Your True Tales
September 2005 – Page 29

Two-Dimensional Figure
by Jessi

My first serious paranormal experience happened four years ago when I was 15. I was at a summer camp (Center for Talented Youth) in Carlisle, PA, staying in the dorms at Dickinson College. For a few days, the girls on my hall had been talking about weird things happening at night, like a tennis racket hovering in the darkness or shoes being thrown while both roommates were in bed. This was all supposedly going on at the other end of the hall, and me and my roommate, even though we believed in the paranormal, wrote all of it off as girls trying to get attention or play a joke. Our RA (the young woman who was in charge of our hall) was starting to get pissed as more of us came out with bizarre stories... it was as if every night it progressed to a different room, going down the hall.

I remained a skeptic until one night. As my roommate and I were up late in the dark talking, we heard a muffled whistling that sounded like it was in the next room. The whistling became louder and I got a sick feeling that whatever was whistling had traveled into our room somehow, but neither of us saw anything. We heard the crashing sound of our makeup being flung off our dresser, which was on the total opposite side of the room. At this point we were terrified, and laid in bed silently waiting for something else to happen. As we were whispering about what was going on, we heard the distant sound of someone going around knocking progressively on all the doors down the hallway. I have to mention that every night, all rooms were required to be locked, and no one was supposed to leave their rooms. We called out to see if it was our RA, but no one answered. We were freaked out for awhile, but eventually it all stopped and we concluded maybe we had imagined a lot of it, which didn't make sense considering the makeup being thrown.

All of that was leading up to what would be the TRUE shock of that summer, one of the most life-changing things that I have ever experienced. The next morning, my roommate and I were doing our makeup in front of the full-length mirror on the door. Directly parallel from the closed door was our only window. The blinds on the window were closed, and our room was lit only by the light that escaped the cracks and sides.

As I was concentrating on my makeup, I was distracted by the light blacking out for a brief second. It felt unnatural because I thought, "The sun can't just flicker out like that." My roommate and I looked at each other with a knowing expression, and she said, "I saw it, too!" We both slowly turned around to face the window and froze. Walking out of the wall corner was a PITCH-black two-dimensional figure of a man wearing a fedora-type hat. There were no discernable facial features. He was casually walking across the wall in an almost cocky way. When he reached the window, he turned around to face us, and was BLOCKING OUT THE SUNLIGHT where he stood!

The room became darker as the light framed his silhouette, and he waved at us and then turned and slowly continued walking across the wall until it disappeared into the crack of the wall. My roommate and I stood there completely stunned for about five seconds before we grabbed each other, screamed bloody murder and scrambled for the doorknob. We burst out of the room crying, and it turns out that the whole upstairs hall came down to see what was going on because EVERYONE had heard us screaming. It took us a few minutes to be able to even talk about it, but our RA looked terrified. We knew she had seen some things too, but probably didn't tell us because everyone was already panicked. Most of the girls thought the dorm was haunted, but even though I had no clue at the time about shadow people, I knew that what we encountered was NOT a ghost. It was probably from another dimension, especially considering the fact that it was completely flat. It seemed neither malevolent or benevolent, more like curious and mischievious... but it was still the most shocking, surreal, and frightening thing I've ever seen.

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