Keep out.

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Now that my blatantly repellant subject has caught your attention, seriously, if you're skeptical of or uninterested in the paranormal, then you probably don't want to frequent this thread. As that's what's going to be going here.

Maybe not just the paranormal. Anything from dreams to ghosts, from strange creatures to UFOs. It'll both be my journal to keep track of my own experiences, as well as to keep track of others that I stumble across online and find interesting.

Anyone who would like to comment on anything is welcome to. Anyone who would like to post any of their own experiences/others' experiences that they found fascinating, is also welcome to post them here.

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Of course, my main reason for deciding to create this thread is because I'm interested in what's referred to as the "paranormal" or the "supernatural." My main reason for creating it now is because of something that happened today.

If I've talked to you frequently (which I know I haven't with a lot of you, unfortunately), then you might know that the property I live on and much of the property around it is... well, for lack of a better way to describe it, a little haunted. No, it isn't just my own speculation that I base this on. Everyone in my family has had some sort of odd experience here, as have most of my friends who visit on at least a semi-regular visit.

Let's start this off with a brief description of the property. It's five and a half acres, most of which is actually forest; maybe two acres is clear land with a few trees speckling the field. Visible from our sloping driveway (most of the property is basically a large ditch with a flat bottom, where the houses are) is a double-wide, and a brick house behind it. Behind the brick house are three sheds and old chickencoops that no longer house chickens. Next to it is a larger shed. Next to to this is a large field, empty of everything except a few trees. A cluster of these trees contains a bench-swing suspended between two trees, out in front of the double-wide visible from the road. Another doublewide is along the lines of fifty feet away from the other two houses, on the opposite side of them from the larger shed, and isn't visible from the road due to the forests surrounding the property.

Running across our long driveway near the top is a flat trail, maybe twenty-five feet wide. This trail spans between a few towns and quite a few miles, though a lot of it is rather overgrown, but almost none of it is too overgrown to walk along. This trail used to span quite a few more towns as well; railroad tracks used to run its length. On the part of the tracks we own, two old railroad markers still stand, virtually undamaged. The trains stopped running on the tracks in the early 1920s, when a passenger train crashed in a town only a mile from the one I live outside of. This crash killed all or most of the passengers, and burned down at least seventy-five percent of our neighboring town What survives of it consists of one stretch of highway barely a mile in length, lined with houses, one gas station, and a couple churches. This town used to neighbor one of the largest cities in the state in size and population before the crash and the fire.

There are a few people, included among them a few of my friends and my late mother, who claim that they could hear footsteps following behind them on these tracks when they walked on them. I certainly second this claim.

Less than a mile and across the street from my house is a family cemetery. A little further down the dirt road that this cemetery is on is an old, crumpling house where my brother and I once saw someone standing in the upstairs window, someone that looked like a young girl in late 19th century attire. She was quite clearly standing upstairs, looking down at us, unmoving; but the entire upstairs of the house is too rotted for anyone to stand on, and the stairs of the place half-missing. I wouldn't even have trusted the first floor of the house not to fall through. But the girl was standing there looking down at us as though wary of trespassers in her midst, and continued watching us as we left. We turned around as the house was nearly out of sight to look back, and she had gone from the window. I haven't seen her again to this day, but I bring a camera to this house every time I walk to it, in the hopes that I might one day see her there again.

On the same side of the road we reside on, are two more cemeteries, one on either side of us. One is less than a half-a-mile walk down the road. The other is about a mile and a half away. You could say that this property is surrounded by death.

Living here made me take an interest in the paranormal from a very young age. Things happened on a pretty regular basis, most of them benevolent enough. Things going missing and showing up in strange places, voices from empty rooms, and so on. There have been a few slightly more malicious happenings throughout the years, but nothing that seems truly harmful. A strange greenish apparition hovering over my bed one night when I was six or seven. My mother, myself, and later my sister-in-law after she and my brother moved onto the property waking up with hand-shaped bruises occasionally (this would flare up on occasion, happen every night for a few weeks at a time and then subside for a while, and still does happen occasionally to me and my sister-in-law). A strange shadowy figure that seems to like intimidating anyone alone and following me around when I'm going through bouts with anxiety (Akino won't let me adopt it as an angst-genre Muse, incidentally ~_~). Nothing worth calling in an exorcist for, but still not particularly pleasant.

Nevertheless, whether benevolent or vengeful in any way, I find it all quite interesting, especially the history behind it all.

As I mentioned a while ago, I created this thread today because something that particularly struck my interest happened earlier. Something that hasn't really happened to me before. I saw what I think might have been an up-close full-bodied apparition.

My brother, a friend, and I had gone out yesterday evening. Probably about twelve hours ago from right now, actually. We returned home, parked alongside our house (and less than ten feet in front of the red brick house), and I got out of the car--standing in the open doorway of the brick house, I saw for a split second what looked like a woman. I didn't notice much, as my friend got out of the front of the car a moment later and blocked my view; he moved, and the woman was gone.

Take note, that the only adults at home at that time were my sister-in-law and her mother. They were both inside our house; the brick house has been uninhabited for some time and is used as storage now. We found the door of the house open a while back and my brother assumed one of the dogs had gotten it open--which struck me as very odd, considering the door was closed and locked from the inside. I brushed it off, anyway, until I saw that today.

There was nothing in the doorway I could have mistaken for the woman. Nothing is as tall as human-height that can be seen from the doorway, and her clothes were mostly bright; I noticed a lot of white and what might have been a flower pattern of a shirt or a dress. The body-type might have been a little short, a little dumpy. Aside from that, I didn't have enough time to look before my view was blocked and she disappeared. She didn't strike me as threatening at all. In fact, quite the opposite. Despite seeing so little of her, and for such a short time, I felt almost immediately like I had seen my nana. It didn't scare me, it didn't even strike me immediately as odd that I was seeing anyone in the doorway of an empty house. When I first noticed her standing there, it didn't seem weird at all. It didn't feel like a ghost or a spirit or however you would call it, until after she was gone from sight, until after it struck me exactly what I had just seen.

Whenever I see anything so blatant as this, I want nothing more than to brush it off, pretend I didn't see it, find some way to disprove it. I'm a little of a skeptic myself when it's me seeing or hearing anything strange. But, I hadn't thought about my nana at all today. Hadn't for quite a while, honestly. The only thing visible from the doorway is the back wall of the living room and the doorway into the hall that leads to the kitchen. Nothing vaguely shaped or sized like a human. Anyone that could have been in the house for any reason was inside of our house. I don't see why I would have been seeing things if I was busy thinking about the food we had just picked up. Nothing remotely paranormal had crossed my mind all day, nothing about my nana had crossed my mind all day. And I just so happen to see what I'm pretty sure was her standing in the doorway of her old house. I can't disprove it, and it always bothers me when I can't find some kind of alternate explanation. I love the paranormal, but my mind likes to think along a logical train on things like this. And logic isn't doing much for me on this one.

If I did honestly see her "spirit" in some form, then really, I couldn't be happier. It would be nice to know that she's still looking out for us, since she was like my other parent growing up; she lived next door to me from the time I was four years old to the time she passed away when I was thirteen, and she was around more often than my dad ever was. So in a way, as much as I'd like to disprove it so I don't feel like I'm completely mad, I sort of hope it was her stopping by to check on us.

She's probably not happy with the state her old house is in, but... yeah. If it were up to me, it'd be nicer. But everyone else just keeps using it as storage, and there's not much I can personally do about that. I'm only one person against the rest of my family. Hopefully I'll be able to fix up that house again one day, as it is a rather nice little house.

Whether anything that I've had happen here has been real or just coincidence, just figments of an overactive imagination, I'm still always going to find it interesting, and I'm still going to be documenting it right here, simply because I love the subject of the paranormal so much.

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First, have a link. The article describes a document posted on the FBI's website on the incidents at Roswell in 1947; and quite frankly, I'm surprised that it hasn't gotten any more attention than a single article on yahoo. It's an official FBI document, and it's quite... interesting, to say the least. Just thought I'd share it ^_^

Now, on another subject; in my last post, I mentioned the strange shadowy figure that seems to be attracted to feelings of angst, depression, and so on. I had my first experience with him in a while last night, so I'd like to cover a bit more about him.

The house I currently live in was my grandparents' house; after my nana died unexpectedly four days after my oldest nephew was born, and my grandpa (who was, for reference, actually my mom's step-father, not biological) moved back to New York to spend time with his biological children before he passed away (his kidneys were failing and he had made it with that for... one or two years up to that point, and he knew he didn't have much time left; he moved out late in 2005, and passed away early 2006), we moved into this house. My brother and his family then moved into the house we had been living in. My nana, as I mentioned, was like a parent to me more than my own father ever was. I was very close to her, so was my mom. Her sudden passing was a huge blow on me, but I couldn't even imagine how it was for her (I can now, of course, giving now I also happen to know what losing a mother is like). She wasn't showing much emotion over it in front of me. Trying to stay strong.

It all fell through when I caught her crying on the front porch one night; she missed her mom, and this was the first time she ever expressed to me (and confirmed my suspicions) that she wasn't really in love with my dad anymore, and hadn't been for quite a while. While this night was probably one of the key events that led to me and my mom being as close as we were, it also, for a while, shut down my emotions. I wanted to stay strong because I knew my hurting was only hurting her worse, so rather than deal with the loss of my nana through grieving, I ignored the sadness. I pretended it wasn't there, and eventually it stopped.

Except it didn't really stop; it only moved elsewhere. I think that through this shrugging off of my negative emotions, the emotions had to go somewhere; they hadn't been given the proper attention they needed, hadn't been resolved. The emotions remained, just not with me. Through this, I believe the shadowy figure I mentioned was born, because it was very shortly after this that I began seeing him.

This figure, in physique, is dark. Nothing but dark. A tall, dark mass, eight feet or so in height, can manifest itself as a shadow on a wall or a shadowy mass that is capable of moving away from a wall. The one time I saw him very closely, he had red eyes. No pupils or irises, just red, and this was the only feature I could see where his face should be.

I liken him to shadow people; I came up on the theory of his being made of emotional trauma before I ever heard of shadow people, and when I looked them up, loll and behold, it's said to be one of the possible explanations for the existence of some of them. Have a look here, in the second paragraph. It seriously blew my mind. Shadow people on the whole can be many different things; basically, it just describes a shadowy apparition that science has yet to prove or disprove as a type of "ghost." It can be anything. Shadow people can be ghosts of the dead, they can be demonic in nature, or, as in the case of mine, they can be metaphysical manifestations.

He revels in attention; it bothers me talking about him because when I do, he has a tendency to show up. Because his make-up is of ignored negative emotions, it's only natural that he would be attention-hungry, and attached to me, as I guess I was sort of his creator in a way, if my theory is correct. You could liken him in a lot of ways to a child suffering neglect. The only difference is he isn't quite human, and is definitely no child.

I can tell when he's around. Most of my family can, but none so much as me, because he's more attached to me. Whether I see him or not, if he decides to come around, any atmosphere can grow cold; physically cold and metaphorically. I could be in the best mood I've ever been in and just suddenly take a turn instead for depression, anxiety, nervousness, fear, sometimes bad enough to make me physically sick. That, more than any shadow on any wall, is what marks his appearance to me. I'm not one to take fear in ghosts, I find them fascinating. I fear the shadow because of what his presence does to me.

He comes around mostly when I'm already not doing extremely well, already feeling a little down. Negativity seems to attract him; he hangs around and makes it last even longer than it has to. Sometimes he does come around when I'm doing extremely well, but not often, as positivity seems to weaken him. I think he's slightly vampiric in nature; he's strengthened by negative emotions, feeds off of the energy of the person feeling a bit under the weather, but weakens when everyone is positive. I don't enjoy his company, when he's around I want nothing more than for him to leave me be, yet when he's not I find myself researching shadow people and being all the more curious, just because I find these things interesting.

I would have passed him off as myself going insane, had my mom not seen him while she was alive; she mostly saw him in passing, a shadow moving across the wall that she didn't quite catch. My sister-in-law once saw him full on, standing behind the television for a full ten seconds, before walking across the hallway and disappearing on the wall on the other side of my bedroom's closet; he seems to like my closet, as I have most often seen him standing in front of my closet door. Because others have seen him, I unfortunately don't feel like I can pass it off as my own wild imagination. I believe he appears to other people because he's plenty capable of feeding off of anyone's emotions; the reason he appears to me the most is because most of the negative emotions he's made of are mine.

He didn't gain the ability to do much physically until about a year ago; I came in one night, in a very good mood after hanging out with a friend, and heard a growl as I was closing the back door. It wasn't like anything I had ever heard in my life. I know my dogs' growls, and it wasn't any of them. It didn't sound human. It sounded like it was directly at the back door, outside of it, and there wasn't anything there. Needless to say, I locked the back door, shut off the porch light and hurried out into the living room; I got the impression of him being there at that moment, and I didn't want to be in my room for it, as up to that point, I had only ever physically seen him in my room.

I got all the lights in the house shut off except for the living room light and sat out there with my laptop, trying to ignore his obvious presence, since ignoring him does make him leave occasionally. Now, before I carry on, I will explain that the house is set up as such; the back door leads into a small laundry room; coming in, if you turn left, there will be a doorway into the kitchen. Turn right, the kitchen leads to a walk-in dining room, and the dining room opens into the living room without a door. From the sofa I was seated on, I could see into the kitchen, and could see the doorway leading into the laundry room.

I happened to see something out of the corner of my eye; I looked up to see that the light in the laundry room had flicked on. Odd, definitely. Ignoring the paranormal possibility, I got up, thinking maybe I had left that light on, and started towards the kitchen to go shut off the light.

And the light shut off. This froze me. Maybe both lightbulbs had died. Maybe the wiring to that light had crossed wrongly somewhere, somehow. If I ignored that it might be him, I thought, maybe he would go for the night. So I kept forward.

Then the light began flicking on and off. On and off. Not furiously, but not extremely slowly. Just like a little kid playing with the light switch. Still, it might be wiring. As I got closer, I stopped. The house was dead silent--I could hear the light switch itself flicking on and off. As I got close enough to see, I watched the light switch flick off, one last time.

I won't lie; I seriously about fainted. And not just because of the fact that I felt him hovering right behind me the second the lights went off. It was the simple fact that he had the energy to do anything physical; if he could turn off a light switch, what could he do to me? And judging by the presence I felt behind me, he was in an even less delightful mood than usual--and thinking back, though I didn't know why then, I think I do now.

I had been depressed then. For quite some time. It was around last summer, and I was just really missing mom. I was about to be graduating high school and she wasn't going to be there to see it, and it killed me. The shadow was reveling in it, in all the negative emotions. I saw him everywhere. Not even just my house. Then, I finally got someone to talk to, still the only friend I have in person that I'm comfortable with talking to about pretty much anything. And it lifted my mood almost immediately, to actually have someone to talk to. This was... probably the third night after we'd really gotten close.

I mentioned the shadow to him that night, actually, now that I think of it. I think it was a combination of that, and the fact that this friend of mine had taken away the shadow's constant source of negativity so suddenly, that pissed off the shadow so much. He wanted to scare me, to scare me back into my negative mood. It worked for that night, but I was fine again the next day. He kept persisting for a little while. Attention-starved child. Then, he gave up again.

As for his growl, I've heard it twice since. Once, a few months after the first time, in my nephews' room. I heard their television shut off; my older nephew had come out into the living room and fallen asleep on the couch, and my younger nephew was in the room alone, asleep in his playpen, so he couldn't have touched the TV. But I heard the television shut off, and a moment later, that same growl, in their room. And my nephew woke up screaming.

You can bet I was in there in five seconds flat. Turned the television back on, comforted the poor kid. That time was probably a bid to try and make me angry; anger is a negative emotion, and the shadow could have fed on it as well. So he targeted my weak spot, my nephews, in an attempt to really piss me off. And yeah, it worked. Of course it did; the one thing I had been worried about from the start with him was him ever going near my nephews, and he had done just that.

The next time I heard it was actually just last night. That same growl. I'd been depressed for about a week, and though I hadn't seen him, I was feeling him again. Ended up spending a good part of the night talking with one of my friends, and it cheered me up; the shadow got mad, and I heard the growl in the boys' room again. Very, very quietly. Not like he was trying to scare them, just like he was annoyed and leaving because I was going out of my bad mood.

Thinking about it, he's an interesting thing. I started out thinking of him as nothing but horrible, terrible, something not quite evil but close enough that I didn't want it anywhere near me. But thinking about him, I can't help but pity him a little, even with as much as I hate pity. Sympathize, even. My family tends to either not notice or ignore my depression whenever I'm not doing well. Neglect, no matter how small, is painful. So aside from the fact that he was created of my own banished negativity, the fact that he was born of neglect only makes him all that much more negative, all that much more hungry for attention. I don't feel bad enough for him to like him; it's hard to like something that exists to make people miserable. But I do pity him, especially since it's more than likely my own fault that he exists, if my hypothesis of his existence is indeed correct.

I'd love to write something like him into a horror story one day. It would be an interesting thing to work with.

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So... that was strange.

Tarot cards. My readings have always been pretty vague; I've practiced with them, just going by readings in the book that came with my set. Runes always worked better for me.

This is the first reading I've done based off of a spread I found elsewhere; in this case, I was looking up spreads for finding out about spirit guides, or contacting them. I found one that seemed to fit the description, and might also serve another purpose. This particular spread is for contacting your spirit guide or a spirit around you. I decided to try it.

I do believe the latter happened.

This is the spread I used.

The Spirit Spread

--2-----3--
-----1-----
--4-----5--

card #1 represents the spirit, a little info about who they are
card # 2 represents why they are with you right now
card # 3 represents what they want you to know
card # 4 represents what actions you can take and/or how you can help them
card # 5 is a summary/outcome of the entire reading

I lay my cards with the fronts facing down, and flip each card as I reach it. So, I'll continue my post in the same way; one card at a time.

For my first card, I received The World, inverted. Now, this is a wonderful card when upright. Completion, reward, success. But it was inverted, which connotes such things as disappointment and inconclusion. What does this mean? As this was the card that represents a little about the spirit themselves, this is a very sad spirit indeed. They feel incomplete somehow, it seems, and they want me to know that.

The second card was the Ten of Pentacles, upright. This card deals in wealth and gain. Prosperity of any variety. And the second card represents why they are with me right now. This, to me, implies that the spirit is with me to gain something. Just what that might be, I guessed that might be covered with card four.

But first, came the third card. This was the Two of Cups, inverted. I actually feel like an idiot because I just realized I read it as upright; which means two forces that are drawn together for some reason. Inverted, I guess it would mean two forces pushing away from each other, pulling away from each other. The third card represents something the spirit wants me to know, so I guess this would mean it is feeling alienated from me. Either way... it still seems to all come to the same outcome. And this way actually makes more sense to the outcome it came to initially.

The fourth card. This was the card that broke me. This was the card that told me I hadn't gotten in contact with my spirit guide. The Wheel Of Fortune, inverted. Representing failed enterprise, difficult change. This fourth card is representative of how I can help the spirit; so I help the spirit by going through difficult times. If this seems familiar, please refer to my previous post about my shadow person.

My fifth card, the summary or outcome, is the Six of Pentacles, upright. This is a card "full of the promise of bounty." This could mean two very different things. It could be the outcome on my side; the spirit is feeling alienated and slowly drawing away from me, and it could mean a promise of bounty for me. Good things on the horizon. Or it could be in the respect of the spirit; something bad is soon to come, and he will have the negativity from me that he seems to sustain himself on once again. Very vague.

I believe this is my shadow person.

He's feeling incomplete and disappointed (first card). He's with me for his own sense of prosperity, for the abundance of negative feelings that once surrounded me, and often did, between my mom and many other close family members passing away (second card). He wants me to know that he feels like he's being pushed away (third card), and that it would certainly be helpful if I'd enter into some new downfall or tragedy to replenish his sustenance (fourth card). One of two things could come of this; nothing bad will happen and I continue to push him further away, or something bad happens again and he gains what he craves (fifth card).

This is the first really interesting Tarot reading I've had, and I'll definitely be looking for more spreads online from now on. This was a very simple, but apparently effective spread.

I'll probably post pictures of this particular reading later. I took pictures so I could remember this reading, as I'm probably going to tell my brother about it tomorrow, he's interested in this kind of thing as well. So yeah. Yay pictures?

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AAAAH before anything else, the pictures of that Tarot reading from my previous post:

The full spread.
Card 1: The Spirit
Card 2: Why They Are With You
Card 3: What They Want You To Know
Card 4: Actions You Can Take To Help Them
Card 5: Outcome

Sorry that took so long. I figured I'd post it at the beginning of my next post, but I haven't had much that I felt like posting about until... well, yesterday morning.

Onto yesterday morning. In fact, it relates to part of why I'm awake right now. Of course, the main reason is my incessant insomnia that I've yet to find any real cure for. The other reason, at the moment, is what happened yesterday morning. I guess you're wondering what that might be? Well, I had my first (and very hopefully last) experience with sleep paralysis. I can only be thankful that I've studied it in the past and therefore knew exactly what had happened after I broke out of it, but that doesn't mean it was very enjoyable.

Something similar has happened to me before, but I believe to this day that it was actually my first face to face experience with some sort of spirit rather than sleep paralysis. I might talk about it in a later post, but I'm sort of still not extremely comfortable talking about it. One of the few things from early in my childhood that I still sometimes have nightmares about. I hope you'll forgive me for mentioning it and changing the subject.

Sleep paralysis... in short, in order for it to occur, part of your brain has to be awake while another part is still asleep or has fallen asleep. This can create something like a waking dream, only you can't move while it's happening--hence "paralysis." That's the gist of it, at least. I've read plenty of accounts of it, and mine is a sort of run-of-the-mill case.

Once again, that doesn't mean it was enjoyable by any means, otherwise I might be at least trying to sleep right now.

We'll start with yesterday morning. My brother woke me up to let me know that my younger nephew, Ian, a two and a half year old that's just started to learn the wonders of being a daredevil, had finally done it: gained himself a trip to the hospital for something he did. Nothing serious. Nothing related to his recent attempts to flip off of the fronts of couches or combat-roll off the backs of them (luckily he hasn't succeeded in his endeavors yet). You see, he just got a penny stuck in his mouth, wedged between his hard palette and his teeth, tightly enough that neither my brother, his wife, nor her sister could get it out. The doctors got it out fine later that afternoon, and all there was left to show for it was a little indentation on the roof of his mouth.

Carrying on, after my brother told me that Ian was on his way to the hospital for something not quite so serious as his older brother's past hospital trips (putting his arm through a window, tearing the corner of his lip within hundreths of a millimeter of hitting a major nerve that could have paralyzed that side of his face, etc.), I was calm enough to turn my head and close my eyes again, try to go back to sleep. It was still rather early and if I was actually able to sleep then by George I wasn't missing the opportunity.

Unfortunately, it didn't work quite as I had expected it to. Within minutes, I was laying on my back, staring at the wall beside my bed, listening to the happenings in the living room, unable to keep my eyes closed for long enough to get to sleep. I heard my brother get off the phone with his wife (I later found out this call was regarding the fact that the ER was overcrowded and Ian was just going to be going to his regular doctor instead), and I heard my door open. I saw someone standing there out of the corner of my eye, and figured it was my brother coming back in to tell me something. I made to turn my head and look.

I found myself unable to do this. Kept trying for a bit, until it sunk in that I wasn't just being lazy, I actually couldn't move my head. Then the realization sunk in that my arms and my legs had also suddenly become much too heavy to do anything with. Breathing even felt a bit harder to do. I was pinned to the bed, unable to do anything but watch the figure standing in my open door out of the very corner of my eye, now convinced that if it was my brother he would have figured out there was something wrong by now. It sunk in right around then that it was sleep paralysis, but this knowledge did nothing to snap me out of it, unlike when a dreamer snaps awake after realizing what's happening to them is only a dream.

It felt like hours before I could move again--when I finally jerked my head to the other side to stare at my door, the figure was no longer there and the door was closed. Typical case of sleep paralysis indeed. My brother later confirmed that he hadn't entered my room again that morning, the only time he had entered had been to tell me about Ian's morning malfunction. It had all been a hallucination, a waking dream, like those that often occur during sleep paralysis. From some of the cases of it I've read, mine was quite minor.

Minor or not, I never want anything like it to ever happen again. If I ever wish to include something of the sort in my writing I have firsthand experience to go by at the very least, but that's the only benefit that comes of it as far as I'm concerned. I never, never want it to happen again.

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Ghost stories!!!

I positively love this website. I love reading up on other peoples' experiences with the paranormal. I just figured I'd share this link here. Don't have anything I really feel like typing up right now, so that'll be all for now! ^_^

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Last night was a weird night for dreams. Well, this morning, really, given I rarely fall asleep for any length of time until the sun's already coming up lately. I also think I might have went into sleep paralysis twice this morning. Both instances of it were very brief, but it wasn't any more pleasant than last time. Worse, if anything.

It started with a very short dream; started with me waking up and going out into the living room, flopping onto one of the sofas and talking to my mom, who was sitting on the other sofa watching out the window. Just talking, I don't even remember about what. All I do remember is that the dream ended when we heard heavy footsteps stomp right past us through the living room. When I woke up, I couldn't move. I kept my eyes clenched shut, because they were capable of moving and seemed to want to open. After last time, I didn't even want to think about what might be standing in my doorway this time. I didn't open my eyes until I could move again, and I got up and turned on my bedroom light.

I was tired enough that I laid back down, and went straight back to sleep. I don't remember that dream very well, just very vague details. All I remember is it was odd and relatively pointless in nature. I woke up from and saw someone standing in my room, someone I recognized. A friend of mine. I panicked and shut my eyes very quickly. I went through a good bit of the day today wondering if it was one of those cases where a person dies and goes to visit friends and family for a brief period of time before passing on, until I saw him on facebook this evening. I couldn't exactly text him during the day and go, "Hey, are you still alive? Because I had this wicked crazy hallucination earlier and I'm half convinced you died in a car wreck on the way to work or something." That sort of text just doesn't generally go over well. I'm fairly convinced that was sleep paralysis as well, as having trouble keeping my eyes closed seems to be a common element of my few experiences with it so far.

I'm feeling really odd tonight. I can't really explain in what way; I'm not sure myself. Kinda dreamy. I know I'm awake, but everything's had this surreal, sort of floaty quality for the majority of the day. Last time I felt like this was a result of experimenting with binaural wavelength tracks and listening to two in a row that just mixed together to produce some weird results. I think it's a side effect of the sleep paralysis this morning. It's not entirely unpleasant, just extremely strange.

On another note entirely, I downloaded an interesting application on my wonderful wonderful smartphone recently. It's supposedly a "ghost radar" that picks up energy/sound wavelengths in relation to the location of the phone and reproduces them as words. Believe me, I was extremely skeptical, but I've gotten some weird, weird, weird results with it. I was sort of lol-ing at it until I realized the radar was picking up some pretty sentient answers from a red (red is supposed to indicate a very high concentration of energy) dot that would be right near my closet on the radar. If you've read my previous posts, you'll know that my shadow-buddy likes hanging out around my closet.

Seems like he's willing to use any means to make his presence known >< As I said, he's like a very negative, attention-starved child. I'm going to do my best to document some of this, and I'll probably post some of the "conversations" here for others to look over and offer their opinions.

For now, however, I think I'm going to do a bit of tarot reading and get back to typing up a few things for yourghoststories.com. I don't feel like sleeping, that's for certain. ~_~

[Κομμα]

I bet it seems like I'm spamming my own journal, doesn't it? But no, seriously, I absolutely had to share this as soon as I found it.

Hooded Shadow People

That link describes what I've been going through with my lovely shadow guest to an absolute T. Seriously. I could feel the color draining from my face just reading over it. The only difference, is I've never, ever delved into "dark" spiritualist activity, though it didn't say that was necessary; it just helped set the conditions. I'm not going to lie, I can be quite superstitious about magic--if I don't know about it, if I haven't properly researched it beforehand, I'm not going to try it. I've never even used an Ouija board, for Pete's sake! Apparently my life just sucked enough that it drew one in or created one.

A few bits that stood out to me:

"... the shadow entity described as the Hooded Man most often appears to those who are negative or 'dark' individuals who are sad, depressed, and unhappy."

Pretty accurate, I'd say. I was definitely quite depressed when mine started showing up.

This entity is usually described as a hooded shadow with long cape and glowing red eyes, mostly deemed a man...

The first time I saw him head on, his eyes were indeed glowing red. Since, I normally only see his silhouette. He doesn't really lose form when he moves like it described in the paragraph after this. He is hooded, wearing a cape or a cloak maybe, and his eyes did glow red that first time I saw him--and I saw him more clearly that first time than I ever did subsequently.

It is believed that the hooded shadow forms attach themselves to those who have a lot of negative life history and who have willfully delved into the darker paranormal and supernatural realms, perhaps looking to aquire some powers associated with these realms. These beings often show up immediately following traumatic live events or great material losses when the human being involved is already in a state of loss or great negativity.

Like I said, not the least bit of delving for me. However, it started appearing when I was fourteen and is still around, and I've been caught in the middle of a web of negativity for as long. Mine showed up in glimpses now long after my nana passed, and really took form after my mom passed away and I was stuck in a state of depression and the worst insomnia I'd ever faced in my life.

It seems the hooded man/entity works against the person, driving them further into despair whenever possible. The hooded man seems to cause further depression, fear, a great deal of paranoia and generally harrasses a person with these moods and conditions until the person can end up in a state of feeling totally worthless. Due to the way a person might deteriorate emotionally and mentally, the attachment of these beings to the person is very hard to break.

Totally accurate. It doesn't really detail the way that the figure can give off negative emotions itself--this was the most torturous thing about him for a very long time, having those emotions pile on top of my depression from losing my mom.

Of course, the best solution here is to not end up attracting a 'hoodie' to you at all.

No, really? Tell me something I know, why don't you! *mumbles about idiots writing articles on the paranormal* -_-'

The best defenses if you end up being harrassed by a hooded man entity is to use everything positive that you know of against it. Pray, positive affirmations, seek positive emotional and mental health supports, connect or re-connect in your relationship with any higher power you've come to know, meditate, avoid ISOLATION and start renewing friendships or making positive new ones...and believe in your worthiness.

Tried it and I guess it laughed at me, tried it and nothing happened, tried it and it just tried harder, tried it and I think it lol'd at me quietly to itself, tried it and it actually kinda worked but only as a temporary solution, tried it and it got pissed off, tried it and it didn't care. The shadow doth persist.

These hooded shadow people are considered some of the worst from those who believe that shadow entities exist.

Well, honestly, I don't mind mine so much now that I can block out the negative emotions he puts off; I still sense them, but they don't effect my own mood or my own feelings anymore. He can only feed off of me if he finds some creative way to make me depressed or angry (his most successful gimmick so far has been very blatantly targeting one of my nephews and if he ever does it again I'm going to punch him in his glowyfreakineye >_<).

But seriously, OMFG I'M NOT THE ONLY PERSON. I'm... I'm actually almost glad to know that I'm not just delusional. I mean, I knew I wasn't since other people have seen him now, butbutbut... I was still considering it a possibility.

[Κομμα]

My brother finally saw my shadow person.

He never doubted it anyway, but I'm still interested that he did. He caught a glimpse of the bugger as he was walking past three windows in our dining room that overlook our front yard; he saw said shadow person moving, very quickly, past a bench swing we have suspended between two trees, which happens to be somewhere I frequently hang out. Earlier that same day, he felt a hand on his shoulder that we both believe, from the fact that it seemed comforting and she seems very tied to my experiences with my shadow person, was our nana sort of comforting him in advance. My brother's been going through a lot recently, but due to some... experiences he had as a teenager, he pretty much always has his guard up against negativity. If that shadow person is thinking about haunting him, it's going to have another thing coming @_@

I'm back with another experience I had recently... maybe a week ago. Would likely have posted it sooner, buuut I wanted to discuss it with my brother beforehand since I was a little freaked by it. Well, not really freaked. Just made nervous. An excited sort of nervous. Basically, it's the closest I've come to intentional astral projection.

I don't deny it could have been sleep paralysis for a moment, but... sleep paralysis is, in most cases, positively terrifying, and this simply wasn't. And another thing, I think that sleep paralysis can be triggered by paranormal happenings, and I therefore do not care if it was sleep paralysis. I think the body likely goes into sleep paralysis during astral projection. So, moving on.

In short, I was meditating lying down; I normally meditate sitting up, but my back was bothering me terribly and sitting up for that long with no back support was too distracting, and meditation and distraction don't mix well. So, I was meditating. Got to that point where you feel sort of vibratey, sort of like having pins and needles in your entire body but slightly more pleasant. I ended up deciding to come out of it at some point, not for any particular reason, so I opened my eyes, which normally does it. Normally brings me right back to normal.

However, I still had that vibratey numbness, even when I opened my eyes. I could see my room, though it was blurry due to my lack of glasses... but my bedroom door wasn't there. It was just a doorway, and through it I saw what may have been the most beautiful forest I've ever seen in my life. Something like the Catskill mountains. Very rocky, huge rocks jutting out everywhere, but the trees were just too large. California redwood size, I mean. And there was a river running through it all, somewhere beyond the rocky cliff that was right at the doorway. And I saw it all, despite having no glasses on, perfectly clearly, more clearly than I've eve seen anything. A lot of the trees were pines, and I could have counted every needle on every tree, even those in the distance. It was beautiful. I can't do it justice with mere words, and even thinking about it again brings tears to my eyes. I don't know where this was; all I really knew was that I absolutely wanted to be there.

I could see a figure standing on one of the rocks, not far from the doorway itself, but this was the one thing I couldn't make out. I could see no features on this figure. I didn't get any sort of bad feeling from them, I simply couldn't quite see who or what they might have been. Just that it was a vaguely human shape. Not sure if it was male or female.

But the shock of seeing this made me jump a little, and it disappeared from my vision rather quickly as I came completely out of my meditative state.

I discussed this with my brother tonight. He's achieved "full meditation" (something like astral projection through meditation) one time, and only one time, and is something of a guide to me in the area. He suggested exactly what I figured out of it; that I needed to talk to him because I still have that nervousness of the unknown that pretty much everyone has, regardless of whether they like to admit it or not; and that I should focus on that "vision," for lack of a better word, the next time I meditate. I'll have no troubles doing that.

The only time I have ever seen anything quite so clearly as this forest was in a dream I had, that I'm not entirely sure was a dream; my brother thinks it may have been my first experience with astral projection. All that really happened was I was standing in a pool of water that stretched out very far. I was about knee-deep, perhaps minus a few inches of depth, though the bottom of the water wasn't actually visible. It was very slightly rippled, and the most brilliant shade of turquoise I've ever seen. It looked pretty much exactly like the water here (link) except that it was water in all directions, I could see. I was alone, though I very distinctly felt that there was a presence there with me.

This particular "dream" occurred immediately after a dream in which I died. It's supposedly impossible to die in dreams. While I think this is a ridiculous wive's tale, I certainly never had died in a dream up to that point. And after I died in that dream, I was in this pool of water. It was beautiful, it was breathtaking, and I was utterly calm. The feeling that someone else was there wasn't a negative feeling. Before I came to, woke up, I never did look behind me, and I almost wish that I had, because I think whoever I felt there was behind me.

So in this "dream," my vision was as unnaturally crisp and clear as it was when I saw this forest in my bedroom doorway; and in both instances, both places were places I absolutely wanted to be, that I loved and identified with for no reason I could even begin to explain. When I awoke from the dream about that strange lake, I was devastated that I even had awoken, since I hadn't wanted to leave. When the forest disappeared from my doorway, I was equally devastated because it was incredibly calming and satisfying just to be able to see it.

I regret to say that, because of my mundane nervousness, I haven't meditated since that vision in my doorway, but I certainly do intend to again, probably tonight since I'm not tired at all and very at ease after the conversation I had with my brother. He drives me nuts quite often, so I really don't give him enough credit for how great a brother he really is.

Next time I post, if nothing in particular happens in the meantime, I'll probably discuss the spirit of a little girl that I've had contact with. But now, I think I'm going to go do a bit of writing, meditate for a while, and go to sleep.

[Rae]

I've been meaning to post here for...ever. ._. So, instead of rambling about my long history of ghosts, I decided to tell you about something creepy that happened to me a couple minutes ago.

So, I was just sitting on the couch minding my own buisiness, when I suddenly felt someone trying to get my attention. You know...like when you have headphones on and a parent or housemate will call your name from another room? Like that. Except, I didn't have headphones on and no one called my name. I tried to ignore it, but the feeling kept getting stronger and stronger and more urgent, so I immediately headed for the tarot decks. Trust me...it's better than a pendulum or other forms of scrying at the moment. I asked mum if I could borrow one of the decks she collects and then went to meditate over the cards. I've never used that deck before, and I didn't want mum's aura or energy, etc. to interfere with...whatever was going on. And then it got freaky.

I get all nice and relaxed, the way you're supposed to be, and picture clearing my chakras. In my head, it was like I could see myself sitting in a dark room with my chakras slowly becoming clear. But...I felt like someone was standing behind me. It was like me and someone with nightvision had stepped into a pitchblack room; they could see me, but I couldn't see them even though I knew they were there. I could feel someone tryign to shake me and call my name, but none of my senses worked. And then I finally opened my eyes. The living room looked the same. Everything was fine, even though I didn't feel so great. I didn't want to stop the reading, though, because I wasn't sure if the thing pestering me was a spirit or not, so I shuffled the cards and laid them out using this spread.

The first reading was odd; giving the impression of someone frustrated, angry, emotionally wounded, and trying to establish communication about...something. Like I said, it was odd. Some of the cards didn't go together at all. Another thing that was odd, it didn't read like how it normaly does when I'm trying to get ahold of our ghosts and tell them something, it read like when I'm trying to give a person a reading, and the don't really want it but are too polite and curious to refuse.

So I started wondering if I'd somehow tacked onto a person and shuffled again, keeping in mind my question of "who are you?". (Using the Secrets of the Necronomicon set, by the way. Definitely not my usual deck type, even if the cards are beautiful.)

Card 1: 3 of Disks - Work; skilled labor; craft; constructive force; building up; erection (in the building sense! Minds out of the gutter!); increase of material things; clever use of skills.
Overlapping that was card 2: 2 of Swords. I couldn't tell if it was inverted or not (seeing as it's sideways, so here's both meanings: Upright - Truce; restoration of peace; differences resolved; quarrel ended; unselfishness; sympathy; understanding; balance acheived. Inverted - Continuing tension; lingering resentment; tactlessness; disloyalty; imposture; unintended injury.

So, by those cards I could safely make the assumption that this was someone very skilled and clever who is probably trying to balance out a want for peace with resentment towards those around them. It fit in with the previous reading, too.

Card 3: The Fool - Innocence; simplicity; naivete; child-like wonder; spiritual path; new beginning; journey of discovery; higher guidance; need for prudence.
(In my book that shows the Celtic cross, card 3 is an immediate influence, I'm kinda merging the two.)
Card 4: The Devil, Inverted - Malice; resentment; betrayl; oath-breaking; anger; abuse of power; intimidation of others; bullying; deliberate cruelty; forbidden forms of sexuality; pleasure in wickedness.

These two cards say that this person is simple, but full of anger. They probably have a past of abuse as both the abuser and the abusee. They seem to want to start over, to try and get back to a childhood-like time where they were happy and the issues of their past didn't happen.

Card 5: 9 of Cups, Inverted - Self-praise; full of oneself; vanity; self-congratulation; bragging; conceited; generous but foolish.
Card 6: Strength, Inverted - Brute strength; frustration; smoldering rage; resentment; potential for violence; unbridled anger; loss of control; ungovernable; lashing out; misuse of force; bullying.

Both cards are future influences, what could happen if they're not careful and don't change their ways. These cards say that their ego will destroy them. They are currently too full of themself to look at the big picture, which will lead to anger, frustration, and them doing something that they will later feel a crippling regret over. It's a very dangerous mindset to be in.

Card 8: 10 of Cups - Success perfected; acheivement realized; sustained happiness; wish completely fuffilled; heart's ease; ideal love; perfect friendship; cup runneth over.
Card 9: 4 of Wands - Completion; perfection; settlement; celebration of success; conclusion of work; enjoyment; harmony; satisfaction.

These cards are a bit...odd to have in such a negative spread with a great card like the 10 of Cups in the spot for the querent's fears. To me, it says that this person is afraid of reaching their goal and having everyone but themself be happy. Or, perhaps they are scared of happiness, themselves, feeling it to be fickle and short-lived. It would also seem that they are scared to be so connected to others; possibly fearing that such a connection would lead only to more betrayl.

Card 9: Knight of Cups, Inverted - A young man who puts his pursuit of secrets and personal power above the welfare of others. This can lead him to an unscupulous conduct. He veiws others either as obstructions or tools to be used, and he displaces or uses them with utter ruthlessness. He hides his purposes to deceive. He does not think of himself as evil, but sees himself as clever and practical. He has scant sympathy for other human beings.
Card 10: 10 of Disks - Family affairs; the homsestead; wealth; retirement; penson; a gift; end of work; prudent investment.

Seeing as card 9 is supposed to reflect the inner dreams, wishes, and ideals of the querent, we can guess that he is very manipulative and a bit singleminded. He sees something, he wants it, he does everything in his power to get it. But he's dooming himself by burning his bridges. If he could learn to move beyond his closed-mindedness, he could be rewarded with getting exactly what he wants without suffering as he has been.

Put it all together and you've got a man who is intelligent and strives for balance while simultaneously sabatoging his efforts to reach that balance so he can attain his goals. Connections with others scare him, leading him to push everyone away in hopes it will keep him from getting hurt. His manipulativeness and ego will lead to his own self-destruction, but if he can push those aside and try to branch out, he may have a chance at happiness and the future that he wants.

It's not a happy reading, to be sure, and it sure freaked me out that I spent 45 minutes trying to use a deck of cards to get this guy to let me know what was wrong. If he was a ghost, I'd be looking up banishment spells at the moment, not telling you guys. >_> To be honest, I wish I knew who this guy was. All my inner maternal bits are wantignme to help him, but honestly I'd just like to know what his goals are and if he realizes that he does have issues.

I kow it's insensitive of me, but I'm still pretty shaken. ^^; 'Scuse me while I go and try to calm down. Sorry for the giant post. ._.

[Κομμα]

*-tackleglomp-s Rae* Glad you made it! And don't worry, I encourage long posts ^_^

I'd be pretty shaken myself, and I have a high tolerance for this sort of thing; it's difficult to spook me, perhaps since my first experience with anything paranormal or supernatural was utterly terrifying and traumatizing and anything else that's happened to me just seems rather tame by comparison... but yeah, I definitely would have been spooked. I can see where you're coming from with the maternal side and the more objective side; I unfortunately tend to let that the maternal side take over in situations like this, which is a huge part of why my shadow person is still around and why I can never manage to turn down anyone in need of help. I don't think you're being insensitive; in fact, I think I'm too sensitive, so I absolutely commend your stance.

I don't have a whole lot of experience with Tarot cards; I've only just started feeling remotely attached to my own deck, which is likely why I never had much luck with it until recently, so I definitely can't offer much insight. Just it was very interesting to read and I would have been pretty freaked myself. I know I was rather freaked when I got in contact with my shadow person; I've mostly stopped using my tarot cards and runes lately because he's gotten in a habit of making himself the subject of any and all of my readings, regardless of who I'm trying to contact. He's not happy that I've been ignoring him lately and is willing to use pretty much any means to contact me.

My brother posed an interesting theory about this type of shadow person last night, that I rather found interesting. See, my brother has a good friend that is very into this, and my brother himself was into it for a short time, and while it gives you great energy it can do terrible things to your state of mind. In a lot of ways, it's like spiritual drug use. You get addicted and can't stop; and if you manage to stop, you have to keep your guard up at all times, because it's easy to relapse. Once you do it, it's also easier for negative things to get attached to you. This is the main reason he keeps his guard up all the time. My brother's friend who still does this, and has since he was a teenager, has shadow people attached to him. Nothing like mine. They're smaller, but they're still negative.

I've never messed with energy vampirism myself; I certainly had read about it as a teenager. I've read about a lot of things of the sort. But, to me, it seemed a little too... I guess taboo, since I can't think of any other word for it. It made me think of drugs, and I had no intention of doing drugs of any kind. I've never done any negative thing that should have drawn a shadow person to me, I've just had personal issues that have lead to this one getting attached to my negativity.

Apparently, negative energy is the most satisfying type of energy for those into energy vampirism. My brother thinks it possible that these types of shadow people could be spirits of the once-living, spirits of those who practiced energy vampirism in life and have been disfigured by it into something inhuman as a result. They still crave negative energy in the afterlife, and latch onto negative people to gain it; this could mean someone who practices energy vampirism themselves, or someone who's just had a lot of issues in their life that have lead to a lot of negative feelings.

I like this theory. It unfortunately makes me feel even more pity for this shadow person, but it all makes a great deal of sense why he's grown attached to me. For a while, I was a great source. A cheap and easy spiritual drug dealer, I guess. Now he's grown attached and doesn't want to let go, so he's fine doing anything to gain my attention; from targeting people I care about, to invading on tarot and rune readings meant for myself or other spirits. A side of him does seem rather human, while a side of him certainly seems very inhuman. So, the theory makes sense to me.

He's grown a bit more active lately and managed to catch me severely off guard a couple mornings ago. The lamp in my room went out on this particular morning. I sleep with it on because I'm afraid of the dark to some extent; my room gets pitch black and I can't deal with pitch blackness. When that lamp goes out, I wake up, and this morning was no exception. My room was fairly dark, only a little light was managing to break through the curtains because the sun was just rising. I adjusted them a little and lay back down. My television is adjacent to the end of my bed, to the right of my closet door, so my eyes caught the reflection in my television screen of the little bit of light shining in through my window. I noted that the curtains were of a rather ominous shape--something like a hooded figure reaching out towards my bed.

Then I noticed the curtains were moving closer to my bed in this reflection, hand-shape outstretched.

I sat straight up to look at my curtains, and they were shaped absolutely nothing like what I'd seen in the reflection on my television screen. I looked back at my television and didn't see it again. I readjusted my curtains just to be safe. A little more light was reaching my room now, and I was a little more comfortable, and I lay back down. I saw something out of the corner of my eye, and glanced over at my bedroom door in enough time to see a hooded figure looking at me from around the corner of the alcove the door is set into, then move back again to where I couldn't see it. With that, I sat up, grabbed my flashlight, shined it in that direction, and walked over to turn my bedroom light on.

He normally doesn't catch me that off guard anymore, but given I was just waking up, I didn't quite have my guard up yet. He keeps finding my weak spots and I'm not extremely thrilled about it, but I'm still doing my damnedest to fend him off. I have been seeing less of him lately, and was very surprised that my brother had seen him. In fact, my brother had seen him the day before this particular morning.

I think I'm done. I can feel him trying to break my guard now and I have little interest in continuing talking about him while he's being ornery. I think I'm going to try meditating until everyone else is awake and then I'm going out in the living room.

[Κομμα]

As we found out via googling and various other means about a week ago, the Samsung Fascinate, my lovely Android smartphone, has a built in electromagnetic field sensor that has of course been exploited upon in the way of EMF Apps. Ghost hunting? There's an app for that. No, seriously.

So, my brother pirated a pretty neat one that actually works; you can test them by holding the phone up to something that is known to put of an electromagnetic field, such as a refrigerator, and see if it spikes, and it indeed does. It also has a built in recorder, so you can record your EMF session, as well as audio at the same time if you're looking to pick up EVP (electronic voice phenomenon). All quite interesting and, as we discovered tonight, effective.

My brother has taken an interest in this shadow person since his sighting of him, and we've been spending a few nights discussing and researching shadow people. He was at the computer, I was in an armchair tonight. I happened to catch something out of the corner of my eye, and I had my phone. On a general whim, I pulled up the EMF detector app. Normally in this chair, the app sits at about 40-60 microTesla units, but it was registering changes from around 80-120 microTesla units, which is unusually high. I got up and out of the chair, and there was a small area of the living room registering this. Then it drained off. I took a step towards the hallway and started picking it up again, and it went away. Another step, it was back. It faded off entirely in the hallway.

Not three minutes later, I again caught something out of the corner of my eye, this time in the dining room. I headed out there. Through the living room, my phone registered at between fifty to sixty microTesla units, about average for that area of the house, and normally average for the dining room. I got to the dining room table and it spiked up to 90, and began fluctuating between around the high 70s to lower 120s again. Walked back out in the living room, back down to around 50. Back into the dining room, same spot, it just continued to jump between around 80 to 120 microTeslas. It drained back down to fifty-ish in the dining room rapidly after a few minutes of this.

I am most decidedly a very intrigued Comma.

Also, around a week ago, not very long after I got the application and was just testing its features out a bit, I picked up something on an EVP recording that intrigued me a little. It sounded like a voice whispering the word "creeping" right into the mic. You can hear the sounds of my nephews' television in their room in the background noise, and you can tell the difference between the background noise and this whisper. It definitely sounds male, but it's hard to say anything aside from that. I don't even know that it was the shadow person. Could have been anything. I just know it was a teency bit odd.

That's all for tonight on the subject. I don't feel like provoking him to come bother me any more tonight, I had more than enough earlier. Intriguing and all, but still not something I want to provoke.

[Κομμα]

Got out of touch with my spiritual side as of lately, and I seemed to mostly stop noticing any activity going on around the house at all; good or bad, positive or negative. I feel bad about it, but it deterred the negative entity I've mentioned here, the "shadow person," and that was enough to convince me. I still have my beliefs, but I haven't been meditating, no runecasting, nothing at all, I hardly even have been thinking about it, and while it's keeping me from noticing the entity, I think it's a huge part of what's keeping me so low in spirit lately; and over the past week or two, things have again picked back up.

It started small. Losing things, having them turn up in odd places. My glasses, firstly; I lost them for about a week. The day they went missing, the first place I checked was my bookshelf. It comes up to about the height of my waist, maybe a bit higher, and is right at my door; I figured, maybe I set them here while I was walking into/out of my room, I've done it before. Tore the thing apart, they weren't there. Five days later, I happened to be leaving my room, and spotted them sitting front and center on top of the bookshelf. Similarly, my brother lost a cigarette lighter recently; maybe a day later than when I found my glasses, as he was going to light one up with a match, he reached for the matches, only to realize he had something in his hand: the lighter that had gone missing about a week prior. Yay?

This seems more like the innocent playings of the little girl I've heard and caught glimpses of around the house before. No idea whether or not I've mentioned her here before or not. She seems to mostly only bother me outwardly when I'm home alone. Turning televisions on and off, giggling but not really letting herself be seen, so on and so forth. I get the impression that she's the one that likes rearranging and hiding things.

A few days before, I caught a glimpse of a figure moving past my bedroom window (which is just to the left of my computer desk, overlooking a ramp that leads down from my back porch that was built when my grandpa lived in this house so he could get down it in his wheelchair). Pretty big figure. I guessed it was my brother, until I heard my brother in the living room, as well as his wife, as well as my nephews, and there wasn't anyone else here; not to mention I didn't hear footsteps, and I just didn't get an altogether good feeling from it. My mind didn't jump to the shadow person either; I hadn't seen him in so long that I thought maybe he'd finally given up.

Not so.

I figured if things were happening again without me doing anything at all to provoke it, I may as well give in and get back to my spiritual side again. I missed it, and that was only contributing to my depression. The first time I tried meditating again, sitting on my bed, I started feeling it again. Not the clown-spider alien from the Stephen King book/movie of the same name, but the feeling I get whenever the entity is around. Not much longer before I was actually pushed over, physically, felt a hand on my back. Thinking back, the thing that walked past my window was probably the same thing; a large, dark figure that gave me a bad feeling. To which I do say, crap, I thought this was done with. ~_~

Then, again, at my dad's house. I saw it moving across the wall nearly every time I opened my eyes in the living room that night. A great hulking black shadow with a hood. I guess it figured it would have a better chance of getting to me out of the safety of my own home, and maybe it did, because I was even more miserable than I expected I'd be the entire time I was there. At least I didn't go into sleep paralysis at any point. Had that happened, I'd have demanded to go home. I don't deal well with sleep paralysis, at all.

But, you know, I don't care. At least I've got a chance of combating it when I'm in touch with my spiritual side, so I'm getting back to meditating every day (well, preferably night when everyone else is asleep and all is quiet) again, at the very least.