02/04/2025
I’ve had paranormal experiences my entire life. I used to think it was just fleeting shadows or tricks of the mind, but no, they were real, tangible, and persistent. I’ve come to accept them, even pursue them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t still catch me off guard. I’ll tell you an experience I had of one of these encounters.
The particular day was unremarkable. There were no eerie feelings in the air, no oppressive silence, no sudden chill that would have signaled something was lurking unseen. It was just another weekend afternoon, sunlight filtering through the windows, the distant hum of a television filling the house with life. I wasn’t thinking about spirits or hauntings—I was just moving through my home, heading into my bedroom like I had a hundred times before.
I entered from the hallway, the one that connected the den to the kitchen, and moved toward my bed, ready to throw myself onto the mattress in a moment of mindless relaxation. But as I did, something made me glance back toward the hallway.
And that’s when I saw him.
A man. Standing there.
Clear as day.
He wasn’t a shadow, wasn’t a passing blur or a shape in the periphery of my vision. He was solid, as real as any living person. My breath caught, my heart stuttering in my chest. He didn’t belong here—I would have heard him if he had walked in, I would have felt the presence of another person. But the moment my eyes locked onto him, he was gone. Not in the way someone might turn and walk away, but in an instant—just… vanished.
I sat up abruptly, my pulse hammering in my ears. The house was quiet. Too quiet. That strange, suffocating kind of silence that follows something unexplainable, as if reality itself was trying to adjust.
Then I heard it.
A cry.
My son.
I rushed out of my room and into the kitchen, where he sat on one of the stools at the bar that separated the den from the kitchen. His face was twisted in distress, tears welling in his wide, frightened eyes. Next to him, one of the stools lay on the floor, its seat still spinning in slow, lazy circles.
“What happened?” I asked, already feeling the unease crawl up my spine.
“I don’t know,” he sobbed. “It just fell over.”
The words barely left his lips when, on the opposite side of the kitchen, the beaded curtain that separated it from the laundry room swung open. Not gently, not as if stirred by a passing breeze, but violently—as if something had run straight through it.
I froze.
The beads rattled, shifting in place long after they should have stilled, as if whatever had moved them still lingered just beyond our sight.
I had lived with the paranormal long enough to recognize a pattern when I saw one. Something—someone—had made itself known. The man in the hallway. The fallen stool. The force that tore through the beads. It wasn’t random. It wasn’t my imagination.
It was real.
And it wouldn’t be the last time.
There were many experiences in that house. Too many.
But this was the moment I knew, without a doubt, that we were not alone.
