I breathe heavily. I take a double take of my surroundings. I see nothing, or at least I hope I do not. The static dark has begun to fool me once again. I see shapes in the bathroom entrance; pitiful white silhouettes and creepy distorted faces appear within the corners of the house. I take another breath, look in front of me at the semi-familiar faces, do another double take and then make sure there is not an extra face in front of me in the dark open room.

Stories of the Goat Man, Slender Man and other myths and folklore were passed around when I decided to hangout out with a friend from school and his friends. The conversation went from gaming and a universe of never ending loops to triggering stories and our imaginations growing wild with hesitation of our own beliefs and disbeliefs. The open room we decided to gather in has a 6-foot window placed in front off the house overseeing the gloomy black night who also decided to play tricks on our eyes and imagination. Scary stories have become the norm whenever it reaches 2 in the morning: it seems to be unavoidable.

People love the semi- adrenaline rush their crazy imaginations produces after feeling slight hesitation of their surroundings after horror films and scary stories. Even if they are fully aware of their own frights and beliefs, the adrenaline rush hits them hard and they question themselves and how their imaginations has decided to form figures in the darkness. I, on the other hand, hate it.

We sit in darkness unsure if we should believe our lying eyes. Two of us sat on the black couch staring straight out the luxurious window. The other two, including myself in that group, sit as far away from the open window.

A girl appears outside, directly in plain sight of the the windows view point. She cocks her head to the right in an unnatural manner, her hair falling into place and she continues to repeat it on her left and right again as if she were keeping time. Right, left, right, left, right, left…and she disappears once you look away or try going downstairs.

Or at least, our wild imaginations created this phenomenon to continue keeping us on our feet about the wild things that slither around the shadows of the dark.

We all gather in the center of the room with our blankets and continue to tell these scary stories. We also continue to disbelieve, but also hesitate that maybe, just maybe, there is some truth to these stories. There always seems to be some hidden truth in them and that possibility of the supernatural being a concrete idea in your mindset is what screws you over in the middle of the night when you are trying not to believe.

We all unanimously, without exchanging even a single word, decided to sleep on the floor of the room. It felt safer than going to the guest room that had been assign to me because that possibility of the shadows coming alive still lingered in the back of my mind.

We awoke in the morning and all I could think is how silly I had been last night believing these stories that couldn't be relatable. However, what if the Goat Man had been in the room the whole night while we slept, simply trying to fit in with the group of 4 in front of him while he sat on the black couch. If this actually happened, there is no proof that he was actually there in the shadows, starting at us while having gruesome thoughts in his head about how simple it would be to kill us.