Hooded Shadow Stalker

This is going to be quite a lengthy story. It covers the majority of the past five years of my life; at least, the bad parts of it, as this shadow man only tends to show up at the worst of times.

Shadow people are a steadily growing phenomenon, and no one really knows of exactly why. I find the entire subject fascinating, even in spite of the rather negative history I've had with them - truly, with one in particular. I've seen stories of them in a good light, where they've gone as far as to protect someone from something else. I've seen accounts of them as observers. I've read of experiences in which they were tormenters. I personally can relate the most to the last.

It started when I was fourteen. My spirits were quite low at the time. My grandmother had passed away, my grandfather had moved up to New York to be with his biological children; we had moved into their old home because it was more spacious than ours and still right on the same property. Living there was nothing short of a constant reminder of the loss for me and, as I found out shortly before Christmas that year, for my mom. It was her mother and step-father, and it was going to be one of the first family Christmases without either of them. She wasn't doing well, and my dad had forgone his promises to be there for her more than he had been, had in fact done the exact opposite and started staying away more often. That was how it all began for me - as much as my mom had been there for me throughout the years, I wanted to be there for her. I decided that rather than cope with my grief, I was going to ignore it, ignore feelings on the whole, so that Mom would have somebody there for her. I in absolutely no way blame her for any of the following events. It was my decision, and she detested it herself.

When I tossed all those negative feelings out the window and locked it before they could find me again, it seems something else did find them. It started very simply; I saw shadows. Out of place shadows darting across the wall out of the corner of my eye, glimpses in mirrors and reflections in windows... And seeing them would always leave me feeling inexplicably grief-stricken, depressed, scared, sometimes even angry, but always confused. These feelings weren't mine, but they were affecting me so strongly that they became mine. My mom later told me that she had seen shadows occasionally as well, but never said whether they affected her mood because I never mentioned to her that they affected mine. As things went further downhill (news of my grandpa dying in New York the following January, the stillbirth of my brother and his wife's first daughter a year later, my dad finally getting kicked out and taking all of our money with him to go live with my mother's best friend and my godmother), the shadows just kept appearing more and more often to me.

In early 2009, things were finally looking up. My mom had met the love of her life. He was more like a father to me in a year and a half than my biological father had ever been. Her divorce with my dad had finally gone through and they were undoubtedly going to be getting married soon. A week after the divorce was finalized, she died. Brain aneurysm. Just like that, everything was sour again, and more so than ever. She had been not only my mother, but also a sister, a best friend, the sort of mom that no teenage girl would be embarrassed of because she was just that awesome, and she was gone faster than I could have blinked. Over the next few months, I isolated myself, and that was when things got worse.

I saw this shadow head on for the first time in around May of 2009. I was being homeschooled at the time because I found it impossible to put on a happy face and go to school like everything was perfectly normal, and I had a habit of finishing my schoolwork early in the day and spending the rest of the day just hanging around the house. It was maybe one in the afternoon, and I was in my room reading, actually feeling pretty good. Quite suddenly, for no reason at all, that good mood drained away from me. I felt almost on the verge of tears, I felt a feeling of absolute terror for no reason at all, so overwhelming that I felt physically sick. I put my book down on my lap, unable to focus. Head on, at the foot of my bed, I saw the source of my despair. It was dark, it was humanoid in shape, and it was tall enough that its head just about touched the ceiling. It appeared to be hooded, and had glowing red eyes with no other features. I sort of squinted, thought maybe my eyes were playing tricks on me, maybe it was just a shadow reflecting from my window; but it was there, standing like some strange three-dimensional shadow at the foot of my bed.

I hid under my covers like a scared five-year-old. I'm not even going to try to pretend that I stood my ground; I was terrified. At that moment, I was five-years-old again, a five-year-old that had just seen the boogeyman but had no parents to call into her room to make it go away. The strange alteration of my feelings connected with its appearance, my first thought was that this had to be demonic - there was no way that it could have been the spirit of a human.

I didn't stay under my covers for long. Where I live, it's so warm by the middle of May that you hardly want to sleep under covers; they're just sort of there for decoration. I very slowly peeked out from under them, saw it was gone, and got out of my room. I grabbed one of my guitars from the computer room and darted outside. I waited for my step-dad to call on his way home from work and didn't go back inside until then, at around six o'clock, five hours later. It luckily wasn't that humid outside that day, but I don't think I would have cared either way.

I saw him again on various other occasions, but never that close up, normally as a two-dimensional shadow against the wall, at my closet door across from the foot of my bed; the only time I can recall seeing him three dimensional again was during a trip to the lake with my brother and a few of our friends one night (at this point in time, the summer of 2010, I was living with my brother's family in the same house my grandparents had once lived in; my step-dad had been forced to leave in late 2009 to take care of his parents, both of whom were stricken with health problems that rendered them incapable of taking care of themselves); I was sitting on the beach stargazing, when I happened to glance off to the side and spot the shadow person standing on the rocks to the side of our swimming hole. No one else saw him, or if they did they certainly didn't mention it, but he stayed there the entire time we were there. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me until I watched him walk up the rocks as we were leaving.

It was later that same night that I told one of my friends about my experiences with him, and opening up about it was liberating... Until my friend left and I came back inside by myself around thirty minutes later. The shadow apparently didn't want me feeling liberated, for as soon as I closed the back door of the house and locked it for the night, I heard a growl issue from outside, a growl that sounded like nothing I had ever heard in my life. It was animal, and it was human, but it wasn't either at the very same time; I doubt any one human or animal would be capable of making this noise. A moment later, I felt such a powerful surge of utter negativity hit me that I became dizzy; and I felt something standing behind me. I was afraid the shadow was going to be right behind me, and I closed my eyes and sort of stumbled out into the living room. The feeling of someone standing over me faded when I sat on the couch and grabbed my laptop, but I still felt him. He was there, he was watching me, and he wasn't giving up that easily.

It was a few minutes later that I saw the light in the laundry room, where the back door to our house is, flicking on and off. Not flickering - flickering implies that it was irregular, like a light blinking just before it dies, or in a power surge, but no. The light was going on, and off. On, and off. The pace was very steady, and rather slow. I swallowed my fear, thought like a skeptic. Maybe the wires were crossed. Maybe it was just a strange power surge, the breaker box acting up for that side of the house. The kitchen light was off, after all, and the only light I could see for that side of the house was the laundry room light. So, I stood, walked through the dining room, through the kitchen... And watched the light switch in the laundry room go up and down on its own a few times before settling in the off position. Another wave of negativity hit me, and he was standing over me again, standing behind me. Anger was the strongest emotion that was being put off by him. He was showing me that he was capable of manipulating things physically, if he wished; he could, if he so wished, physically harm me.

I hurried back out into the living room. I didn't ask God to protect me; I had started looking into shadow people by this point, and I had seen that as a common element in most shadow people stories where the shadow person behaves less than kindly to the narrator. Ask God for help, and the shadow person is dispelled. I had tried this a couple times when I saw him in my room, and it seemed only to encourage him then, so I wasn't trying it now when he was already so angry. Instead, like a pitiful child, I found myself huddled on the couch begging quietly for my mother, for my grandmother (who for much of my life had been like the second parent my dad never had bothered being). And, to my utter surprise (it hadn't been to any purpose, just the pitiful child in me doing what was natural), it worked. I didn't see them. I didn't necessarily feel them there, but I felt the negativity lift away. I went to my room afterwards, and slept uneasily with both the overhead light and my lamp on.

After this, seeing how the shadow person reacted to me calling upon my loved ones for help, I decided it would be best if, rather than let him intimidate me right back into isolation, I became even more social. I continued talking with my friend I mentioned before about it, as well as with my brother. The shadow apparently decided to counter me with similar tactics: if I could be more social, then so could he. My brother, my older nephew, and I returned home from the lake one day to find my sister-in-law looking quite terrified. My brother asked her what was wrong. Not five minutes before we turned home, she saw something out of the corner of her eye and looked up to see a tall shadow on the wall to the right of the computer, behind the television console. It looked fairly human in shape, but was a bit large. It seemed out of place, and she looked around to see what might be casting it. After seeing nothing that could have cast it, she glanced back in time to see it walk, at a leisurely enough pace, across the wall, across the hallway, and disappear to the left of my door.

At this point in time, I hadn't told my sister-in-law about my experiences with the shadow man, and neither had my brother. This was like confirmation for me; before, I might have been going nuts. Now, someone else had seen it head on, someone I hadn't even mentioned it to. Once again, the shadow was showing me the extent of the power I had provided it; that it could use others, people I cared about, to get to me. Once again, I didn't let it deter me. I could fight back, too. I could be positive, I didn't have to provide it with the negativity it fed on - for at this point, I was positive that's what it wanted me for. For a while, I had been the perfect source of negative emotions, but no more. As I got more social, so did he. As I told more people of him, he showed himself to more people. I could feel that he was getting angrier that his tactics were falling short of molding me back into that lonely, depressed girl that had been the perfect source of negativity for him for years. One night, sometime in late 2010, he decided on a new tactic.

I was in my room one night. It was already well after midnight, and I was wide awake, writing, my insomnia in full swing at the time for no reason other than to spite me. I had just come back into my room from getting a glass of water, observed that my oldest nephew, five at the time, had come out of his room and fallen asleep on the sofa, which he often does at night. I checked on his younger brother, two at the time, and he was fast asleep in his playpen, the television on and turned down low as it was every night. I had sat back down on my bed, listening to the sounds of quiet cartoons through the wall, when I heard the television shut off. I paused; I knew both of my nephews were asleep. If my older nephew had woken up, or if my brother or his wife were checking on the kids, I would have heard the door open as the doorframe is slightly warped and makes quite a noise when it's opened. My younger nephew, even if he had woken up, couldn't get out of his playpen, and the playpen was too far away from the television for him to be able to touch it. Needless to say, I was on immediate alert.

I heard that growl again, for the first time in months, that inhuman sound that I had last heard outside the back door... Only this time, it was in my nephews' room. My younger nephew woke up screaming. I hurried into the next room, calmed him down, got him a sippy-cup of juice, and he was back to sleep in no time, but I wasn't exactly calm myself. This tactic had been foolproof, on the part of the shadow man. My nephews mean the world to me, and have gotten me through much more than they'll probably ever know. I would do anything in my power to protect them. They're a weak spot for me; apparently the shadow decided that if he couldn't isolate me and make me depressed, he could push the anger button. Anger is a negative emotion, after all. And little as I liked it, it worked. Of course I was angry; he had terrorized my nephew for the sake of getting to me. I was angry he had gone that far, I was angry it had worked so well, and I was angry at myself for letting it work. He hasn't done this again yet, and I'm very glad for that.

At this point in time, I don't feel threatened by him. He only has as much power as I give him. As long as I have my nephews as a weak spot, he certainly has the power to anger me, at the very least. However, I've learned to control the effect his own negativity has on me; I try to stay on guard all the time, and as long as I'm on guard when he comes around, I can sense the negative emotions he puts off but they don't affect my own emotions. From what I have read on shadow beings like this one (for one, I recently found an article on hooded shadow people of his exact nature; the accuracy with which it described what I was going through unnerved me a little), he may be around for quite some time. At the very least, I can say that there are much worse things that could be stalking me. I don't believe him demonic, though I certainly don't consider him benevolent. For now, I'll deal with him the best that I can. I have my weapons against him, and he has his weapons against me. More than anything, as he doesn't have quite as terrible an effect on me as he had even a year ago, I find him quite an interesting subject for study. As much as I hate to admit it, I might be a little sad if he left me alone forever.

I am very sorry that was so long, but to be honest, I would even consider this to be a bit concise; with as much experience as I've had with him, as much as I've read on shadow people since he started appearing to me, I could probably write a book on him at this point. This just includes when he came into my life and my most notable experiences with him, more or less.