Stalked by Shadow People

I received a request from a reader who has an interest in personal experiences with 'Shadow People'. I decided to peruse my archives and post the most interesting accounts I've received from other readers over the years:

Shadow people are some of the most menacing and frightening entities around. I believe they are of a demonic nature. Not only do these dark shadowy figures cause anxiety and terror but often enjoy terrorizing people in their beds. Most shadow people are not alone but have partners in crime. The shadows that terrorized me were never alone. Sometimes my bedroom would be filled with dozens, big and small. Some could touch me. These shadows would pinch me. It wasn't till I was maybe about age 9 that I finally told my parents about these entities and it caused quite a stir in my family. As usual my parents thought I was suffering from nightmares and suggested I eat less before bed time.

Without fail these Shadows returned every night. It wasn't until one night I couldn't stand hearing their laughter that I resisted their powers to make people catatonic or in a paralyzed state that the reality of the situation was no longer a joke to my Mother as my bed began to shake violently as if a giant hand was shaking it. I jumped out of bed and ran so fast that I don't even remember running to my Mom's room. I jumped on her bed in the dark and her bed started shaking too. She held me in her arms as she prayed out loud to God and slowly the shaking resided. By the end of the month we moved out of that home.

Now this is what I gathered from that experience. One; That house was extremely old. I don't know if that had anything to do with it. But there was a bad vibe there from day one. A lot of crazy things happened there with my family fighting all the time. Never in the history of my family had there been soo many arguments and cases of domestic violence and abuse. Two; besides fights and arguments there was a vibe of mischievousness. When I played in that house it was almost as if all of us were in some kind of altered state, like some kind of dimensional trance. A good example of this was the movie ET where the kid gets aroused in the class room and he starts releasing the frogs. Yeah! I can't remember the whole thing. Let's just put it this way, I guess I went through intense puberty there. I remember having bad thoughts all the time. I remember my best friend Diana flirting with me and acting mature, but only in the house. When we played outside she was a normal kid. I swear this house had some effect on people's feelings and whatnot. The strange thing is that I don't remember much of my childhood in the house as I remembered most of my childhood in school or playing outside. I remember being cruel to my pets. I was never like that but I became a bad kid in the house. Outside I was quite normal.

The strange thing is that we moved about 5 blocks away from that house into a new apartment and I thought things were back to being normal for almost half a year with no incidents. No fights between Mom and Dad, when we all got together it was fun again. I noticed it right away the vibe change. I noticed that the old house was really dark inside. Half a year passed when I had my last incident one night.

It was early, maybe 2:30am I had woke up to use the restroom and I was maybe about 10 years old. I remember laying down in the bed and getting comfortable when I felt my bed got shoved from one side. At first I stood still as I thought maybe it was an earthquake. It passed and I played it off as just my imagination. As I began to fall asleep I had the sensation of being cold and clammy so I covered up. I felt feverish and I felt a small pinch on one of my toes. I became frightened as I looked around in the dark and saw 3 black outlines around my bed. The Shadows were back!

I became paralyzed as I screamed for help, I'm still not sure if I did try but nothing came out or if I imagined screaming out. The point is, I was freaking screaming! I felt some cold weight on my chest as I became face to face with one of these entities. Still paralyzed it looked me right in the eye and this is what I saw. It's eyes were black as black velvet and evil looking, but the outside rim of it's eyes was black line yellow line, black line yellow line all around the outside perimeter of it's eye in a pattern and it moved counter clockwise motion. It's two other Shadow friends had red and the other full yellow eyes. It was unreal as they all burst out in this wicked laughter and vanished and never bothered me like that again.

Shadow people can move objects and touch people. I believe they can physically hurt people. There are theories that Shadow people are alien beings. Some claim they are travelers from a different dimensional plane. Professor Stephen W. Hawkings has talked about shadow people being a real possible phenomena. Millions of people have had similar experiences and even video footage, photos of this phenomena. You are not alone, but the best we can do is share our experience and hope to learn as much as we can about this. I'm sorry about the sloppiness of my writing and spelling but hope that you can have a heads up to this strange phenomena. Good luck..Carlos

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Shadow People, Poltergeists or Demons?

My experiences took place in the early 80's in Toronto, Canada, and just like the fellow writing of his experiences on your site, mine also took place in a very old house. The house then was at least 75 yrs old and has since been razed to the ground and a brand new structure built in its place. When my family moved in there we experienced the same sort of events, arguments, abusive situations, strange phenomena but not to the point where we all noticed it right away. In fact my younger brother was a skeptic up to the point where things began happening to him as well. I think he took this attitude to allay the fears he must have had. Our father moved out of the house after the first year and away to another part of the country so just the three of us were left. At one point we had family come and live with us before they too departed.

My experiences began with an event I will never forget when I was 16. It was summer and I had difficulty sleeping. This went on for one month approximately. Then one night I had fallen into a light sleep when I was violently awakened. I recall hearing a sound that I thought was an explosion and thinking that our stove must have exploded in the kitchen below me. I opened my eyes and looked around the room in the darkness but saw nothing to indicate anything was happening. Suddenly my bed began to shake violently up and down and it felt as though I was being electrocuted through my solar plexus. I couldn't move but I could see my feet moving as the bed was jumping up and down. Some objects rose up off my dresser and shot towards the bed I thought they would hit me as they approached with such speed. In fact they stopped suddenly and began to swirl around in a counter clockwise direction above me and from the center of this swirl a bright white light appeared and some voices which were like high pitched shrieks or nails on a black board said quite clearly. "The message we bring is to tell the people he is still alive." And then everything stopped suddenly. I was terrified and basically thought I would end up in a nut house. I remember shaking from fear so much I could barely get out of bed. I made my way to my mom's room to tell her about it at which point she assured me I was having nightmares. Say your prayers and go back to sleep she said. I returned to my room after an hour or more but I couldn't sleep. It was a long time before I could sleep there in fact.

The next event happened the following January. I was coming home very late one night and decided to take the short cut through the alley way by our street. I passed a parked van with windows all around and I saw a movement in the van which made me feel somehow by its shape, size and response that it was doberman someone had left outside in their van. I kept walking but the thought pestered me that someone should leave their dog out in mid winter in the night. So I went back to the van cautiously peering in but there was nothing at all. Not even a cushion or anything hanging from the ceiling. Ok I thought I guess I imagined it. I happily kept walking home and when I was in the alley I suddenly heard footsteps behind me in the snow. I got a little freaked out and when I turned my head I didn't see anyone there. As I got to the end of the alleyway and turned onto my street I looked back to the entrance to see if anyone was following me. What I saw shocked and terrified me. There was a streetlight right at the corner and in the pool of its light was standing this enormous creature. It was at least 8 feet tall and huge. What struck me was that its form was completely black, there were no reflective surfaces on it whatsoever. In fact the light was shining directly on it and it seemed to absorb that light. It had large things on its head which I took to be horns or ears and its fingers ended in points like claws and the feet as well. Its eyes were red completely and staring right at me. I don't think my feet touched the ground I ran so fast.

After that experience I had a few others with the same creature. Another night I came home late again and I fell onto my bed after shutting the door just wanting to fall asleep. My cat was in the bed with me when we both heard a voice laughing in the room. A masculine voice. My cat freaked out and ran to the door scratching and miaowing loudly to get out ,I opened the door and she took off. I just didn't want to believe anything was in there with me so I pointedly turned my back to the rest of the room and went to sleep. Another night I turned over and opened my eyes early in the morning and there was the same creature , smaller though, standing in front of my closet staring at me. I recall I got really mad and told it to eff off and turned around and went back to sleep. Meanwhile my brother had seen the exact same creature but his had yellow eyes. He confided the story to me years later when we had left the house and had no knowledge of my experiences. He told me he had awakened early one morning and found that he had left the light on in his room, thinking that he should get up and turn it off he turned onto his back and opened his eyes and there sitting on his bed's headboard was the same creature, talons on feet and hands, completely black with no reflective surfaces, but his was he said about 4 ft tall and squatting on the headboard staring at him with yellow eyes. He said he was terrified and decided not to turn off the light after all. I don't remember if he said it vanished quickly or if he shut his eyes and when he opened them it was gone. He said he never saw it again but had other strange experiences in that house.

One day we decided that we should trade rooms. So I moved all my stuff out to his room and vice versa. I teased him and said he'd have to share my room with a visitor but he was disbelieving. After I had moved to his room I had my last experience in that house that was in the shadow people realm. I woke up one night to a sound in my room like rustling. I was wide awake because I thought it might be a mouse. I switched on my lamp and looked toward the other end of the room but seeing and hearing nothing I lay down again with the light still on. I turned to look at the clock and saw that it was 2:20 am then I saw these two large globes of light beyond my night stand. I was frozen up on one elbow because I had been about to turn out my light again. They moved in a way that reminded me of balloons falling. The larger of the two was golden yellow in colour and the smaller was blue. They looked like spheres lit from within and emanating a misty light from their forms. I somehow could sense that they were intelligent. They knew that I was looking at them and they wanted me to see. The larger golden one floated almost majestically to the door whereupon it flattened to a pancake shape in under half a second and slipped under the door. The second smaller one followed along and did the same. I was very nervous and scared at that point but only because I had to go to the bathroom and this meant I had to go out into the hallway where they had vanished to. Our hallway was very dark and without a proper light as the house was old and not renovated very well. I waited for as long as I could which was about 15 minutes and then I cautiously opened my door and went. The hallway was pitch black so my plan was to inch my way to the bathroom with my back to the wall so nothing could sneak up on me and once I got there I could turn on the bathroom light to illuminate the hallway. I followed my plan through and as it turned out when I turned on the bathroom light it shone down onto the stairs and the first landing. In the light were two shadow people. I've only ever thought of them that way because there was no other way to describe them. They looked like shadows, only they were in the light. They didn't look like the other creatures I had seen, in fact they looked like people in the sense that they had a head and arms and legs and torso and hands. They threw up their hands as though in surprise, like I'd caught them unexpectedly and then they flew down the stairs without a sound. It took me a long time to come out of that bathroom as I didn't want to encounter any of these things again.

Unlike your other poster, these creatures never touched me, at least to my knowledge and never tried to hurt me. Although they did scare the dickens out of me. I recall telling these stories to people years later in other parts of the world and hearing similar tales and wondering just what they could be. Somehow we don't seem that much closer to knowing. I would conjecture though that as is the case with plant and insect life here we certainly haven't got all the facts in yet. Perhaps these creatures share the world we live in but in a different way and we have learned to ignore them or pretend they don't exist. Maybe they are trying to tell us they do exist. Perhaps like us there are those with good intenetions and those with not so good intentions. Its my opinion that we are getting closer to the truth everyday.

A side note here: I read a book a year ago called 'Initiation' by Elizabeth Haich in which she distinctly mentions the shadow people and the effects they caused in the lives of people she knew including her own son prior to WWII. If this is true then perhaps these are beings who've been with us for a very long time. Then again if they are time travellers then all things are possible.

Sincerely, Pema

The Alaska Mothman: Dark Harbinger

On Monday (4/25) I posted an encounter with a Mothman-like humanoid in southwest Alaska. The witness stated that this was his first incident with the being and that descriptions of subsequent encounters would be forthcoming. To begin, I have again posted the first incident:

My first encounter with this thing most people call the Mothman was when I was nine years old and I remember it clearly like it was yesterday. I was walking back from my uncle's place. I was walking on the sidewalk and I saw this man standing on top of my fathers house close to the edge facing west. He was all black he looked like a man. He stood about 7 or 8 feet tall. I shouted out at him but he acted like he didn't hear me. I said "hey you...who are you?" I kept trying to get his attention...it was like I wasn't there. But when I said "hey you're standing on my house...who are you?" he looked at me for a few seconds.

His face seemed like a normal persons face until it slowly opened it's eyelids and I saw a red glow...like his eye's were glowing not a red light but a glow. I froze and just stared at him. He stood there looking at me for 9 or 10 seconds and looked away and jumped really high and far. I'd say he jumped about 40 feet high and 70 to 80 feet away and as soon as he seemed to fall down, very long and large wings came out of his back and flapped twice...just in those two flaps he traveled about 100 feet and flew right over the high school.

Since that day I never spoke to anyone about it cause I thought I saw the devil. I freaked out so bad I looked out for it everyday to make sure it wasn't around. That is my first encounter with that thing. It's body was like a man's and his face is like a man's too...but his eye's are what make's it so scary and weird. Those wings are very long and large. His whole body was all black...like not skin but blackness was covering him...I can't explain. I'm not the only one in my village that saw this thing but after that there have been many sightings here and in other villages....even to a point that the thing goes into people's house's while they sleep. That happened to someone I know. - N.H.

Tununak, Alaska

Before I decided to post further encounters I needed to know more details into these sightings as well as the possibility that similar incidents had been recorded. These specific occurrences where experienced in and around the coastal village of Tununak, Alaska, located on the northeast coast of Nelson Island, about 110 miles northwest of Bethel. The population of the community consists of 96.9% Alaska Native or part Native. Tununak is a traditional Yup'ik Eskimo village, with an active fishing and subsistence lifestyle.

I will be referring to the witness as 'Nate'. There are a few questions that needed to be asked during the research process in particular, why he refers to the being as a 'Mothman'. His answer was:

I don't know it's real name. It's just that all the people here know it as the 'devil', it comes around and suddenly very bad things start happening. Sometimes it just seems to be watching and nothing happens or very weird things happen. Some people will experience an ability of some sort for a short time and then suddenly they're back to normal. If you ask me I think that the Mothman is not a physical being. I think it's an energy formed from somewhere or someplace that takes character when encountered by an individual. When encountered by a person with a certain belief system the Mothman takes on a form according to the person's point of view of reality. That's one theory of mine to explain it's appearance to people. Some people will say it looked like an angel with red eyes. Some will say it looks like a cowboy standing 9 feet tall with glowing red eyes. Others will say it looked like a 6 feet tall man that can walk through walls. So to tell you my thoughts of the name of the thing I would say maybe it's name is 'Leviathan' from the book of Job in the Bible. That would be the closest name I got for it. Why I had so many encounters with it...I have no idea. I do know that there have been encounters in other villages.

The following narratives are Nate's description of his subsequent experiences with this being:

My second encounter was when I was a teenager. It was a winter night and I was riding on a snowmachine with my cousin. We saw a light on the north hill. We thought it was a snowmachine so we went to go and see who it was. When we got close to the hill the light disappeared. We were able to see every part of the hill...the light just vanished nowhere in sight, so we were gonna go back home. We turned the snowmachine around as cousin said he had to urinate, so I waited for him to finish.

While I was waiting I saw a black object on the ground, darker then all the other things on the ground. It was getting taller like something was coming out of the ground. As soon as it reached 7 feet tall or so it started to come at us fast. I told my cousin to look at the thing. He started to freak out and ran to the snowmachine, started it and looked back at it. He yelled it's getting very close so I looked back. It seemed to be 100 ft. or so away and coming fast. I screamed to my cousin to take off fast. I was so freaked out I closed my eyes. We were going at least 50 miles an hour on the snowmachine. I looked back to see how far we got from it but that thing was getting closer, I estimate at 15 to 20 feet away from us. It was like that thing was not even running and seemed to float over the ground. I couldn't see any eyes on it...no red eyes, just all black. I was screaming to my cousin to go faster but the thing just got closer and closer like speed was nothing to it. When we reached the village the thing stopped and turned around. My cousin just kept going fast on the town road going about 60 miles an hour until we got close to my grandmother's place. He slammed on the brakes as we jumped out of the snowmachine and ran into the house. We told everyone inside about what was chasing us. My grandmother said it was the 'devil' and told us to stop being 'bad kids'.

The third encounter was when I was 22 years old and at home playing on a Ouija board. I was talking with the board and it said it was the 'DEVIL' so I foolish asked it to possess me. It said 'NO'. I asked why, it said 'WRATH' so I stopped asking it questions. Suddenly the room started to get cold even with the furnace running. I wrapped myself with my blanket but I was just getting colder. I also felt the need to look through the window...like something was telling me to. I again felt this urge to look, so I got up, went over to the window and looked outside. I saw a man standing next to the steps of my neighbor's house, just looking at me. I could tell he was staring at me though I thought it was one of my neighbors, so I went outside to talk to him. I called his name but he never replied. The street light was shining on him but I was unable to see his face, like he was covered in a black cloud or some sort of blackness. I kept trying to get him it to recognize me but received no answer from him. I took out my zippo lighter which I had just filled with lighter fluid and hadn't used it since. I flicked it on and tried to see his face but I still couldn't see it. When I got closer my zippo turned off as if that thing blew at it. I tried to relight it but I was unable to do so. Suddenly I heard a quiet voice saying in my head to 'back away'...so I backed off slowly, not turning my back until I got to the road. When I reached the road I took off running as fast as I could to my place. I looked out the window to see if it was still there and it was still staring at me. I started to look for a flashlight so I could see what or who it was. When I found the flashlight I looked out the window and noticed that it was moving off to the road.

I decided to follow it. When I looked closely it didn't seem to be walking...it was floating away. Dogs would start barking as it passed houses. I was chasing it holding a flashlight hoping I could get a look at his face. I was too slow to get close but fast enough to keep up behind it, like it was going slow to make sure I was behind it but fast enough to stay far ahead of me. It was luring me to him but I kept chasing it. When it started getting closer to the church it slowed down and circled the church, like it didn't want to get close. It continued to move on and I just continued chasing it. When we reached the end of the village I stopped. I felt creeped out, like that thing was trying to get me to go out onto the tundra in the dark. I turned around and quickly walked home.

There are other encounters with this thing that many of the people in the world know as 'Mothman' but here, we know it as the 'Devil' or 'Demon'. He has been around for very long time and has been seen by many people here. He has done a lot of things that creep everyone out, like being at a location where someone dies the very next day and on the very exact spot where he was. When he comes around that means something very bad is going happen.

I don't call him the 'Devil' or 'Demon'. I disagree with that term...I just call him the 'Black Man with Red Eyes' or 'Dark Man' because he's surrounded by a blackness or a black cloud.

There was an encounter where a guy was out hunting and saw it with a couple of his friends. They tried to get it's attention but it never responded back. They tried shooting next to it but he never got spooked by the gunshot. There are many other encounters but these are not mine so I can't say exactly what happened...I just hear the stories.

Location of Tununak, Alaska

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Traditional Yup'ik shaman 1911

Despite the influence of the Christian missionaries, Yup'ik shamans (angalkuq) possess powers that are beyond physical powers. Their achievements are considered impossible for any human being to accomplish. Shamans define a customary role in Yup’ik life, and while Christian religions have interceded in Yup'ik traditions, some say that shamans still play an important role. A long time ago, Yup'ik forefathers encountered supernatural beings and some have become stories that were passed down from one generation to the next. Encounters of supernatural beings are considered true and can happen to anyone and anybody.

The legends and folklore of the Yup'ik people do include several good and evil spirits but nothing similar to the descriptions given by Nate. The closest traditional entity would be of a dark shaman who makes life more difficult for the people around them. There is nothing that would represent a harbinger of death.

During my research I was impressed by Yup'ik customs, especially those that involved gossip, lies and their respect for spirituality. The community, even in current times, deeply frowns upon malice towards others and the spread of distorted accounts. Because of these traditions and fear of ridicule, there is little to wonder as to why these stories have not reached the mainstream.

Resentment kills a fool, and envy slays the simple.

- Job 5:2

On the Other Side: A True Story

I recently received the following anecdote from Shannon:

It was November 23rd, 1993, the day before Thanksgiving. I was spending the night at my best friend Lexy's. I was enjoying the simple luxury of being allowed this time with her, because until a few months before, I had lived with my mother and had grown up in a Steven King novel of physical and physiological torture. But now I was living with my grandmother who, while seeming to resent having me in her house, was completely dismissive of who and where I spent my time allowing me freedom for the first time in my life.

Lexy and I were laughing over something silly when her older sister Ann walked in with the cordless phone. She was simpering over the person she was talking to.
"Oh that's so amazing" she squealed, "I can't believe you could see that!" This went on for some time until she handed the phone to Lexy. After a few seconds, to my great irritation, Lexy was making the same gushing sounds.

Lexy handed me the phone, "You have to try this! He's physic, he'll tell you things that'll blow you away!"

"Yea, no thanks" I pushed the phone back at her. I wasn't going to let some fraud turn me into a giddy idiot.

"Come on" she begged, with her sister chiming in.

Finally grumbling, I took the phone and said through clenched teeth "Go ahead, tell me all about myself!" I was going to carve him up like a turkey and pass back the phone.

There was a pause, and a bemused young man said "I don't know, I know you're scary!'

Very satisfied with his answer I handed back the phone. It really set me on edge that anyone who had psychic abilities could treat them so casually. I had a degree of them myself, and had ruthlessly turned them as off as much I could. I couldn't fathom being at ease. It was a war I had been fighting with myself for a great deal of my life. My mother had almost convinced me anything along those lines was the work of the devil, as she herself had been indoctrinated. I wavered between the fear of the things I could see and complete denial.

The phone made it's way back to Ann while Lexy laughed at how rude I had been." Eric's a really nice guy" she was saying, "you'd like him if you gave him a chance."
I shrugged it off. "Not into his little parlor tricks."

Much to my surprise, Ann kept trying to pass back the phone. "He wants to talk to you" she persisted. Finally I took it and made nice for a few minutes rather then be rude to Lexy and her sister. I was relieved when Ann took it back as soon as she could and left.

"Apparently he likes you" Lexy teased.

"He's nice, you were right, but I think he just gets a kick out of me. I was the only one who wasn't blown away by him." Privately I was wondering how Eric would have felt if I had turned the tables on him and started digging around in HIS head. Surface reads are the easiest things to do. But, since he had respected my space and didn't try to dig, I would extend the same courtesy. I was kind of surprised and amused with myself, that over the next half hour my mind kept drifting back to him.

Ann returned with the phone, "he wants to talk to you" she said flatly, handing it to me. She turned on her heel and walked back upstairs to her room.

I looked at the phone, and Lexy "She into him? I don't want to step on any toes."
Lexy shook her head, "I don't think so, I think she's into his friend Kenny."
"Oh, well do you mind if I talk to him for a little bit? I don't want to be rude to you."

She waved it off, "don't worry, enjoy yourself." she grinned, "I'll be here all night."

So I took the phone, and to my utter amazement 5 hours passed in the blink of an eye. After a couple of hours Lexy had gone to bed, and I spent the night getting to know one of the most vital and electric people I would ever meet.

I feel I should stop here and explain a little bit about Eric. His energy is intense, he's like chaos. When he decides he wants something, it's happened before you even knew it was on the table. Suffice it to say I was his girlfriend by the end of the night and a month later we were engaged. At 16 I can only say I was dazzled by his attention and fell for him very quickly.

With his encouragement I soon started seeing my abilities in a different light. Within weeks I could describe events that took place in area's we would drive or walk through, see spirits, hazy images of the future, people's true natures with hidden thoughts and images and found my true gift of seeing into the past. Often key events that took place in someones life that molded them into who they are. Eric's strength was looking into the future, channeling, seeing the same aspects of peoples hidden selves as I (hence his little session that night with Lexy and Ann) and receiving visions. It was a whole new world for me, once the door was cracked, it banged open.

With my new sight I became more afraid of my grandmother's house which was almost 200 years old and had mirrors from the civil war era that would show me frightening almost fun house versions of myself when they weren't hazy with orbs. There was a clock from the same period that would chime at weird times or start and stop when I came home. There was also shadow people who would follow me from room to room. Many was the time I would call Eric scared to death, demanding he tell me how to turn it off. "There's no going back" he would tell me, "you can't walk through life with your eyes closed." He had confidence I would get my bearings eventually and learn how to deal with it.

In the meantime, Eric's best friend Kenny and Ann who I had grown much closer to due to Kenny's obsession with her, had formed a tightly knit group. That's when things really started to happen. Ann would see shadow people walking through the walls of her house, moving up the stairs and gathering at the chandelier in the dining room. She would also feel people touching her and sometimes calling her name. Kenny would see the same shadowy people, and feel the air around him move as though there was a strong breeze in a tightly closed room. Crosses would appear in the wooden grains of his bedroom door. Things would be moved around his house, his cats would hiss and snarl at things unseen, and he had horrible nightmares of seeing his face in a mirror with blood running down the glass. For all of us, electric clocks and lights and appliances would short out or have surges. To this day I have problems with electricity. I blow out watches, lights, streetlights, etc.

Lexy and I drifted during this point, I was so busy with Eric and this unworldly experience that Ann and Kenny were also going through with us, that I turned more towards them. I was also struggling to go through the process of becoming fully emancipated as I coped with my mother's increasing viciousness, so I didn't have much to give Lexy at that point. As far as my mother was concerned, Eric noticed as I suffered through her visits and phone call rants, that she paralleled the activity going on around us. When the supernatural activity was really strong, she would get even more ugly, even threatening my life. When things were calmer, she was also.

One day during the thick of it I was sitting on the steps leading down to the basement where I watched Eric pacing. He was showing me where this all started for him.

"I was in high school, and my one friend Becky asked me to talk to her friend Heather. She was scared for her. Heather had recently lost her aunt Susan, who had been like a mother to her. She had started dabbling with some pretty dark shit. She had been messing with an Ouija board trying to talk to her aunt and she got in over her head. She started talking to this spirit named David, he seemed OK, he was a little boy who had drowned. He was nice enough to her, but soon another entity started coming through. He used to terrorize her."

"Why did Becky ask you to help?"

"Because everyone knew I was very religious."

"Doesn't being very religious, studying the Bible, and having an open mind to things like the occult, contradict each other?" To me it was all confusing. I had had it drilled into me that God was little different then this evil tyrant who sat brooding up in the clouds, eagerly watching his creations for the tiniest infraction so he could gleefully cast them into a fiery hell.

"You can't study the Bible and not figure out there's so much more out there then we can even begin to figure out. There's no way to scratch the surface in one lifetime. That's why I don't rule out anything. These things are real, to ignore them because you cherry pick which passages to study would be ignorant and blind."

"Maybe even in our case, dangerous" I observed.

He nodded, "So she would sit here, and we would be talking, and she would go into this trance and this being would come through. He would talk about things, in riddles sometimes. He would give predictions, like their being one world currency, politics, things that would happen in my life. He even told me that someday I would meet the Parish."

I looked at him stunned, "do you think he meant me?" my last name was Parrish.
He again nodded, "Oh yea, he said, you think you're something? Just wait until you meet the Parish! I had thought he meant a church, but now I know better."

I sat there in stunned silence for awhile, with this eerie feeling that I had been watched my entire life by something evil.

"There was many things in riddles, things I've never figured out. Couldn't even remember them all now, he just enjoyed playing games with us. As time went on he got more cryptic and taunting. He told us through Heather that in life his name had been Henry Bisby Kane. That he had been a preacher in the 1800's in Arizona. He had taken his congregation out to a cave and sealed them in by making everyone believe it was the end of the world. He never let them go. Even now he preys on lost souls and draws them in. He's full of rage, very cunning and extremely dangerous. Heather had made a deal with him to let her see her aunt one last time. She was down here-"
Suddenly I could feel my blood run cold.

"Shannon? Shannon what is it?"

I heard him from a great distance. I was almost in a faint. I saw a figure walk from the wall a few feet away from Eric had been standing. It was slender, in a stained white dress, brittle hair and the flesh melting from the bones. As I looked on in horror, it ascended the steps in an odd jerky gait and passed through me to disappear through the door at my back. The feeling of it moving through me was like nothing I can even begin to explain. The horror of it, the understanding that death itself had just scraped through me, I couldn't breath. I was shaking so hard I felt my teeth rattling and gasping. My heart raced so hard I though I might just die on the spot. I couldn't even speak. Eric was frantic. Finally I managed to draw in a full breath and burst into tears. "He showed her" I sobbed, "He showed her what her aunt looked like, NOW, DEAD, A CORPSE!!! The f**king thing walked right up these stairs, right through me!"

The next hour is a haze in my memory, I know it took him a long time to calm me down, and for me to stop shuddering.

When I was able to hear the rest of it, he explained to me that I had just described what she had seen, right down to the dress.

"Are we safe from this? Every day now Ann or Kenny are freaking out about something they've seen, we're seeing things all the time, can this hurt us? And what happened to Heather?"

"She's OK now" he said reassuringly. "The last time she channeled him I went toe to toe with him, begged God to save her, quoted scripture and banished him from her in Jesus' name. I'm not trying to say we did an exorcism, but we made it uncomfortable enough he seemed to have moved on. She straightened out after that, grades went back up, she stopped wearing all black, stopped having nightmares and channeling. The really interesting thing is she doesn't remember much of it all. She remembers hanging out down here, but not the channeling or seeing her poor aunt, or the nightmares or anything. No idea of why unless it's her way of subconsciously protecting herself by blocking it out."

"Have you tried to talk to her about it since" I wondered out loud.

"She just shuts down, she wants nothing to do with it, it's like talking to a wall."

"Defense mechanism" I agreed.

"Yea, most likely."

Later that night after I fielded a frantic call from Ann who thought something tried to grab her arm when she was walking down the stairs of her parents house, I was walking down the hall by Eric's room. I thought I heard something drop. Forcing myself to be brave, I walked into the dark room, and as I was reaching for the light I saw a hand come towards me. All bravado fled and I screamed the house down until Eric came running in.

"This has got to stop" I said grimly, "We need to do something, we can't just sit around waiting for it to screw with us!"

"I could try to channel" he offered quietly.

He had on a few occasions channeled this one spirit, who was kind and very dear to me. It had explained to me it had been with Eric always and was one of his guardians.

"How do you know that if you trance out, Kane won't come in?"

"We don't" he replied uneasily.

I looked at his broad shoulders and took careful note of the way he out massed me by over 50 pounds and towered over me by almost a foot, and asked him what would happen then. "Would he kill me? Go after your parents? Burn this place down?"
He shook his head, "he can only use my voice, my body is protected. He would never be able to cross that threshold."

"How do you know?'

"Heather would have tried to kill me wouldn't she?"

"Alright" I firmed up my failing courage and managed to sound much calmer then I felt, "let's just do this, either way, I need some answers."

We closed and locked his bedroom door after leaving word with his mom we were going to be watching a movie. I turned the ringer off his phone and pager, and perched on the side of his bed. I held his hand and watched for any sign of fluttering of his eyelashes. He always closed his eyes when he went into a trance, and the only thing that changed was his eyes would slowly open when he had made the connection. He squeezed my hand reassuringly and I sensed him leave. I can't explain it more then that, I just felt him leave. I gently laid his hand back down by his side and waited for his eyes to open. It took much longer then usual. First I noticed the side of his mouth draw up in a smirk. His cheek twitched. The head turned ever so slightly towards me, then his eyes slowly opened. I watched them slowly sweep the room before they settled on me. They were no longer green, they were muddy and dark. They're not his eyes I thought frantically. Even when he had channeled his dear guardian, his eyes had only become slightly more clear and emerald, these were not the same eyes.

"You" he whispered.

The smirk remained. I knew precisely who I was dealing with. "So we finally meet" I said calmly. "I had wondered if you would come."

The smirk grew. "You called me."

"How did we do that?"

"You keep visiting me."

I stayed silent for a moment, waiting for him to tell me what he had come for. Eric's body twitched, his hand spasmed. I laid my hand soothingly on his. The being didn't even notice.

"Yes" he said after a moment. "You're wondering who I am. I am the keeper of souls."

""So what do you want with Eric and I? Our souls don't belong to you."

"They will" he sighed.

"Never" I assured him.

"You don't love him" he turned Eric's brilliant gaze on me. "You never did, and he knows it."

"I wouldn't expect you to understand love."

"I know all about you" he continued raspily. "I know everything your mother did to you, I was there when she broke the chair over you."

I gasped, I had never even told Eric about that. He knew I had been physically abused, but he didn't know how bad it was. "She has split personalities, are you trying to tell me you were one of them?"

"So weak" he smirked.

"You're calling me weak now?"

"No, her. But you were always meant of be one of mine."

The eyes drifted closed and Eric's hand started spasming again, and a moment later he moaned and started thrashing.

"Eric? Baby! Wake up, come back! Eric, honey please!" I pulled him up in my arms and rocked him.

He dropped his head on my shoulder, "It was him."

"Oh yea, got to say I'm not fond of all of your friends."

He raised his head and smiled tiredly. I was happy to see his eyes were once again a dark green.

"What does he want?"

"I think he really wants us both."

"What else did he say?"

I repeated it, right down to him affecting my mother. "That would make sense" he nodded, "if she has a fractured personality, and her depression keeps her down, she's very easy prey for something like him."

"But why would he bother with me? Did he know I was going to grow up and be with you someday?"

"I think he targets anyone like us, who are strong and spiritual, maybe having strong physic abilities make us more vulnerable, because we're linked to the other world and more open to them. I think he must target us young because it might be easier to break us then."

It wasn't long after Eric went to bed, channeling sessions always exhausted him. Since I had been staying with his family for the past few months, I went into his mom's room and watched TV with her until she turned in for the night. I however lay awake all night trying not to jump at every shadow that danced on the walls or every little sound.

After that things became worse for the four of us, Ann was convinced things were after her whenever she was in the house, Kenny was seeing things and my mother was making my life a living hell. Even going so far as to taunt Eric that if she ever managed to get me back in her house, I would never make it out. To say it escalated is somewhat of an understatement. I was exhausted, as was Eric. Dreading what I knew had to be done, I held off as long as I could.

Finally after a few more weeks, we decided to try to channel one last time. I was going to try to find out how to get rid of Kane in our lives once and for all. I was nervous, I didn't know the scripture like Eric, I had no idea of what I could actually do, but I knew my own strength.

I wish I could relate the conversation that took place between Kane and I when Eric reluctantly managed to push himself under, but to be perfectly honest, much of it is gone from my memory. I remember him telling me he has always been there, and wasn't the only one. We were of special interest to him, because of our strength and ability's, and I remember passionately arguing, but I couldn't tell you about what. I have a sense at one time he started challenging me and revealing things I wasn't allowed to keep the knowledge of, but they're far gone. I think this session took place for almost an hour. It went on and on until finally those squinting muddy brown eyes rolled up and Eric seemed to pass out. I was so exhausted, feeling as though all of my energy, even some of my life force had been drained away, I just stretched out and put my head on his shoulder. I knew sooner or later Eric would swim back up. I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew I woke with a start to see Eric's brilliant green eyes.

"Hey you, I think we did it." He passed a hand tiredly over his face and sat up.
I got up and began to slowly pace. I couldn't stay still.

"He left, I think he he might be banished or at least gone for good. I don't feel him anymore."

I know we talked at length about what had been said between Kane and I, but as I said before, I don't remember too much of it. I can say things did calm down, Ann stopped seeing things, as did Kenny. Eric and I hadn't told them about his channeling, so they didn't know we believed the source of this nightmare was gone. The fact that they stopped experiencing things as soon as this took place, was proof enough for Eric and I.

Now at this point I would like to wind this all up with a quick happily ever after spin, but in fact Eric and I didn't stay together much longer. We started fighting too much, and he became obsessively controlling and I became defiant and withdrew completely. At 16 and 19 I don't think we had the life skills to balance two A type personalities. But the interesting thing about the aftermath of this all, (and I'm the only one of the group who believes this) is what happened to each of us. Eric's control issues went to an even darker place, and he started having issues with drinking. Ann who had been this "good Girl" became very loose, and most of her friends lost all respect for her. Kenny who was the most social person I had ever known, who lived for his friends, became dark and bitter and pushed most of us out of his life. I didn't go back to my mother's, but was able to get my own place and go out on my own. I spent the next 5 years in an abusive relationship, where as a stripper, the drinking and drugs almost finished me off. It really seems like we each became the manifestation of our dark side. The impulses that we might have been able to balance and resist before, destroyed everything in each of our lives that had meant the most to us. I find this to be an eerie coincidence.

I'm happy to report Eric and I found our way back to being friends, each married and doing much better. Our lives have returned to being back under control, Kenny has recently followed suit. Ann is still caught up in it from all accounts. Still playing fast and loose. It's also interesting to me that the two stronger ones (Eric and I) pulled back from this first. I think when you open the door to this kind of thing, the consequences can last a lifetime. Another modern example that quickly springs to mind is Mel Gibson, and the downward spiral his life took after he made "The Passion."

Now if you're thinking this all sounds just like the Poltergeist film series, you couldn't be more accurate. It really seems like the writers of the films had first hand experience with this entity. Almost everything about the Kane we came to know from personal experience is relayed in this series. In the opinions of Eric and I, it's completely based on the real entity and his story. You can find references to Kane the stealer of souls in popular fiction, such as Nora Robert's Key Trilogy series. You can find little towns in Arizona named Bisbey, or places where there's references to that fateful expedition. I believe we're not the only ones who have had experiences with him.

Frankly, it never feels over, when Eric, Kenny and I get together weird things start happening. It feels like a live wire that still hums with power.

So, anyway, that's my weird story. Not a ghost story exactly, but every bit of it is the truth, and had a huge impact on the lives of 4 kids who opened Pandora's Box.

Many thanks to Shannon!

On the Other Side: A True Story