I had an incident with the Shadows when I was about 10 years old. I was sick with the flu, and was staying at my mother’s house. I had been watching TV in her bedroom, and I fell asleep. Sleeping fitfully, I was awoken by the sound of my mother screaming ferociously. She was lying next to me, and it was now about 2:00am, and she was sitting up and pointing at the wooden dresser. The silhouette of a man was perched on top of it, which was very high, and it was crouching there, its face fixed upon my shrieking mom. It had no detail. It was just a featureless humanoid shade with narrow white eyes. It turned its head to me when it found out I had awoken as well, and it just sort of stared at me while my mom continued to howl at it. It then leapt off the dresser, looked at me again, and then ran out the door where light from the hallway was streaming in. The way it ran, it just sort of became a blurry streak that vanished around the corner faster than any man could run.

The next morning, my mom was so very nervous, and I brought up the Shadow; she started acting very skittish and told me not to talk about it ever again. I brought it up several times more in the future, and each time she admitted that she never wanted to think about it again. The interesting thing was, she felt a great evil force emanating from the Shadow, she told me that much, and that it was a spawn of the devil. However, I felt nothing more than curiosity from it, and the fact that it was on my side of the bed and the way it was looking at me gave me the impression that it was there to watch me, as it only fled when it noticed I had glimpsed it.

That was not the least of my encounters. For years, both before and after the incident, I had always noticed that there were times when it was dark, that there had seemed to be a presence lurking in the shadows, a force that made you feel like something was staring at you. At times, it was merely uncomfortable, but others, it gave you the impression that it wanted to hurt you, that the darkness hated you, and times like that I would run as though I were being chased, back into the company of others. This only happened at night, when I would be riding my bike home alone from a friends house, or when I was walking my dog and he would start growling at nothing, or when I would walk into my dark
room and would feel a horrible malevolence until I turned the lights on. Sometimes, I would stare at the ceiling, and only moonlight would be streaming in through my blinds, and it seemed as though the room would get darker and darker slowly, and the sense of being watched would increase, and I would start seeing shapes moving at the corner of my eyes. I knew these events were strange because not all darkness or shadows gave the impression of harboring unseen “ watchers”, and most nights nothing at all would be out of the ordinary.

I didn’t encounter a full Shadow again until I was 15 and had moved into a new house, this time with my dad. I was sitting in the living room at 10:00 am, broad daylight outside, and then I felt like something was wrong, that feeling of being watched, and I heard something smack hard against the window, which had the curtain drawn. My heart froze as I saw what had made the sound; a man, or rather the outline of a man, about 5’ tall, was pressed against the glass, arms stretched out and bent upwards at the elbows, palms pressed flat against the glass. The man had no features, no clothes, just that generic human outline I remembered from the bedroom. This took all of one second, as the Shadow then turned and streaked away very fast. The thing that bothered me about it
the most was that whatever it was pressed right against the window, and it should have been solid, but it had been almost transparent, with only the curtains catching the pale grayness of its outline. I had felt definite malice this time, and it only got worse.

I saw a Shadow at night walking my dog, he barked and bared his teeth, and I felt that sensation again, and looked quickly to the side and saw a Shadow shape duck behind a boat in a neighbors driveway, and when I went to look there was nothing there. I saw it again when I was in my kitchen getting some food, there were no other lights on and the living room and hall were nearly pitch black except for a tiny nightlight, and from that I felt the watching feeling and turned fast to notice a mans head with no ears and red eyes looking around the corner from the hallway. It shrank back when it saw I noticed. The worst was when I had fallen asleep doing homework, and had a disturbing nightmare, awakening to the sight of a Shadow standing over my bed, outlined by the light coming in from the hallway through my half open bedroom door, which then quickly backed away and then turned into dark motes when it saw I had noticed it, just like usual.

The entire time I lived in that house, dark places almost always seemed to radiate anger and a sense of being watched. My dog always shied away from dark corners, and would bark and growl at nothing. The worst dreams I ever had came when I lived there, and I know it had something to do with the Shadows that didn’t want to be seen but would always let you catch them looking at you. Two more minor incidents were when I was walking down the stairs at midnight, the bottom floor being pitch black, I saw a shape with red eyes that looked wide and flowing, with a bald human head and no arms and legs, radiating no malice, just surprise, and then a month later when I stepped outside my bedroom and saw a hulking Shadow whose head brushed the ceiling, that had no eyes and a shape that was human but for the strange jagged outline around it. It stood in my way and even reached out, but then it turned and vanished down the wall into deeper shadows. It hadn’t seemed evil either.

I still see dark shapes out of the corner of my eye quite often, and occasionally the sense that a dim room is getting darker towards the ceiling, but the sense of being watched isn’t quite as frequent as it was. I’m 23 now and they must have gotten more careful because they don’t let me see them fully anymore, although I do catch them disappearing around corners or other objects very rarely. I’ve had two friends who didn’t know about these incidents see Shadow Men once as well, and my friends mother and grandmother said they once saw a Shadow Man with narrow white eyes walk into their house, look at them, and then turn and walk away. It is vindicating to know I wasn’t imagining it, and I often dwell upon it to remind me that not all in this world is as it seems. My mom still hates talking about it to this day.
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