The part of Kentucky that I am from has its share of legends and other such stories. One that has been passed down in my family and by a lot of others who knew my Grandpa all claim to have seen a little black ghost dog on the old road that used to run up by where I live. Supposidly only 5 people has seen the dog and when they went to pet it their hand went through it. My Grandpa swore to this and so did a few others that witnessed it till there dying day. This is one of the reasons I got into paranormal investigation.

The area I live is dominated by the legend of a family member of mine who died back in the 40's. His name was Johnny Young but people called him Johnny Booger. Johnny supposidly could make things appear and could make inanimate objects move just by pointing at them or just by watching them. When my grandma was young, Johnny would come over and stay with at her parents house. My great grandfather never wanted to really confront Johnny about. One day however he told my great grandfather and my grandma that he would show them what he could do. He made a flock of sheep appear before them and my grandma said you could reach out and touch them, then they disappeared. Later he made their bed move. The actual legs of the bed would bend and drag inself. He had a huge family and everyone around here knew him and his legacy is still very strong around here. He was very open with what he could do. I'm not real big into everything ESP based but I was looking through some stuff based off of the governments research into ESP during the cold war and I found at one time what was called a level 4 ESP or something like that. Everything that the article claimed a level 4 ESP could do was everything I had always heard Johnny to do. Everyone around here has a story about Johnny from their grandparents. I have been to his old home place many times and even to his grave site and that is where I got my first paranormal evidence. This was one of the biggest factors that got me into the paranormal. I have always sought to find the source of what drove Johnny Booger.

The defining factor for me that got me to into the paranormal happened when I was 9 years old. I was in bed and I have always had sleeping problems, I just cannot lay down and go straight to sleep. I am usually up all night and have always been this way. While laying in bed one night I was just thinking and I was fully awake. All of a sudden this figure walks in front of my door way and stands there staring at me. It is a man and he is made up of nothing but pure darkness, like a living shadow. He is wearing a hate, that kind of resembles a cowboy hat. The figure just stood there aimed right at me for at least 30 minutes. This whole time I was in terror and could not call out for anybody. The hallway was well lit by lights and my room was light enough that I could read and this shadow person just kept standing there. It was perfectly defined as a man in every detail and it kind of sway at times like he was standing to still and it made him a little off balance. Then after the 30 minutes was up it just vanished! Gone right before my eyes! This was the defining factor for me to start investigating the paranormal when I got older.

But at the same time I am skeptical of what I see during investigations and on TV and the sort. My number one goal is to try every means neccesary to debunk it.

I totally understand what you mean Revenant. After taking numerous physcology courses in the midst of my premed years I had actually took this into account and thought it over and dug deep into it. The only thing for me that keeps me believeing it is, when the aparition first appeared I had just went to the bathroom and then came back and laid down. I hadn't been laying there for maybe 2 minutes (I was basically just thinking) and was frustrated that I could not sleep, when the apparition appeared. What was so weird about it to me was I immediatly sat up in the bed and the hairs on my arms and the back my neck stood up and I just felt like I was having a low blood sugar attack, thats how cold I felt. It stayed for about 30 minutes and the whole time I was moving around while sating up. I was moving around with my hands behind me just trying to get as far back as I could. I finally stood up and after about 5 minutes of standing there is when it finally just vaporized. I walked immediatly over to the spot where it had just disappeared from and just kind of felt around in the air then I turned and ran down the hall way and woke my parents up. From where I was at and where the apparition was at was about 7 feet between us, it was really close.

Hey Revenant, I understand completely. Being curious about me not running for it does raise a lot of red flags and to be honest if I was reading somebody elses post that was written the way mine was I would have a really hard time deciphering it in my head and making any logical sense of it. When this first appeared I got scared to death and like I was saying the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood up and I was almost paralyzed with fear. I started to move backwards in my bed by pulling myself with my hands behind me. My first instinct was to run past it to my parents and wake them up. I wanted to do that more than anything. Here is what happens that kept me from completely losing it at this young of age. I first closed my eyes and started praying because my parents had just started taking me to church about a year or 2 before this event. While doing this I felt calm and not as scared. When I opened my eyes it was still there, I could still make out all of it but I was not as afraid for some reason. It felt like something was keeping me calm. After awhile I started to revert back to panic and thats when I got out of bed and stood there for what felt like 5 minutes or more (but you know how time is for a child) it could have been less and I started to go back through the cold shakes of being scared and thats when it disappeared and I bolted for the door and out in the hallway to my parents. The reason I did not run at first was because we have a small hallway and when it appeared right in front of my door, it was a complete mass that looked just like a person and it was completely blocking the door, I didn't think I had a chance of getting out of there. I didn't explain the religious parts and such because I didn't want to go into great detail at the time but your right this is a place to really delve into things like this and to put the whole story into perspective. Like I was saying when I prayed about it I felt an unusal calm come over me, even though I was in one of the most horrifying experiences of my life.

Edit- I thought I would add that I have thought a lot about this situation throughout my life and the more I think about it the more my physical and emotional response to this occurance at the time puzzles me. I had actually writtin about this experience once in class and the instructor at the time also found it a little fishy and hard to digest. The thing about it that really intrigues me is that I went through this stage in my younger life where I did not easily get afraid. When this event happened I went through a lot of emotions at once and then the weird calmness and then back to the fight or flight instinct. Not long after this occurence I developed an anxiety disorder which plagued me for some time. Is there a connection to this event and the eventual anxiety problem? I don't really feel that is the case. Like I was stating earlier, there could be a lot of rational explanations for what happened to me but at the time it was so real and especially when I got out of bed and was standing there and then walked over to it there wasnt really any transition feeling or phase there like I was in a dream or in a sort of trance. The emotions that I went through on that night have been what has really stuck out to me throughout the years.