My whole life I've loved scary movies and I have a brother a few years older than me, so its safe to say I was watching them at WAY too young an age. Combined with the fact that I had a very over active imagination, I was scared of everything. The grudge was hiding in my closet, the clown from IT was in the shower drain, Freddy from A Nightmare on Elm Street was hiding under my bed, etc. As an adult, I've been able to write off most of my more unusual experiences and memories as simply a child getting worked up over shadows. However, there's one memory in particular that I cannot for the life of me explain away.
It's my earliest memory. I had to have been about two years old. I was young enough that I still slept in the crib in my upstairs nursery, with my parents a couple rooms down the hall from me. To clarify, I was too young to have really seen any scary media and my mother was quite protective of me with those things until I was a few years older. I wasn't the best sleeper, and I'd frequently wake up during the night. I remember being uncomfortable alone at night in that room. I assume that's true for most babies? Not scared necessarily, just...uncomfortable.
When I woke up this night, I remember tossing and turning, playing with blankie and overall just hanging out. All of a sudden I looked over through the bars of my crib and I distinctly, vividly remember a pitch black shape with glowing, deep red eyes. It stared directly at me and I remember feeling the breath on me. I screamed. Cried. My Dad came in and picked me up, carried me to the hall and calmed me down by pointing at all the different parts of a painting hung in that upstairs hallway. I remember counting the apples in the tree with him as he comforted me. When I tell people my earliest memory, its just of my Dad coming in and taking me out to that painting to comfort me. I don't mention the pitch black shape staring at me through the bars on my crib. To be honest, I've tried to write it off for a long time as a dream.
I got to thinking about it recently though. I was only a couple years old. I didn't know what scary stories were, I didn't understand the concept of death or ghosts or demons. I was pretty voraciously sheltered until I was about 5 or 6, and then my brother started in with the scary movies. Is it normal for babies to dream of things like that? I know there's the old internet 'fact' about only being able to dream of faces you've seen before, not being able to create new faces. I don't know if that's actually true, or if it even applies to shadow creatures, but I know I wouldn't have seen anything like that as a child. So I either conjured it in my imagination, or maybe it was something real?
In the above section I only wanted to include what I distinctly remember. But there are more things from that night that I believe happened, they just are a bit more fuzzy. I clearly remember the glowing red eyes and pitch black shape. There were two windows on the opposite wall and I vividly remember the moonlight streaming in through them, before one window - the one on the right - was mostly occluded by the black mass. The fuzzy part is that I remember thinking that it was like a dog, but I don't remember if it was the shape of a dog, or just a black mass at about large dog height. I also think I remember it making a low growling sound, but that could just be my imagination.
That nursery was remodeled into a guest room when we got older, and after I moved out for college, that became the room I stay in any time I visit. To this day, I cannot sleep in that room without a light on. I'm still uncomfortable in there and my anxiety spikes at night if I have to sleep there.
I've looked into Black Dogs, demon dogs and Death Omens, but I don't believe that anything happened around that time? My grandpa would have lived another year or so and he's the only one that passed when I was a kid. No major life changes either.
Has anyone heard of anything like this? Not necessarily a Black Dog in a demon dog sense, but something similar? Possibly a different shadow creature with glowing red eyes? Or does anyone know if this just sounds like normal baby imagination?
Please let me know! Thank you!
I think that the reason why you remember this particular incident after so many years is because you were probably in danger from a malevolent entity, I believe that the things we remember throughout our lives are for a reason, the other unimportant stuff gets lost in time, and the fact that you still remember is also your minds way of protecting you from anything, even now that you are an adult and still feel uneasy being in the room where you had your experience when you were 2 years old.
I'm not sure about the glowing eyes, but I do remember a incident that my mother had told me that happened to her father when he was younger about seeing a ghost dog, but it was white in color and was climbing a tree, maybe when I am ready to submit more stories I'll write in length about it and some of my grandfather's other experiences.