A Reddit user raised by paranormal investigators says a six-foot figure with glowing red eyes once stood in the corners of their childhood bedroom, just watching.
The account was posted to the r/Thetruthishere community under the title “My Childhood Was Filled With Things I Still Can’t Explain” by a user named Mossy_Forest01. The witness says their parents once ran a paranormal investigation team called the Midnight Paranormal Society in Chicago, Illinois, so the unexplained was a normal part of growing up. Even so, the experiences began “long before I understood what paranormal activity even was,” and the witness still can’t say for sure what they were.
Is this a ghost story, a childhood memory shaped by an unusual upbringing, or something harder to name? The witness admits they aren’t sure either.
Heavy Boots and “Imaginary Friends”
The earliest memory the witness shares is a sound. Before the age of five or six, they would hear something walking around their bed late at night. It “sounded like heavy military boots walking across the floor.” At the time, they assumed it was their imagination.
Then there were the friends no one else could see. The witness says they called them imaginary friends, but adds, “Looking back, I don’t believe they were imaginary.”
One figure stood out from the rest. The witness remembers it as “around six feet tall, completely dark, with glowing red eyes,” standing in the darkest corners of the room “just watching me.”
Then came a night that truly frightened the child. “I woke up on the floor beside my bed,” the witness wrote. “I had no idea how I got there, but I had bruises around my ankles.”
On another night, the closet door slowly opened by itself. The witness expected to see the little boy they sometimes saw. Instead, a tall black figure with red eyes stood in the doorway, staring straight at them. The door slammed shut. “Then I heard it laugh,” the witness recalled, describing themselves as “a little kid, lying in my bed crying because I had absolutely no idea what was happening.”
A Building With a Bad Reputation
The witness says the building itself had “a horrible reputation for paranormal activity.” One photo from that time reportedly shows the child sitting on a swing while, in the background, it appears “something is pushing the swing even though nobody is behind me.” We have not seen the photo, so its details rest on the witness’s description.
Real-world tragedy touched the property too. The witness says a man was shot in the alley behind their garage. Soon after, the family moved to another apartment.
The new building came with its own history. According to the witness, a woman there had reportedly found her mother deceased and later died by suicide in the building. After the move, the witness began waking in the middle of the night to find the front door open. One night, both doors were open.
As the witness walked toward the first door, they heard “something running up the stairs toward me.” They froze. Whatever it was “sounded like it was coming straight for me.” The witness ran to get their dad, who came downstairs and yelled for whatever was there to leave the family alone.
Things calmed down after that, though not completely. The witness describes objects being thrown or slammed without anyone touching them, and items moving when nobody was near. “I’d hear growling and laughing,” they wrote. They also state a lifelong belief: “I’ve always been able to see, hear, and feel things that other people couldn’t.”
The Old Farm
During their teenage years, the family lived on what the witness was told was a very old, haunted farm. They heard that Native Americans had died on or around the land long before the family arrived. The witness is careful about what they can prove. “Whether every story about the property’s history is true or not, I know what I personally experienced there.”
On the farm, doors opened and closed on their own. Voices outside called for the witness to come out. They heard what sounded like drums, and at times they thought they saw figures standing far off in the distance.
Grief and a Different Kind of Presence
The story grows quieter near the end. The witness’s grandfather died in his house, and afterward the witness felt his presence there. Their grandmother passed away this year, and the feeling is different. “With her, I don’t feel the same fear,” the witness wrote. “I just feel like she’s still around sometimes.”
The witness offers two possible reasons. Maybe it is because they have spent their whole life experiencing things they can’t explain. Or maybe, in their words, “losing someone you love makes you notice every little feeling and sound around you.”
What Another Redditor Shared
One commenter, CharacterCat8178, said the figure in the corner hit close to home. They wrote that they had dealt with a similar entity, though they doubted it was the same one. Their family called it “Shadow.” The commenter described a tall figure with a face that was “just a black void of nothing,” wearing a hooded black cloak that draped to the ground. Like the witness’s figure, it seemed to enjoy lurking in the corners of rooms where the walls meet the ceiling.
The commenter also claimed that Shadow physically harmed their two-year-old stepson, but only when the commenter was home and watching, and that it seemed determined to drive them out of the house. Instead of leaving, the commenter grew angry and stubborn. It took just over a year to understand what was happening, they said, and Shadow was eventually “dispatched and sent packing.” It never showed up again.
Possible Explanations
There are conventional explanations to consider, and none of them are meant to dismiss the witness. Footsteps, dark figures, and the feeling of being watched are common features of hypnagogic imagery, the vivid sights and sounds that can appear as someone drifts toward sleep or wakes up. Imaginary companions are also common in early childhood, and a child raised around paranormal investigations may naturally weave those ideas into what they see in a dark room.
Waking on the floor with bruised ankles has no confirmed cause in the post, though a fall from bed or sleepwalking are possibilities. Old buildings creak, pipes knock, and doors that don’t latch can drift open, while sounds carry oddly across open farmland at night. Stories about a property’s past, including claims that people died on the land, are also common in haunting lore and often hard to verify.
The witness seems to know this. They openly say they are unsure, and they suggest that grief may sharpen how they notice sounds and feelings around them. Whether a genuine visitation or the mind filling in the dark, the experiences were clearly vivid to the child who lived through them.
Where Is the Line?
The witness closes with a question rather than a conclusion. Growing up with these experiences made them wonder “where the line between imagination, unexplained experiences, and something genuinely paranormal actually is.” Then comes a simple admission: “I’m still not sure where that line is.”
That honesty may be the most compelling part of the account. Nothing here is offered as proof, and there is no video or photo we can examine. What remains is a long series of experiences from someone who grew up around investigators and still says they don’t have the answers. Tall dark figures that watch from the corners of rooms turn up again and again in shadow figure reports, which is why the commenter’s story sits so neatly beside this one.
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Original account: “My Childhood Was Filled With Things I Still Can’t Explain” by Mossy_Forest01 on r/Thetruthishere.
