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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/itsyaboiFaZeShrek on 2024-10-26 15:55:41+00:00.
I’ve always had a very odd relationship with my imagination.
My imagination and daydreaming were so vivid as a child that it kept me occupied throughout most days, for better or worse. My dreams were no different. Some days I would have the most breathtakingly vivid dreams that were so beautiful; however, I found out from a pretty early age that this imagination came with a price.
The horrific dreams and hallucinations started when I was around 5 or 6. I would have hallucinations of angels coming to me, standing in doorways, holding me in my dreams, and showing me things. Now, being raised in a religious household, you would think that I found this comforting; but they always terrified me. The angels that I would see had no faces; and, when I met them in my dreams, their embrace was freezing to the touch. There was no comfort I found in them; and, to be honest, this is probably one of the reasons I fell out of religion so early on in my childhood. I can’t exactly remember all of the things that they showed me in my dreams. I know they weren’t all scary or bad, but it was always unsettling at the least.
But my hallucinations, while the good ones were still there sometimes, became more and more horrifying as I got older. Sometimes when I’d wake up from a terrible dream, me being an elementary aged kid, would of course call for my parents; and one of my parents would come. Usually they would come right to my bedside and comfort me, pat my head, give me a kiss on the forehead and be on their way back to sleep. But I remember on some occassions I would get even more scared when my parents — or what I thought was my parents — came to comfort me. Because sometimes all they would do is peek their head around the corner and stare at me for minutes. With it being just about pitch black in my room, with only maybe the moonlight shining in from the window as light, I could only make out the shape of someones head. There were never any facial features visible, just kind of a white blob. I would call out “Mom” or “Dad” multiple times, but I would never get a reply. When this happened I remember always thinking “Why is mom/dad taller than usual” but me being so young never registered that it could be something else other than my loving parents coming to check on me when I called for help. When I would finally say “You’re scaring me,” after the uncomfortably long time of them just staring at me, the head would disappear back into the hallway.
I know now, of course, that in these situations those were most definitely not my parents.
I would only become more and more aware of these tall ones as time went on. I started seeing them in the events I just described at around age 8, and it got worse at around age 9.
I remember being around grade 4 going into the one of the school washroom stalls. After I was done, I headed to the sink to wash my hands. The sinks were directly ahead of the stalls. So when looking into the mirror, I had complete vision of the stalls. I was looking down at my hands while lathering soap on them, and when I glanced back up at the mirror, I could see someone’s head peeking from over the bathroom stall that I had just come out of. The head had a normal looking men’s haircut. The thing that I noticed first is that there should have just been enough of the head visible to see its eyes, or atleast its eyebrows. But there was nothing. I completely froze. Even after 14 or 15 years, the memory and feeling is seared into my brain.
It was completely still. I had really hoped that it was my imagination playing tricks on me. I didn’t hear a sound coming from the thing. No breathing, no shuffling, no anything. After the intial reaction of freezing up, I turned around, hoping that it wouldn’t be there, but it was. I once again couldn’t bring myself to move. Even though it had no eyes, I could still feel its gaze upon me. I don’t know how long I stood there, but after a while, its head very slowly started to shrink down out of sight. After I couldn’t see its head anymore, I quickly looked down towards the bottom opening of the stall and I saw its feet. This particular tall one had standard brown business-type shoes.
Directly after noticing this, I finally heard something. It began fidgeting with the door. Looking back on it, it was like it had no idea how the door worked. The idea of being face to face with that thing overrided anything else, and I began to ran. Just as I exited the bathroom, I heard the stall door creak open.
That day was the start of my personal hell.
The tall ones would only begin to appear more often. A week after this first encounter, I was in my classroom during our history class. I remember hearing the distant and slow clacking of shoes, the sound you usually hear when a teacher is walking down the hallway. I didn’t think too much of it, as it’s something that I heard quite often. Until I noticed that the last time I heard them was when they were directly outside our classroom. I turned my head toward the doorway, and when I did, I jumped out of my chair and stumbled backward and fell against the wall. I couldn’t do anything except scream.
It was there again. The same tall one as in the bathroom stall, except this time I could see its entire body except for its head. It was too tall for the door. Its outfit was that you would see at a law firm. Very tidy, suit and tie, you get it. The thing had very deformed hands. It had extremely stubby fingers, and the hand itself looked like a blob of flesh just mashed together.
Everyone obviously was looking at me, then started to look toward the door; and, as you probably suspected, just looked back at me with a mix of confusion and fear as to why I was screaming inconsolably. My teacher rushed to me and tried to figure out what was going on, but I couldn’t take my eyes off it. It felt like if I stopped looking at it, it would come snatch me away and I would never be seen again. After what I think was a minute or so, as I was still crying uncontrollably, I saw the thing fully move for the first time. Usually this would be comedic, but this was horrifying. It didn’t turn around and walk away like a human, but instead just took one massive, slow, exaggerated sidestep out of view. Imagine that as you like, because I don’t even want to describe how unnatural this movement was.
My parents were called, and I was taken home. It took a long time for my parents to get anything out of me. I did eventually tell them, and they took me to a child psychiatrist. They always knew I had hallucinations that scared me from time to time, but after seeing me like how I was that day, they decided that was the final straw.
The psychiatrist took it as an overactive imagination and told my parents that hallucinations during childhood are not that unusual and that they would eventually subside. He told my parents to come again if this kept occuring on a regular basis.
Well, the visions of the tall ones kept occuring, and I was put on meds a short time afterward. They didn’t do a thing to help. And after a while, I started seeing tall ones other than the businessman. After about a year or two of constant hell, and though it was still hell, I was able to manage these visions a lot better, or so I thought. I won’t describe each and every one of these encounters, but I will tell you the one that landed me in a psychiatric ward.
I was around 13 at the time, and just like the rest of the encounters I’ve told you about, I was also at school. I was outside during our recess time, and I was trying my best to be social with the other kids, so I was playing some soccer with them.
At some point during the game, I was looking across the field towards the neighbouring street when I saw a flash of red kind of dash in and out of sight between two houses. Something about it immediately set me off. Mind you, no tall one I had seen at this point moved quickly. I tried my best to ignore it and continue with the game. Some time later, I looked back towards those houses, and once again I froze like I was 9 again. There was an extremely tall woman in a red dress, standing across the street. Something about this one was different. It was extremely tall, maybe around 10 feet.
I tried my best to do the calming exercises that I had learned, trying my best not to lose it. I brought myself to look at it again, and it started to make those slow, exaggerated strides toward me that I had become accustomed to seeing. Then, without warning, it started running. This was the most scared I’ve been in my entire life. This was something new that I couldn’t deal with. The way it ran was like it was dislocating every bone in its legs. I couldn’t even describe it. I screamed, and I ran as fast as I could. I ran inside the school and tried to find anyone that could help me.
I have no idea why, but I couldn’t find anyone inside the school. It was like everyone had disappeared. I heard the door that I entered to school with slam open. Loud, pounding, fast footsteps followed. I knew that it was the tall one. I also heard, for the first time, a noise come from the thing itself. It was an unbelievably loud muffled scream, as if someone was screaming into a pillow, except it didn’t sound human at all.
Something about that noise made me give up. It filled me with such an unimaginable sense of dread that I just stopped running. I heard the sound of the pounding footsteps get closer. I gave myself th…
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