Shadow people or something else? Experienced until 13 yrs old

[super_neko_lover]

All my childhood I was terrified of the dark. I HAD to sleep with my mom in the same bed as me. This wasn't a bratty kid thing, I felt like this was for my own safety. I felt such a heavy presence in the dark it was awful. I had recurring nightmares for years. But anyways, I did see things in the dark. I looked it up and all i got was "shadow people" but it doesn't really feel like the description of what they were or maybe they were a different type I don't know about.
Basically they would be different sizes and pace around my room but I could tell they were aware of me. They never got close to my face but their presence was so overwhelming i cant describe the feeling. Their silhouettes would have an either blue, purple, red, or white ring around their dark bodies. Each individual spirit silhouette would stay the same color throughout the night. I never remember feeling a feminine presence.
I was 13 years old when I saw my last vivid spirit(s). This is the only time I faced my fear and looked at them with courage. There were only 2 of them. One was a man on slits who just walked back and forth through my room and another one was an injured football player who was standing near him. I dont know if I just thought he was injured but I remember thinking they both felt sad and weak. For the first time, I reached up to touch them both. Of course I was too far away and they didn't even acknowledge me but I felt like I faced my fear of the dark and the spirits that scared me for so long.
After that I ended up hospitalized and on medication (just anxiety meds not anything intense). I don't see them anymore.I only ever told one doctor and then said I lied about it the next day . I know it may seem like I'm crazy and mentally ill but I went thru a traumatic experience in middle school and was later on diagnosed with bipolar 2. I stopped seeing them after I was *placed into the hospital (i was not on meds at the time). All this paranormal stuff started way before my mental health issues.
I've only see one other spirit in broad daylight and it was when I younger. I know this spirit was real for a fact!!! Thats another story though. Interestingly enough, I've always been a night owl. I'm assuming because I'm bipolar but I feel very connected with the dark. I stopped sleeping by myself once I got a cat (in the 5th grade I know thats kinda shameful but she slept with me every night) cats love me and a lot of neighborhood cats hang around my house! so i think im safe from bad spirits for now.

Thanks so much for reading this long ass story. Please please give me your thoughts. I don't want to be crazy. Thank you.

 

[Charleh]

Welcome to the forum, SNL. I think what you’re saying about these shadow people you are seeing may have been actual shadow people. Almost always, they are at the very least aware of you, whether or not they are looking at or interacting with you. Also they are typically negative entities (never heard of a positive story about them) that feed off fear and negativity. Maybe that’s why they didn’t show up again since you faced your fear and approached them.

Good to know you took mental health concerns into consideration when trying to figure out the reality of what you encountered.

So no encounters as of late?

 

[super_neko_lover]

Welcome to the forum, SNL. I think what you’re saying about these shadow people you are seeing may have been actual shadow people. Almost always, they are at the very least aware of you, whether or not they are looking at or interacting with you. Also they are typically negative entities (never heard of a positive story about them) that feed off fear and negativity. Maybe that’s why they didn’t show up again since you faced your fear and approached them.

Good to know you took mental health concerns into consideration when trying to figure out the reality of what you encountered.

So no encounters as of late?

No I haven't. I didn't realize they feed off negative energy that's really spooky. I did have a lot of anxiety as a kid and it got worse until I started finally getting treatment. I haven't seen any in years. I was actually JUST looking around my room to see if they were around but I don't feel any presence.

 

[Charleh]

Negative spirits can gravitate toward those that suffer from a variety of mental health issues, because they’re easy targets to feed off of. And since mental illness can be difficult to manage sometimes, to them that just makes you a long term source. I’m glad you overcame the fear of these things and got the anxiety under control.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[WitchAndShaman]

All my childhood I was terrified of the dark. I HAD to sleep with my mom in the same bed as me. This wasn't a bratty kid thing, I felt like this was for my own safety. I felt such a heavy presence in the dark it was awful. I had recurring nightmares for years. But anyways, I did see things in the dark. I looked it up and all i got was "shadow people" but it doesn't really feel like the description of what they were or maybe they were a different type I don't know about.
Basically they would be different sizes and pace around my room but I could tell they were aware of me. They never got close to my face but their presence was so overwhelming i cant describe the feeling. Their silhouettes would have an either blue, purple, red, or white ring around their dark bodies. Each individual spirit silhouette would stay the same color throughout the night. I never remember feeling a feminine presence.
I was 13 years old when I saw my last vivid spirit(s). This is the only time I faced my fear and looked at them with courage. There were only 2 of them. One was a man on slits who just walked back and forth through my room and another one was an injured football player who was standing near him. I dont know if I just thought he was injured but I remember thinking they both felt sad and weak. For the first time, I reached up to touch them both. Of course I was too far away and they didn't even acknowledge me but I felt like I faced my fear of the dark and the spirits that scared me for so long.
After that I ended up hospitalized and on medication (just anxiety meds not anything intense). I don't see them anymore.I only ever told one doctor and then said I lied about it the next day . I know it may seem like I'm crazy and mentally ill but I went thru a traumatic experience in middle school and was later on diagnosed with bipolar 2. I stopped seeing them after I was *placed into the hospital (i was not on meds at the time). All this paranormal stuff started way before my mental health issues.
I've only see one other spirit in broad daylight and it was when I younger. I know this spirit was real for a fact!!! Thats another story though. Interestingly enough, I've always been a night owl. I'm assuming because I'm bipolar but I feel very connected with the dark. I stopped sleeping by myself once I got a cat (in the 5th grade I know thats kinda shameful but she slept with me every night) cats love me and a lot of neighborhood cats hang around my house! so i think im safe from bad spirits for now.

Thanks so much for reading this long ass story. Please please give me your thoughts. I don't want to be crazy. Thank you.

Hi SNL, welcome to the PNF. I’ve read your related Reddit posting too.

I don’t have a huge background with ghosts, spirits, and such. However, I do think you could have been having your own real experience with them as a child.

As a child I too was completely terrified of the dark. My fears of the dark went way back to my early childhood and were so deep that I had trouble sleeping alone until age 16. My parents tried to get me psychological help through therapies between ages eight and ten. But whatever it was that terrified me was so very, very deep that it could not surface to be faced.

I sometimes wonder if I wasn’t seeing people earlier in my life - people whom others in my family could not see.

I know with certainty at age nine that I saw - or at least I believe that I saw - my deceased grandmother in my bedroom. It is my first recognized experience with what I suspect to have been a spirit. She didn’t do anything other than sit on a chair in the moonlight that streamed into my room and smile at me. I was terrified mostly because I didn’t expect anybody to be there let alone my grandmother. She was not recently deceased having died at least three years earlier; we were never close so it was not likely that she was on my mind at that time.

You can be certain that there are others here on the PNF who will provide to you their more experienced inputs.

 

[Cass]

Summoning your courage to face that fear, would not have been easy for you.
Probably, up until then, you didn't know how to do it anyway. So well done.

Actually, such phenomena, although difficult to deal with, often turn out to have taught us many useful, esoteric aspects of our own psyche.
As you were able to tell things about them, shows that a part of you had never been afraid, as it was able to look and calmly observe them.

Such incidence is never the same for any two people, so the value you may later realize, will be unique to you.

I liked reading your story, and the nightlife is probably your natural environment, xx

 

[WitchAndShaman]

Having written that post out was extremely cathartic- maybe more than I have previously considered. So first, thank you for sharing your difficult experiences SNL as it has given me the opportunity to re-examine my own history.

So (as posted many times on the PNF), I first recognized my very psychic self at age 16. This is when I started recognizing I was reading the thoughts of my friends and acquaintances.

Add to that unrelated fact that my Dad fought in two wars and was MIA too. He returned from war with what today would very likely be diagnosed as PTSD.

Putting two and two together makes me wonder if maybe - prior to age 16 - if I was psychically experiencing my Dad’s terrors of war? Then at age 16, recognizing I was psychic might have broken that unknown connection thus freeing me from my fears of the dark. The interesting thing is that though I encountered telepathy at least weekly with people outside my family, I don’t recall ever having read the thoughts of my family when I was in my teens.

Sorry for the diatribe SNL. You just made my wheels turn and I had to get that thought recorded for later reprocessing.

 

[Lynne]

[="Charleh, post: 460207, member: 2172"]Negative spirits can gravitate toward those that suffer from a variety of mental health issues, because they’re easy targets to feed off of. And since mental illness can be difficult to manage sometimes, to them that just makes you a long term source. I’m glad you overcame the fear of these things and got the anxiety under control.

Thanks for sharing.[/QUOTE]
I totally agree with Charleh on this. Also add to that there’s a possibility you have the gift to see spirits. Some do. It’s like a beacon and the troubled ones seek you out for help. This adds to your fears and anxiety which feeds the negative beings. It’s a hard thing to handle when your a kid. My daughter went through a similar situation. We are open minded and helped her through it. Getting a cat companion was what was recommended to me. They are protectors and give warnings to the sleeper if something is near. My daughters cat was her life companion until her passing. It gave her time to learn to handle things on her own.

 

[Lynne]

Having written that post out was extremely cathartic- maybe more than I have previously considered. So first, thank you for sharing your difficult experiences SNL as it has given me the opportunity to re-examine my own history.

So (as posted many times on the PNF), I first recognized my very psychic self at age 16. This is when I started recognizing I was reading the thoughts of my friends and acquaintances.

Add to that unrelated fact that my Dad fought in two wars and was MIA too. He returned from war with what today would very likely be diagnosed as PTSD.

Putting two and two together makes me wonder if maybe - prior to age 16 - if I was psychically experiencing my Dad’s terrors of war? Then at age 16, recognizing I was psychic might have broken that unknown connection thus freeing me from my fears of the dark. The interesting thing is that though I encountered telepathy at least weekly with people outside my family, I don’t recall ever having read the thoughts of my family when I was in my teens.

Sorry for the diatribe SNL. You just made my wheels turn and I had to get that thought recorded for later reprocessing.

Wands we are so blessed to have you share your expierences with us. It may really help someone who’s been through something similar. You have had some really fasenating and wild expierences. I feel privileged to learn about them. We will all gain a better grasp of how this universe is wired.

 

[WitchAndShaman]

Wands we are so blessed to have you share your expierences with us. It may really help someone who’s been through something similar. You have had some really fasenating and wild expierences. I feel privileged to learn about them. We will all gain a better grasp of how this universe is wired.

Thank you Lynn. Your support is always clear in your posts and always appreciated. It is hard being so introspective while trying to understand the external world; but, it’s leading me to believe even more that our outside world is very influenced by our inside world (mind).

Since posting this morning, I have come up with a second just-as-woohoo idea as well for why my fear of the dark ended so abruptly. I’ll consider taking both of those ideas which includes that from this morning’s post and opening a new thread on same for anyone to ponder.