My name is being withheld for personal reasons, but I live in California and am 17. For about 5 years now, I'm sure that a supernatural entity is somewhere around me no matter where I go. Actual sightings of the thing have been relatively sparse in time (at least around a month, at most around two years), but nevertheless very apparent and frightening. I've seen it in several different locations -not all just in my house. It has seemingly followed me to friends homes, parks, and even workplaces. I don't believe myself to be schizophrenic and I have never been drunk or under the influence. I am sure that there the thing I see is a paranormal reality that has -for unknown reasons- taken to following me. I still don't know what it is, but I'd like some help. I believe it is not of human origin.
The first time I remember seeing it was in my old home in California near San Francisco. It was a small apartment surrounding a shared courtyard. I lived with my mother and often stayed home alone when she went to work. It was over the summer -from what I can recall- when I was alone in the kitchen watching television. I had a cat named Ally who wasn't very sociable, so when I heard a very deep moan in the house, I thought it was Ally pushing an open door. The apartment was old, so I didn't make much of it. But then I heard it again, and came to realize how different it sounded from a moaning door. I wasn't particularly afraid because I'd had plenty of experiences hearing noises alone at home. But I got up to check anyways, just to make sure someone hadn't broken in or something. There was an easily accessible fire ladder just outside the window in the single bedroom, and I knew that shady people often wandered the city at night from experience, so it was better to be safe than sorry.
As I exited the kitchen and entered the living room (the house was linear, each room connected to the next in a series, bathroom being at the back and kitchen being the house entrance) I heard the noise again, this time louder. I walked into the bedroom and froze. It was the first time I'd seen the thing. It was very, very tall- immense even- standing beside the bunk-bed. It was anthropomorphic; two legs, two arms. It was very lanky, with thin arms and legs but larger-than-normal hands and feet. Its head wasn't really there; it was more like a mound protruding from the shoulders. This figure is what I have seen with each sighting. It stood there, but did not move. It was pitch-black, and I could not make out any other color than black on its surface. My heart was racing, and I was terrified to speak. I ran out the door and went upstairs to my apartment neighbors home. I knocked and acted calm when he opened up, and asked if I could stay. He was a very good friend of both me and my mother, so he didn't hesitate to let me stay. I tried explaining to him, and he said he saw shadows out of the corner of his eyes too in his life, but we both looked it up and learned that it was just called "pareidoilia".
I tried to calm myself and see where he was coming from. Eventually my mom came home, and I went back to my house. The thing didn't show up for several months. I had long since dismissed it, but it showed up again in the same house. My mom was home, but I saw it instead outside on the wooden porch (apartment was 3 stories high, I was on the second floor). It stared inside through the window, but stood as far away on the porch as it could. I screamed and ran into the bedroom that time and my mom came to my aid. I explained it, reminding her of what I saw months before. She didn't make much of it. I should note now that all my experiences were at night or dusk.
The third experience was about a year and a half later, I think, after we moved to the East Bay. Again, I had forgotten about the incidents, or at least shrugged them off as night terrors. It was after we moved that I spent a weekend at my grandmother's house with my cousin. My grandma lives nearly 5000 miles away from me, just to note. I was going to sleep when I rolled over and saw the same entity again, this time standing right next to my bed. But it was doing this strange movement. I'd like to say it was marching like a marching band would, but it's hard to remember. Again, I screamed, jumped out of bed and babbled incoherently to my grandfather while climbing onto his work desk. Family was calm and controlled, and my grandma passed it off as a "night-terror" (being half-asleep and dreaming). I was by that time fed up with the thing, and it has been since then that I have not one day forgotten about it. I managed to pull through the nights sleeping in the same room. Terrified, but I did it.
The fourth incident occurred much later, and very recently. I got a job as a summer lifeguard at my local community pool a year ago. It was one Friday night after a "night-swim" for the city, and I was working late helping the others clean up around the deck. At the pool, there is a decent-sized hill (tall enough you can't see over it and onto the baseball field) and one person per clean-up round is assigned to patrol over it to make sure trash and people weren't lying about on the invisible side of the hill. I was tasked with the duty and casually strode over. There's a number of pine trees that sit on the other side of the hill, so when I caught a glimpse of what I thought to be the figure, I looked over it again and just saw a pine tree. But as I approached the tree area, I realized the entity, again, was nearby. It stood at the base of the hill beside the fencing that blocked off the baseball field, and stared at me (at least, I think it was looking at me, as it had no facial features). I hurriedly ran over the hill and back into the pool deck area where halogen lights abounded. I kept my mouth shut so as not to seem like a paranoid jumpy person, and continued on.
My friends have a father who is very enthusiastic about sailing, and I have been with him and his sons on the boat several times. We had visited Angel Island twice, but decided that the third time we should stay on the island overnight. On our previous trips there, we had seen others do it too, and though I was scared of the entity, I do actually like being scared... At least, from silly stuff like movies. Angel Island has a very dilapidated WWII hospital on it, and visitors to the island are welcome to enter it. Only its stairs to the upper floors are dismantled, completely preventing people from reaching them.
We sailed over to the island, walked around it, and came back to our boat area (we were going to sleep on the boat) along the path leading to the hospital. It was clearly dark out, so I was slightly scared. As we headed back, we walked through the hospital, flashlights dancing about, and had some laughs. But I became terrified when I looked beside me to see the entity standing outside a glass-less window in the room next to the one we were in. I shrieked and pointed at it, and my friend had a phone-camera ready. He pointed at it, and he said he saw a faint shadow himself, but when we looked over the camera, there was nothing. It disappeared behind the window, but I heard very heavy footsteps on the upper floor just seconds after it did. No one else saw any trace of it but me and him. His brother and father were confused, and thought we just simultaneously decided to come up with it. To this day, he and I agree we saw something, but the other two just laugh and shake their heads.
The most recent sighting (only a month or so ago) was the first sighting in my home on the East Bay. It was around 6 pm during a school day when I was doing homework and listening to loud music. My desk faced away from the rest of my small room, so when I turned around to grab my remote I saw the shadow standing in the corner on the other side of my room. I picked up my controller and threw it at it as quickly as possible, and it disappeared. It wasn't like a shadowy puff, in the sense that it disappeared -it literally just vanished in no time at all. It left no wake. It was like flicking a light on and off; one moment there, the other, gone. I looked around, but didn't dare go to pick up the controller again.
The previous incidents are all of the major ones, or rather, when I have seen it most vividly. I have seen it on several other occasions walking in my house. Around a corner and then gone. It has been in the streets outside my window for a moment, even in the backyard. I have seen it once running silently in my friends backyard when I was over for dinner.
I should also note that unlike some other incidents of "shadow-creatures" that I've heard of, mine have never produced any premonition-like feelings. I have never "felt" like this thing was watching me or was nearby, and the places I go have never given me the "chills". It is only when I actually look upon the thing that I am overcome with fear. Though I had seen it plenty of times before, each subsequent sighting nevertheless imbued into me an uncontrollable sense of fear. I can't describe it as anything else but fear or terror. I cannot tell if it means any harm, because it hasn't approached me or spoken to me. No contact but visual contact. But the fact that it causes me to become scared for my life is enough to say that it isn't a good thing. It is inhuman. It is too tall, to thin at the appendages, and does not have a head akin to any living thing I've ever seen. I don't like it, but have no idea how to make it go away, nor when it appears. There is no pattern beside it being dark when it appears. I don't believe in God or the Devil, or even demons or angels, or any other religion for that matter. All I believe is that there is something following me, and that there are forces at work beyond our comprehension neither I nor any other man can describe.
I want to know if anyone knows what this thing is. My mom and father have both said they experienced paranormal events once in their young life, so they sympathize. But sometimes they just tell me I'm being paranoid about the thing, like the first or second of my sightings were genuine, but all the following have been hallucinations driven by fear. I don't agree.