19 December 2019 | Haunted houses, Shadow people, Your Stories, Your True Encounters
What I’m about to tell you occurred when I was just five years old; I’m 53 now, but this event sticks in my head like it just happened yesterday. All I can say is, shadow people are real.
My mother and I had flown from the U.S to England to visit family; this was my first time meeting my Aunt and her husband and we would staying at their house for about two weeks. Aunt Lily and Uncle Vic had never had children, but when I arrived, they had a fully loaded toy chest waiting for me with all sorts of goodies. The two items I immediately clocked on to were a metal Bat-mobile and a Batman flashlight that would supposedly shine the “bat-signal” on to a wall by way of the plastic bat cut-out covering the bulb.
I went nuts with this thing – running all around the house trying to find a quiet, dark spot so I could summon Batman with the light! Now, I wasn’t one of those kids that was afraid of the dark, never had been. I was also, NOT afraid of the thing under my bed or whatever it was that lived in my closet; I figured if I left them alone, they wouldn’t have any reason to mess with me. Some kids had dogs or cats, and I had both, but I also had the “thing” under my bed. Yeah, I know…weird.
Anyway, it finally got dark enough after dinner for me to finally play with this flashlight and I found the perfect spot.
Just inside the front door to the house was a small hallway that had the door to the sitting room off to the left, a short path to the washroom on the bottom floor and the stairs leading up to the bedrooms. Once the door to the sitting room was closed, I found myself in pitch darkness; no street light, no bleed over from the t.v., nothing. Mom, Aunt Lily and Uncle Vic were in the sitting room talking, so it wasn’t like I was alone in some random part of the house.
Out came the flashlight and damn(!) it did really shine the “bat-signal” on the wall! I found I could make the bat “fly” around by twisting the light and soon had it flying up the stairs to the next level.
At the top of the stairs, a real hand-made cuckoo clock was fixed to the wall and to the right was the way to the bedrooms and restroom. I got the bat to light up the cuckoo clock fairly well and had been quietly enjoying my new toy, when… it… came around the corner.
Now, I’m not sure what the status of spandex was in 1972, but this person that came around the corner from the bedroom area looked like he or she was sewn into a body hugging black spandex suit. That is how I describe it today – but back then, all I knew was it was a black shape. This wasn’t the fuzzy, dark grey kind of shadow, flat against the wall or lacking form at all. Like I said, I looked like a person in a spandex suit from head to toe. It had 3 dimensional form and I could even make out fingers on its hands.
After walking to its spot in front of the cuckoo clock, this thing turned to face me and stood quietly with its feet shoulder width apart and hands out at its side (kind of like the picture of the Vitruvian Man in medical books).
At this point I wasn’t scared – my flashlight hadn’t moved at all and I was just trying to figure out who this person was; I thought I had met everyone in the house. But as I stood there staring at this new arrival, I realized that although this thing appeared very solid and real, I could just make out the cuckoo clock on the wall…through its chest! That’s right, I could see through it! Not clearly – but still, it was there!
Just as I was about to call out to my mother, whatever this thing was took a step towards me; I actually saw its foot move down to the first step and it got closer to me! Not only that, I could still see the cuckoo clock but now I saw it through this things head. As it took a second step down the stairs, my little five year old brain broke; I screamed bloody murder – the flashlight went one way and I turned to run in the other! The sitting room door burst open, my uncle picked me up and demanded to know what was wrong.
“Man on the stairs!” was about all I could get out before I went airborne. My uncle had thrown me towards my mother and took off up the stairs. I guess I should mention he was a London Metro police officer and wasn’t used to taking any guff from anyone.
Mom and Aunt Lily moved me to the kitchen where there was a back door we could use to escape if need be. We waited for seemed like an hour, but it was most likely just a few minutes before Uncle Vic returned.
“I found nothing,” he said. “Windows are still closed and locked, front door is still locked, nobody hiding in the closets – I guess whatever it was is gone now.” He then said, “I’ll leave this with you ladies,” and left us in the kitchen. He didn’t seem upset, just a little defensive maybe?
My mother and Aunt Lily got to work assembling a small pile of wooden match boxes, cotton balls, gauze as well as some food. That’s when they introduced me to the concept of leaving gifts for the “wee people” in the garden. That night, and each night for the remainder of my stay, we would make little beds using the match boxes, gauze and cotton, and leave them in various places around the back garden along with a saucer of milk and some crackers or bread. This was apparently to appease the creatures that Aunt Lily thought may have caused me to see whatever it was on the stairs that night.
I’m not saying it worked (I’ve actually never seen another entity like that again), but each morning when we would go check, the beds as well as the food would be gone. It didn’t hit me until later just how quickly my mother went right into the whole let’s-make-beds-for-the-little-people mode without hesitating. It was like she already knew.
Over the years my mother would occasionally ask me to tell her what had happened that night; what did I see, what did I feel, etc. Each time when I was finished, she would say something like, “that’s exactly what you’ve always said,” as if to confirm the whole thing wasn’t a made up story from the mind of a five year old.
So yeah, I still believe in the little people that inhabit gardens all over the world, am fairly convinced there might be something under my bed, and half expect to finally see the thing in my closet each time I go to grab some clothes, but I’m kind of grateful I’ve never seen that shadow person again.
And that is my story.
Submitted by Patrick Matteo to weird Darkness and My Haunted Life Too
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