From: Renee
To: The Official Shadow People Archives
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 9:28:32 AM
Subject: Man in the cupboard

Hello

I was reading some of your archives on Shadow People and identified specifically with Sara's shadow story, "From the Closet."

When I was younger, from the earliest age I can remember to around 8 or 9 years old, I saw a shadow being that I called "The man in the cupboard." There are things from my childhood that I dismiss as an overactive imagination but this man was something different.

The earliest, clearest memory I have of him was when I lived in my old house in a room shared with my sister who is 3 years older than me. She never witnessed the man in the cupboard because every time I tried to wake her, she slept through it. My efforts to wake her were never strong though as I feared that he would take action against me. We had a white cupboard in our room that my parents had bought second-hand which I kept my clothes in. This is where I believe the shadow man originated.

It was after 8:30pm and my sister was still awake because she had outgrown the 8:30 curfew but I had been sent to bed. I was lying in bed attempting to sleep when I noticed that there was a black figure standing in front of the blocked off fireplace on the right hand side of the room. It was staring at me intently, its silhouette darker than the darkness around it. I could not see it's eyes at this point, but later on in my experiences with the shadow, I could make out its eyes and they were the only features visible on its face. I did not scream as I was frozen with fear. His presence was something that I experienced frequently in the night time and every time, I forced my eyes closed in an attempt to shut him out until sleep came. This time however, I acted differently. I slowly pulled the covers from me and chanced a sprint to the light switch, directly across the location of the shadow. The light switch came on and the shadow disappeared. I fell asleep with the light on until my sister came to bed. Thus, I thankfully slept through and did not experience him a second time that night.

Another time he came to me was around the same time, still inhabiting the old house. There was a rocking horse against the wall of the room and whilst I lay, attempting to sleep once more. I noticed his appearance hunched behind the rocking horse. I stared at him and he stared at me and neither of us moved. I heard my mother's footsteps walking past the door and made another sprint across the room to the light switch. When I turned around, the rocking horse was moving back and forth but the shadow had disappeared. My mother came in when she saw the light on and scolded me for still being awake. I tried to explain to her why but she fed me the motherly, "It was all in your imagination..." crap and told me to go back to bed. The light went off and the shadow reappeared moments later in the same position behind the rocking horse, only this time, it was upright. I turned away, closed my eyes and waited for sleep to come. That night I awoke again to a shiver of dread; I could feel him watching me. I turned slowly and the shadow was directly in front of my face staring straight into my eyes. I dared not even breathe for fear that it might notice the fact that I had stirred from my slumber but I could see its eyes. They were exactly the same in outline as human eyes, yet the way in which they were present was bizarre. The pupils, lids and inner parts of the eyes were black with the outlines of the parts consisting of a thin white line to define them. I turned back around in my bed to face the wall and forced my eyes closed again but sleep did not come so easily this time.

At one point, I tried to communicate with him after being ridiculed by my siblings who dismissed my belief in him as being childish imagination. I wanted him to go, to get what he wanted so that he would leave forever. I awoke in the middle of the night and he was standing close by my bed looking down at me. I choked out the words, "What do you want?" but to no avail. He continued to stare intently, yet blankly at my resting form.

These appearances were consistent throughout the time period I spent sharing a room with my sister in our old house and it continued to the house in which I currently reside. However, the white cupboard where I believed the shadow form spent the daylight hours was moved to the garage when I moved into a room with a built-in wardrobe. The shadow form stopped appearing and I have not seen him since. Whatever this being was that plagued my nighttime hours, I feared it more than I feared anything else. It pulled me into a state of such dread that I could not move or speak and it was and is still an object of ridicule used against me by my family members. After a period, I stopped trying to convince people that what I was seeing was real despite my conviction that it was. This site makes me feel much less crazy :)

Thank you.

I give you the permission to upload my story to your archives and release my email, first name but not surname.

-Renee