Spiders, Shadows, Shades (& Maybe Ghosts)
Just a couple spooky stories on some creatures.
Hide & Seek in the Corner
Once I was in a house with my two little brothers (who, for reference are both 10-15 years younger than me) and there’s one room that is kind of freaky…especially when it gets dark out. There was this little rocking chair in one corner and I was less experienced with visions of not-people & not-premonitions then, but I knew what I was seeing and it was only amplified by the feeling.
There was a little boy huddled over in the corner by the rocking chair. His hair looked a little purple even though it should have been dark brown or black. And he smiled at me with this creepy as fuck grin and that’s really when I knew something was wrong, very wrong. He wanted to play “hide & seek” which isn’t strange for a child, but I mean he had on the expression of someone who had just finished a murder spree.
I think what triggered it was him realizing that I had seen him in more than just passing. I walked out of that room pretty fast. Not my home, not my place to be laying banishings. And aside from that, they were a bit anti-witch there per connotations of witchcraft and magick.
So later that night, I’m out with the family and their little girl and she asks me if I want to play hide and seek when we get back (it was already past her bedtime) and it freaked me out to have the question posed to me, again with a little knowing smile. Needless to say, I spent a long time mildly creeped out by that corner.
Hand Holding
On the walk back to that same house is a dirt road. And every time I walk it after sun down there’s an extra shadow on the ground. The light is usually coming from house lights either ahead (the house I stay at) or behind. The shadow starts about 4 houses back and she just walks alongside me until we go through the gate.
The shadow is a little girl, probably age 5-9 who seems to be wearing a (white?) dress with her hair down and a hand always outstretched as if trying to grab the hand of a living person. She freaks me out. I’m not sure exactly why because she does seem like a little girl who wants her hand held, but her energy seems malicious and dark. Maybe one day if I’m back there I’ll work up the nerve to read cards with her.
The first time I remember seeing her, there were 3 of us (girls) and 4 shadows on the ground. I held on to the woman beside me with both hands and she looked at me like I’d lost it but I don’t think she minded. She’s pretty used to it now when I see things or get uncomfortable in certain spaces, even if she wasn’t as much then.
A Dream & My Bedroom
This one is more recent. I had a dream one night that there was a shade perched at a specific location in the house I was currently living in. It was really creepy looking, tall with shiny red eyes. It was wearing a wide brim hat the first time I saw it, but not after that.
The dream was pretty short-lived. I knew immediately that something was wrong with the dreamscape. Once, I spent a couple of months having intense nightmares and many of them were reality-adjacent. So I’ve gotten decently good, by this point, at knowing when I’m “waking up” into a dream. I walked out of my room because it felt right and down the hall. There, I saw this shade perched on a ledge staring at me like it had been waiting. I was scared, I do admit, and ran back into my room where I closed the door. It followed.
Still dreaming, I called out to a spirit that I am close with to come and handle the situation. I was confused and anxious about what I had seen, never having been chased by a shade before. The spirit did come and I woke up shortly after still wondering what exactly had happened. It was not until later in the morning that I put together some important pieces.
These pieces included that the shade had likely not come into my room, despite it being within a dream, due to the heavy warding system I have in place, including the spirit-eating egregore; and that the shade was real. There it was, when I went looking, perched exactly in the place I had seen it in the dream. I waited for evening when it was dark and brought a tarot deck to sit across from the shade and read cards. Having “Death” jump out was a fun experience, I did not know if it meant the shade was dead (implying it was once alive) or if it’s lifetime involved taking life. I asked it to leave, otherwise face being bound by me.
Vampire in the Night
When I was younger, I went to visit a women with a young daughter who hated sleeping in her room. The young daughter, about 5 then, went to sleep with her mom and I stayed in her bedroom for the night. It was hard to fall asleep at first, which I attributed to it being something different than I was accustomed to. But then, a few hours later, I woke up unexpectedly. I was fully awake and felt something weird, some strange energy and an inability to fall back asleep. I turned over to face the room, as I had been facing the wall the bed was pushed against.
It was then that I saw her. Kneeling down in a beautiful, albeit bloodstained, white gown was a woman. Her long, black hair wet with the same blood and her teeth sharp with memories of how it had been stained.
Butterfly Dreams
A couple years ago, I was friends with someone that shared a strong energy connection with me, in part due to my own workings. One night I had a strange dream where I bumped into a man and spilled some of my items (from a bag, I assume) onto the ground. We both knelt down, in the dirt, to pick them up. My eyes were caught on a butterfly necklace. It’s a real necklace that I was given as a child and seemed out of place in this dream.
The man and I both looked up as he handed it to me and I felt that this dream was the type that reached “beyond” the veil. So I looked at him closely, and finally the dream came to an end. I meditated for a little while about who this dream was connected to, because the man in the dream wasn’t one I knew. (Sometimes I get messages for or about other people I’m close to.) I asked the friend I had a strong energy connection with about it.
He said he’d once had a friend that had a butterfly tattoo. But the friend had passed on in a rather graphic way. He’d felt at fault for it, because he should have been a “better” friend to the man. Later that night, I called out to the soul that had come to my dreams armed with a butterfly token and read tarot cards for the friend we (had) shared. It was a very moving reading, and I was glad to have been reached out to.
The event wasn’t really so simple as a ‘hello,’ though. The man from my dreams had a brother who was still alive, also tattooed with butterflies and a bit unstable in more than one way. I told my friend he should check on the brother if he could. A few days later they bumped into each other, and a few months later I again reminded him that he should look out for his friend’s brother if he could. The story takes a sad turn here, they bumped into each other again, but days after that the dream’s other message and warning came to fruition.
Stay tuned for how to handle shadows, shades, and ghosts!