Shadowed Figures
by Victoria Rife
Since I was about four years old I saw shadows at night that terrified me. This was highly unusual because I was relatively fearless when it came to most aspects of life. At the time I think my parents just believed it was the workings of an overactive imagination but I knew what I saw was real. I would often sleep on the floor of my brotherâs room, at the foot of his bed, or at the end of our hallway just so I wouldnât have to be stuck in my room alone with whatever was harassing me.
The shadows were always pitch black and opaque while normal shadows are transparent and light penetrates them. Thatâs very obvious information but I feel the need to point it out because a lot of people tend to come up with the same reasoning for the shadows I saw – “maybe it was a passing car that cast light into the room?” “Was it a moving tree outside of your bedroom window?” If a passing car or a moving tree can cast impenetrable black shadows in the shape of a figure then thatâs one hell of a car or tree!
The shadows always felt mean or angry to me – for some reason I felt like they were not there to be gentle and friendly, they were there to harm me. Although, as a child, they never ever touched me. I would simply wake up at night and see one of them standing at the foot of my bed or standing across from my room and I felt more scared than I have ever felt in my life. Ever.
Gradually the occurrences stopped and I was able to sleep okay again.
It wasnât until years later did I see one again and it terrified me more than any of my other experiences. I was trying to fall asleep as my husband (my fiancĂ© at that time) lay sound asleep next to me. It was standing about four feet away from our bed until it slowly came over and leaned over my husband. It had no distinctive features – no face, no hands, no feet, no clothing, no hair, nothing. It was simply a black shadowed figure with impenetrable darkness. I started screaming to wake up my husband to turn on the light and the shadow disappeared. I explained what happened to him but I donât think he believed me. My husband had never seen or experienced anything he could not explain and although the paranormal interests him, he had never felt, seen, or heard anything unexplainable. He tried to quiet me down and we slowly fell back to sleep. I felt safe – I had always felt safe sleeping in the same room as others.
But later on in the night I awoke on my stomach unable to breathe.
Someone or something was holding me down, pushing me down onto the bed with all of their might. I was gasping for breath and managed to yell out to my husband who turned on the light once again. At this point I was simply sobbing. We moved our bed against the wall so nothing could approach me and I demanded that the light be left on for the rest of the night.
A few months later I was switching through the channels on the tv when I happened to stop on a paranormal investigation show. I have no idea which one it was but my ears perked up when they talked about âshadow peopleâ. Sure enough, they played a video of a âshadow personâ appearing out of nowhere and it was exactly the same thing Iâve been seeing for years.
Awesome idea!! KGhost Internet Radio had your link on their internet radio website; what a cool venue for that, huh? Wish you luck and successes….sounds really awesome!!! Love the idea…
Whoa, creepy!!! Any idea what the shadow people’s problem is???
Great story, Victoria!
I experienced something like this all through my high school years (strangely, not before or after), and I lucked out that there was never the feeling of malicious intent. At first, I thought it was a trick of my eyes as I was reading before falling asleep, just something dark in the hallway or doorway. Not so much, really. My German Shepherd always slept at the end of my bed, and even if there was no sound and the rest of my family was asleep, her ears would prick. She’d look over quickly to exactly where I thought I had seen something and stare for a while, then calm down again.
A woman from my father’s church, who happened to also be the town historian at the time, actually believed me when I was telling her about it. After several weeks, I wasn’t just thinking that I saw things, but a humanoid darkness the size of a small child would stand just inside my door. Over time, one multiplied into three, each in a different spot in the room. Now and again, I could have sworn I heard whispers but could never discern what was being said. The historian tried looking into it for me but ultimately came up with nothing.
After a while, I got used to it.
At the end of my senior year, my best friend came to stay the weekend and set up her sleeping bag on my bedroom floor. She knew about the “shadow people” but didn’t believe me in the slightest. I’m in my bed with my dog sprawled over my feet, and my friend is getting settled in. Just as I’m dozing off, I hear a frantic whisper.
“Rena…what is *that*?”
The streetlight outside lets me see things in that typical orange glow, and I can see my friend’s head turned very pointedly in the direction of where the first shadow would always stand.
“Oh,” I reply sleepily. “That’s just one of those things I was telling you about. Don’t worry–they don’t do anything or hurt anyone.”
“Um…’kay.”
For five minutes, we’re quiet, and I almost manage to fall asleep again. But, suddenly, my bed bounces slightly as my friend leaps into it, wriggling her way under the covers, covering her head and everything. She says to me, “How are they here? Your dad’s a minister–there are crosses all over the place!”
“Maybe the power of Christ doesn’t bother them,” I mutter back, sleep really trying to pull me under.
“Okay…we’ll find something else to get rid of them, then.”
When I woke up the next morning, my friend had already been awake for a bit, rummaging through my closet for anything she could find. On a whim, she decorated my room with anything related to Darth Maul (yes…from Star Wars: Episode I) that she could find: masks, action figures, post cards, even the collectible Pepsi can. Very oddly, the shadows never came back. I still don’t know what to make of that.
I used to see these as well when I was a child. Mine were always by my door and would walk towards my bed along the wall by my closet. I wholeheartedly agree that they were not there to chill and be friends. My parent’s never believed me and wouldn’t let me sleep elsewhere. These shadows appeared nightly for years. I had my stuffed animals set up in defense perimiters (it’s ok to laugh) and usually they wouldn’t appear if I could sneak a pet into my room to sleep with me. Eventually as I got older I heard somewhere that if you demand in the name of Jesus Christ that they leave they have to. I would chant this then when they started to move closer and it seemed to help–or at least it made me feel more at ease. I have not seen them since bfore I went into high school. It scares the crap out of me that one appeared to you as an adult. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be an insomniac again. Best of luck to you.
Hey Rena! What joo doin!? You shoulda emailed me that one so I could publish it properly. Silly. :p
Good story!
This is not pleasant. The room my daughter sleeps in was my little brothers for years. He was always scarred to death to go to sleep even as a 14 year old boy. He used to say that these very dark forms were in his room frequently and always felt that they wanted to hurt him or worse. He used to say the feelings of malice were so strong that sometimes he would wake up and instead of being across the room they were all over him trying to keep him from breathing. He didn’t call them shadow people, somehow he believed that they were demons. Demons that he accidentally invited into his life out of a youthful curiosity of black magic and something called the necronomican that he had read through and played with as a kid. Now my daughters don’t see the dark figures, but they have seen a small child just sitting at the end of their bed watching them sleep just as they are waking up.
My husband and I had someone or something that followed us from our apartment to our house. I sensed it was a male presence, totally non-aggressive and liked to play hide and seek.
Your all so easy to jump to conclusions of ghosts …What if this shadow is what lives inside of you just sometimes …Or maybe we have discovered how to exsist in different dimensions …Would you be so scared if it was a person who worked for the government and was there to spy on you from a socialoligist point of view..No not there to hurt you but to study your reactions and maybe even bring you into this top secret experiment at sometime in your life … Some would say im crazy but then again you don’t know my story or what I have found out. Look outside of the box people..try to look with a science point of view and you just might be surprised at what theory you end up with..I have my facts but I can’t discuss that . Just know that we know very little about our bodies and our universe but the government has been studying us for a very long time. How would they get peoples permission to evaluate your everyday living situations ..Think about it!!! By not being seen ….Right? THINK PEOPLE!!
Jen… There’s no need to be insulting. God knows, I agree with you in principle, that nobody knows anything. I also feel that MOST ghost hunters leap to conclusions when they make any type of declaration, but this section of The Beyond isn’t for debunking, and telling people how they’re wrong. Its about people sharing their experiences so that others reading may be able to identify with them. It’s also about telling a good first hand story.