Compilation of My Experiences

Edit: Perhaps this post is too long to garner much interest. So, the tl;dr of the main story is - encountered a dark presence which made me believe there was Something out there, and it opened my mind to other experiences I've had throughout my life. The other anecdotal experiences are located a little further down, and a much easier read.

Hello! Longtime lurker across this sub and many others. I don't post a lot - mainly because I've felt for a while, I have nothing to say/contribute. I'm still hesitant to share my experiences, but I've felt compelled recently to share my stories with others instead of living in fear.

I'll start with the main event(s) which solidified my belief that there's more to this reality than meets the eye, and then end by sharing some anecdotes from minor events over a few years.

I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but I tried to provide as much relevant information as I could.

First thing's first - the story I'm about to tell? I don't like believing in it. I've hoped for years that it was just a cruel practical joke. I've even asked another person involved if what happened was real, and they've stuck by their own account. Out of respect for those involved, I'll keep some details to a minimum.

Even still, I hope it's just a long con and the pranksters are sitting back, chuckling at my gullibility - rather than the reality that I encountered Something.

Here goes.

In the summer of 2017, I was an actor in an outdoor drama in the south, which told the story of a particular group of Indigineous peoples and their removal to Oklahoma. This wasn't my first time with the company, but I was still fairly new to professional theatre. I was young and dumb, and thought I knew a lot more about everything than I actually did.

Most everyone who wasn't local in the cast/crew lived in dormitories and cabins built behind the theatre. Middle of nowhere-adjacent, back in the woods. Not very well-maintained, either - a lot of the buildings there were several decades old.

Now, every theatre I've been a part of has their own ghost stories. This place was no exception - and the stories extended to the living areas. If you lived there, you heard all about Boots - a big fella with heavy footfalls, who'd walk up the long hallway of one of the dorms.

There were other stories, too. Doppelgangers of folk who lived locally, or of people who'd been in the cast/crew in years past, who'd walked around and wave to you if you noticed them. If you tried to pursue them, they'd speed up and disappear into the woods. LPs - the Little People - were brought up from time-to-time. And everyone who wasn't local was given specific warnings: Don't whistle at night, and if you hear your name called and can't find the source, don't respond.

The stories fascinated me. Since I was a kid, I've had a love for the paranormal, so I tried to learn as much as I could. With as much supposed activity as this place had, I was disappointed I hadn't yet had my own encounter.

That changed in 2017.

Suddenly, the place was active. Even those who previously hadn't believed in the paranormal were having encounters. People's names were being called every day. Parts of the cast would get suddenly sick, or injured, right before they would go on-stage. If you were alone at the theatre, you might hear heavy bootfalls on the wooden platforms, or chains rattling. Some even heard them at the dorms - specifically, on the roof.

One night, one of the locals - a friend of mine, who I'll call J - had a terrible panic attack on stage, and was taken to the hospital. Later, his brother - another member of the cast, who I'll call M - called me later that evening and asked if I could meet him at the theatre.

At first, I assumed M wanted to talk about another member of the cast who he'd been interested in. It wasn't the first time I'd met him down by the theatre; one night, during a party, we'd gone down there to talk. But I was wrong.

I found M sitting on the mainstage, smoking a tobacco pipe, rocking back and forth. If that wasn't odd enough, he was wearing an outfit I'd associated with a more professional setting. He told me to sit next to him, so I did. And he started to tell me what had happened to his brother, J.

Earlier that evening, J had looked up and out into the audience and saw... something. It looked like an old lady, but her eyes were red. The sight scared him so bad, he'd ended up in the hospital. And M was there to find out what had caused it.

While telling me this story, I became aware of sounds off in the woods, next to the stage. Nearly eight years later, I can still hear them: a crackling, like something stripping off large branches and breaking them. The closest I can describe is the crackling sound the demon in Insidious makes whenever it moves, but even that pales in comparison to what I heard.

What was worse was the sudden, paralyzing fear that came over me. I felt anger. Hatred. Directed at me. It felt like it wanted to hurt me, wanted me to suffer. I'd only felt hatred like that once in my life - as a kid, when I'd awoken late at night in my room, and felt Something in my room, standing over my bed - heard It breathing.

I confess, I didn't see anything. In fact... well, it might have been a trick of the night, but the shadows over near the noises almost seemed to grow darker. I've seen this only once since - down a hallway, at the same theatre.

The noises shifted. I heard the faint, distant sound of chains rattling. And another, unmistakable sound of bootfalls on one of the wooden platforms behind stage. At this point, M said we were to check it out. In my mind, I'm thinking "WHY?!" but I followed out of fear.

The footsteps stopped as we got backstage. I tried getting out my phone - to record, or for light, maybe both. It didn't work, at least at first. When I finally got my phone light on and shined it out, I saw a door opening - some kind of water shed, I think? It swung open, and then stayed put - almost like something was hiding right behind it, and shielding itself from view by holding it open.

Then, I heard the heavy footsteps again. Except, they were on the deck to the concessions area- approximately 35-40 feet up, I'd say. The only way something could've gotten up there is by going back through the audience, or going up a narrow dirt trail in the dark, and I didn't see nor hear anything of the sort.

At this point, M tells me he left the rest of his tobacco back in one of the living areas, and tells me to go get it. Shouts at me to run. And to my credit, that's probably the fastest I've ever ran in my life. When I got back to the dorms, some of the cast/crew were around the firepit- I yelled out to a friend of mine to call another local, who managed the living areas, who I'll call D. Yelled at my friend to tell D to get down to theatre, as fast as he could.

By the time I made it back to the theatre, D was there. He'd conferred with M, and agreed there was Something there. They'd gotten a plan in place to try and either trap It, or at least force It out.

Well, the plan didn't work. Whatever It was, It was crafty enough to escape detection after the fact. According to D, It has been there for a long, long time.

To make a long story short - over the rest of the summer, both M and D took part in smudging ceremonies to protect the space, and prevent events escalating.

As to what It was? Well, M and J told me it was a witch. There's another name for it, but I don't know the exact spelling - but basically, someone who practices what they call 'bad medicine.'

There was also talk of a disgruntled former Indigineous cast member, who'd brought a screech owl onstage after a performance (screech owls, I was told, could be used to carry bad medicine to someone else).

My mental health suffered the rest of that summer. I didn't sleep much, and occasionally heard noises - like some kind of wild animal - right outside my window. I came close to ending everything a couple times. And since that night, I had my name called quite a few times - the scariest, being when I was in a group of people, and had my name shouted directly into my ear, and nobody else acknowledged it.

After that night, I tried my best to find any trace of whatever It was. Went for a walk. And... well, I guess it could've been an animal. But something took off in the tall bushes, something that stood about as tall as me.

I've since been back in that area only a few times. A couple times as an actor, but mostly as a visitor. I've asked D if it was a prank. He tells me each time he wouldn't have gotten out of bed at 3am just to pull a prank. As for the others... well, I don't have as solid of a friendship with them as I once did.

A part of me really hopes it was just a cruel prank. Just the locals' way of laughing at gullible white folk. But I can't shake how I felt when I looked into the darkness, and felt Something staring back at me with such intense hatred.

I've told this story a few times. I try not to after dark- I don't know. The one or two times I have, I've felt like I'm being watched.

Since that time, I've had a few other experiences which bear mentioning.

• In 2018, in the same location, we almost lost a cast member during a performance. One of the Pyro effects - a cannon going off - went off prematurely, seconds after someone walked in front of it.

• In 2020, right before COVID, I went to a theatre conference in Kentucky. I felt something crawl into the hotel bed with me two separate nights.

• In the spring/summer of 2021, I lived in Atlanta with some friends. I became convinced I was being harassed spiritually by something; I kept finding dead animals around our property, and we even had a bird fly into our bathroom vent from an outdoor opening, and die in there.

• In '22, I was settling down for a nap when I heard a feminine voice whisper "Go to sleep." This is the only other time I've had an 'auditory hallucination' outside of the outdoor drama.

• I've had several weird 'dreams'. Many of them involved floating outside of my body, and exploring my house and the surrounding area outside. Another dream, I was back at the outdoor drama with D - it was all in black and white, and he was in silhouette, save for his glasses, which were faint outlines (think the Observer from the Tribe Twelve series). He/It asked me "Where do you live?" and there was a faint rumbling in the environment around us.

• In the summer/fall of '23, after delving into the UAP subject some more (basically a much more serious interest than I'd had originally), I started feeling like I was being watched at night. The feeling stopped after I'd begun meditating and focusing on bettering my mental health.

• In the fall of '23, I started having similar 'floating' dreams, but this time I felt something almost... riding me? It's a little difficult to describe. Almost like something was straddling me above my body. The dreams stopped on their own.

• In early '24, I saw a UAP - a silver orb - above my workplace, moving up in the sky. I looked away for a split second, and it was gone. I saw a similar orb in my travels out west, in the Rocky Mountains. While out west, I also believe I saw a large, dark shape above the mountains in New Mexico, and another hovering, sandy-colored object in the Grand Junction area of Colorado (though I'm not convinced these weren't a plane and a helicopter, respectively).

It bears mentioning that I've dealt with drug abuse (specifically, weed) for several years now, in part because it numbed the feelings of mental illness I've dealt with most of my life. I've quit a few times, and even have it up for New Years just recently, and some of these dreams have begun again. I've been keeping a dream journal for the better part of a few years, so if anyone's interested in some of the more curious ones, let me know.

A few final notes before I leave off this (admittedly long) post-

• I've been re-examining areas of my younger life. As a teenager, I recall having several experiences of what I thought were, at the same, sleep paralysis. I guess they still could be, but I'm not sure; there's the image of something silhouetted in my doorway, and the sensation of something speaking through me, or pulling words from my lungs.

• I recall a vivid memory of being at my cousins' farmhouse when I was very little, and seeing large, bright eyes in their huge front yard. Eyes, or maybe orbs? Maybe both?

• I recall seeing a star above the Disney park in Florida as a kid, doing a zig-zag motion in a spiral pattern, before disappearing.

• I recall a moment when, as a VERY young kid, i was having a conversation with either my cousins or a family friend, where I said I had "come from the sky", or something like that. I remember the context was about where we thought babies come from, or something like that - I don't know why I've remembered that specific moment, though.

There are other weird moments like these that I can recall, but these feel the most pertinent to mention.

At times, I have to check in with myself to see if I'm going crazy. I keep an open mind, but I also play the skeptic so that I don't fall into delusion.

Anyway. I know this is long, so if you made it this far, thanks for reading. I'll answer any questions I can. It feels nice to get this off my chest for once.