I heard like foot sets on the roof, so my first inclination
was Santa's here with his reindeer.
What I found was not Santa at all.
It was jet black. Hands were outspread.
This really shook me from HV studio.
This is unnerved. Welcome back to the Unnerved
podcast. It's where normal people share
their abnormal stories, and if you enjoy true stories of the
strange and terrifying, then you're in the right place.
I'm your host, Chris Fricke. As a child, do you remember the
anticipation the night before Christmas, perhaps knowing that
in the middle of the night, Santa would be delivering your
gifts under the tree and the excitement would keep you
restless all night? And maybe, if you're lucky, you
might even get a glimpse of him. Santa just happens to be the
only home intruder that we're OK with.
But what if Santa turned out to be someone or something totally
different than what we expected? In today's story, Chris recalls
A childhood experience where a figure appeared on Christmas
Eve, but Santa was nowhere to be found.
What Chris saw that night would haunt him for the rest of his
life. This is his story.
I'm Chris from Florida and this is my story.
It was Christmas Eve in 1987. That time I was seven years old
and I was visiting my great aunt in Wilmington, DE.
It is an older house. It's probably like 100 years at
this point. Her husband had died like 20
years previously. Before we showed up, we had
dinner and then it was time to go to sleep.
So I went upstairs and me and my older brother were sharing a
room. My aunt had a thing where she
did not like shut doors, the doors wide open.
I was on the left side, facing towards the door.
When I was laying down, I heard like footsteps of them on the
roof. So my first inclination was
Santa's here with his reindeer, so I was excited.
That's initially what woke me up thinking that.
So I was kind of wired and looking around and what I found
was not Santa at all. Suddenly and I turned towards
the door when I saw a figure of a person.
It was jet black and I could see the figure because it was darker
than the surrounding area, hands were outspread.
It was like like it was bracing on the door frames.
Having seen this, the only person in the house that was at
large was my dad. So I said Dad when there was no
reply, that's when I started to get really scared.
I looked at the face to see who was him and all I saw was a head
with two dots of red light. I looked at it for in about 20
seconds before I thought the best strategy was to put the
covers of Ryan over my head. I had tried to wake up my
brother, who's on the right side of my older brother, but he
would not wake up. He was not waking up.
So all I could do is just pretend that I hadn't said
anything and just hope it would leave me alone.
This really shook me. I hadn't.
I hadn't spoke about it for years.
But then when I was about 12 and I was in the car with my mom and
my brother, I brought it up jokingly, You know, just because
it did. You know, it could have been
like a, you know, a child is lark.
And then my mom turned around. After a couple minutes, she
said. We've seen them too.
Their experience is a little bit different where they were about
to walk down the stairs with actual light around and as
they're walking down the stairs that that was leading up to you
know the bedroom and the 2nd floor, a dark figure was
climbing the stairs and stopped both hands on rails looking up
at them. So that's not just like low
light kid being you know, fanciful that's like 2 observers
of moderate age looking and finding a dark figure in that
house looking up. There was always an off feeling
about the room that was just adjacent to the flight of stairs
in that room. It is always had a bad feeling
about it. There's a gigantic mirror in
there that was very off putting and all of my siblings, we would
always run past that room to get onto the stairs to run upstairs.
Years later I'm talking to my mom and her and her brother did
the same thing. They felt the same bad energy,
something bad where they had to run up the stairs and get out of
there. Only years later, when I had
been like breeding paranormal stuff, did I realize that other
people had started talking about shadow people with red eyes,
whether it be larger or smaller red eyes.
That's the only reason I I give my experience any kind of
credence because I experienced it before I read anything about
it, and I'm not one for fanciful tales and I'm pretty objective.
It just feels like some kind of, it's just like an entity.
I don't, you know, some people say like, oh, it's just like a
being cloaking itself. I've heard that too.
I don't think that's that that's necessarily what it is, but it's
that that that's the way it felt, does not feel warm.
It didn't feel overly malevolent.
It was just kind of just there. I don't know, man.
I mean, like, I like science and like, the only thing that really
messes me up about it is years and years and years later
reading about it, like reading other people's tales.
And that's what really jacked me up.
If I had, like read books about this, then I would give it more
salt, you know, I'm saying. But this way came before any of
that kind of reading. My best guess is that they treat
light the way other entities treat the atmosphere.
IE you walk into a room and you feel a cold pocket that is
essentially something drawing upon the energy of heat, say to
manifest itself. So this thing may have been
pulling in the energy of say like light or you know, or heat
to pull itself manifest itself here.
That's that's really the best guess that I have.
What Chris and his family experienced in that house is
nothing new. As Chris previously stated,
countless other people have seen many types of shadow figures
looming unexpectedly in everyday life.
Many describe them as menacing or evil, while others believe
them to be helpful or neutral in their intentions.
Some even speculate that shadow people may be the extra
dimensional inhabitants of another universe.
These shadow people are usually placed as paranormal or
supernatural to some degree, but the exact answer of what they
are may be forever unknown. Thanks again for listening to
Unnerved. If you guys enjoyed this
episode, please share it with your friends and leave a review
wherever you get your podcast. And if you guys want to see
photos related to each episode, be sure to follow us on our
Instagram at Unnerved Podcast. There you'll be able to see
photos and video of the shadow people that others have
allegedly caught on film. Until next time, take care.