This is a semi-long story so I apologize, but this has been happening for a decade now and I need to finally tell someone about this to find help. I'm currently 23, but this all started back when I was ten. I had always had a series of strange and bizarre psychic experiences as a young child where I would communicate with what I thought were imaginary friends but turned out to be dead relatives -- my great grandmother, who died thirty years before I was born, was my first "imaginary friend," and my family has always been a believer in ghosts since.
When I was ten, I started to see more and more supernatural phenomenon (ghosts of old family members mainly), but I was also beginning to be able to predict future events that would happen later in the same day. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but my mind would go blank for a split second, I'd feel kind of empty headed, and I'd just blurt something out that didn't make much sense. Later in the day it would, though. For example, I remember one day I had a spell and muttered "robbers at ten" when we were getting done grocery shopping. Later that night we were at my aunt's, and as we were heading out the door she tried to scare me by saying "watch out -- it's past ten, and that's when the robbers come out."
It was at my aunt's house this all started, too. I had a little spell while I was staying the night and muttered "he sees me in the bath tub." I thought 'whatever, my uncle must walk in while I'm taking a bath.' My aunt and uncle lived in a run-down apartment, and their bathroom only had a green curtain for a door that faced their bed. It was pretty cramped, and the window directly across from the green curtain door meant you always saw the outline of whoever walked in to the room. Later in the evening, I went to take a bath and had a blast because their bathtub was HUGE. My childhood self loved it. I remember looking up, though, and stopping dead in my tracks. Outside the green curtain, a man was just standing there watching me. He was sort of short -- maybe 5'6, 5'8, with one foot resting on the low-sitting bed while he watched me. I couldn't make out any details, and I became frozen in fear. Not knowing what to do, I ducked under the water. When I came back up, he was gone. I asked my aunt and uncle who their friend was, but they didn't know who I was talking about.
One or two months later, I was back home and my mom was telling me about the psychic books she was reading. She said that ghosts were everywhere and if we tried, we could really make contact with them. She kept talking about it, but I was getting really uneasy. My skin kept tingling and my hair was on edge. I felt like I wasn't myself. She finally asked me what was wrong, and if I saw anything. I had another one of my half-second spells, but this one was different than anything I'd encountered before. Instead of blurting out a phrase, I saw - as clear as day - me and my mom leaving my aunt's apartment after I was watched in the bath tub. Worse, I saw the thing follow us and get in the car. It came home with us. In the vision, I saw it laying in the bath tub of our house at the current moment too. It was disgusting. It looked badly burned, with pitch black eyes and soft pink skin. It had thin, scraggly hair that went down to its waist and was wearing a loin cloth. It was like it sensed that I had the vision, because I saw it crawl out of the bathtub and then the vision ended. I panicked and started freaking out and saw it come in to the living room. My mom did one of her "spirit, you're dead, go away" chants and it left.
I had never seen a ghost that wasn't a family member before and I was petrified. Completely terrified. We discovered it hadn't left, either. Everything would be fine for days, and then the hair on the back of my neck would raise and it would be there in the corner of my eye. He always made himself known to me. He never attacked me, he never harmed me. He just... Watched. I would wake up in the middle of the night, and he would be standing against the wall right outside my bedroom, watching me. He couldn't enter my bedroom for some reason, it seemed like - or at least he never did if he could. He just stared.
I lived with only my mother, and she kept trying to do random rituals to get rid of him. Weird things were beginning to happen in our house (doors slamming, we'd hear kids laughter, some parts of our house were completely off-limits in the basement because we would feel like we were being suffocated with dread or we were about to be attacked), and she thought if she did the right chant or ritual it would all go away. This isn't to mock people who use sage or declare that a spirit should leave in jesus's name, but this irritated whatever the thing was and didn't get rid of it. I distinctly recall my mother commanding it to leave in the name of Jesus when it appeared to me at one point, and it rolled its eyes before getting uncomfortably close to her and staring her in the eyes. It hated her.
Things became heated when my grandma was over one night for dinner. My mother had tried to get rid of the monster again earlier in the day, and it seemed to work. She finished cooking dinner, gave my grandma and I our plates, and went out to the kitchen to grab hers. There was a thud and she let out an ear-piercing scream, and my grandmother and I both looked up to see a large butcher knife quite literally *stuck in the wall* near her head. She was hysterical the rest of the night and said it flew across the kitchen. Weirder things started happening aimed towards her after that. We had steep steps to the basement, and she began to fall down them frequently and would say she felt like her foot had run in to something that wasn't there, or that she was pushed. It ended in a big fight between her and her sister that stayed with us one night, because she thought her sister's kid pushed her but then found out that he was out with friends.
The thing started showing up to me more and more until I was seeing it every day. Despite how violent he got towards my mom, he never laid a finger on me. Whenever he showed up it FELT extremely malevolent and, honestly, I can't begin to explain how much dread seeing him gave me. He was pure evil. But he looked at me with curiosity whenever he showed himself, sort of like he was observing me. Occasionally I'd see him with a little boy, and without moving his lips, he informed me the boy's name was Chris. I don't really know what to make of that, honestly, except that the boy sort of "belonged" to him but I would occasionally catch him trying to run from the man -- which always ended badly. He was badly burned, too, but the similarities ended there. In time, the thing decided to tell me its name, too -- Duilan (I imagine that's how you spell it, it's pronounced like Doo-Lahn). It's like he wanted me to be his friend, but whenever I saw him, it looked like in a second he would also gladly rip me to shreds and eat.
Things peaked when he showed up in one of my dreams. In it, I was in an alley and somehow knew he was on the rooftops above me. I went to the end of the alley to climb a ladder there and confront him; when I looked on the rooftops he wasn't there. I looked back down and he was standing right next to me, his face closely against mine. It was like he was seeing a new dish he'd never heard of before; pure curiosity, but the underlying tone was that I'll never survive. It petrified me. The only reason I believe it was his way of communicating was because when I woke up, he was at the doorway to my bedroom smiling. Duilan was taking over my life, and he kind of knew it. Kids wouldn't come over for sleepovers anymore because they'd wake up scared.
My mom started calling psychics after several months, and as luck would have it, she got in touch with a lesbian pair of psychics who could come that weekend. The two came over in the evening and demanded we tell them nothing about what was going on. As soon as they entered the house they grew uncomfortable, and as it turns out, we apparently had a lot more ghosts and the like than we thought in the house. However, one started screaming as she entered the bathroom and the other went white faced. Both of them saw Duilan in the tub, and they described him perfectly - burnt skin, pitch black eyes, sharp teeth, scraggly dark hair.
They said he used to be a caveman in Ireland, but he hadn't been one for a long time. He was ancient. Furthermore, he had developed a strong interest in me, and they confirmed he'd been trying to push my mother down the stairs and wanted to kill her so that he could have me to himself. He didn't say why or for what. They claimed that together they got rid of him, and to be fair, I did not see him from that day forward. That night my mom sent me to stay with my grandma for the weekend, and I thought it was over.
As years went by, weird things have continued to happen. For years, random, creepy things would happen at my grandma's house when I lived with her, but only around 2 or 3 am. I'd hear knocking on our glass slider door, I'd hear the creaking of someone walking up and down the hallways outside my bedroom, etc. -- and my family has heard it, too. It freaked them all out. What's dumb is that once the event is over, you forget about it. It seems stupid during the day, like you're overreacting. Plus, all my ghost-seeing days were apparently over after that night with the psychics, and I didn't have episodes where I'd predict a future event or conversation anymore.
For all intents and purposes, I totally forgot about it until my freshman year of college. I'd had a weird feeling all day, and when I went to bed in my dorm room, I had a terrible dream. It was really strange. It showed forests and distorted images and you had the strong sense there were people in the shadows of the forest somehow, just watching you. I had a strong sense the entire time of a guardian angel hovering over me, and I was in a cold sweat. Then, suddenly, the point of view turned and Duilan was standing right there smiling. He didn't move his lips, but the message was clear: "they aren't going to be able to protect you from me forever, and I'll be waiting." Though he didn't say who they are, it felt like he meant a guardian angel of some sort that was protecting me from his influence.
I was terrified. However, I never saw him, and that was the last experience I had for ages. I forgot. Two years ago, however, I moved in with my first boyfriend. He was a programmer and was up until all hours of the night working on Code. There was a short hallway from our bedroom to the living room, and a door on the left in the hallway led to his makeshift office, and a door on the right led to the bathroom. I'd told him about my experiences, and he always laughed about how ridiculous I was. He didn\'t believe in ghosts or the supernatural at all, and it had been so long that I figured he was right. Not long after we moved in together, however, he shook me awake frantically at around 3:30 am. He whispered that he thought our house had been broken in to, but he sweeped through it with a baseball bat and found nothing. He said he'd heard footsteps coming down the hallway towards the living room while he was in his office, and they were plain as day. He asked if I'd been awake to use the bathroom or anything and I told him no.
Over the weeks, it became a much more frequent occurrence. He shook me awake again several weeks later, pale as a ghost. He said that he heard them again, but this time he was ready and had opened the door to his office only to see something in the shadows for a split second before disappearing. I joked that he finally had a ghost coming after him for a change, and asked what it felt like to be haunted. His response still gives me chills. He just looked me dead in the eyes, and said, "zach, the footsteps are always coming from the bedroom where you've been sleeping. Whatever it was is in here with you each night."
Needless to say, I was ready to soil the sheets right then and there. Other weird things have happened since; after we broke up and I got a new place, I'd had drinks with friends and went to the bathroom. When I finished washing my hands, I opened the door but it suddenly slammed shut in my face like someone pushed it. I was buzzed enough to think it was a friend trying to be funny, but the more I pushed and turned the doorknob, the more it wouldn't budge, like something was obviously holding me in the bathroom. I eventually threw open the door and no one was there. I asked who did it, and all my friends thought I'd lost my marbles because they'd all been in my room watching a movie.
Finally, I moved to the east coast for grad school not long ago. My new roommates and I have had increasingly bizarre things happen, such as things literally crashing and breaking behind us while watch movies, my bedroom door opening and closing with a slam, scuttling sounds along the hardwood floor like something with long nails is running across it, and we've each seen shadows cross in front of our doors and stand there. I thought maybe the place itself was haunted because the area we're in is known for hauntings, but tonight as I took a shower I looked through the glass shower door and for a second I saw Duilan staring back at me as he stood back against the wall. After all this time, he's still here just watching as always.
I talked to my mom, and she said that her and the psychics that night had prayed (or done some sort of ritual?) with my stuff to have me lose the gift to see the dead or any other ability like that. She said it had caused me too much grief as a kid, and so it's better that I didn't have it at all. The issue is that whatever this Duilan thing is, it's still here and it's still following me. Tonight it proved that. It's never left, and hasn't stopped following me for over a dozen years -- now I just can't see it. What's worse is that I think as a kid not long after it was over, my friends made fun of me for making up the experience and so I demanded it come back to show them what it could do. It was a dumb moment, but I was ten and once everything was over it felt like a distant memory. Looking back, though, I'm beginning to think my playful recess conversation may have invited it in to my life in a more pivotal way when I demanded it return by name.
So... My question is, is this thing a demon like I think it is? I've never seen a ghost with pitch black eyes or fangs before, and the malevolent presence it has terrifies me. The next question... If it is a demon, or even if it's just a malevolent spirit, why did it give me its name? Why does it only watch me? What is it waiting for? Is there a way for me to ask? At this point, I'm tempted to start a conversation, but I'm terrified of how that would turn out. Both times I talked to it, every word it communicates felt so calculated and like it was holding so much back. Instinctively I know I can't trust it, but it seems to want me to. Plus it seems like it draws me in through my insatiable curiosity. It seems to have a strong fixation with showers and bath tubs, and answering why that is would be enough to get me to converse with it once more lol.
In all seriousness though, I don't know what to do or how to proceed from here. I need this to be over, because I'm tired of this thing following me everywhere. I'm sorry this is long, but that's everything. If you have any ideas or thoughts or comments, just let me know. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen.
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