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The glittering figure that pulled my leg

Someone living alone in the woods woke to a hand gripping their ankle and dragging them down the bed. When it let go, a tall, hunched black figure was crouched by the window, its surface sparkling like glitter.

A house alone in the countryside, surrounded by forest · The middle of the night, a few months before posting · 2 min read

It wasn't just a shadow. Its silhouette was blacker than black, darker than the room itself.

This person lives alone in a house out in the countryside, with forest all around and no close neighbours.

In the middle of the night they woke up suddenly, not drifting awake but jolted, because something had hold of their right ankle. Hard. It lifted the leg up to about a 50 degree angle and started dragging them toward the foot of the bed.

They were lying on their stomach and couldn't twist around to see. Their first thought wasn't ghosts at all. It was a break-in. And they weren't scared, they were furious: who the hell was in the bedroom?

They tried to yank the leg back and reached behind to grab whoever it was. Every time a hand got close, the grip would jerk hard and straighten the leg out again. That happened five or six times. Then the hand just let go.

They rolled over expecting to see an intruder standing there. At first the room looked empty. Then they saw it.

By the window at the end of the bed stood a tall black humanoid figure, half crouched as if it had to duck under the ceiling. It was hunched, with its head tilted a little to one side like it was curious, and it had two long arms. It seemed to be studying them.

It wasn't just a shadow. It was blacker than the darkness in the room, like a cut-out in reality, soaking up light instead of reflecting it. But the strangest part was that it sparkled. Its whole surface shimmered with tiny blinking specks, almost like glitter, as if it were made of thousands of little reflective flakes that shifted as it moved. There was nothing pretty or magical about it. It just looked like something that wasn't entirely solid.

They stared at each other for several seconds. Then it was gone.

Since then they've read plenty about shadow figures, but those are mostly fleeting things in the corner of your eye. This was tall, solid, right there, covered in that shimmer, and it had physically grabbed them. They're still wondering what it wanted, and whether anyone else has met one like it.

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