthat scared the you know what out of the young lady I was with.So when I told her this she got up from her chair, walked awayfrom me, then turned to me to tell me I was a crazy SOB. At thattime a stuffed animal shot out from under her bed. Of course itscared her to no end. I picked it up, I think it was a rabbit,and said, "See, I told you so." Funny thing, we neverwent out after that.
At age 18 I went off to college. He never appeared in my dorm,but the occasional weird thing would happen, moving pens, fallingbooks and such.
When I would go home for the weekend, sometimes he showed up,sometimes he didn't. As I got more and more into life away fromhome, I saw him less and less.
Then once when I was about 20, I had a young lady as an overnightguest. My parents were home. So separate bedrooms were expected.I took the guest room and she took my room.
He showed up that night. I turned over and went back to sleep.
Then next morning I was talking to my friend. She said, "Isaw you looking at me last night." "What are youtalking about?" I said. "I didn't get up last night."
She of course had seen a shadow standing in the doorway. Sheassumed I was sneaking in for... ahem... a political discussion.When she sat up to speak to me, she said I crouched down and kindof vanished.
That was the last time I remember seeing him. Now at 28, my tripshome are less and less frequent. I have moved far away and nowonly get the chance to go home about once every year and a half.Now, even if I sleep in the guest room, he doesn't show. Ifanyone else has seen him, let me know. He's kind of like an oldfriend and I do wonder what he's up to these days.