#if you're good with cats you're probably good with ghosts and whatnot

[ysabelmystic]

PLEASE tell us about the shadow boi

Thank you to the at least four people who humored me on this one.

(Using it/he pronouns for the shadow in a gender neutral way)

This took place during my freshman year of high school. I was living in a newly built tract home at the time. This is the last place you'd expect a haunting to occur, but in my experience, California is funny like that. Despite the southern US seeming far more likely to actually be haunted, most of my and my family's experiences have all taken place within the California central valley. This was just the craziest and most undeniable of those experiences.

One morning around the start of the school year, I woke up at exactly 4:15am. My alarm wasn't due to go off until 5:30. Catercorner from my bed was a tall, vaguely human-shaped shadow. And by shadow I mean a dark blob that hovered in the corner rather than being attached to the wall.

Now, this was almost immediately at the start of my Exvangelical era. My parents and I were wading into deep edgy atheist territory. "Facts and logic" and all that. Instead of freaking out, I decided that I was probably hallucinating and went back to sleep. After getting home from school, I rearranged some of my furniture and put my violin stand (I was forced to play against my will but I digress...) in the shadow's corner.

This did not work, because the next morning, at exactly 4:15am, I woke up to the same shadowy blob in the corner, now covering my violin stand. This time, I turned on my phone light and shined it in the corner. The shadow didn't disappear like a normal shadow would. Instead, it seemed to rapidly melt into the adjacent closet.

I might've been an "atheist", but I couldn't completely commit myself to the idea that the supernatural was a creation of human ignorance and imagination. What I was committed to was the belief that the vast majority of "evil" and "demonic" beings were deeply misjudged and at worst just needed a friend. I did some research on shadowy beings and creatures, and found that this thing most resembled "the hat man" (despite being hatless). And since "the hat man" was "evil", surely, it either neutral or friendly. I would treat this thing with respect, and if it was just a hallucination, then wasn't it better to make friends with my hallucinations instead of demonizing them?

This was my train of thought for the next several days, as every other day or so, I was woken up at a 15 minute increment between 3:45am and 5:00am to this shadow in my room. Usually, it was in the corner, but some days it edged closer and closer to the center of the room.

About a month in, one morning, I woke up to the feeling of pressure on my legs. The shadow wasn't in the corner, but at the foot of my bed was the obvious indent in my mattress that could only come from a person sitting there.

Instead of panicking (probably because I was fucking tired), I said something along the lines of, "I don't care if you're in my room, but you have to stay in the corner".

The indent vanished and the pressure disappeared.

Nothing notable would happen for the rest of the school year. As annoyed as I was to be woken up early, in some ways, I started to appreciate the shadow in the corner. I would say good morning to him or gripe about being woken up early. I asked it for its name a few times, but I never got anything. He was just a nameless entity who lived in the corner of my room.

Sometime around February, I went off of my mood stabilizers cold-turkey. I didn't sleep for three days, and when I finally did start sleeping again, I was afraid that the change in my brain chemistry would mean that I'd never see the shadow again, and when I did, I told him that I missed him. The fact that nothing changed in the pattern of appearances is part of what convinced me that it was real.

The final time I saw it though, things changed.

It was either late May or early June. My family was about to move, and it was my final night in the house. The only things in my room were my mattress and blankets, my art desk, a couple of art supplies, and a wooden stick in my windowsill that kept it from being opened. And that final night, I said something to the effect of, "You're free now. Have fun haunting the new family," and went to sleep.

I woke up at exactly 6am. There was no shadow in my room. Instead, what I saw was the stick in my windowsill levitating in the air. It lingered for a few seconds and then fell to the ground. My window slid open, and the bag of colored pencils in the middle of my desk was knocked to the floor.

I was a little shaken, but I was more exhausted and in total disbelief than anything else, so I went back to sleep.

Later that morning, I woke up to my mom opening my door and scolding me for not being awake and for opening the window when it was so damn hot outside. The stick and pencils were also still on the floor. I asked if she had opened it, and she said that she absolutely had not.

I have no other explanation other than that it was the shadow, and that I had somehow set it free. When we moved across the country, I was actually upset with myself that I hadn't invited him along, and tried a few [failed] demon-summonings to see if I could fill the void. I don't know where he come from or why he was there, but it happened. It was weird, but given that I never felt outright afraid (and with some entities, I have), I assume he was friendly. Given that I spent most of that year being actively suicidal, he was one of the few things that brought me any joy, and was probably one of the reasons that I bothered staying alive at all. Regardless of who it was or what he was, I hope that he's dong okay.

But yeah. That's the shadow boi, and he is my number 1 reason as to why I believe in ghosts.