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The original was posted on /r/highstrangeness by /u/bargain_parm on 2025-04-23 22:38:00+00:00.

When I was a kid my family and I lived in rural East Tennessee. We were in a not so old brick house up on a hill off the highway. The most unique feature of this house was a spiral staircase going to the basement from the kitchen area. My mother and stepfather made their bedroom in the basement at the bottom of the stairs as there were only two bedrooms upstairs. One for my sister, and the other for my stepbrother and I. One night I woke up from my sleep and as kids do, I thought it was a good idea to make my way to my mom downstairs. I hadn’t had a nightmare or anything, and I wasn’t scared, I just wanted to go get in bed with mom. I was probably 7 or 8. So I made my way down the hall towards the kitchen where the spiral staircase was. What I was about to see is something I’ve tried researching intermittently throughout my life. It’s something I’ve never forgotten and can clearly see it in my mind right now. However, my research has never really returned anything that I would call a clear match for my encounter. I just realized that this may be a good place to get some feedback so I’m hoping for some help identifying it. As I got to the stairs, I naturally looked down them as I started to make my way to the basement. It was mostly dark as everyone was asleep but me. Before I could get down the staircase, I froze as I saw a human like shape making its way up the stairs towards me. I say human like because there were no features, only form. Not how you see ghosts portrayed or talked about as being a like the former person only translucent. This entity was as if I was looking at a photorealistic drawing of the staircase with a human coming up the stairs, but the artist had erased just the human form. There were soft edges, but a solid white/light gray form in the shape of a human. It was moving and climbing the stairs just as a human would do. It was casual, not erratic or threatening, but as soon as I saw it I, along with freezing up, had chills shoot all across my body. It was as if I was screaming inside, but I didn’t dare make a sound. I darted back to my room and in typical fashion, put the covers over my head and remained there only checking once or twice to see if it had come to my room. I never saw it again. Does anyone have any thoughts?