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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/CMPaiz on 2024-11-27 09:19:23+00:00.

The newborn phase is hard. Most parents will tell you “hard” is an understatement. In reality you spend most of your time dirty and delirious, desperately trying to avoid nodding off into your third or fourth morning cup of coffee. You’re already dealing with constant worry, inconsolable screaming, endless poopy diapers, and wondering what each stain on your shirt is. You have no hope of getting a full night’s sleep. You hardly have time to eat, let alone cook. A shower suddenly becomes the height of luxury. What I’m trying to get at is, it’s easy to believe your mind may be playing tricks on you when you see something in the shadows in the dead of night while you have a newborn, but this isn’t my imagination, and I need to know if any other new parents have seen this too.

Well before my due date we set up the baby monitor. We left the monitor on at night in order to get used to the screen’s persistent glow cutting through the darkness of our room. I’m a night owl, frequently staying up until two or three in the morning, so I spent many nights glancing at the screen and never noticed anything unusual. 

The same was true for the first few months of my daughter’s life while she slept in the bassinet beside our bed. But on her first night alone in her room I noticed a particularly dark spot in the corner that seemed to pulse, as if it were alive. As if it were breathing. I squinted. I zoomed the camera in. I even went into the room and peeked at the corner myself. I didn’t find anything out of the ordinary until I glanced back down at the screen and saw that the spot had moved from the corner to the middle of the room and was now a distinct, humanoid, silhouette. And it was looking in my direction. 

Fear engulfed me immediately. I stared at the figure on the screen as it stared at me. I had trouble tearing my eyes away, frozen in terror, but knew I had to look up. I had to see it for myself. But when I looked up, nothing was there.

I rushed over and scooped up my daughter, bringing her back to her bassinet in our room, and when I looked back at the monitor as I plugged it in, I noticed the figure was gone. What was still lingering was the chill that had been sent up my spine, and an unshakable feeling that I was being watched. I spent the rest of the night staring at the door, as if I was waiting for someone to come barging through it.

It was a week before my husband could convince me to let our daughter sleep in her room again. 

“You’re tired, you’re stressed. You probably just saw a shadow,” he kept repeating. I finally gave in just to make him drop it. 

I spent the entire night sitting up in bed, eyes glued to the monitor, scanning constantly for pulsating shadows, but none showed up. After a few nights with no overnight visitors, I began to relax. After a few weeks I started to believe that my husband must’ve been right; it must’ve been a figment of my imagination. But last night I rolled over to take one last peek before going to sleep for the night, expecting to see my daughter sleeping in her crib, but she wasn’t in her crib at all. She wasn’t even in the room. The shadow was standing right over her empty cot. Its “head” snapped up, in the direction of the camera, as if this thing was trying to look into it. To look at me.

I immediately smacked my husband awake and shoved the monitor in front of his face.

“Where’s the baby??” I yelled as he rubbed his eyes trying to come quickly back to consciousness. 

“What are you talking about?” He yawned, finally focusing on the monitor, eyes suddenly going wide and moving to scan my undoubtedly unhinged expression. “What’s that thing?” he asked me, not waiting for the answer as he sprung out of bed, running into her room as I scanned every corner of ours, as if she could’ve magically teleported in here on her own. I didn’t see her anywhere, so I followed my husband, hesitantly for some reason, and made my way to the nursery doorway, monitor in hand. On it I could see my husband frantically searching high and low in the room but, more importantly, I could see the figure looming over his each and every move, reaching out, trying to touch him, when my husband suddenly whipped around, panting, as if he expected someone to be there and yet saw nothing. But I could see it.

From the doorway I glanced up at them, but instead of seeing my husband I was met with the face of the thing, inches from my own, with deep, black eyes staring into my soul itself. The skin was covered in boils so full they could burst at any moment. Giant jagged yellow teeth leaked drool over stretched, cracked, lips. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. It opened its mouth and I expected my ears to be met with a disgusting gurgling but instead a sweeping crescendo of infant cries engulfed me. Not just one infant, but many, all screeching in perfect harmony, transfixing me with their heart shattering sounds. The screams became an all encompassing roar, growing louder and louder, before suddenly stopping all together, the beast vanishing right before my eyes.

I then heard a quieter, familiar cry from my daughter’s crib. She lay there, squirming a bit, beginning to fuss, and my husband and I exchanged confused looks before he picked her up and brought her back to our room.

I don’t think I’ll ever be letting her sleep in that room again.

The thing that’s really bothering me, though, is that something feels just the slightest bit off about my daughter. Like she’s changed in some way?

Has anyone ever encountered a monster like this?