Your True Tales
February 2008 - Page 12
Followed by Dark Beings
by Stella
I have a fair number of strange stories, ranging from the earliest years when I was still in a crib (living in a house that I only lived in until the age of two) to fairly recent. What caught my attention was the article, "Fairy Tale Phantoms." When I was little, between the ages of five and eight, there were times when I would see strange "people" walking behind me. My parents have always been very devout Christians, so seeing these "people" really scared me. They were very tall, maybe over six feet tall, and cloaked in black with no real features to be seen. I could make out arms and legs, their heads, but nothing else. Because I thought that my dad would be upset -- maybe I was being followed by demons or something and that might mean that there was something wrong with me -- I didn't say anything to anyone for a very long time.
One day, after moving back to Pennsylvania (from North Dakota, I was about eight, 1989), my mother and I were walking through K-Mart when I saw those black "shadow people" walking behind me. It was almost as if I could see directly behind me without turning my head. (I since started studying Wicca and other Pagan religions because of such odd phenomena in my life.) I stopped my mother and told her everything about these strange people, how they scared me, and that it had been happening for a long time. I started to cry and my mother started praying right there in the middle of K-Mart. I felt pretty silly, even at that age, but after she was done, I didn't see them again until I was about 19 or 20 or so, roughly 2000 or 2001.
In that incident, I was driving up to my parents' house in the northern part of Pennsylvania during the winter at night. I friend called me on my cell phone, so I decided to pull off at a little spot that hunters use for parking during deer season. It was snowy, so I pulled the car in part way and turned it around to back in, just in case, so I could get back out. When I pulled in, my headlights lit up the small clearing for a moment, so I got a look at the surround trees, however brief. I also looked, out of habit, into my rear view mirror and quickly noted what was behind me. I sat there for a few minutes, five or ten maybe, before glancing back in the rear view. I stopped talking and stopped listening long enough to make my friend do the classic, "Hey, hello? You still there?" routine. I told my friend that I had to go, I think I upset someone or something and needed to leave where I parked, ASAP.
My friend asked what was wrong, so I explained: When I pulled in, I noticed that the trees were about 10-15 feet away from my car. I saw where they were both in the light of my headlights and in the dark behind the car. When I glanced back during my phone conversation, the trees, it seemed, had moved closer to my car, the closest one being about four or five feet from the back window. I stared for a few moments taking it in, disbelieving. The "trees" were six-eight feet tall and totally lacking branches. They appeared to be the same "shadow people" I saw when I was little. Scared the daylights out of me. I left that little makeshift parking lot as fast as I could.
So far, I've only ever met one person who has had a similar experience with tall, shadowy figures like those. Then I read the article. I've been getting more skeptical over the years, hardly believing in any of the things that I've seen or experienced. Any of it could be written off as lack of sleep or just an overactive imagination. But reading all those stories; some of them gave me chills. Especially those that were so similar to this little anecdote about my strange shadow people.
On a side note, the area that my family moved to in 1996, when I was about 15, has always been creepy. My parents don't even care for it. My dad used to love going for walks in the woods to sing and pray, but sometime during my years in high school, he just stopped. My mother has been strange. She used to be a lot more calm as far as I can recall; maybe it's just age getting to her, but things have always been weird here.
An old friend of mine came up to visit one evening. A little while later, he called me to tell me that as he was leaving. Something caught his eye in the headlights, just off in the trees on the edge of the tree line. Whatever it was kept up with his car, running along side in the trees at about 35-45 miles per hour, and stood about six feet tall.
I have too many weird stories and stories friends have told me, from phantom dogs to drawers that wouldn't open for anyone yet had no locking mechanism and on to strange apparitions.
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