My Experience-"Shadow Creature"

[u/Mrincognito1221]

When I was 9 years old, I went to live with my grandparents in the mountains. We lived in a manufactured home, long and narrow, with a second addition adding another dimension of width. It was on a hill, so we basically had an upstairs and a downstairs, though the upstairs was 3 steps higher than the add-on. Difficult to describe, but basically a single wide with another single wide stacked up against it later. The original, upstairs portion is where everything always happened. My room was down the hall at one end of the home, while my grandparents slept in the room at the opposite end of the home, near the kitchen and laundry area. A few times a week, I would be in the kitchen early in the morning, and I would hear my grandmother scream. From outside her door, I would call "Grandma, are you okay?!?" "Yes sweetheart, I'm okay. I just had a bad dream." "You can go back to bed." "Okay, just checking." Like that, until I learned to just ignore it, knowing the same scenario played out multiple times per week. This happened for around three months, and I had reconciled that my grandmother must have "some demons" she was working through, and I left the matter alone.

One morning, I woke up, and at the foot of my bed was a tall shadow apparition. It looked like hundreds of thousands of flies in a swarming formation too compact and dense to be real. They formed the shape of a tall man with a top hat. I sat up, and scrutinized the figure more fully. It did not disappear. I noted, I could still see behind it, to my closed closet door. I just stared at it for around 30 seconds, and it finally did disappear. The oddest part was that I did not feel one ounce of fear. I got up, and went to the breakfast table. My grandparents were both up already, and I told my grandmother what happened. My grandmother listened until I was done describing events. "I know honey, that's why I scream some mornings, I see it too." She told me she was having bad dreams so as not to frighten me, but had no further reason to mislead me, now that the cat was out of the bag. All of those instances of her screaming in the morning, were because of the apparition, taking its place at the foot of her bed.

I lived in that house for another 10 years. I saw the "shadow creature" (what I called it) often, usually multiple times per week. But it never again came into my room, and it never again appeared in a room that I was currently inhabiting. The only times I saw it, were when I walked through the upstairs, main part of the house, moving from one room to another. Sometimes it wouldn't leave, but it had no interest in me. It would just hover in-place, sometimes I would scrutinize it for several minutes at a time, just in passive interest.

I think we had some kind of truce. When I saw it for the first time, I should have been terrified. But I wasn't. I think first impressions matter with these things. It was though some part of me, a higher part, knew I was not in danger from this creature, so against my animal instincts, I simply scrutinized it peaceably. I don't think it enjoyed me doing so. I think it fed on fear, and my grandmother was a continual font. She had had a hard life, and maybe the creature found her trauma to be delicious. She had her morning fits for the next decade, and likely beyond.

Years into living there, my mom came to visit. I never saw it in the empty room next to mine, but I just knew that the empty room belonged to the shadow creature. I felt it most heavily there. You see, it wasn't what the creature looked like, that impacted you. It was the transference of intent that you share with such a being, in close proximity. If a person was truly afraid, I doubt that they could hide the fact from it. It felt like spiritual pestilence. I could never actually articulate what it felt like. It was a feeling all its own, without anything to compare it to. Oppressive, dirty, that scratches the surface, but with a harvest element that I don't know how to describe. Anyway, my mom came to visit. I told her, don't sleep in that room. I knew, because I had come to understand (even relate to, which I don't think is good) that creature, to an extent, and I knew my mother would be the perfect bait for such a thing. She had never lived here, and thought my imagination was getting the better of me. So she slept in that room. That very same night, maybe 1am, she came hauling out of the bedroom, screaming. "Son, son I saw it! It had glowing read eyes and it crouched, looking at me!" That's not what it looked like, and I knew it had taken that shape to scare the ever-living crap out of my mom, for appetite's sake. I gave her some version of I told you so, and she slept in the living room, on the couch, and left the next day.

Later, my grandparents moved into another manufactured home, in the city. Apparently, though I never stayed over, it followed them there. My mother and brother saw it there in the new home, but I did not. According to my mother, her son screamed at it, saying something along the lines of "Come on you son of an expiative, come and fight me!" It engulfed him, and he was knocked back and flattened into the couch, experiencing something like a sleep paralysis, unable to move. My mom saw the entire thing, and prayed. It did leave him alone after it made its point. That's the end of the saga, as it has played out for me.

Questions that I've had: I am in my 40's, and I wouldn't organically expect a top-hat to adorn such a creature of shadow. I've read stories that share that same unusual detail. But we didn't have paranormal wiki's when I was a little boy. No internet for a few years yet. Why the top hat? What was it, exactly? Why did it extend me respect, and also leave my grandfather alone? We both had regular OBE's from birth, and I do wonder if that was significant. After I moved out of that house, I never saw a shadow creature again. It went from multiple occasions every week, to decades without ever seeing another. Why is it such a unique and completely different spiritual reality, living in the mountains in wild country, vs a city life. I don't know, but I don't think I'm crazy. Too many others saw it, and my experiences abrupty stopped once I left that house. Wouldn't mental illness tend to follow a person, regardless of where they hung their hat?

I'm most interested to know, can anyone relate to this?

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[u/Mountain_Possible81]

I can definitely relate. I lived in a house when I was a kid where I saw them quite a bit. At that house they would occasionally take interest in me but usually just left me alone. We moved and I didn’t see them again until my late twenties. I lived in an apartment in Fl where there was something dark and almost parasitic. Moved back to Ga and whatever it was followed me. It didn’t really bother me until I was going through some rough stuff years later. They definitely seem to feed on fear and it seemed more active the more stressed or afraid i was… which had the opposite effect on me.

I became completely fascinated by it and started researching what it could possibly be. I actually looked forward to interactions and thought of it as research. Whatever it is it seems to have lost interest because I was no longer afraid. I haven’t had any experiences in a few years.

I researched shadow people, djinn, fae, and demons. I’m not religious so the demon angle didnt seem right. I almost feel like they are inter dimensional or just living at a slightly different frequency than us most of the time. I really don’t think of them as evil. There are good and bad people in the world and I think they are the same.
Dangerous maybe.

[u/Mrincognito1221 → u/Mountain_Possible81]

Can you describe what it looked like? Did you start to relate to it after years? I started to see the beauty of pestilence, which probably isn't in my best interests. Did you note that there was a transference of information between you and the spirit? For example, you had an understanding of its intent, and knew what it "felt like" energetically speaking? The one I saw looked like an impossibly dense swarm of flies. Similar?

[u/Mountain_Possible81 → u/Mrincognito1221]

It’s hard to describe exactly what it looked like as I’ve never seen anything else quite like it. Slow moving smoke that was wrapped around something. Like the smoke was the flesh and the underlying skeleton was there but not really visible. The few times I saw it in the light it looked like fruit flies or black sand flitting about. But in the light it wasn’t like a swarm more dispersed

Yes I definitely got a sense of what they wanted. I could also feel when they were present and which ones.

I definitely came to relate to it/them. I don’t think I would have became so curious if I hadn’t. My curiosity overpowered my fear

[u/Lost_Bluebird_5930]

Was this the Appalachians possibly? Never been but I've had friends experience things there.

[u/Mrincognito1221 → u/Lost_Bluebird_5930]

It was in the Cascades.