Last night I stayed up watching a History channel documentary on the Amityville Horror. I've been sick for a few days, and after sleeping through a big chunk of yesterday, I had too much energy to go to sleep, so I figured I'd leave it on. At any rate, it sounded like your average ghost/demon story involving a haunted house, until they brought up the imaginary friend "jodie" that the daughter played with. This "imaginary friend" was a manifestation of the demon. What hit home for me was the descriptions of it, especially shown from this video clip taken from the movie based on the true story.
The reason that this unnerved me was that I experienced something like this growing up. I remember getting up when I was about 5-6 years old, and going down stairs to watch TV, and seeing glowing, blood red eyes staring back at me through a window in a room that was adjacent to our living room and that had all of the lights turned off. For some perspective here, you'd have to be at least 6.5ft tall to have even a shot of looking in that window in our old home because it was pretty high off the ground. I also remember seeing a vaguely humanoid shape surrounding the eyes, which gave me good reason to believe whatever it was, wasn't the result of something easily explained away like someone flashing two lights in the street.
To this day, I don't really like having anything to do with the supernatural because of that, and another childhood incident which happened about six or seven years later. Thing is, unless something like this has happened to you, you cannot appreciate how on some Lovecraftian level you know... you know that is a "thing that should not be--but is."
Dude, I read that book when I was about 12 and it was the scariest thing I had ever read up to that day. And maybe since. I was camping (by which I mean, sleeping in a tent in the woods by myself) at my grandparents' cabin, and I didn't get a wink of sleep all night.
I don't know if that was the final straw of just the revelation that I really did not enjoy that sort of thing, but I have never since been a far of horror, and with few exceptions (e.g. the original Fri13, the original Halloween) have really never seen a horror film.
I never even saw the movie of Amityville...
Between my experiences (this isn't the only time I've seen a demon or felt one's presence) and my becoming a Christian about five years ago, I don't really do horror anymore either unless it has no real spiritual element to it. There's just nothing entertaining to me anymore about spiritual horror movies that deal with stuff that I know is not only real, but significantly more serious than the movie producers can ever imagine.
I go backpacking frequently, and there are places in the woods that I actively avoid. I'm not the only person familiar with the area that's aware of these areas, and we are in general agreement about steering the curious away from them.
It's not a question of paranoia. People act differently out there when the sun sets, you can't see beyond the illumination of the campfire, and the woods are quieter than they have a right to be.
While it's not easy to convey the how wrong it feels while you're there, it's palpable. Tangible, even. Personally, I've heard things while there that I have no way to explain (and I'm quite familiar with the local fauna).
My wife is a big fan of the SciFi channel show, "Ghost Hunters." I always make fun of it. They always "sense" or "feel something." They always see something that the camera just missed. I still maintain that the show is a fraud.
The reason she likes it and is really into that sort of thing is because she had a few simular experiences to what you have described when she was around the same age. Personally, I have never believed in this sort of thing. I've always wondered if part of her experience (and yours) is explainable by the fact that a six year olds mind is extremely active and even more impressionable. She insists that her experiences were real and they are not imagined or manufactured.
I've resigned myself to reluctantly believing her because frankly, I can not disprove it. I'm also pretty sure the bible does not completely discredit the idea that spirits are not actively roaming this world. If nothing else, just in the form of Angels and demons. Also, like you said, nothing like this has ever happened to me, so who am I to say it's not real?
My wife is a big fan of the SciFi channel show, "Ghost Hunters." I always make fun of it. They always "sense" or "feel something." They always see something that the camera just missed. I still maintain that the show is a fraud.
The reason she likes it and is really into that sort of thing is because she had a few simular experiences to what you have described when she was around the same age. Personally, I have never believed in this sort of thing. I've always wondered if part of her experience (and yours) is explainable by the fact that a six year olds mind is extremely active and even more impressionable. She insists that her experiences were real and they are not imagined or manufactured.
Well, the next time I was about 11 and the next I was 18...
...maybe you still had the mindset of a six year old. :)
Kidding.
Those orange eyes you see on that video up there, my brother and cousin were up one night and they said they were watching a movie and they saw what they described as two red eyes on the tv screen, when it wasn't a reflection and wasn't part of the movie. I'd imagine by their description, the eyes looked something like those ones.