One night while studying in my room with low lamp light to
read by, I reached over to change a radio station and
happened to glance up to see a dark silhouette, not unlike
the picture above, standing in front of my closet door,
which was shut at the time. Thinking an intruder had
broken in, I jumped up to protect myself, but by then the
silhouette had vanished. Because the vision lasted less
than five seconds….. if that….. I was never completely sure
if it was an optical illusion or what it was. However not
long after this, my closet door would always be found open
in the mornings even after I made sure it was closed the
night before. Sometimes in that same room I had feelings
of being watched and occasionally heard my name being
called but I never saw the shadow man again. Still I
always wondered about it.
Rewind to the year before..........
I went backpacking in Ireland with a couple girls and we
were the sole female occupants of a youth hostel at Achill
Island. Peter, an English backpacker we met along the way
was the only male and had the men's dorm all to himself.
(Of which there was no way to get to the women's ward
without having to leave the house.)
It was September and the tourist industry was folding up
for the season. Cass, Allison, Pete and I toured the now
deserted but beautiful landscape in the cold wet weather
which never let up the three days we were there. At night
we returned to the unheated hostel to pay the warden the
nightly fare and crash atop the cold hard bunks. One of
the hostel regulations is that the warden must make a bed
check each night to make sure everyone is where they are
assigned. And without exception, the warden and his family
always lived and slept on the premises.........except at
Achill. It was the only hostel I ever visited where the
warden had living quarters in a lodging house down the road
and probably never did a bed check in his life. I never
learned why this was.
The dorm room which I shared with Cass and Allison
contained three bunk beds and a chair and no other
furniture. There was one window in the second-floor room
which looked out onto the street. Each of us took a bunk to
ourselves. Cass and Allison slept on the bottom bunks of
theirs whereas I slept on the top bed in the bunk directly
across from the only door to the room. This door led out
to a short hallway...... actually a 'tight' cramped landing
with a pull cord dangling from the hall's only illumination
source, one naked light bulb. There was one smaller dorm
room across from ours which remained unoccupied during our
stay at Achill. The toilets were outside the house.
After a particularly cold rainy day sightseeing the island,
the three of us tumbled into sleeping bags for a hard deep
sleep. At three am, however, I found myself strangely wide
awake. From the staircase outside our room came footsteps
trudging up the wooden steps to the landing just outside
our door. Funny time for a bed check, I thought and waited
for the warden to open the door, stick his head in and
leave. He was walking up in total darkness.....the light
over the landing was not on. At last the footsteps
shuffled onto the landing and stopped.
I waited for the door to open and a flashlight to flood the
room but all was still. No lights, no footsteps....no sound
at all. I strained to hear something knowing that no
footsteps descended the staircase. Just as I thought I
must have imagined the footsteps, the cord in the landing
was pulled and light streaked in from under our doorway.
Then silence again. More minutes ticked by and still no
warden. In that irritating anticipation mode of wanting
the warden to finish his bed check so I could go off to
sleep without interruption, I jumped down from my bunk and
opened the door to see where he was lurking. There was
absolutely no where else to go but our room or the
unoccupied room across from ours and the warden was in
neither. Downstairs was pitch dark and all was very quiet.
Confused, I returned to bed closing our door but left the
landing light burning. I climbed back into bed and tried
to sleep. A few minutes later and without sound, the
landing light went off. 'If the warden's downstairs he
probably switched it off from the bottom of the stairs,' I
shrugged and closed my eyes. Moments later light penetrated
through my lids and my eyes flew open. The light in our
room was now on and the door still shut.
Up until now I thought my room-mates had slept through all
this. Cass was snoring away in her bunk to the left of me
but Allison whose bunk was next to the door sat up and
looked bewildered. "Did you turn on the light?" "No" I
answered. She blinked at me and then at the light switch
near the closed door and without another word, turned over
in bed with her back to the room. I didn't get up to shut
off the light either and didn't have to. Ten minutes
later it went off 'by itself.'
The next day as we were sitting downstairs in the living
quarters of the hostel, Cass went up to the warden and told
him, "Do you know you have a ghost in this hostel? With
perked ears, I looked over at them expecting the warden to
explode in laughter at Cass's joking around. However the
warden's expression was one I will never forget. Instead
of bursting out laughing or giggling like I expected, he
nervously glanced at Allison, Pete and I in the room and
then hushed Cass. "No need to be afraid of him. He's
harmless and never hurt anyone." he said barely above a
whisper. Cass cheerfully replied, "Oh I'm not scared.
I've seen ghosts before. I just wondered if you knew about
him." The warden let out a resigned sigh and asked Cass
not to tell anyone about the ghost as if he was concerned
it might be bad for business. He did agree with Cass that
the ghost was male but gave no other information.
Later I cornered Cass and asked her why she thought the
hostel had a ghost. Reluctant at first, she finally
replied that the first night we had stayed in the hostel,
she woke up to see a dark shadow, the shape of an adult
man, come into our dorm room where the three of us slept.
He stopped at the bunk closest to the door and just stood
there watching Allison sleep for a few minutes. Then the
man moved to the next bunk where I lay unconscious. Cass
thought the warden was a pervert making bed checks in the
dark like that. Nothing to illuminate the room but
lamplight outside the dorm's one window, she could only see
a silhouette. However when he turned away from my bunk and
towards hers, she realized in amazement that the shape had
no features or details at all. She could feel his presence
even more strongly than she could see him.
"Don't bother me.' she commanded as he approached her. The
shadow man stopped in his tracks as if caught off guard and
then backed away from her towards the closed door where he
vanished. His presence gone, she went back to sleep.
I told her the only crazy part of her story was her "going
back to sleep." Cass laughed and admitted to seeing ghosts
before but never felt one's presence as strongly as this
one's. Excited by the experience, she wanted verification
of the ghost by asking the warden about it. She assured me
that most ghosts were not harmful and were usually curious
or wanting attention. She thought this shadow man was
seeking both.
Allison's response was to be dazed and uncommunicative
about the whole incident. She didn't want to talk about it
yet she believed Cass was honest. Peter, who had no
experiences in the men's ward with the ghost, felt the
subject wasn't worth his attention.
I had never known Cass to talk about ghosts and the
paranormal before and was surprised at her admission to
having psychic gifts. She kept this knowledge to herself
and never spoke about them again. Although I still write
to Peter, I lost track of both Cass and Allison shortly
after this trip, which I regret very much.
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