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Three Strange Silhouettes Or Shadow People

 

This experience happened in our house in Vancouver, B.C., in the mid-70s, when I was about 4 or 5. I slept in a crib in my grandmother's room until just before I went to kindergarten. I was sleeping in my crib the night of the experience. It must have been after midnight, because my grandmother rarely went to bed before 11:30 pm in those days, and she was sound asleep in the bed next to my crib. I don't recall waking up, but I recall the abject terror of watching 3 silhouettes apparently dancing around my crib for what seemed like hours (I have no idea how much time actually elapsed) until I must have fallen back to sleep from sheer exhaustion (it surprises me that I was able to fall back to sleep as terrified as I was).

The silhouettes were very dark figures in an already dark room. My 4 or 5 year old brain perceived them as a witch (a caped figure with a pointed hat) a tin man (boxy, man-shaped figure) and an ice cream sandwich man (rectangular body with what looked like evenly-spaced pock marks in it). The witch and the tin man were dancing by the side of my crib (the witch quite provocatively) and the ice cream sandwich man was dancing at the foot of it. Periodically, this latter figure would seem to leap up over my crib and descend down over me.

I know how bizarre it sounds, but the experience was absolutely real to me, and even now, over 30 years later, I can still recall the abject, breathless terror, and the desire to call out to my grandmother, but the inability to do so (all I could manage was a quiet whimper). I remember trying to look over at my grandmother out of the corner of my eye. I was afraid to turn my head for fear of alerting the figures that I was awake. I couldn't move, but I think this was fear, not sleep paralysis. All this is as vivid in my memory as if it had happened last night.

I do not believe I imagined the experience, although I recognize that my child's brain, in its attempt to make sense of what I was seeing, influenced my perceptions. For instance, I perceived the witch figure as female because witches with pointy hats were female in my mind, so in that sense the perception that the witch figure was female may have been "imagined." However, I cannot believe that a wholly imaginary experience would feel so real or would remain with me for so long.

I have always been afraid of the dark, and to this day I often sleep with the light on even when my husband is sleeping next to me. I don't necessarily think that this experience was the root of my fear of the dark, but I'm sure it didn't help. This experience has troubled me since I had it, and I am very interested to hear of similar experiences. I have tried to research it, and the closest I can come to it is the shadow people phenomenon.

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Comments about this paranormal experience

The following comments are submitted by users of this site and are not official positions by yourghoststories.com. Please read our guidelines and the previous posts before posting. The author, lsandhu, has the following expectation about your feedback: I will participate in the discussion and I need help with what I have experienced.

Believe_1234 (1 stories) (4 posts)
+1
11 years ago (2012-11-28)
Thank you for favoriting my story and leaving a comment and bringing me to your story because they are so much alike! Yours seems scarier though, I can't imagine my shadow man dancing around me, for some reason I think that makes it more scary lol. But I do believe your right, I didn't get a sense that he was evil, I would love to find out more on "shadow people". I find it very interesting now that I'm older. I'm favoriting yours as well.:)
Fergie (40 stories) (1159 posts)
+1
12 years ago (2012-07-20)
Isandhu: sorry, no help from this direction! That certainly was strange?!? 😕
I don't know how I missed this one for so long! That must have been so scary for you, at that young age. My goodness! Did you ever tell your grandmother? If so, did she have anything to say, besides that "you have a good imagination"?
'Grown ups' always say that, don't they? 😉
reddysteady (5 stories) (95 posts)
+1
12 years ago (2012-07-20)
lol "And an ice cream sandwich man" - I love how young minds perceive shapes, that's perfect. I don't mean disrespect but the description of this figure did make me giggle a little 😳 This is a truly spooky account though; I think younger minds are open to perceiving all sorts of things that "grown up" (more jaded, maybe?) minds can't, and that we are especially vulnerable in our sleepy state. Was this your only instance in seeing this phenomenan? I'd be very interested to know if your Grandmother or anyone else in that home had seen something like that before or afterwards.
Love and light,
Red
shadow_witch (65 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-02-02)
Wow...How odd! 😕 Well of course, "The Wizard Of Oz" comes to mind, because of the witch and the tin man, but I have no clue about the ice cream sandwich man. I believe you though, because of the strange things that happened in my OWN childhood. I believe children are allowed a glimpse "behind the curtain of reality" until we get to a certain age... And it's a very strange world back there! Then again, it could have just been a very VIVID dream-but who's to say what REALLY happened, that night? I'd like to know myself! But the sad part is, we'll most likely never know. 😢 It sure is a mysterious world we live in isn't it?!
ams112700 (27 posts)
+1
13 years ago (2011-02-02)
WOW that must have been just plan TERRIBLE! Man just imagine if that happened to me if I told my parents when I got older they would take me to a doctor! They would probably think I am going crazyyy!:P I don't know if they would send me to the doctors but they would think I am going crazy!

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