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.