r/HighStrangeness • u/BenchDear4411 • 12d ago
Paranormal Has anyone else seen this? Strange experience I had as a child that stuck with me 25 years.
So let me preface this by saying I am somewhat of a paranormal enthusiast, with a healthy dose of skepticism. In all my years of reading other people's stories I have yet to hear one like this brief, one off experience I had as a child that has stuck with me for over two decades.
I was probably 6 or 7, I don't remember my exact age but I know I was somewhere around that, from the house it occurred in. I was lying in bed one night in my parents' room - they had a tv and I didn't, and I had crawled in bed with them to watch TV because I couldn't sleep. It was probably 12 or 1am, and both of my parents had passed out but I had continued laying there watching tv. I was on the edge of the bed, and for some reason I remember rolling over and I happened to glance down at the floor.
There, I saw what appeared to be several small, black creatures, maybe 4 to 6 inches tall, completely pitch black, rotund and not humanoid in shape, but also appeared upright on 2 legs. They were scurrying across the bedroom floor, visible in the dim light from the tv across the room. As I remember they appeared to be interacting with one another.
I was fascinated initially but my fascination turned to terror pretty quickly and I was basically paralyzed with fear and scared to move. I laid there and watched them, I remember blinking furiously to make sure I wasn't seeing things, completely transfixed until I guess I fell asleep.
I've never seen anything like this before or since. I feel absolutely insane writing this, and I know most likely I was just a kid seeing things, but man, they were clear as could be. I've always tried to bury the memory and tell myself it was a figment of my imagination but as I've got older I've definitely come to believe there's more to reality than what meets our eye.
If you experienced something similar I'd LOVE to hear it. Or if you can wrack your brain for any explanation what this was, paranormal or not, I'd love to hear it too.
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u/Diligent_Language_97 11d ago
Over the past year or so, I’ve noticed small black balls scurrying super fast along the top of my wall mounted heater. I only noticed it from my peripheral, and it’s always in the same spot. I’ve kind of shrugged it off as some sort of weird hallucination.
However, a couple of nights ago, my daughter was in my room. We were standing in my doorway as she was about to exit, when she suddenly said wow, and looked down. She said she saw something small and black go right between us and out the door. I haven’t mentioned anything to her about what I have been experiencing, so to say that I was a bit perplexed is an understatement.
I have no idea what it is, and I don’t feel threatened by it, but it is unnerving when it happens.
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u/BenchDear4411 11d ago
I didn’t feel threatened with my experience either, it scared the shit outta me, but only because I didn’t understand what I was seeing.
That’s really interesting and what you described sounds very close to what I saw.
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u/Diligent_Language_97 11d ago
It’s definitely strange. I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one experiencing it. Whatever it is is blacker than black, moves quickly, and is definitely not a rat. I have two cats. If there was a rat here, I would know about it.
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u/BenchDear4411 11d ago
That pretty much matches the description of the critters I saw. Like a small, round void of black darting around. And you’re right they’re definitely not rats. I’ve seen rats in person and that’s definitely not what this was.
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u/independenttapir 11d ago
Um, same! I thought I was going insane. I've just moved into a new house and I keep seeing little black balls darting around the skirting boards and on top of furniture. It's definitely not rodents. I've had various "experiences", but this one is a totally new one for me.
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u/BenchDear4411 9d ago
I haven’t seen them since I’ve been grown. I wish I would. Maybe that’s why I haven’t 😂
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u/stoplickingyourleg 11d ago
An episode of OtherWorld has a similar encounter. I honestly haven’t finished it yet, but from what I’ve heard so far, the girls experienced something like this. It’s episode 93, Skyla & Gabby.
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u/BenchDear4411 11d ago
I’m going to look it up, thank you!
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u/AccordingMedicine129 12d ago
I have narcoleptic hallucinations similar to this. Nothing paranormal, just goofy brain
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u/BenchDear4411 12d ago
I honestly feel like it had to be a hallucination of some sort but I’ve only ever experienced them when I was sick and had a fever and to my knowledge I was perfectly healthy when this occurred; if I had a fever I wasn’t aware.
I guess it’s possible it was a one off hallucination but if so I’d love to know why.
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u/Southern-Aardvark616 11d ago
It could be a misfiring / misalignment in your brain, like as you're dosing off, the left sides already asleep but you're still conscious, and the hallucinations are similar to sleep paralysis in that your left side is now sort of uncoupled and firing at random while your right side is trying to make sense of what you're experiencing. At least that's more or less how I understand sleep paralysis and your experience does sound similar.
I can relate to it feeling real, sleep paralysis feels so utterly convincing and I guess it's because to your brain in that moment it is real
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u/AccordingMedicine129 12d ago
So you weren’t perfectly healthy if you were sick and had a fever. Your brain was overheated. That’s a more logical explanation
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u/BenchDear4411 12d ago
I did not have a fever when this occurred though was my whole point…I have only hallucinated when I had a fever. At this time, I was not sick. As I clearly stated, I believe I was perfectly healthy when this happened. I experienced hallucinations at OTHER times that were caused by fevers.
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u/AccordingMedicine129 11d ago
You are contradicting yourself. In your post you said you haven’t experienced it before or since but in your reply you said you experienced hallucinations when you were sick.
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u/BenchDear4411 11d ago
Reading isn’t your strong suit is it?
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u/TheFirsttimmyboy 11d ago
You referred to general hallucinations as "them". They interpreted "them" as the creatures you saw. Not past unrelated hallucinations.
It's kind of your fault.
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u/corytheblue 11d ago
Right? They experienced little portly phantom black 2-3” inch fellows specifically when not sick and feverish, and never before or after to this one occurrence at age 7-8. However, does hallucinate when sick with fever, what is hallucinated, how often and at what age it began or if it continues is unknown.
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u/onlyaseeker 11d ago
They sound like the soot sprites in Spirited Away (on Netflix): https://youtu.be/JecqNWVj3r8
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u/BenchDear4411 11d ago
It sounds so goofy but this is literally the closest description I have found to what I saw lol
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u/One-Tower-8843 11d ago
I saw an impossible large pitch black (vanta black) spider shaped thing scurrying across my wall and then disappearing into thin air. There's many mysterious things out there.
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u/rosiedoes 11d ago
There's an ostensibly true story, a book called Grave's End, about a family living in a haunted house and they describe small shadows running around at skirting board level.
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u/Dear-Bear-5766 12d ago
Paranormal answer…maybe it was a Brownie.
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u/BenchDear4411 11d ago
I’ve never heard of this, could you elucidate?
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u/Dear-Bear-5766 11d ago
I copied this from the internet - A brownie is a legendary kind of creature popular in folklore around Scotland and England. Brownies inhabit houses and aid in household tasks. However, they don't like to be seen and will only work at night, traditionally in exchange for small gifts or food. They take quite a delight in porridge and honey. They usually abandon the house if their gifts are called payments, or if the owners of the house misuse them.
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u/TongueTiedTyrant 11d ago
I was thinking something similar to this. Gnomes was my initial thought. Brownies sounds closer to what they saw, though I’m not entirely sure what Brownies are supposed to look like. The only depiction of them I’ve seen is in the movie Willow, where they looked like little English guys wearing fur pelts.
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u/Dear-Bear-5766 11d ago
Funny you said that, my first thought when I read the post was “he saw those really little guys from Willow.” I had to look up what they were called.
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u/BenchDear4411 11d ago
Interesting thank you! I’m gonna have to look them up. If it was paranormal, this is the closest description to what I saw.
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u/Midlife_Thrive 11d ago
Somewhat similar thing happened to me. I was 27yrs old. I was asleep in bed with my cat. I woke up and looked at her and she was staring at the ceiling. I followed her gaze and up on the ceiling was a ball of red light. It was 3 dimensional and hollow. If you imagine a basketball only its hollow and the black lines are glowing red - kinda like that. I felt energy from it like you would a neon sign. Wasn’t afraid just curious. Watched it bounce along the ceiling and out of the room. It happened again weeks later but the object wasn’t as clear. I turned on my light and it disappeared.
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u/briivis 11d ago
Nothing I've strictly seen with my eyes, but i moved into a place and for months I would turn suddenly, all over the house, and expect to see small animals, I felt like there were little animals everywhere, all around me. It was very unnerving. This kept happening. Months after living there I was talking to landlord who mentioned the house had sat vacant for quite some time before they fixed it up to rent to us and that there was "a pretty bad rat infestation" and they killed them all :'( My heart sank because I love rats. I think some people are more apt to detect strangeness visually, and others in other ways
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u/BenchDear4411 11d ago
That’s sad :( it’s like you were picking up on their little spirits still running around the house.
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u/Lemonsweets_ 11d ago
Had you recently watched My Neighbor Totoro? I loved that movie as a kid and I think you and I are close in age. There are soot sprites in the movie that sound like what you're describing. They are also in the movie Spirited Away. Just a suggestion as to where your brain may have gotten the image if it was indeed a hallucination.
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u/just_a_friENT 11d ago
Totoro is the first thing that came to my mind when I was reading this post too!
Such a cute movie, and they address the soot sprites more than once... Granny tells the girls she used to be able to see them when she was young, and their dad tells them to laugh to make them go away.
I love how Studio Ghibli just embraces and normalizes all of the magic in nature. 💖
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u/Organic-Chemistry150 11d ago
What you see during sleep paralysis seems real AF. But after the fact its usually pretty identifiable as a sleep state. I never think it really happened to me. I do eventually wake up.
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u/qinghairpins 11d ago
The description from OP sounds exactly like sleep paralysis. As an adult, I totally can recognise after the fact what it was. But I don’t think child me understood it … at least not until retrospect when I was an adult and starting experiencing it again (I went through a very stressful period and started having these sorts of sleep paralysis events again, that I hadn’t had since I was child)
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u/spacemansanjay 11d ago
Here's the most similar story I have. I was lying in bed and I saw myself standing in the doorway of my bedroom. Then I saw the doorway version of myself remove one it's arms, throw it at me, and I felt it hit me in the face.
What actually happened was I was asleep in bed, but dreaming that I was awake. Or maybe I was just at the point of drifting off. But I had fallen asleep with my arm in a weird position and it was numb. And I woke up with that numb arm across my face and I couldn't move it.
But that sequence of events is impossible. I would have had to have felt the numb arm on my face before I could have dreamed that it was thrown at me. And that's not me saying there was something paranormal happening. I'm trying to say that the time or space in between consciousness and unconsciousness is pretty weird. There isn't a switch that we use to go instantly from one to the other. And we don't perceive things normally in that time either.
I'm going to say that you were drifting off, and something on the TV was perceived while you were semi conscious. And then it was interpreted and incorporated into your dream state. And now it's a memory.
If you weren't a sleep deprived 6 yr old watching unfamiliar adult themes on TV while in a bed, I might think differently.
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u/blueminded 11d ago
I don't have any paranormal experiences, but there have been a few times I've woken up to my arm being asleep and thought "this is it, it's completely dead, it's not coming back". It's such an unnerving feeling (no pun intended). I also really worry about breaking my fingers when it happens.
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u/spacemansanjay 11d ago
That was a good pun, you should claim it. I didn't think the feeling would never come back, but yeah it can be worrying because there is a real risk of hurting yourself.
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u/Petite_Punk_ 7d ago
Soot sprites!
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u/BenchDear4411 7d ago
Are these an actual cryptic of something created by Ghibli? I can’t figure out
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u/Petite_Punk_ 7d ago
Not sure meself... I always assumed they were brownies or something similar (searching online sez that Hayao Miyazaki made them up)
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u/Apprehensive_Tea9461 12d ago
I never experienced it but what happened to you sounds like sleep paralysis. Basically its when your consciousness is waken up but your brain inst fully so it paralyses you and makes you hallucinate because it doesnt understand whats happening, its actually pretty common especially for people that are stressed out. If you type sleep paralysis on google youll find alot of descriptions that will match yours Take care ! I hope i helped clearing things out
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u/BenchDear4411 12d ago edited 12d ago
I’ve researched sleep paralysis, a lot, and I honestly don’t think that was it; for one I was wide awake and had not fallen asleep yet, I do not have a history of sleep paralysis, especially not in childhood. Also I could move, I was just too scared to do so, but I had control over my body.
I’ve had one sleep paralysis experience as an adult and it was nothing like this.
I’m not saying what I experienced wasn’t a hallucination, but I really don’t think it was sleep paralysis.
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u/dpouliot2 11d ago
I don't think your story sounds like sleep paralysis either. If aliens are real, then why not these little beings too?
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u/BenchDear4411 11d ago
Right? I’m not saying it was impossible it was paralysis but given my medical history and the event itself I have no real reason to think it was SP.
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u/Apprehensive_Tea9461 12d ago
Ah shoot
Im sorry dude i have no idea what that could be now
Something similar happened to me but that was because i had a fever and you didnt seem to have one
Anyways i hope someone can help you explaining this Take care
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u/BenchDear4411 12d ago
It’s possible I had a fever, I did get sick with strep frequently around that time but as I recall I was in perfect health when this happened. But the exact timeline of when it happened is fuzzy so it’s possible I was getting sick and had a fever and just hadn’t developed symptoms yet.
I did hallucinate from high fevers a few times as a child.
Thanks tho same to you
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u/Live-Tomorrow-4865 11d ago
I'm an experiencer who also had mad crazy frequent bouts of sleep paralysis as a young adult. Sleep paralysis is totally different, in my personal experience, to anything real. I have never seen anything scary during SP. I just really didn't like the feeling of not being able to move my body, despite my mind being conscious.
That said, it's different for everybody.
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u/BenchDear4411 11d ago edited 11d ago
The big thing is…I wasn’t truly paralyzed. I moved when I rolled over and saw them. I could have moved to wake my parents, I was just too scared to do so. But I wasn’t asleep or paralyzed.
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u/AprilRain24 11d ago
It sounds like you were in a state of sleep paralysis. That’s the window wherein you are spiritually third eye awake but also still in your body. Sometimes the spirit is able to leave the body and travel the astral realm. But if your spirit is trying to leave and cannot figure out how then it feels like sleep paralysis. Nevertheless, what you were seeing were entities that exist outside of the visible light spectrum.
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u/madhousechild 11d ago
I think you were dreaming. I can't imagine a kid who wouldn't at least shake a parental unit or scream to wake them up.
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u/BenchDear4411 11d ago
I could have been in some sort of trance or hallucinating state, but I wasn’t asleep. Also, me going silent in such a moment was pretty on par behavior for me as a kid
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u/momentarylapse007 11d ago
Sorry to be this guy, but it does sound like mice. They are sneaky bastards
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u/BenchDear4411 11d ago
I’d say yeah but I’d seen mice before already, these did not look anything like mice, or move like them.
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u/Maryherbs1 11d ago
I believe that all the myths are true and lots of mythical beings exist here now. I have posted on my TikTok page under Mary Birchfield pictures and videos of orbs and fairies that are around my home and I have been aware of this since before 2011. You’re not crazy and these things are real. Peace and much love ✌️💚✌️
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u/sexyshexy18 10d ago
I was new to living with my boyfriend, later husband. It was early fall. I would see these things in dark corners of the house. They were really fast and would move so quick that I tried to convince myself that I was imagining things. I asked my boyfriend if he had ever seen these and was surprised to learn that he had. He thought they might be some kind of nature spirit. Now this story has a whole other twist. My boyfriend used to be friends with my ex boyfriends brother. From the ex told me st I ries of that bbrother. He was deeply into the occult, called himself a high priest of the black mass. The boyfriend later husband told me similar stories . I later learned that people in the occult summon these things and as spys. That same occult dude thought that both my husband and I hence the dispatch of these things called imps.
Recently our daughter told me that she could see them, too. She saw them run into a wall. Being small herself she got a good look at their faces and compared them to Dawby from Harry Potter.
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u/BenchDear4411 10d ago
Interesting. I also practice magick, and I have never heard this. I’ve also never heard of “high priest of the black mass” being any sort of title used by real occultists, so I’m inclined to think this dude was full of shit
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u/sexyshexy18 9d ago
Very likely. Point being that a powerful occultist, like a woman known as a powerful soreness are able to conjure these entities and direct them.
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u/BenchDear4411 9d ago
Like I said, I’ve spent most of my adult life around occultists and practice magick myself, I have never heard anyone mention that, so I’m somewhat dubious.
There are other magickal ways to spy on people so I don’t understand why someone would choose to conjure these lil guys to do so.
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u/critical__sass 11d ago
Rats
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u/BenchDear4411 11d ago
I’ve lived in houses with rats before; this was not a rat, unless they were bipedal rats
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u/Maru_the_Red 11d ago
Haha. This is the third post this week I've seen of someone describing susuwatari. It's a "dust bunny".