River Dweller

My whole life has been heavily affected by the paranormal, and just weird creepy happenings in general. From the time I was born to even now, it’s just always been that way, even for other members in my family. Starting around the age of 13, things started to get super aggressive in my parents house, and once I transitioned to high school and, and then college, the activity became darker. I began hearing my name whispered from certain parts of the house, or corners from my room at night while trying to sleep. On 2 occasions, I felt a a large unseen force get into bed with me. The  house grew to feeling dark, uneasy and unwelcoming. 

It was now specifically effecting my sleep. Because of these things happening, I pretty much stopped sleeping all together, and would lay awake for hours into the morning waiting for daylight so I could leave the house and go to school, or do whatever, as long as it meant getting out of that house. 

I was going to art school at this time, and would need to be in class by 8 am, but because I wasn’t sleeping, I started getting up around 5 am to drive down to the river in my hometown and sit on this little bench that’s been there for years. I would sit there and watch the sun come up. It became a nice morning ritual that I got to look forward to in my nightmare-of-a-life, at the time.

This was a crisp, fall morning. I remember it was incredibly foggy and it had that halloween atmosphere to the air. Diagonal from this bench, id say about 10 ish feet away, is this giant concrete block, which I assume covers water pipes or something having to do with the river, but it’s something I used to lay on when I was young and look up at the sky from. As i’m sitting on this bench, it’s completely quiet, totally devoid of any noise, except for the soft sounds of water gently moving in the river. 

The sun was gonna be coming up in about 30 minutes, when I suddenly started to feel uncomfortable. I felt like I was being watched, or that someone was going to come up behind me…I felt paranoid, like the feelings I’d get at my parents house before something weird happened. 

And then I heard it…It sounded like something or someone was on the other side of that giant block, breaking sticks in half. Then, all of a sudden, I saw the blacked out, misshapen shadow of a figure step out from behind the block. Once it stepped out, only everything from the waist up was visible. It stretched out 1 long arm around that covered 2 sides of this block. Something that would be TOTALLY impossible if this were a human because this block is very large with wide sides. It almost looked like a cartoon by how long and stretchy the arms looked and I was frozen in fear. 

I wanted to run so bad but I physically couldn’t get my legs to start moving. This thing started to shimmy up this concrete cinder block like a fucking spider monkey. My GTFO kicked in and I stood up and literally started speed running to my car that was parked just under the only visible streetlight, which was looking like my savior at that moment. I didn’t look back until I slammed my body into my driver seat, locked my doors, and turned on my high beams. I kept thinking I was gonna see that thing, slithering down through the fog, off the ramp hill onto the street, and come for me. I was so scared when I got the courage to run, that I left my coffee sitting at the bench that morning. I took off in my car and for some reason had tears running down my face, I think because of the fear.

I skipped going to the river the rest of the week and ended up waiting until the following Monday, and when I pulled up and got myself ready to confront that cinder block again, it just looked darker than usual, and I said NOPE, and backed out and just drove around until class started. I’ve never gone back to watch the early morning sunrise.

Thanks for the amazing podcast-me and my husband listen every day!