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 brother’s room, at the foot of his bed, or at the end of our hallway just so I wouldn’t 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. That’s 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 that’s 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 wasn’t 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 don’t 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 “shadow people”. Sure enough, they played a video of a ‘shadow person’ appearing out of nowhere and it was exactly the same thing I’ve been seeing for years.