Shadows on the Wall

11/20/11

I decided to start keeping a sleep journal because of what I think are weird dreams I'm having. Today passed like any other day; woke up, brushed my teeth, went to school, got home, flopped on the couch, watched TV, brushed my teeth, went to bed. Little did I know, what was meant to be the last step in my day would be the start of my nightmare. I awoke to a strange sound. After the mandatory looking around for threats, I assessed that a wolf hadn’t broken in looking for an early-morning snack.

After determining my safety, I than looked at the clock. It was 12:30. Then I looked at the wall next to my bed. I know this is a strange thing to do, but when I was a child, I had horrible night terrors.I always needed to have a nightlight, lest I wake up in the night, screaming someone was holding me down and trying to kill me. I now know, being an adult; that those episodes were likely the cause of sleep paralysis, and the fear of dying came from my horrible nightmares. I still have that nightlight, and cannot bring myself to remove it from that outlet. Whenever I would wake up as a child, I’d look at the wall, and immediately lose all fear that I had welled up in me.

Back to the present, I looked at the wall. This time, something weird was on the wall. Instead of a shadow of me lying down with my knees sticking up, as I was doing, my shadow showed me lying flat. I soon felt a feeling of paralysis I haven’t felt since I was a child. My neck muscles feeling disabled, I was forced to stare at the wall. In the shadow, I saw something rising from the side of my bed. It looked like an amorphis blob, with no determinable shape. It looked transparent. The next part to come up was the neck, if you could call it that. It was the size of a medium tree trunk, and seemed to merge into the head and body. Next up were the shoulders, half as wide as my bed. Than the arms; twisted and spindly, bent at abnormal angles, 4 fingers with claws at the end, and what looked like spiky appendages. The torso came next, looking to have large spikes coming out from where the ribs should be. Finally, up came the legs, the most human-looking part of the stature, despite appearing to bend to the right. At this point, I was terrified. What was this? Why was it in my house? Why couldn’t I move? Than just as soon as it fully appeared, it again disappeared, slowly slinking downwards, before it’s misshaped head shrunk below the shadow of my bed. The second the last trace of its head disappeared; I was able to move again. In an instant, I jumped up from my bed and turned my light on, and did a complete search of my room, but found no trace of the creature. I drew it up in Photoshop to the best of my memory:

11/21/11

After that incident last night, I decided to sleep in the living room on the couch. My parents keep nightlights in the hallway for my little brother, who seems to have night terrors, as do I. Again, I woke up, and looked at the clock, and it was again 12:30. I looked down the hall, and again felt the paralysis set in, locking my head in place staring down the hall. It appeared slowly, just like last time. First its head emerged from my room, than the rest. Than it started moving, moving towards the living room…towards me. It moved slowly, its shadow the only thing about it visible, its shadow stretching over the wall as it moved. I had a full view of the hallway, and nothing but the shadow was there. Again, the shadow faded into nothing, and again the paralysis dissipated. I jumped up, and went to my car to sleep for the rest of the night.

The next morning, I decided to get to the bottom of what was going on. I Googled for “moving shadows” and got an eyeful. Apparently, there have been a lot of “shadow-people” spotted over the centuries, and some have been unofficially connected to disappearances. I was hoping my little “shadow-person” stalker wasn’t there to harm me.

Tonight, I unplugged my nightlight, hoping that that will get rid of him. Wish me luck.

This journal was found on the hard-drive of one Richard Hunt. His bed was torn to shreds, and blood was everywhere, but a body was never found.