First Time I Saw a Ghost

Ghosts, witches and spooks, oh my! Ever since I could remember, paranormal phenomenon was one of my key interests. Even if I would forget about it, things that go bump at night would remind me. However, it was not until I was about 13/14 years old when I could say with certainty that whatever I saw was something of paranormal origin.

Source: pixabay.com

One night, while on vacation with my family, I was laying in bed listening to music. With earplugs in my ears, imagining that I'm a famous entertainer, I went to switch sides of the bed. As I turned around, I saw a full figure of a 3D shadow standing at the foot of my bed. Keep in mind I was not a sleep nor near falling a sleep. Of course, my first thoughts consisted of me trying to explain the mysterious shadow in a rational way. Although the shadow was in 3D, logical part of me ignored it and tried to explain it as a 2D shadow which we are all used to seeing. Was it a reflection from the window? The window was right in front of me, therefore the shadow would have reflected on the wall behind me. Even if it somehow  managed to reflect in such a strange 3D way, what was creating the shadow? Nothing in the room could have created that shadow so I moved on to the outside. However, we were on the third floor which would make it pretty difficult to reflect anything from the outside. On top of it, the building we were staying at was surrounded by fields not streets. As I was running out of explanations, I was hit with a realization that I cannot explain the situation rationally. That thing, whatever it is, should not be there according to everything I knew. I was covered with cold sweat. Furthermore, at that moment I remembered something the owner of the apartment informed us about; her husband had recently passed away.  I instantly jumped out of the bed, opening the door to my parents room. "Can I leave the door open for the night?" - I asked. My parents agreed without asking questions. As I returned to the bedroom, the shadow had vanished; nothing was there. Strangely, I slept pretty well that night. However, it took me a year to share the experience with my family.

Looking back, there are couple of things that were rather interesting about that encounter. To start with, the shadow did not disappear in a blink of an eye. I had always expected from shadowy encounters to last for a split second but that is not what happened. Instead, I'm pretty sure the whole situation lasted for about a good minute, if not more. When I was trying to figure out what it could be, I was looking around, turning my eyes away from it but the shadowy figure just stood there the whole time. 

Moreover, the apparition did not seem to be negative. At first, I felt confusion rather than fear, danger or dread. It was only when I realized that I cannot explain it, that I felt a bit uneasy. But that's it; uneasiness due to the fact that it was abnormal to me, not fear because the figure felt sinister.

It was years later when I found out about the phenomenon of shadow people. It made me wonder that I may have encountered a shadow person rather than a spirit. However, the fact that there was a backstory (the owner's husband recently passed away) led me to believe that maybe shadow people could sometimes just be spirits. Although I cannot be sure what it was, there is a possibility that it was a spirit who appeared in a form of a shadow.

Thanks for a read!

Have a spooky day!