The Shadows Are Watching
When my husband and I lived in Florida, we bought a cute little 3 bedroom, 2 bath, ranch style home as our first home. It was not huge but suited us just fine. We built a huge organic garden that took up about a forth of the backyard! There was no indication of any presence in the house at first. Over time, however, I started noticing little things that slowly turned into bigger things that I couldn't ignore....
There were two smaller bedrooms on one side of the house that were our sons rooms. The front room was our younger son's room and the back room was our older son's room. He was about three when we bought the house. That back bedroom always had a strange feeling about it. I wrote it off as me just being weird when we initially moved in.
When our son was about 4, he asked me if God wakes us up in the morning. I told him not physically but metaphorically, yes. I explained it in 4 yr old terms, of course. He said that he wanted to know if God actually wakes us up in the morning. I asked what he meant by "wakes us up". My four year old son said that someone tickles his feet in the morning to wake him up! WHAT?! It was tough but I tried not to react in front of him. I told him that God doesn't usually do that and moved on. Thankfully, he didn't ask about it again.
There were a lot of nights, before my third son was born, when my oldest would come into our room saying he was scared and couldn't sleep in his room. He would sometimes sneak into our room and use his pillow and blanket to sleep on the floor beside our bed without waking us. Generally speaking, he never really liked his room. There was even a time, out of a need for sleep, that I told him to sleep in our bed and I tried to sleep in his bed. I actually couldn't do it! It felt like someone else was in the room with me the whole time and I couldn't fall asleep! After that, I was much more lenient about him sleeping in our room. He was very relieved when we had our third son and made that room the nursery. We put bunk beds in the front bedroom and put the two older boys in there.
Now that the back bedroom was the nursery, that meant that I had to go in there several times throughout the night to nurse my infant son. I was not thrilled with that idea but having my other sons in the front bedroom immediately put a stop to my son waking us up in the night because he was afraid. That was helpful since the new baby was already keeping me up with feedings.
The feeling of never being alone and always feeling watched prevailed. It never seemed to affect the baby. He slept a typical infant schedule. However, I dreaded his night feedings. As soon as I stepped out of my bedroom, I felt someone else there. Once I entered the nursery, the air actually felt heavy. It was as if the atmosphere in that room was thicker. I couldn't really distinguish if it felt like dark energy or light. It just felt different from the rest of the house. There were nights when I would constantly look around the room, half expecting to see someone looking back at me. The feeling of being watched was so tangible, it often gave me goosebumps.
Then it all came to a head during a typical feeding one night. My baby was probably about 4 months old or so and woke up around 3am. Pretty normal for him. As I sleepily stepped out of my bedroom, I saw a black figure, in the shape of a man, sitting on my couch! The features were definitely the build of a man but perfectly jet black. I couldn't see any defining features like eyes or mouth, or hair. Just the outline of a man that was solid black.
As soon as I saw him, he stood up from the couch and disappeared. It was so fast, I stood in the doorway of my bedroom, trying to figure out if I really saw what I saw! I can still see it in my mind's eye today! It was definitely up there with some of the coolest paranormal experiences I've ever had! Of course, my immediate problem was that I had to walk right past my couch and into the nursery to nurse my son. I'm sure I don't have to tell you how much I DIDN'T want to do that in that moment! But.....he was crying and I suddenly wasn't sure if he wanted to be fed or if maybe something had woken him up or messed with him. I rushed in to find him doing his typical hungry cry. He was such a cute little baby boy! He's almost 15 now. I miss those days.
Anyway! I got side-tracked. ha ha
I scooped him up and nursed him, all the while looking around the room and listening intently for anything that didn't sound normal. I felt creeped out and didn't feel alone but we got through the feeding without further incident. The feelings of being watched and never feeling alone continued until he was sleeping through the night. Thankfully, he never seemed affected by it and stayed in that room until we moved when he was 3 1/2 yrs old. My feeling of unease while in that room remained throughout the whole ten years that we lived there.
The second time I saw a shadow figure in that house happened about 2 1/2 yrs after the first time. It was the middle of the night and I guess my husband couldn't sleep. He had gotten out of bed and gone to the living room to read. I woke and opened my eyes to see a male figure standing on the other side of my bedroom, facing me. He was mostly black but I could see that he was wearing cloth pants, kind of like Khakis, and a short sleeved checkered type shirt. My grandfather had passed away just a couple of months before this so I thought it was him at first, because those are the type of clothes my grandpa wore. Who knows? Maybe it was. He HAS visited my dreams since then.
I looked down where my hubby should have been laying and put my hand there in order to wake him and tell him to look, only to realize he wasn't there. As soon as I looked back up, the figure turned toward the little door to our back porch, took one step, and disappeared into the door. The whole thing was over in just a moment.
After a minute of coming to terms with what I had just seen, I went quickly into the living room and told my husband what I'd seen, still convinced that it was my grandpa. He, of course, said it was a dream and told me to go back to bed. I find it interesting that the figure showed up the one night that my husband was not in the room with me. I do not think that was a coincident. There have been other strange things happen in the home, too. We had a dog that would bark at our closet in our bedroom for no reason. I don't mean she would bark in a friendly way, either. This was the "danger, I don't recognize this person" bark/growl.
I was actually kind of thankful when we moved, although the house was perfect in every other way. I still miss our huge organic garden. We went back there a couple of years later and met the family that bought the place. I casually asked how they like it and if anything strange ever happened there. Anyone who has EVER seen a scary movie would have asked a million questions at that point! They simply said everything was fine and moved on in the conversation. I left them with my email address but have never heard from them. I assume they are doing fine and are comfortable in the home.
As I've said before, these energies tend to find me. It's possible that whatever was there left when we moved out. I didn't have any major experiences beyond a few whispers in our rental house before we bought the home we are in now. We've lived here over three years and have started having some interesting things happen here now… For those experiences, read the post titled Home Is Where The Haunt Is.