Hey everyone,
Every few months I visit this site out of pure interest to read others' stories but have never contributed my experiences. I have been interested in the paranormal and a believer since I can remember. Recently I have been reading a lot of experiences regarding Shadow People/Animals because I find them to be terrifying (the people experiences to be exact) and wouldn't know how to react if I'd seen one. Now to be honest, I completely forgot about this experience until now. Reading other stories has jogged my memory, I have seen a shadow animal.
When I hit my mid teens (I'm 24 now) I was coming to terms with certain aspects of my life that I felt I couldn't share with anyone. I started to become very depressed (I did this secretly though, no one knew). My brothers and I had begged to have a dog and they finally gave in. He was a border/bearded collie cross and we named him Raven. He was everything I ever asked for and we had "a man's best friend" relationship. I told him all of my secrets and I swear he would look me in the eye and I could see he felt empathy. It sounds a bit crazy but it's a strange read even now that I am typing it. Anyway, so I was about 14-16 years old and just my middle brother and myself were at home. My brother is a couple years older than me and by this time Raven was about 6 years old.
It was about 10 PM and I was in my room and my brother was downstairs playing video games. I decided to go join him and left my room and turned off my light. My room was the last one at the end of the hall and the only illumination down this hall was a lamp that was turned on in the living room. As I walked down the hall the next room I pass is my parents room where Raven usually slept. As I passed the middle of the doorway, I stopped dead in my tracks and felt compelled to look into my parents room. It was such an odd feeling.
When I looked into my parents room I could see a solid black mass, in the shape of my dog sitting upright and looking out of my parents bedroom window. It was weird, because there is a street light that supplied enough light in the room for me to see some colour in the room (duvet, jewelry etc) however my dog was all black. I didn't think anything of it so I called "Raven!" and it turned its head to look at me.
Didn't move. "Raven come on!" he still didn't move. I didn't feel scared, threatened or anything like that. It was just really strange. Anyway I didn't feel like I was being forced to stand there either so I just turned and made my way downstairs. I told my brother what happened and that Raven was acting really strange and he was like "uhh, Raven has been outside for the past hour..."
I ran upstairs, opened the back door and called out for him and he came out of his dog house and entered the house. I still wasn't scared, just releived to have him in the house. I was really confused though and just paid no attention. I am surprised that I actually forgot this happened!
To provide more detail: My parents bed is about 4 feet away from the window and is high enough that if you sat on the bed you could barely see out of the window. Why would he be positioned there? Also the first level of our house was raised so the window was about 8 feet from the ground so it's not like I could see him sitting outside on the ground or anything. Also I put doppleganger in the title because the shape of the black mass' body was the exact shape of Ravens (he had a distinctly small head with big, pointy goofy looking ears). My dog was mostly black with a white tipped tail, white paws and white neck. Was my dog astral projecting? Weird thought lol.
However, I'd like to add that sometimes at night and every morning he would poke his nose through into my room to check on me or wake me up (I would leave my door a bit ajar for this purpose). And we had to put him down because he had epilepsy and his medication couldn't control it anymore. I was at work when this happened and my parents didn't tell me. When I found out I had a massive breakdown. I cried for hours, I couldn't believe the only one I have ever confided in was gone.
For 2 weeks after he passed I could hear him walking across the kitchen floor, his nails clicking against the aluminum. It was so strange, but so comforting because I didn't get to say goodbye. After the 2 weeks I had a dream where he was talking to me saying he was okay and that he wouldn't be able to come back and visit me for exactly one month. The clicking sound stopped after that and exactly one month later I dreamt about him again and he told me he is alright and everything is fine.
I'm sorry for the length of this story, I intended to only write about the shadow part but the rest of it is really important to me as well. Does anyone have any thoughts or comments?
Thanks for reading.