The Earliest Memories

Welcome back to Life of the Haunted!

Today, we’re going to take a journey back to where everything started.

Back in the day, when I was only four, my family decided to pack up and move to a brand new house out of state. Now, without going too deep into specifics, the land our house was being built on apparently had some history that wasn’t exactly known to us. The street that ran behind our land was actually used during the Civil War. Houses that still stood were taverns and hospitals for the soldiers.

Now, I’m not going to jump to conclusions and say that’s what gave our house its unique visitor, but it definitely brings up some questions I still ponder to this day.

With some background information, let’s get into it.

When people talk about their earliest memories, they generally remember something happy or even normal. Some remember their birthdays or playing with their favorite toy. Generally, it isn’t a memory that even over twenty years later still send chills down their spine. That’s what I get when I think back to my childhood.

The most prominent thing I can recall is waking up in the middle of the night to a dark figure, the most opaque shade of black I’d ever seen, standing at the foot of my bed. Just watching. It didn’t have any features, just a masculine outline, bold against the darkness of my bedroom surrounding him.

People will always ask, was it sleep paralysis? Just a dream? It was probably just a nightmare.

To that I’ll say, it’s a possibility.

Is it one I believe? No.

I was completely in control of myself from the moment I woke up until I eventually fell back asleep, hidden under the covers as the shadow stood over me. I distinctly remember staring directly at it. Sitting up in my bed. Blinking a few times to make sure I wasn’t just seeing things. When I realized it wasn’t going away, I dove beneath my blankets and shut my eyes as tightly as possible, willing the figure to just disappear.

Not only that, but it would become a regular instance, seeing him. Both in the middle of the night, and during the day.

So unless I was living a waking nightmare, which, it honestly felt like I was, I wasn’t alone in my room that night.

That’s the earliest memory that I can dredge up, but I’m pretty sure I’d witnessed strange things prior to that night that I just don’t remember. As an adult, my mother told me a story about how creepy of a child I actually was.

To the best of my knowledge, the very first experience that occurred at that house was when I was four. My mom and I were walking back from dropping my older brother at the bus stop. When we got closer to the house, I apparently asked my mother, “Do you see that black thing?” Of course confused, she began asking me about what I saw. Again, I stated, “The black thing right there,” before pointing at the corner of the house. She couldn’t see what I was seeing, and trying to get more out of me, she asked if it was a dog or even a bear. I told her, “No, like daddy.”

Thus ensued a normal reaction to anything creepy. We went inside, she grabbed her keys, and we left.

That wasn’t the last of my horrifying childhood antics though.

Later on, Mom was walking me back to my room (which was adjacent to theirs), and according to her, I randomly stated, “Mommy, that black thing’s in your room.”

Those sightings weren’t the last I’d seen of the mysterious figure, and we’re going to delve deeper into those stories later on. For now, I’ll just leave off here. In my next post, I’m going to talk more about the Shadow Man that lived in my childhood home and things he’d do other than just lurking about the house, watching your every move.

Until next time,

Stay spooky.