Essay I wrote for my first English class. This really happened to me and my best friend at the time. I used the short shitty version so I hope you can understand it still.
THE SHADOW
I never really thought about the supernatural, ghost’s, demons, probably because like most people, I didn’t think these things were real. I wasn’t going to believe this stuff you see in movies, or the famous ghost story that someone you know tells you, about what someone else told him about a ghost. But, as we grow and experience life, we change our minds, or perhaps our minds change us.
It was May 1995, the beginning of summer in Missouri. I had just turned sixteen. My best friend at the time had recently moved into a big two story, four bedroom house with his family, consisting of a younger sister and brother, and his parents.
To this day, I still remember clearly every second of my first experience in his house. David and I were both down stairs in his room. It was late, around 1:00 or so in the early hours of the morning. David had just bought the new Nirvana album that afternoon, so of course we both had to listen to it until are ears rang. We were sitting on his bed looking at the new album. David was telling me about the strange occurrences and sounds he had been hearing in his new home. He had often seemed tired during the past few weeks and he was telling me about what had been going on. Things He had been hearing. things at night that kept him up. There were sounds, like something walking up and down the stairs, over and over, most of the night, he explained. He would get up, looking to see who it was, and never seeing anything at all.
David would sometimes wake in the middle of the night to the voice of his mother yelling at him, telling him to go to sleep. She was thinking that he was making those noises. His brother and sister would tell me that they heard things too. They were all just trying to ignore it. David’s mother would just deny it, saying, “ it's just an old house.” The stories they were telling me sounded like scenes straight out of some cheesy, scary movie. This was not the first time David had tried to explain things to me, I believed him of course, on some level, but I guess the thought of them living in a haunted -house seemed a bit absurd.
We had the music playing in the back ground. I remember I was just about to switch to the next song, when we heard a loud knocking on his door. It was an inside door right next to the stairs that went up to the first floor where most of the family slept.
We thought it was one of his parents knocking, but of course, we were a little jumpy since David had just been talking about these “happenings.” Knowing they would not like the CD we had, we immediately turned it off, and waited quietly. Neither of us said anything. After a minute or so, and not hearing another knock, we decided to turn the music back on, but right when we did, there was another knocking on the door. It was loud and clear. We both heard it. Without planning this together we both instinctively jumped off the bed, and ran quickly to the door and opened it, hoping to catch whom ever it was that was knocking. My heart went into overdrive after seeing nothing except the darkness of the empty hallway. We weren’t fast enough, I was trying to tell myself. It had to have been his little brother or sister playing with us.
I could feel my heart beating hard, and fast, like I had just run a twenty mile marathon. So, much for thinking people in scary movies are fearful and stupid. I was acting just like them. Out of fear and the adrenaline rushing through our bodies, we hurried to his sister’s room, the closest to us, and the only other one downstairs, determined to find out which family member had tried to scare us. Hoping to see her awake and laughing at our stupidity, we opened the door. To our surprised, she was dead -asleep and snoring. My heart sped up even more. We crept upstairs to his younger brothers room and peeked in. He too was sound asleep. Now we were convinced it had to be his parents. Perhaps they were getting revenge for hearing the forbidden music we had been playing. We slowly opened the door. No way had they been up. You can’t fake sleeping the way they were. I don’t know what we told ourselves, and each other so that we could sleep that night, but this was only the beginning of my awakening to the realm of the unknown.
David and I spent the night either at my house, or his almost every other week. So it was probably the next Friday night that I spent the night again. That night was uneventful, but morning was a different story. It was broad day light, but nightmarish in itself.
I was just waking up. I could hear David’s mother say that the rest of the family was going to the store. I heard them drive off. They left, and I lazily got dressed and was headed down the stairs to the bathroom. Down the narrow hall I heard David’s voice calling me up stairs, “3B!!! (lol insert real name here)” he yelled. I yelled back," Hold on, I'm going to the bathroom." As I walked out of the bathroom I heard his voice calling me again from up the stairs. “3B.” I didn't answer this time. I was miffed he was calling me again, I had told what I was doing.
I just started walking up the steps to see what he wanted, and half way there I heard my friend calling to me again. “3B!!...COME HERE.” As soon as I got up stairs, I expected to see David sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast. That’s how it always was. That was the routine. But, he wasn't there. He was no where. I was overwhelmed and frozen. I felt that chill go up my spine that writers always write about. That's when I heard the front door open, and I saw David come in from outside. He’d been airing up the tires in his bike. He had no clue what had happened. Who had called my name? He’d been outside the whole time. My heart missed a beat. I now understood people going numb, and not knowing what to think or do. Our senses get clouded. Nothing is clear. Everything is altered.
I couldn't not believe it. Shock is a good way to put it. I was in shock. I felt like there was something inside the house that was playing with me, twisting reality. A few minutes ago, I had been inside the house, alone with this thing, what ever it was. This thing that could imitate the voice of my friend. What else could it do? I’d find out soon enough.
It was the middle of August, about twelve twenty that the scariest event happened, the one that finally changed my mind. There was a bright, beautiful, full moon out casting shadows of everything. David and I were in his parent’s car. It was parked in their driveway, and we were waiting for his father to drive me home. I was in the passenger side, back seat, and he was in the front passenger seat. David was leaning back looking at me and rambling on, and on about this girl he liked.
It was late and I was tired. I was just looking at him pretending to pay attention, throwing out a, “right on” here, and there. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks, that cold chill going up my spine again. The hair on my neck stood up. At this exact moment David had stopped talking, and got this look on his face that I can’t even explain. I will never forget it, I could tell he was feeling what I was. His face was completing stricken with fear. I don't know if this was why he stopped talking, or if it was just that he simply could not. We just sat there looking at each other for a second, which felt like hours. Then, for some unknown reason we were both drawn to look along the left side of the car. We were frozen not wanting to move, not acknowledging that someone, or something was there. Then we both at the same time had to look, because now we heard it. Someone or something was walking on the gravel driveway beside the car. Then I saw it. My jaw dropped. My heart once again felt like it was going to explode from the adrenalin being rushed through my body.
I don’t think you can ever be prepared for seeing what we saw, I was completely paralyzed. It was the shadow of man, where there was no man . Yet, there was the shadow of a man walking at a normal pace, just feet from the car. The moon was straight to our left, so all the shadows should have been cast to the right of the object, but this “THING” seemed to completely defied reality. It was casting in the exact opposite direction. This shadow that seemed darker than other shadows, was cast towards the moon. I know that I’ve ever been so scared in my life, before or since. It was a different kind of fear, a supernatural kind. I felt completely helpless, not knowing what this thing was doing or wanted. We sat there fear- stricken, watching this Shadow- creature walk slowly by the car, like it was just showing us, that it was there; that it existed, for one purpose, to scare the living tar out of us. And believe me, it got the job done, Then it disappeared just as fast as it had appeared. It seemed to mix into the rest of the shadows cast from the trees. It was gone.
I found out later that David’s grandmother claimed to have also seen the shadow in the driveway a few weeks prior to this. Finely, there had been so many events that David’s family had to acknowledge something was going. They called the elders of there church, and had the house blessed. It took me a year and a half after that to work up enough courage to spend the night again. I had slept in my brother’s room for two months after seeing the Shadow. I now believe that there are supernatural things that we can’t explain. And I think for most of us, this is probably what it takes, to see it for yourself.
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