Note from Amelia: I reached out to friends and followers in hopes of gathering some true ghostly encounters to share each week during the month of October. Last week, we heard from Katie Hopkins about an abandoned, haunted home in Iowa. This week, I would like to continue by welcoming artist Nanette Fabros, who shares this unsettling experience from her own home:
Later in the night as I lay awake, I noticed the closet door. It stood out to me how brown it was with an artificial texture pressed into the wood. Ridges inside ridges, oval shapes that grew larger inside one another. I began to feel almost drawn into the swirling pattern of the door. Then, all of a sudden it looked as if the spirals began to shift. I could see shadows from the streetlights reflected on the door. They were large shadows, somewhat intimidating. I began to feel uncomfortable, so I tried not to look at the door, pulled the covers over myself just a bit more. At this point I was not sure if I was asleep or awake, either way I felt that I should look at the door just to keep an eye on it and make sure that nothing was happening, and that all I was looking at was a closet door with some shadows reflected on it.
My anxiety began to rise. I told myself, "It is just a door! Nothing to worry about." So, I looked at the closet door to confirm, yes, my imagination is getting away with me and all is just fine. There it was, the door was shut, nothing sticking out of it, but wait. What was that? It looked as if one of the shadows moved! I said to myself, "No, stop, it is just a door." My body began to freeze up with tension. I began to gasp for air, if I was breathing at all. Now my attention was drawn to the shadows lurking around the surface of the closet door. The shadows that were tall and dark, now seemed animated with smaller shapes breaking off from the main shadows. The shapes floated slowly, then as if the closet door had dimension to it, the shapes got sucked down and disappeared into the depths of the door.
After all the strange activity, I decided that it was just shadows. At first, I was still basically facing the ceiling and grasping the sheets. Then I became more tired and probably fell to sleep. As if time had not passed at all, I felt a heaviness creeping up on me. What could it be? I opened my eyes and discovered a large looming, spider-like shadow morphing and seeming to descend on top of me. My heart was pounding, and I was gasping for breath. This heavy shadow was moving, and I felt as if I could not move out of fear. All I could do was lie there in intense fear as the shadow moved closer and closer. Finally, like a rubber band breaking, I jumped up out of my bed, grabbed my pillow and swung at the figure back and forth, up and down. Then I stopped while holding my breath. There it was over my bed. As I looked, the shadow creature began to dissipate like a fuzzy TV, and it vanished into thin air right in front of my eyes.
How relieved I was that my pillow swinging shooed the shadow spider away. A quick look at the closet where the shadow must have emerged from…just darkness. I turned the light on to erase any lingering shadows or shadow creatures from my room, and it was all clear. After the event, I was able to fall asleep, but not facing the closet door. This night was unique to me. I have not had a similar experience to this since then.
Nanette Fabros is a creative artist who lives in the suburbs of Chicago. She is a graduate of Northern Illinois University with a major in Visual Communications. She is also the designer of the "Amelia Cotter" logo!
"The Closet Door," copyright 2018 Nanette Fabros
