Short Ghost Stories

#8 The Shadow

I didn't know that's what it was called until much later. I was living in a house in Laguna Beach that had been there since the 1920s. In it's history, it had been a speakeasy, a brothel and a house for smuggling illegal immigrants.

One day, my new wife and I were having an argument. I can't even recall what it was about. She walked down the block to get a cup of coffee and cool off, and I was alone in the house. The way the place was built was incredibly haphazard. There was a bedroom and living room on one side, then a bathroom with two entrances. On the other side of the bathroom was a hallway that had windows in one side and two bedrooms on the other. From my bedroom, I could look across the hall into the bathroom, then through the bathroom and down the other hall. I was standing at my dresser, and I just noticed movement out the corner of my eye, and looked down there. There was... and honest to god, this gives me goose bumps just typing it, 17 years later, a black figure. It was maybe three feet tall, and it was only vaguely humanoid. it looked like black scribbles, like someone had scribbled a human shape, but the scribbles moved, like electricity arcing, that's the best way to describe it.

There was no sound that I could remember. I distinctly remember when I saw it I wasn't afraid, just like, WTF? Then it noticed me looking at it. I can't say it turned around, it just, focused on me I guess. THEN I was scared. I didn't move, didn't scream, nothing, I was just frozen, because it just fucking came at me, it RUSHED down the hall towards me. I have no idea what it intended, but as soon as it entered the bathroom, the door closest to me just SLAMMED shut on it. I screamed. I yelled for my wife. She wasn't home. I went the fuck outside, into the daylight, and didn't go back in until she got home about 10 minutes later.

I don't believe in ghosts. I don't believe I saw something supernatural, but I know I saw something. I don't know what it was.