A Shadow Person Encounter of the First Kind

By Diana Akroyd

It was around 1992 or 1993. I had traveled from where I was living at the time in Austin, Texas back East to New York to visit my parents and younger siblings. It had been about four or five years since I'd graduated high school, so an outing with friends was also planned.

We decided to meet at a local diner to catch up. Conversation inevitably drifted to what had happened to whom when someone brought up a tragic occurrence involving a young boy we all knew named Eric. Eric was three years younger than me and had actually been on the same bus that my brother and I took to school each morning. In retrospect, I can't say he was a very nice boy. A typical bully, I guess. He gave my younger brother heck on most days and I was friends with Eric's older sister, Adrian. Needless to say, I never cared much for Eric but I was still saddened when I heard that on the last day of his senior year, he'd been showing off and drove his car at a high rate of speed into a tree in front of the school and subsequently killed himself. Granted, Eric had been a bit of a bully, but he certainly hadn't deserved to die at such a young age. I thought about Adrian and wondered how she'd handled it, feeling sorry for her loss. Bully or no bully, he'd still been her younger brother whom she loved.

After a couple of hours of catching up, my friends and I bid each other goodbye and I drove home. It was late. My parents had given me my old room to stay in which was located on the lower level of my parent's split level house and hadn't yet been deemed as my sister's room. It was the only bedroom down there next to a family room, bathroom, washroom and computer area. My youngest sister was around eight or nine years of age back then, and thoroughly excited to have me home after such a long absence. Naturally, she wanted to sleep in my room, so she got her sleeping bag and set herself up on the floor next to my bed.

A few hours after retiring for the night, I was awakened out of a deep sleep by the sound of three slow knocks. Knock... knock... knock. I opened my eyes and instinctively looked at the clock first. It was 3:00 a.m. Strange... it sounded as if the knocking had come from a ledge that spanned two walls in my room. As I tried to figure out what that knocking had been, my eyes began to adjust to the light a little better and I looked down at my sister still sound asleep in her sleeping bag next to me. Little did I know, we weren't alone.

That's when I saw it. A shadow person. It stood around six feet tall and it was blacker than black. Opaque black. An actual complete absence of light because I couldn't see through it. It stood on the opposite side of my sleeping sister, facing me, and looked completely three dimensional. I could make out no facial features as it appeared to be shrouded, but I could most definitely make out its head and shoulders and where it continued down to the floor. I also noted that it had no feet.

My heart began to race as I quickly realized that I was seeing a ghost and I was paralyzed in place, still raised up on my elbow in bed, staring at it and it staring back at me. I got the distinct feeling it was male and, for some reason, Eric's name came to mind. Perhaps, due to my Catholic upbringing, I began to recite the Lord's Prayer inside my head.

"Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven..."

I hadn't gotten very far into the prayer when, slowly, the shadow began to move. Not towards me but, instead, turning to the side and then gliding across the room and disappearing into the wall where a large mirror hung above my old dresser.

Needless to say, that once it had vanished, it took me all of about a half a second to jump out of my bed, leap over my still sleeping sister and run up the stairs to sleep on the couch for the rest of the night. Well... honestly, I didn't sleep that much. But, I did think about Eric a lot and said a few more prayers for his soul after apologizing for calling him a bully.

Sadly, being a paranormal investigator now, and looking back at the experience, I could just kick myself for not having a camera handy at the time.

Que sera, sera.

Diana is the founder of the Orange County Ghost Hunters, an Ordained Minister, Demonologist and Author of the book, "Chosen: End Times Truths Revealed"