Hello, TTIH. I've been a subscriber for maybe a year and have always wanted to share a few of my (perhaps) paranormal stories with you. I was a subscriber at /r/nosleep for quite a bit longer, but grew tired of the "creative fiction" that I'm sure many of you are familiar with there. Because of that, I never really felt a desire to contribute to that community, and would rather post here. There was that Ask Reddit thread a few days ago that sort of inspired me to share here.
Before I get started, it's sort of important (or maybe just to me), that for some reason, the presence, or lack thereof, of my dad in my life has affected me greatly. I don't mean he was an absent father, he's always been there for me and still is. The thing is, with every experience I've had, there's been a kind of strange connection to my dad being somewhere unusual, "paranormal" or not. My worst medical emergencies always seemed to happen when my dad was not around. For example, I was diagnosed with epilepsy when I was younger. Thankfully I haven't had an episode in many years. However, whenever I would have a seizure, my dad was away from home for one reason or another. There were only two exceptions, and they were rather mild. My worst "grand mals" always happened when he was gone. I broke my wrist when he was gone, and I had several surgeries while he was out of town. What makes this particularly interesting, is that my dad has mostly worked from home for my entire life. He only ever really left home to visit the office for a couple hours or when he had a corporate meeting in Atlanta, Kansas City, or wherever he needed to be for whichever company he was working for. I may be reaching far with this hypothesis, but it has always been something that I connected with my experiences. To me, it is important.
Anyways, on to the stories.
(1.) The first one I can remember, I was probably around eight years old. This story always seemed like one I could write off as a figment of my childish imagination, but I still felt like I should include it, even though it is rather short.
My dad was in Kansas City for a corporate training event or some such, and I was home alone with my mom. I have an older brother that I was sharing a room and bunkbed with at the time, but he was gone that night. He may have been with staying with a friend, but I don't know. All I know is that he wasn't home. I awoke that night with an uneasy feeling. I'm not really sure how to describe it, other than not being able to fall right back asleep and having trouble breathing. I didn't wake up from a nightmare or anything, I just woke up feeling nervous, and I remember having a somewhat sour stomach. Anyway, after tossing and turning for maybe an hour, I walked to my parents' bedroom and asked my mom if I could sleep in her bed. Of course, she said yes, and I slept in the spot my dad would normally occupy. His side of the bed faces the master bathroom, which is key.
I woke up later, facing the right side of the bed (which is odd because to this day, I sleep facing left), and the door was open all the way, towards me. Granted, this is how my parents usually left it unless someone was inside, so I wasn't immediately off-put. But, I slowly realized that I remembered using the head before crawling into the sheets, and especially remembered closing the door behind me, which I was taught to do to keep our late, long-haired dog from climbing on people's beds. Anyway, after staring into the bathroom for a few moments, I began to see a figure form from nothing in front of me. I remember being really confused, because I instantly noticed that it was a woman. It looked a lot like my mom, but with a different haircut. Years later, I was exposed to these paintings:
The figure greatly resembled the women in these paintings, sans umbrella (this memory was quickly harkened back to upon seeing them in college).
Anyway, the woman seemed to not notice me. She almost glowed. Not with bright light, but almost the sort of soft halo you see around objects when you accidentally fall asleep with your contacts in and wake up nearly blind. It's sort of hard to explain because the only light coming into the room was the light of the streetlamp coming through the slats of the blinds. The glowing was something else altogether. She seemed to be primping herself in the mirror and adjusting the shoulders of her dress. But she never took notice of me looking at her. Just as soon as she was there, she disappeared. I turned around and grabbed my mom's arm. She woke up, and I began to cry. She tried listening, but I was so scared and tired I couldn't really articulate what I had seen. That's all I remember from that night.
(2.) The next story I have was when I was probably about 12-14 years old. It remains the most terrifying and vivid memory of my paranormal experiences. Once again, I woke up in my bedroom (my brother and I had moved into separate rooms by now), unable to fall back asleep. I attribute this to being in the warmest room of the house, and me never being comfortable when too warm at night. I got up to go to sleep on the couch in the living room, which was also one of the biggest rooms in the house and therefore one of the least stuffy. When walking down the hallway, I noticed the light of the television bouncing around the walls of the living room. My dad had, for some reason, fallen asleep on the couch, or had gotten up and slept there in the middle of the night. This was very unusual for my dad, who nearly always sleeps in the master bedroom until morning. Anyway, he had taken the larger of our two couches. I was upset at this because I was, at this point in my life, too tall to sleep comfortably on the love seat. I shook him awake, informed him of my predicament, and asked what I should do. He told me to go grab a sleeping bag and pad out of the garage, lay it out on the floor, and go back to sleep.
I retrieved the stuff from the garage and began setting up camp. Even though I was tired enough, I still could not fall asleep. I grabbed the remote from the coffee table and started watching shitty late-night T.V. and infomercials, thinking they would bore me to sleep.
This is where things started to get weird.
I was facing forward, arms crossed behind my head, watching T.V., laying parallel with the couch and dad on my right. To my left was the kitchen, which was not separated by a doorway or anything, because we had a very open floor-plan. I had a wide-open view into the kitchen with few obstructions other than a bit of counter. Around the corner of the kitchen was a doorframe that connected it to our small dining room.
I began to hear a shuffling coming from the other room. A sort of slow, quiet shuffling that almost sounded like someone limping. The cadence was not like a normal gait, but interrupted and awkward, though quiet. I muted the T.V. and listened raptly, attempting to pinpoint the noise. Looking in to the kitchen, I saw nothing, but I could still hear the noise. While keeping completely still, I strained my eyes to see into the darkness. The closest thing to the edge of the kitchen, and the doorframe which led to the dining room, was our refrigerator which was a cream color, a stark contrast from the surrounding blue-green flooring and shadow. Keeping my eye on this area, I kept completely still, limiting my breathing in order to focus on the sound. I began to see movement around the fridge, something was entering the kitchen from the dining room. I would have been able to see, or hear someone down the hallway or entering through the backdoor in the dining room, but neither of those were options. There was no creak of a door opening or footsteps from the hall; they originated in the dining room. I began to see a figure come into view into the kitchen. What I remember most is first seeing that figure walk into my line of sight, so incredibly slowly. It was dressed in pure grey, in a long, hooded cloak. The dress reminds me of a Dominican monk, in retrospect. The hood was raised, and tall. It looked like a Ringwraith from The Lord of the Rings, but this is before those films were released. It shambled parallel to me, towards the kitchen sink, head low, as if it didn't know I was there. My heart racing, I began to think of what to do. The thing walked to the other side of the kitchen, its lower body now obscured by the counter. Yet it kept it's face parallel to my own, staring down at the sink. When it stopped, I could see its chest slowly rising and falling.
When I couldn't handle it anymore, I decided to wake my dad up. With my left arm, I reached across my chest to tug at his leg, at the same time keeping my head pointed toward the apparition and shouting, "Dad! Wake up!". But as soon as my arm began moving and the words left my mouth, the thing turned and looked at me. Its face was completely obscured in black because of how deep the hood was. It brought its arms up to its sides as if forming a letter T. I noticed that it had shackles around its wrists and chains hung low from them, drawing towards its lower body. All through this, it made no noise, but I feel like I can remember hearing the swish of its robes. As my motion continued and my hand landed on its target, my dad woke with a start.
The first thing he said was, "What the fuck is that?"
The apparition disappeared when I took my eyes off of it to look at my dad. I asked him if he saw anything in the kitchen, and he said that he did see something strange that moved quickly to the window but could not make out what it was. To this day, he blames it on my overactive imagination and him being jolted awake by me. He said he had already been having a nightmare when I woke him up. He has never believed in the paranormal, but I know what I saw, and I'm pretty sure he saw what I did.
(3.) The last story of mine takes place when I was a senior in high school, age 17. I had returned from school and decided to take a shower. No one else was home. Both my parents were at work and my brother was at college in Colorado. I remember it being toward the end of the year, because it was uncomfortably hot outside for my delicate sensibilities and I decided to take a cold shower, which I normally hate. I had plans to meet friends at the nearby lake when I had showered and grabbed a quick bite to eat. Before I entered the shower, I dropped a deuce and washed my hands. After I had been in for a bit, I began soaping up my junk. I should say that I've always had sliding glass doors on my shower, never a curtain that obscured view. Anyway, I was looking out into the bathroom while doing my thing, when all of a sudden, the knob that controlled the sink went from completely off, to full-blast on. I'm aware that some people attribute this phenomenon to a water pressure anomaly, but I'm inclined to disbelieve this because I had just previously used the sink and was in the shower. No hot water was being used. The light was on all the way, and I definitely saw our sink go from off to completely on.
I grabbed my towel and shorts by the door, ran into the garage and threw them on and immediately got the hell out of dodge. I relayed the story to my friends, who to this day thought it was just end-of-year nerves or something. Anyway, that's all I have for my stories for now.
(4.) [FAM] I felt like I should share this story merely because I found it so terrifying when it was told to me. It's not paranormal in any sense, but still quite scary.
My dad moved to the Seattle area when he was in like sixth grade, from the Midwest. Actually, he lived just a few houses down from the house Jimi Hendrix grew up in, which I always though was cool. At this time, Jimi was already famous and had been away from Washington for a while.
But that's beside the point. My dad had found it somewhat difficult to make friends (Seattle Freeze, eh?), and found himself joining sports teams that he had no experience with because he was athletic and disliked being around his single mother and brothers and wanted to get away from them. He decided to join the swim team, which he actually ended up excelling at. When he was in ninth grade, he had swim practice in both the morning and evening. Well, swim is a winter sport, so the skies got dark while he was practicing in the pool (I experienced the exact same thing in high school). One day, he returned from practice after dark and went straight to his room. Besides his mom's bedroom, his room was the only room that had an exterior window, facing the backyard (this was before fire codes were strictly enforced). He told me that he went into his room and began changing to do his homework and go to bed. His blinds were open, but since his window faced the backyard, he wasn't worried about being peeped at (he was never very attractive, anyway).
He was looking out the window when he pulled his shirt above his head to change. When it was lifted off, he saw a long-haired, bearded man with his face pressed to the glass, hands wrapped around his peripherals in order to see better. My dad, terrified, ran screaming from his bedroom and told his older brother to call the police.
Long story short, the police investigated the surrounding area, but found nothing. However, they told his mom that there was a murderous fugitive on the loose in the area and were told to keep their windows and doors locked until further notice. They were never updated on what happened to him.
Anyway, TTIH, I had fun writing this out, mostly because of how cathartic it is to tell people this stuff with anonymity, and of course, without sounding completely insane. I realize this may not be written in a way to make it as creepy as possible, but it is the best I can do, and I'd really rather not embellish the truth. I have one other story I can remember off the top of my head, but I've been working on this for longer than I wanted to tonight. If you're interested in hearing more, just let me know.
Submitted May 20, 2015 at 09:20AM by bennedictus http://ift.tt/1Jydtq7 Thetruthishere
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