Submitted by Coureherritt t3_znlyzy in nosleep
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For starters, I'm a single father of a 14 year old teenager.
His mother unfortunately passed away during child birth, and so I was left with my biggest sorrow, and joy at once.
Raising him all alone has been quite the task, but I've received a lot of help, and pointers from both my parents, and my late wife's parents.
Jason is a good kid, he has good grades, is respectful and understanding and doesn't try to make my life living hell, like I hear some other parents of teenagers explain.
One persistent problem throughout his life has been sleep. He has always had difficulties with sleep, first when he was just a baby, then a preschool kid, school, and even now, a teenager, experiencing the exact same problems. We've been to the doctors, and they've told us he has Insomnia, and I believed it, until recently.
He came in to my room at around midnight three weeks ago and woke me up, although I wasn't actually sleeping yet.
"Dad, I can't sleep." He said, and he looked scared, almost terrified. I could tell by his faint shaking, and the way he held himself.
"What's wrong buddy?" I asked him, and he glanced at the now shut door and flinched.
"It's just.." He was tapping his fingers on his crossed arms, he didn't look embarassed or afraid to tell me like he had been numerous times before, when he broke something, or misbehaved, this time he looked almost confused, unable to formulate the words. "There's always a dark figure in my room.. just.. just watching me while I sleep.. I can feel his eyes on me.." His voice was shaky, I could see the tears forming in his eyes, he was completely terrified, and he fell right into my arms, starting to sob.
Now normally any parent would just believe it to be a bad dream, but I thought of the worse, that there's an intruder. After he calmed down enough, I told him that I'd go look in his room and check.
So like in horror movie fashion, I picked up a large kitchen knife, and tip toed all throughout the apartment, seeing if there are any intruders or evidence of a break in, and in the end I found nothing. Peculiary though, his closet door was cracked open.
As I was walking back to my bedroom, I heard him scream my name, and I ran inside with my knife at the ready. "He was here!" Jason was pointing with his finger to the darkest corner of the room, sobbing uncontrollably.
In the end, I found no one and nothing, and he slept with me that night.
This thing kept occuring every other day where Jason would come to my room and just shake, and every single time he'd say that this dark thing is stalking him, getting closer each night. By the end of the week he'd just sneak into my bed by himself, without waking me, and I'd find him there in the morning.
Two weeks ago, I ordered a cheap set of simple security cameras, and put them up around the apartment while he was at school, including one in his room. Yes, I know teenager privacy matters, and I really shouldn't put cameras around the apartment, let alone his room, but I needed to get to the bottom of this thing thats happening. And I planned on taking them down after a week or two.
The next morning I found Jason huddled up next to me in my bed again, it was a saturday, so I had no work and quietly slid out of bed as to not wake him and made a coffee while turning on the laptop.
I shuffled through the cameras and the recorded footage, the quality wasn't the best, but the camera's were cheap, so what did I expect.
Jason's room was mostly quiet all night. From the moment he got into bed, until the moment he got out and came to my room, he didn't move once, not a single moment, I tried enchancing the footage, making it brighter, to see the darkest corners of the room, but it still was too dark.
When I rewatched the sped up footage for the third time I finally noticed something, while Jason was in bed his closet was closed, and shortly after he left, his closet cracked open just slightly.
I found the exact moment it happened, around two minutes after he left, I slowed down the footage, and the closet fucking opened by itself, even I was freaked out now.
I went on amazon right away and ordered night vision cameras, which cost a small fortune.
The next two days, I continued observing the footage, the second night Jason never came to my room, and he never moved from his sleeping position until I woke him. His closet also remained shut on the second day, however during the first day, after he left, it cracked open again shortly after.
Once the new cameras arrived, I installed them in his room again, and rewatched the footage the following morning. Jason stayed up very late that night, almost to two AM, and he never went to bed in his room, he came straight to mine. This time, I watched the closet with such intensity that I thought even I could open it just by thinking about it, and sure enough, two or three minutes later, it cracked open. I zoomed in as much as possible, and slowed down the footage, and thats when I saw it. A shadow moved across the room in a split second, and past the closet, and the next split second, the closet cracked open. I slowed it down even more, rewatched it again and again, I couldn't make out the figure, it was simply a blob of a shadow.
I sighed and went to my room to wake up Jason, those last days I had to wake him up, because he'd sleep in for as long as he could, and even after sleeping for twelve+ hours he'd still look tired, bags under his eyes.
The next night was the last night Jason was awake.
I woke up with him sleeping beside me as was usual these past few weeks, I slipped out quietly, not that it mattered, and went on with my morning routine of coffee, and watching through the footage.
He stayed up late again, three AM, I considered scolding him for staying up so late on a school night, as I shifted through the footage, strangely though, the closet door never cracked open during the entire night. I coincidentally decided to look through the old camera's that still were set up everywhere else, including my room.
And that's when my jaw dropped and I saw it. Clear as day, a shadow of a skeletal hand hovering right above my son, on the wall behind him, the entire. fucking. night. I ran to my room and tried to wake him gently as I did every morning, but he didn't budge. Then I tried violence, I shaked him and screamed at him to wake up. He didn't. I called the ambulance having nothing else left to do.
He was diagnosed in a coma.
I kept watching those recordings again and again, dating back weeks ago, and I found something even more horrifying. Every night as Jason came to my room to sleep, the shadow followed him, I watched through multiple camera's as the shadow sped from his room, to the hallway, to the kitchen, and then into mine, all within a couple seconds, and then there, in my room, it loomed right over him, getting closer and closer every single night. I don't know how to describe it, its unlike anything I've seen before, a shadow, but so dark, so black, that the darkness of the room illuminated it in a strange way.
This brings me to last week's and today's events.
I, too have started feeling a presence.
I, too have started seeing the shadow looming, at the corner of my eye, and I, too have started having it inching closer to me as I sleep, every single night. I frantically put together a timeline today, and judging by it, today is the last day I'll be able to wake up on my own, which means unless I'm awoken tomorrow, I won't wake up again.
I drove to my parents house today and am going to spend the night here, they have very specific instructions to wake me, I want to see if this thing will follow me all the way here too, and I still need to figure out how to wake up my son, and figure out what this thing did to him.