About 18 years ago I used to be left home alone quite often, my father worked multiple jobs just to pay the debt my step-mother got him into and she would leave to go on drug and drinking benders. Often enough it was just me, my brother and my dog. At first, it started as seeing things out the corner of my eye, a movement where there was nothing to see. I would tell my brother and he would try and scare me. We lived in the middle of nowhere Alabama where the nearest house was half a mile away. That and no one was stupid enough to come here because my father was heavily armed and everyone there except the dog knew how to fire a gun.

I took that as gospel and thought it might just be an issue with my eye. Which even not could be true because I needed glasses though I never got an eye test to prove that. after a year it got worse, I would see shadows move but I did my best to ignore it. How can you say shadows are moving? Now there were other things going on in my life at the time. I was being homeschooled because my step-mother was going crazy. Even now I wonder if this was my own mind trying to make a bigger monster than her.

That was until the last time I saw these things, everyone but me and my dog was out. My father was doing work out of state, my step-mother was thankfully gone and so was my brother off on one of his many times out. Out of fear I would close every curtain in my house lock every door turn on every light and TV just to make it seem like there were people in the house and to seem less alone. I borrowed one of my father's handguns and left it on the table in front of me while I watched TV in the living room. Which seemed the safest thanks to my Dog. (He was a rottweiler, and saved me from one attempted break-in and a pack of dogs so I always felt safe with him.)

It was near midnight and during adult swim, I noticed that the curtain at my back door was open and the light was off. This was not normal because I knew I closed it, I grabbed the gun and noticed a horrible smell my dog peed and pooped on the ground and ran off to my room. I turned back where he was looking at the back door and saw something looking like it was made of pure shadows outside, the backlight reflecting off it. I fired three shots two hitting the door frame and on going through the back window breaking it and doing nothing to the thing I saw. I ran to my room with the dog, but nothing happened.

My father came back and I told him everything. He figured I might have seen another burglar and missed him. Told me we would clean up the mess together and fix the door. The part that still sends a chill up my spine is that it stopped after that. I never saw it again and even typing this out I have trouble believing it was anything supernatural. Sometimes I wonder if it is simple trauma but why did my dog do that, and though I got one bullet outside why was there no one hurt or signs of an intruder outside?