My Shadow Friends

It made sense because I was not the only one to see this. All of my years growing up I have been told that there are ghosts and they are as scared of us as us of them. It is good advice to give scared children. But I had always witnessed shadows and strange blurs when I was alone in my grandmothers attic. This story takes place in Japan with my new wife and our first apartment.

We lived on the second floor. It was a three bedroom place with two bathrooms. I have always heard of the "chill" that comes with a presence of another world. But I am of a strange breed I guess. I use the air conditioner in the dead of winter. Not the entire house just my bedroom. I worked the night shift from 7pm to 7am. So being there at night was usual. At first when we moved in and got settled I always relax and try to get a feel for the house. I received a good vibe from the entire house except from the bathroom in our bedroom.

I had to place blankets and aluminum foil on the windows in the bedroom due to the sunlight that would keep me awake when I should be sleeping. So it was dark as night in there. I would get the feeling someone was in there watching us all the time. I would lie there watching the door with the slight crack in it and wish it would show itself, but nothing would ever appear. If I turned over and tried to not pay attention it would be an instantaneous rush of a presence over my body hovering over me. I would turn and nothing would be there, but the bathroom would be so forceful it would make my heart race.

After a couple months of this and getting used to it I let it pass and didn't let it bother me. Then one night myself and my wife were watching TV and this is the first time I witnessed it.

The couch faced in the direction of the hallway to the bedrooms but sat a little to the right of it where the living space was located. Meaning I could see the hallway and about two feet of the wall leading down it. I was watching TV and this black object made an appearance and stayed there. I knew it was something but I didn't look at it because I knew it would be gone if I shifted my eyes, so I kept my attention on the TV using my peripheral vision to watch this. It was a mix between what I expected to see. This is my best description because I did not get a full on view of this thing. It looked tall but it was actually short when I stood up to examine where it had been standing. Maybe 4 feet tall. The best picture I can give you is this. It was bulky with a small head. Almost like a reaper. It was like one of the bird puppets from the movie dark crystal. The only feature it had was I could tell where the head was at. No arms, no hands. Just a black object. So I turned and it was gone just as fast. I didn't say anything because like I said I have always seen shadows in places lurking around. Until one night when I was watching TV on the couch and my wife was in the kitchen and I had looked around for something and when I looked back at the TV it was there. Then I heard something very scary. My wife yelled for me screaming at me to look in the hallway. That scared me more than anything because it felt as if I wasn't crazy after all. I jumped up and ran to the doorway but it had vanished. Thats when I told my wife that I knew of this thing and it watches us while we sleep.

So we went to the bedroom and went into the bathroom. The feeling wasn't there when we were inside. So I turned the lights off and we sat on the bed. No more than three steps to the bed and I knew it was there. So we sat and talked to it telling it to show us what it is. We asked it if it was human. My first thought was a suicide victim trapped where it had taken its life. But no response from it. We knew it was there watching because the room had the feeling of more than us two. I have a feeling it was an old Japanese woman from WW1 era because the contractors were always finding rifles and bones of lost soldiers on the base buried in unmarked graves.

This spirit never caused us harm or stole any socks from us. For all I know it is bothering someone else in that apartment.