FEATURED TALES 11
On My Own With
the Shadow Man
A few years ago, as I was
stirring from the light sleep of early morning, the malicious, hushed voice from
my youth startled me awake. "Remember me," it whispered , not a question but a
taunt. The unsettling memory, the years of violation by this hateful thing stung
me with the sense of dread that I lived every night. Throughout my childhood,
the presence was heavy and imposing in the light of day but it was truly
frightening after dark when I was alone in my room. But I was never really
alone. It was always there.
My dad and I moved into the
house the day my sister was born so my mother was still in the hospital. The
house was full of unpacked boxes and that first night, the two of us slept on a
bed with no sheets, no covers. My Dad was closest to the open door of the
bedroom and I could see over him, into the darkened hallway. That's the first
time I felt it. It was my introduction to the phantom that would be my unwelcome
companion for more than a decade and would haunt me for the rest of my life.
First, I felt the shiver, the awareness of the unseen presence. And then, the
shadow came from around the corner and hovered slowly into the room at the end
of the hallway. As I watched it pass, I knew that it saw me. Many years later,
when I was a grown man, my father admitted that he had seen it too that night.
For all those years, this thing was a part of all our lives but for the most
part we never discussed it. Many times, I told my parents what I was going
through and that the house was haunted but they ignored me and shrugged it off.
They knew the truth all along but for some reason, they refused to get the hell
out.
This is not an easy story to
tell, not because it's uncomfortable to dredge it up but because the
manifestations were varied and made their appearances over a long period of
time. Every child shudders at the possibility of the scary guy in the darkened
closet or the monster under the bed. For many kids this is a nightly ritual that
kicks off a lifetime fascination with the great unknown. For most of my friends
in those dreamy preadolescent years, the creepiness of bedtime was the product
of a healthy but wild imagination. But for me, it was a perpetual journey into
fear described with such conviction that my buddies knew it was true. Most kids
who knew me, had no doubt as to the veracity of my claims because of the
lingering influence of my supernatural houseguest. I don't know for sure that it
followed me around when I was away from the house. But I was never able to shake
the taint of the haunting. Even when I spent the night at my grandmother's or at
a friend's house, my senses were always on full alert. That heightened awareness
of the energy behind things unseen is a gift and a curse that I'm stuck with for
life.
The house was nothing
special, a suburban tract house, the same age as me. Twelve hundred square feet,
three bedrooms, two baths, conveniently located in Mesquite, Rodeo Capitol of
Texas. The house had no history. Neighbors had been there before our house was
built. They said that no one who lived in the house was very neighborly. They
kept to themselves. The only notable thing about the place was that the people
who lived there stayed only briefly. Then the house stood empty for a while.
Then others would move and stay for a short time and the house would sit vacant.
This went on until we moved in and we stayed.
At first, the shadow man was
a casual acquaintance but he quickly insinuated himself upon me. He wanted me
for a friend. But he wasn't very nice and I didn't like him. During the day, he
was an invisible hanger-on that usual stayed up near the ceiling on the other
side of the room. No matter how many people were around or how much earthly
activity was going on, his sinister gaze was fixed resolutely on me. At night,
spooky turned scary immediately when I tucked myself into bed. Usually, at first
he would just hang around, waiting for the fun to begin. It was after my parents
were settled in and asleep that my bedroom turned clammy and the shadow
descended and swallowed up any glimmer of light. The heavy, brooding shroud came
down on me as it had the night before and the night before and as it surely
would for as long as I could imagine. It was like being weighted, sinking into
deep, murky water. The weight pulled me deeper and the pressure of the water
surrounding me made it hard to move.
Hushed voices in secret
conversation drifted into my room from some ghostly party in the front of the
house. The truly frightening experiences took place when I was a little kid,
seven to twelve years old. In my bed, in the dark, fingers would poke me in the
back. I always slept on my stomach because I thought it would be even worse if I
had to tangle with this thing face-to-face. More than thirty years later, I
still can't sleep on my back.. Sometimes, I heard soft giggles coming from what
seemed like inches away from my ears. And often, it whispered my name. Mostly, I
forced myself to remain totally still and quiet as if I were asleep and clueless
to the taunting. I knew from the beginning that if I cried out for my parents,
they would dismiss the incidents, return to their bed, leaving me to fend for
myself. And then the spirit would be happy with himself and give it to me worse
than ever. Once during this time period, extremely wrung-out, I cried to my
mother, insisting that the house was haunted. She lay on her bed, distraught,
face down in a characteristic emotional dither over her genuine hard luck. My
mother basically told me that such an idea was ridiculous and to go away. I was
certain that she knew exactly what was going on. But she wouldn't admit it for a
very long time.
Enduring the personal
harassment was the most horrible part of it. But there were times when the thing
was more playful than cruel. One time, in the early morning when the room was
tinted with a subtle illumination diffused through Sears gold rib-cord curtains,
it played a silly trick on me. The matching spread draped over the side of the
bed to the floor. This positioning is accomplished by what we call gravity. But
in this case, the part of the bedspread that draped alongside the bed floated up
bringing it parallel with the top of the bed. At this point, I was a tough sell
when it came to being shocked. I just stared at it indifferently as the magic
trick continued. This went on for at least a full minute until the covers moved
slowly down into their natural arrangement. I remember at the time thinking that
maybe it was the ghost of my dog Blackie who met up with a fast moving delivery
truck on the street in front of our house a couple of years earlier.
As time passed, I became less
impressed with the shadow man's shenanigans. I continued to be scared out of my
wits at night but it's just like anything else, you get used to it. One of the
luxuries of my youth was a tiny bathroom connected to my tiny bedroom. That
bathroom provided the entity more opportunities to shake me up. On my seventh
birthday, I was taking a bath. The bathroom door was closed. I was caught
totally off-guard when somebody or something started banging on the door and
frantically shaking and turning the doorknob. At this time in my life, I was
generally too timid to speak up so I sat there quietly until it stopped
abruptly. I got out of the tub, dried off and walked down the hall and into the
kitchen. I asked my parents what they wanted with me and why they raised such a
ruckus. They assured me that it was my imagination and that they didn't hear
anything unusual. My sister was three months old at the time so I ruled her out
as a possible suspect.
From early on, I started
leaving the bathroom light on all night. It didn't seem to deter the phantom's
unyielding harangue but it boosted my morale. To undermine the small comfort I
found in having the light on, he would intermittently turn it off and on.
Sometimes it would be off for an hour and then on again. And one time, he
flicked it off and on rapid fire just long enough to get my attention but not
long enough to wake my parents up. Over the toilet, there was a chintzy, framed
dime-store print of waves crashing onto some rocks. It was big enough to extend
the length of the toilet tank and it hung high on the wall by a single wire on a
nail driven precariously into the sheetrock. This unstable hanging procedure
predisposed a logical explanation in the event that it might fall off the wall.
One night when the bathroom light actually stayed on, I lay in bed staring
directly at the picture that was squarely in my view through the open door. The
little white bathroom was well lit by two sixty-watt bulbs above the sink which
was just a couple of feet from the crashing waves. In a slow deliberate move, an
unseen hand lifted the picture up off the nail and brought it forward nearly a
foot from the wall. It was suspended there for a few seconds and then it
dropped, sending the crashing waves crashing to the floor. Of course, my story
was again discounted even though the nail was still firmly in the wall and the
wire fully intact.
Just about everybody who
spent any time in or around the house had some kind of supernatural experience.
I remember sitting in the den one afternoon with Kevin, a neighborhood friend.
We were hanging out, watching television. We were facing the living room which
was so close you could spit at the front door and hit it on a good day. I was
focused on Merv Griffin doing his opening lounge act when I spotted some cloudy
movement in the front room. My friend, who was less enthusiastic about Merv, was
more keenly aware of his overall surroundings. He was seated so that he had a
view of the entire living room when he saw a slow moving , white, translucent
figure float across the living room. It was mid-afternoon on a clear, sunny day
so the room was well lit. But still, the apparition was fully formed and very
obvious. Kevin was really freaked-out. He was immediately on his feet, darting
around the room, wide-eyed, talking fast and pointing to the living room. My
mother was in the kitchen which was a few feet away from where my friend and I
were sitting and she was totally unfazed. The kid wanted to get out of the house
but it took him a minute to build up the courage to dash through the living room
and out the front door. As a teenager, Kevin ended up huffing too much gasoline
and is probably unable to corroborate the story. And besides, I don't have the
time or inclination to find out what penitentiary he's checked into.
Greg was my best friend on
the block. He lived across the street from me and he was the first kid I met up
with when my family moved into the haunted house. He was younger than me and I
saw him pedaling his kid-sized tractor down the sidewalk. I rode over on my bike
and we were buddies from that moment on. Once, Greg and I were playing in my
driveway. We had just seen an episode of the Three Stooges where Larry Fine
knocked on a wall and somebody knocked back. We decided to try it.
I knocked on the garage door
and immediately there was a knock in return. We thought it was pretty funny.
Then we heard a crash somewhere inside the garage. We ran around to the side
door, expecting to see someone jumping over the fence, into the backyard and
sprinting for the alley. Instead, the door was closed. We checked to see if it
was locked. It wasn't. We opened the door crept into the darkness. I switched on
the light and we looked around to see if we could catch anybody hiding behind
some of the garage junk and boxes. We didn't find anybody. We went back outside
and around the corner to the garage door.
This time, Greg tried it.
Again, the knock was returned. Determined to catch the intruder, we hightailed
it to the side door and it was locked. Now, we knew somebody was playing a
trick. We hurried back to the front and tried it again and in response, thump,
thump. Then, we found the side door standing open. At that point, were becoming
more sheepish but we bravely entered to find the light turned off again. I
turned it on and repeated the search.
Now, to break the tension, I
did my imitation of Don Knotts stumbling through the haunted house in the Ghost
and Mr. Chicken. Greg cracked up at the hilarity of my performance as he always
did. As a child, I was and continue to be as an adult, a real sucker for anybody
who appreciates my humor. So, I was pleased with myself. I was doing my encore
up near the big overhead door at the front of the garage while Greg stood next
to the side door. Inexplicably, the light started switching off and on. It was
certainly not an electrical glitch. It was a switch that made a significant
clicking sound when flipped. We could hear the switch as it turn on and off.
Needless to say we were spooked but when we caught our breath after racing away,
we had a good laugh. The experience never deterred Greg from going into the
house again or garage for that matter. Today, he's an intelligent, rational
adult with a good job and a family. And I know he would get a kick out of
telling the story of the ghost in the garage.
These are the highlights of
my experiences growing up in the house. And since I've chosen not to write a
book at this moment, I'll move forward in time. When I was in college, my
parents finally broke their silence and we began to have long conversations,
recounting our stories of the haunting. They described an early occurrence
concerning a baby that cried throughout the night. My dad would go into my
sisters room and she would be asleep but the crying continued. As he checked
every room in the house, the baby was crying in whatever room he found himself.
It stopped eventually but the mystery was never resolved. Incidentally, my
sister only lived to be ten-years-old. She lived her entire life in that house
and never reported any supernatural encounters.
My parents and I shared
descriptions of what would eventually become the most striking manifestation. We
all saw the same thing although each of us had their own spin. When I was a
teenager, I started seeing what I thought to be an entirely different
personality from the early, sinister shadow man. This entity appeared as a pale
white, undulating form. From my perspective it looked like a hanging plant with
tendrils caught in a persistent wind. At night, I would wake up and see it up
high in one of the corners of the room. It would slowly move along the wall from
corner to corner. Some nights, I would wake up to find it directly above my
head. It wasn't at all frightening. I felt like it was watching over me like a
guardian angel. This was reinforced by the fact that the scary activity had
nearly ceased.
My dad refers to it as the
squid or jellyfish. He and my mother saw it frequently, also up in the corners
of their room. My mother saw exactly the same thing except that it seemed to be
a part of a male figure. It used to stand at the foot of her bed and talk to
her. She would wake up my dad and tell him and he would get up and search the
house. As soon as he left the room, the spirit would return and continue his
monologue. The only thing she remembers for sure was that he often said the
words, "First Canada." We still wonder if he was referring to anything in
particular or if it was a red herring.
When, I was a little kid
having horrifying encounters, my parents admitted that they had seen the shadowy
figure entering my room from the hallway late at night. They saw this with some
regularity but chose to do nothing about it. Now, I have a ten-year-old daughter
and if I saw this thing going into her room, I'd run in and grab her out of bed.
And she would sleep in the room with my wife and I until we vacated the house.
I
understand that my parents had difficulties, not with each other. but with
finances and my sister's illness. Whatever the reasons for their inaction, the
insistent taunt of the phantom in my room has effected me for life. Growing up
in the midst of a relentless haunting is nothing compared to the physical and
emotional abuse that so many unfortunate children endure at the hands of their
own parents. But all children look to their parents for protection and rely on
them to make the world a comfortable, secure place.
After I grew up and moved
out, the activity continued. A few years later when my wife and I got together,
we were at the house for a visit. We were sitting on a sofa in a new room that
was formerly the garage. Suddenly, we heard a rhythmic banging coming from the
laundry room that was on the other side of the wall from us. It sounded like
someone had put a pair of wet tennis shoes in the dryer. No big deal. My parents
were somewhat uneasy realizing that there was nothing in the dryer and that it
wasn't even turned on. My dad went back to check and returned nonchalantly and
asked us to come take a look. There was a yard stick placed precisely on top of
the dryer. It was perfectly centered and one end jutted out just above the dryer
door. It appeared that someone had taken the measuring stick , grabbed it on the
end of the overhang and whacked it repeatedly on top of the appliance. The yard
stick should have been hanging on a nail by some shelves five feet away from the
clothes dryer. Our old friend was having some fun.
The most disturbing event
that my wife experienced took place once when we were staying over night at my
parents' house. My wife and I lived in Los Angeles and were in town to spend
Christmas with our families. That night, we were sleeping in the room that had
been my sister's. It was always the least active room in the house. In fact, I
moved into it immediately after my sister had died in the room. In spite of the
tragic circumstance, moving in was not at all disturbing to me. Good riddance to
the hair-raising corner of the house where I had spent most of my life. My wife
slept on the side of the bed against a wall underneath the window. I slept on
the outside. In the night, she was awakened by what she at first thought was me
talking in my sleep. What she heard seemed purposeful but was impossible to
understand. Then she began to realize that the voice was much deeper than mine
and that it wasn't coming from me. The weird continuous mumble was coming from
somewhere on the other side of me, next to the bed. She never slept in the house
again.
Just over ten years ago, less
than a month before my daughter was born, we were visiting my parents. We walked
into the kitchen and noticed a couple of large plastic bowls were sitting in the
middle of the floor. My mother told us that the bowls were kept on the top shelf
of the pantry which was around the corner, behind a wall and a short step down.
She said that the bowls frequently made the move. That night, as we sat in the
room that was formerly the garage, I noticed a chilly draft coming from the
living room. As I looked in that direction, I felt him for the last time. He was
up high on the other side of the room, Looking at me, through me. He knew that I
felt him there and it gave him satisfaction. The terrible sinking sensation was
back. The atmosphere hung heavy all around me. That was it. I couldn't speak. I
could hear the conversation in the room but it was faint and far away. The gloom
set in and I had to get out. With some effort, I stood up and held my footing. I
faced him and walked toward him and into his space. I was full in his presence
and he surrounded me. He knew that he disgusted me and that I hated him but it
didn't matter. He would never let go. But I had other ideas.
I was brooding and silent as
I stood against the front door. My wife was completely aware of my predicament.
She felt the presence too. She got up and came to me. We said goodnight to my
parents, got in the car and drove away. She said that my preoccupation with
something in that room was obvious to everyone. And that my parents seemed to
find it unsettling. She also told me that when she went to the bathroom earlier
that night that she felt the shadow man in the back corner bedroom, my bedroom.
He stared at her and imposed himself upon her as he always had on me. It was our
daughter that he wanted. But I wouldn't stand for it. I told my wife that our
child would never be taken into that house. She agreed. The next day my mother
called and said that they put the house up for sale. There was no discussion of
what had happened the night before or what had happened for all those years.
Three days later, the house sold. After twenty-five troubled years in that
house, my parents moved out. I never went back to the house. My uninvited
companion stayed behind.
-Glen
Coburn.