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Old Funeral Home

I've seen the shadow. Except it didn't sneak up on me. I accidentally snuck up on it.

Through some of my college years, I lived in an apartment on top of a funeral home, which was built back when Lincoln was President. Multi-floored building on the North Side of Pittsburg. My apartment took up the top two floors (tons of space, really good deal, which is why I chose to live there in the first place).

The first two floors were made up of greeting areas, multiple viewing rooms, several offices, and a huge staircase leading up to a large landing adjacent to two other viewing rooms. Place was huge. Between every room, there were these retractable, fake-wall, wooden dividers built into the wall, so you could make an entire floor seem bigger, or smaller, depending on the size of the funeral.

To get to my apartment on the top floors, you could either come in the front, up the big stairs, across the large landing, and there was a door towards the back that led up another flight of stairs to my main floor/my apartment. You could also come in the back door, right past the embalming room, and take those steps up to the second floor. To the right of those stairs was a small office, to the left you'd see the door to my stairs. (it's a weird layout to describe, so I don't know why I'm trying)

Ok, late one night, nobody's around upstairs or downstairs, and I'm finally getting around to reading the book I've been needing to read for class. I needed a pen to make some notes, and I tore through my apartment with no luck. I figured there'd be one in one of the offices downstairs, so I decided to check. I went down my stairs to the second floor and straight into the little office. No luck there, either. When I came out, I decided to cut through one of the viewing rooms to the main landing and head down to the first floor office from there (thus avoiding walking past the embalming room by the back stairs at night). I opened the door to it from the office and saw that the dividers were closed at the other end. Unfortunately, the light switch for that room was on the other side, too. This was before cell phones were prevalent, so I thought about leaving the office light on behind me to cast whatever light it could out into the viewing room, but that would mean coming back to the office to turn the light off. Too much effort. I'll just risk it.

BAM!!

"Oow, SHhhhhIIIT!!!!"

I neglected to realize that there had been a viewing there earlier and they hadn't put the chairs away. My shin had connected with one, not enough to actually hurt, but enough to make me curse out in that weird yelling/whispering way. I chuckled a little and started slowly making my way forward.

I eventually got to the dividers, and slid them open to reveal the landing area, bathed in streetlight through the front windows. Directly in front of me, though, there was no light. There was just darkness in a human form. No substance, no features, just... dark. I fucking froze. This thing just felt evil. It moved towards me and I collapsed on the floor in the fetal position. I was too scared to think to do anything else. I think I may have blacked out, because for what seemed like a split second, I saw all white, I closed my eyes, and the next thing I knew I was covered in sweat, enough sweat that it would've taken longer then it felt like I was lying there for.

When I opened my eyes again, it was gone. I slowly stood up, put my hands in the air, hung my head down, and slowly, cautiously paced towards my door, saying "This is your place, and I am sorry to bother you here. This is your place. This is your place. I am sorry..." Not that I thought that this would make any difference to the thing, just that I didn't know what else to do.

From that point forward, I always went in and out up the back stairs, and past the embalming room. Whatever it was that lived on those back stairs only seemed to talk to strangers, I actually never heard him, but he seemed much, much friendlier. But that's a completely different story.

#Unexplained/Paranormal #Emotions #Visual/Shadow