Generations of Fear: Shadow Figures and a Child’s Midnight Terror

And I got closer to the bed, and all of a sudden, these glowing red eyes appeared in this black mass under the bed. Two encounters, two families, and one chilling question. What happens when something unseen chooses you or your child? We're gonna hear from generational shadow figures to a midnight terror that only a child could see. My name is Edwin and here are Kalin's and Pablo's true scary stories. These events happened between about two thousand and eight to twenty eighteen and pretty much three different locations throughout the East coast of the US. They started happening in Orange County, New York around two thousand and eight, but the real beginning of all of this happened back in Richmond, Virginia in the nineteen eighties to my mother. My mother and her best friend used to always hang out at her friend Kay's house. While there, they encountered this like shadow entity that would hide in the basement originally, but then it started coming out of the basement and kind of following them. It would hide Kay's mother's jewelry in her room to get her in trouble. It started just taking the jewelry all together they would never see it again. It started following my mom and her when they were hanging out there. The first big instance they had was around Christmas. They building a fort with chairs and blankets, and all of a sudden they see it coming out from behind the Christmas tree watching them. It had these glowing red eyes and it's just staring at them. So they hid in the fort and all of a sudden, the blankets just started getting pulled off the fort. They ran out of there. The next thing they had happened to them, which was the big final thing. My mom didn't really have any instances after this. Kay was having a sleepover party at her house. All these girls are hanging out and they started playing light as a feather stiff as a board. As they're playing, nothing's really happening until it's Kay's turn. When it's her turn, they all do the thing, have their fingers under her, and all of a sudden, she starts coming off of their fingers. She goes all the way up to the ceiling and then everybody starts screaming. As soon as they start screaming and she opens her eyes, it drops her from the ceiling onto the pillows on the floor just full drop and they all went screaming running. A lot of people went home, but they never really had a big encounter after that. It just kind of went back to taking things, hiding things, a nuisance. Really. Around two thousand and eight, in New York, my childhood home, it started coming after me and my sisters. During the same time, in Virginia, where Kay lives with her daughters, it started coming after them as well. So it was just kind of in two places at once somehow, and it would show itself in my backyard. Originally I could see it on the line of the woods in our yard and it would just stand there, and then it started getting closer and closer until I would be home alone and I would see it on our back porch looking at me through the glass door. I did not like that. I would hide from it. It looked like the outline of what seemed like stereotypical back wild West Native American. But we all knew it wasn't that. We could all tell like, that's not right. It's trying to fool us. Because it started in Virginia in the area where they were there happened to have been a lot of like burial grounds and stuff like that, so it seemed to kind of take on what people would assume it would instead of what it seemed to be doing, which was a lot worse than what you would assume a native spirit would be doing. I then started hearing stuff inside the house. We're not sure if the noises I would hear was this entity or something else. In the area that's where I grew up. The area is very well known for paranormal happenings. I live about a block from the spot that had the most US sidings in New York State for the longest time. I live right on the edge of a subject of the Appalachian Mountains, a lot of paranormal things. So the noise is not really sure if it was this entity or not. But I would hear somebody walking in our attic, and our attic is unfinished, so nobody can even walk up there. But I would hear footsteps over my bed at night, just kind of pacing over where I slept, and I slept on a bunk bed. I shared my bedroom with my sister at the time, and I had the top bunk, so it was like right over top of me. And I would hear this every couple nights just as walking until one night in two thousand and nine, this entity came inside the house. I was coming to bed. I always was the last when I go to bed, even at about eleven years old, it's always and I'm walking back to the room, lights are out. I come in and I just can tell something's wrong. The way the room is set up, the doors all the way on one side of the room, it's on the left side. On the right side at the end is where the bed is. Across from the bed is a TV. We had this little TV and it was on, but it was just on blue screen. Nothing was playing, so it has that blue light washing over the room. I look and underneath the bottom bunk where my sister is sleeping, there's no light touching. It's just like a black wall under the bed. I kind of thought that's not normal, but tried to brush it off until I walked in and I got closer to the bed, and all of a sudden, these glowing red eyes appeared in this black mass under the bed, and it started this unnatural growling noise. I was kicked into fight or flight. I didn't know what to do. I didn't run out of the room. I got close enough to jump from the head of the bed to the foot of the bed and halfway up the ladder, almost like an athlete that I was not at the time, and I ran up to the top and hit under the covers. After a little bit, I heard this noise come from the bottom. It sounded a noise almost like a snort, like a when a bull snorts in anger. It kind of made that noise. After a while, I could feel that heaviness leave, so it wasn't hanging out anymore. It had left when it realized I was not going to let it come near me. After that, it seemed to kind of back off a little bit, at least from me. I didn't really have anything happen other than it would turn off the lights constantly on me. Electronics would break very easily, and I would constantly have issues with my things disappearing. After my instance here, it started going after Kay's children. And we knew this because we would visit a lot we used to stay in. They had a detached garage with like an apartment above it, and we always called it the guest house, and that's where we would stay when we visit it. One time I'm in there. I had gone back early to the guesthouse for the one to go to bed. But I'm sitting there TV on trying to go to sleep and I hear what sounds like someone coming up the stairs to the door for the apartment. I call out to my parents, thinking it's one of them coming back to go to bed. Nothing. Then I yell out to my dad, thinking it was my dad. He loved to like jokes like that and try to scare us. No response. My dad would have answered if it was him. So with the no response, I was like, Okay, so this is not my parents, but it's coming up really slowly. As it got a little passed halfway up the stairs, I ran over and locked the door. As it got to the top. I'm hiding at the other end of the apartment, away from the door, and I can see the doorknob turn and it keeps turning back and forth like someone's trying to open it. And then it starts jiggling like someone's aggressively trying to open it, and I could see a shadow from underneath the door like someone was standing there. After about a minute straight of it trying to get in, it stopped and I started hearing footsteps down the stairs, but only to about halfway and then it stopped. I just sat in the corner hiding, did not go to sleep. I stayed there until my parents came and got annoyed that I had locked the door on them. The following day, Mom and Kay took most of us to go to the store. My middle sister and her middle daughter ended up staying at the house because they wanted to play. They did not want to go shopping, so we left. Kay's daughter's uncle lived next door, so her uncle was always there. They weren't alone alone, but they're playing in the living room, and connected to their living room is their kitchen, and they had this intercom system in the main house that connected to about half the rooms, not all of them. They hear the intercom turn on in the kitchen and it was just static. So they go over and they hit it and call, thinking maybe one of us stayed behind and just didn't tell them. They get back heavy breathing through the innercock. They hit it again, saying who is it? The heavy breathing just gets louder. Behind the kitchen, there's a hallway and down it is all the bedrooms and everything. It's a very skinny hallway, so they go around to look down the hall to see if any of the doors are open, if anybody's in the rooms, and they just see this really thick darkness. It goes about halfway. It's like a gradient, so it gets darker the further down the hallway you go, and they see this shadow like person at the end looking at them, and it starts running them. They booked it out of the house, screaming loud enough that her uncle came and they're sitting out on the driveway. When we came back, they're sobbing. They would not go back in the house. My mother and Kay are both telling them it was nothing. You were imagining things you watch a scary movie. I knew better. I knew exactly what it was, and I wouldn't go back in the house either. I just went back to the guest house. I was like, Nope, I'm not dealing with that. It kind of didn't bother us as much after that. It just seemed to like scaring us. It fed off of that, and when it couldn't scare us as much anymore, it backed off a little bit. In the same childhood home in my bedroom in New York. My aunt passed away. I was really close to her her and a couple of years after she passed, I'm still not able to deal with that. I was only nine when she passed. Around the same time as this entity started, I was not doing okay. I was upset, didn't sleep well, and one night, I'm still upset about her passing. All of a sudden, like I'm trying to force myself to go to sleep. Close in my eyes, I take one of my stuffed animals, put it over my eyes, just trying to get myself to go to sleep, and I can see light like someone's shining a flashlight at my eyes very close, and I can see my eyelids, but I still have the stuffed animal over my eyes, so there's no way that could have happened. And I get this wave of calm come over me, and I could hear a voice basically tell me to relax, it's okay, And in the moment, I didn't realize whose voice it was, but in the morning, when I woke up, I realized it was my late aunt who had said, you know, it's okay, relax, And right after she talked, I felt like a dog licked my face, and I had had a childhood dog when I was born. My parents had a German shepherd and she had to be put down when I was about three from cancer. That was her licking my face, and I just immediately after that just knocked out and had the best sleep I had had in years. I finally felt calm, and I finally was okay with everything that had happened to my aunt, and I was able to accept it after that, I one hundred percent believe that, like after people pass, if it's strong enough, if they're able to that, they will visit us and check in on us and let us know they're okay. And twenty fifteen, I graduated and I went to college in Orlando, Florida, so I moved there. I would live in my grandparents' house. They have a house there, and they only stayed about half the year. There are snowbirds. During the half that I was there alone, you could always feel this heaviness in the left side of the house, where my grandparents' master suitet was. I would not go near there. I didn't even like going in the garage that was on that side of the house. I just stayed far away from it as I could. It was always dark. Even if he turned the light on, it just was still very dark over there. Even when they stayed there, I could still feel it even though they were in that room at the ensa there. It was about end of twenty eighteen. I was getting ready to graduate. I'm like doing my homework. I would do my homework at the back of the house. So the house's open concept except for the master suite, which was completely closed off from the house, and on the right side there was a hall with a bedroom at the front of the house and the back. I stayed at the back of the house. At the back of the open concept, they had a screened in porch, which down there is called a Florida room. Some of them have glass. They happen to have glass and screen. And I would hang out back there to do my homework because it was a lot cooler sometimes than the house. I was out there late doing my homework. I'm packing all my stuff up, putting it back in my room in my backpack. As I'm doing so, I'm heading back to my room and I'm turning out the lights. I get to the beginning of the hallway to my bedroom, and I just stop because the hair on the back of my neck stands up. And I hear like a voice in my head say, don't look behind you. And I get a glance in my peripheral and I see that darkness creeping forward. Even with the light on. It was like engulfing the space. And I'm standing there and I hear the same voice tell me to run. I flicked the switch and I booked it down the hall into my room. As crazy it may as it may sound, I still turned off the lights because I would rather deal with that than my grandmother going on about wasting electricity. So I'm in the dark running to my room, which is the only light on at this point, and I can hear heavy steps on the carpet behind me, So this thing was huge. I get in my room, slammed the door. I'm able to just lock it. As I pull my hand back, the door shakes like a really big football player has just body slammed into the door. The only thing that kind of saved me is I happened to have a rosary hanging on the back of the door that I had just put there like a night or two ago. I ran over locked the other door into the room because it connected to the bathroom, and I just waited it out. I did not sleep. It was like stalking the room. I could hear it on the carpet outside the room. It would go around to the outside of my room, to the back where there were motion sensor lights, and it kept setting him off. I would look, there was no there, and would just keep setting it off. Got up in the morning, went to a shop nearby, bought sage. I saved the house. It did not help. Later it chased me out of the house. In the middle of the night about two am. I happened to be up and I could hear this thing going around. It was setting off the lights again, and it was just stalking, and I got this overwhelming sense of if I don't leave, something bad is gonna happen to me. So i'd pack up and I'm getting ready to leave. I had a pet, chinchilla, and I just felt like if I left him there, I was coming back to not having a pet anymore. So I grabbed him as well ran out of the house. As I'm running out the front door, I'm like, not looking up, not looking around, just straightforward, and I could hear this like deep laugh in the house behind. I ran out to my car, peeled out, and as I'm peeling out, I'm aware of the fact that there are only two lights on in the house, my bedroom and by the front door. I book it. I go to a church. I'm sitting in the church parking lot where I finally felt safe. Not super religious, but I Catholic. So I'm just in this church parking lot and I call my cousin. I'm freaking out. It's just like, calm down, you have to go back. You can't just stay in a parking lot all night. So I finally head back, and as I'm pulling back into the driveway, I see every light in the house is now on. As I get out and go to the door, I can hear that laugh again, like it's mocking me, showing me what it can do. And at this house, I don't believe that this is the same thing that followed my mother and Kay and then us. Whatever this was was one hundred percent demonic, because I would get the smell of like rotten eggs every once in a while and stuff like that, and it seemed when I used sage the second time and used as salt on the doorways. It seemed to back off a little bit, and it turned into scratches every night on my door. It didn't really get past that at that point. That was my last big instance. I moved out of that house as soon as I graduated. I was not staying there. I moved back to New York into my childhood home and haven't really had any issues other than my things still go missing, and I still have the lights turn out on me and electronics will freak out sometimes, but that's pretty much it. I mentioned it to my cousin. She had been at the house before. Both of us kind of have like a sixth sense. I usually will hear things and she'll usually see things. So she had seen stuff before and I had heard it, so she knew about it. And I told my dad because it was his mother's house, and he kind of brushed off. He's like, now, it's probably your imagination. It was funny that he would brush off because he had stuff happened to him in his childhood home after he played with Luigi board. That was probably my first experience ever was at his house when I was very young, having something watched me from the bottom of the stairs at like four years old as I walked to the bathroom. But it never came near us. It never attacked us, It never tried to harm us. It just watched at his house, his childhood home. My story started about ten years ago. My son was about two and a half three years old. I was a brand new dad, and we were renting this house, one story house on the east side of town. We were doing good and then, you know, we just got hit with some bad luck. Unfortunately, my wife at the time was indisposed and was taken away for a little bit, so it was just me and my son. I have two other step children, but they were with their father and it was just me and my son in the house alone. I believe it's either the second or third night us alone, just me and him, and he was sleeping in my bed. And it happened around eleven thirty twelve o'clock somewhere around there. We were both asleep, but he just started crying. Like mind you, I've been to a dad for a couple of years now, and I know the differences from crying. But this wasn't like him crying because he was hungry or sad. This was this was a crying like he was scared, like a blood clutter. It freaked me out. I jumped out of bed. I was looking at him because you know, I was. I turned on the night light and I was just checking him down because I know we had squarepions in our house before, and I was just looking for maybe he got bit, maybe he got stung or something, you know. But he was just crying, crying after I checked him, and I was just looking at his eyes. He wasn't looking at me. He was looking past me at the door. My bedroom door was open and it leads right into the living room dining room area. Everything was dark except for my light on my nightstand. But he wouldn't even look at me. I would call his name, I wouldn't try to get his attention, he would not look away. I was thinking, was he staring at you know? I started freaking out, and I asked him, like, what is wrong? Do you see something? I don't know why I thought of that, but it was just weird how he was just staring at the doorfront. And he could understand English, but he couldn't like speak very many words, but he could understand yes, no, so he was shaking his head yes, when I asked him if he was seeing something, and when he said yes, I freaked out, getting goosebumps therves. So I looked over my shoulder and I looked towards the door, and I couldn't see anything. But it was dark, mind you. It was midnight, close to midnight, and it was completely pitch black in there. And usually I could see the blinds from across the living room, you know, you got a little bit of moonlight coming in or something. But I couldn't even see that. It was darker than dark. I kept looking back and forth between the door and him, and he was just crying and crying, and he was I didn't know what else to do. I just started praying, you know, I started praying to bother mussel. When I was praying, I was trying to put everything I had into it, like all my faith, all my energy into the prayer, because I was so scared and I didn't want anything to happen, and I don't know what I can do against something that's supernatural. In my eyes, After I finished the prayer, I was saying, you're not allowed here. You need to leave this house. You were not allowed here, Like I will say in it with every fiber of my being. I was putting so much energy into those words. Afterwards, I shut the door, but when I turned around, my son was already he stopped crying, and he started laying down, and then like he just turned over and he went to bed like nothing ever happened. Coming back to it, and I opened the door, I could see the windows again, and it's like that wasn't like that like a couple seconds ago. So I go to the living room and I start checking everything. I turned on the lights, of course, and I'm looking around the dining room area, living room, kitchen, the hallway. I start checking the doors, the back door. Everything's locked, everything secure. It was really really weird. That was like the only thing that ever happened in that house. That was the only thing that ever happened in my life. Nothing before or since then has happened, but just that one incident. I don't know. It was just definitely one for the books. I don't know how else to explain it. It wasn't until like a couple of years later when he can actually formulate senses and everything. And I asked my son, like, do you remember when you got woken up and you were crying. He had no recollection of it. I mean, I don't blame him. He was three two and a half, so I don't foresee him remembering something like that. I know that kids and pets they can see stuff that we can't see because we kind of grew out of it. But we got taught that stuff is not there, you know, so we end up unlearning what stuff that we can see. I didn't notice my middle child, his name is John, when he was a little kid, like he didn't get to meet his grandfather, he passed away before he was born. He was in the living room and my wife was in the kitchen area. She was doing dishes, I believe or whatever, but she was hearing John laughing and playing. And I think he was about maybe four he was able to talk. He mentioned to his mom that he was playing with grandpa. It was funny because like he was laughing, having a good time, like he was legit playing with somebody that wasn't there, and he said it was his grandpa. Class forward to my son now, he's I want to say, he's like maybe one one and a half. We were living in an apartment on the East Side, and we had one of those little bouncers that you hang in the door frame, so we would have him just bouncing around. Me and my wife were just sitting right across straight in front of him on the couch and we were just watching TV watching him bounce or whatever. But he would turn around and he would like look behind him and up and laugh like he was just laughing, laughing, And he was just jumping up and down, turning the back around, turning to us laughing, turning back to behind him and laughing, and I just thought it was kind of weird. But then my wife was telling me, I bet you he's seeing his grandpa because he never met my son. He was way gone before he showed up, and so it was a nice, little warm, welcoming feeling like it was. It was so nice. It was like he got to see his new grandson that he never got to meet in a way. So it was so cool. I do believe that these kids can see these things and experience it before we end up teaching them that nothing's there. A huge thank you to Calin from the first story in Pablo. From our second one that we got to hear tonight, these stories were genuinely creepy, especially the one about the child. But let's not forget when we have paranormal entities or what we believe to be paranorm entities following us from generation to generation. It's also pretty creepy. We actually talked about it before in previous episodes, where there's hauntings, like if there's something going on in your house and then they do some research and the family finds out that maybe your grandmother some relative had to do something with the paranormal or witchcraft end up affecting you. We have a lot of these little snippets of stories scattered all throughout, like comment sections, emails, and all of these really really short stories that we get to hear or I get to read basically, and they don't actually have a place to share them with everybody. But I guess I could find a little slot here, like after the podcast epens, to share some of these things with you. But it makes me wonder like if these things can be transferred, And also, I mean, if you're a believer in paranormal things, you know that there's something else out there. Also comes along with the thoughts that maybe only certain people, maybe only children can see certain things, or maybe only certain people have the power to transfer these I don't know, events or paranormal feelings like or sensitivity to them down to another family member. Very interesting to think about. But I wanted to mention some of these comments that I got in the last episode the story from the last visit, best Friend's Spirit returns home. Like I said that at the end of the episode, that one really really got me in terms of like it just felt something I could relate to, and it felt like from seeing the comments on Spotify, also something that you resonated with. So I'm glad you enjoyed the story. I know it was a different, different thing that we normally do. But Sonya here for example, says Sonya Salasade says, this one was sentimental, but I enjoyed it made me think about my loved ones whom passed on. Torres asked, is that a cat in the background, And yes, actually, and I don't have a cat. It's actually not my cat. Is I was out staying at my cousin's house and there's a cat outside that you know, he comes to get food and stuff, so he kind of adopted him. But he wanted to come in thinking that the voice me who was in there was my cousin, but no, it was a plus. I'm allergic to cats, so I actually can't have any cats. Let me see this one. This comment from Gutierre GQ says, six weeks after my only siblings passed away, my father had a coronary bypass. I sat alone in the waiting room while they prepped my father for surgery. In my mind I told my sister, I know you're here, but I wish I could see you. And at that moment, there was a brief shadow on the ground in front of me. There was absolutely no other person in the waiting room but me. I believe it was her. She always said it was just the two of us. The two of us have always managed to get through things. Thanks a lot for that comment. By the way, this is it just makes me think like sometimes we do have people that just stay around, you know, and they're there when we ask for their help. So thanks for that comment. By the way. Lilac or Leelac says, this one gave me chills the whole time. OMG made me tear up. Yeah, it was a very emotional story. Cassandra says me out, I appreciate that, you know, the break the what is it called comic relief? Comedic relief? Comic ruth? Yeah, that cat Man, It just wouldn't go away. Amanda says, I believe in signs. My brother passed away in twenty eleven. My son was born in twenty twelve. He had a bunch of toys that required batteries and you had to push buttons to make them noise, to make them make noise, they would just randomly go off all throughout the day. I never thought about it. I just thought it was a coincidence. Looking back, I can't help but wonder if that was him. Man these comments. Thanks so much for that, Amanda Daniella says, Oh my goodness, this story was so sad and definitely hit me too. My husband lost his best friend last year, and the heartbreak just reminded me of that day. I'm sorry for your lost too, Edwin. That's actually really crazy that you mentioned that it was a friend in the first podcast, because since I love the show so much, I recently just started listening to all the stories all over again. I just really listened to Philippe's story. I got chills. But it was great to hear you on the podcast again. Miss you. Yeah, thanks a lot, Daniella for that comment. You know, it took me a little bit to start recording again like these, you know, the intros and everything. But actually I'm remaking the like the episodes that came out with all my intros, they're coming back in. Like I said, I'm just stitching in the because I normally have them on there. This time, we couldn't get to it, like I just it just I couldn't get to the actual record. But yeah, I'm back here and we're still keeping it going. So thanks a lot for that. Let me see. Daniel Steuber says, he guys, has happened to me. I lost my son to suicide at twenty two years of age. I've had a song chorus. He loved interrupt music on my radio. I see his name everywhere and the number seven seven seven when he was born. He was seven pounds seven ounces and he was born on the seventh. Seven seven seven was his number. What's his number? I had just seen my son twenty minutes before he took his life. It hurt deep when I lost him, and I'm still trying to cope. But I do get signs, and I hope I get to continue to get them because it does help me with my grief. That's really tough, and I'm really sorry that that happened. I appreciate you commenting that and sharing that with us. I can't imagine and what that's like, I cannot imagine. And man, I really hope you know there's other things too that can help you with your grief. And you know, I heard once that the sadness were like the pain doesn't fully go away, but things do get mad, like the more manageable was goes on. But I know that we have to keep moving, like, we have to keep doing things, and I mean there's different things for everybody, right, Like you probably have your own system of what helps you, but it's very tough and it's very tough, So I appreciate you sharing that. Viceniaz Cruz says, now this guy's telling the truth, not one hundred experiences and stay on the same story. I kind of think he made up the Kendle towing part, but it's not impossible. Kendal is a very common name, and you know what, there might be some truth to your common here in terms of like we see things often we don't pay attention to them until we have to. But see, that's what I believe is kind of the paranormal, like a huge role deals with that things that are everywhere all the time, like all at once, all there like at all times basically, and whenever there's something that we need to, like a message that we need to receive, we tend to open up our ears and our minds to that specif big thing or something does it for us. I don't know if that makes sense, but but yeah, comment totally totally valid. Chris Manning says, love your podcast, thank you for the great stories. Appreciate that. Thank you, courts William maybe once it's a good episode. On another one, this is one from Dead Silence in the Woods, a terrifying encounter. We have a lot more comments on here, but these are the ones that you know we got from this last podcast episode, from the last visit. So remember on Spotify, you can leave us comments on there and I can give back to you. I can reply, I can react like our little emojis and stuff, so be sure to leave that. Also if you have any reviews, if you want to leave one five stars. Spotify and Apple podcasts, those really help me out. But anyway, that's all I got. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. It was edited in sound designed by Sarah Vorhez Wendel a VW sound. Again to our storytellers, huge, thank you for being so open and sharing your stories with us. And if you have a story something that you want to share with me and the rest of us here at a True Scary Story, head on number to true scarystory dot com. There's a form there, you fill it out, we get back to everybody, and then if it fits the show, we continue on. Like we ask for more details, We ask for if you're willing to give us permission to use all the recordings and everything. Then we schedule recording. We talk on the like on an actual like a call, like an audio call that gets edited, and then we publish it. So it's a pretty simple thing. It's as more complicated than it actually is. But it's very cool that I get to listen to you like personally. Let we get to actually get to listen to your story live like it's it's really really really cool. But yeah, if you have any questions about that, you can email me Edwin at true Scary Story dot com. You can also use a contact form on the website. We get back to you that way. AnyWho, thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary everyone, See you soon.