So this was one of the first times I ever was truly scared by something paranormal, I was 14 at the time (as of posting I am 25 yo) and my father and I had just started buying guns as I took an interest in shooting. We got an M44 Mosin Nagant made in 1953 in Poland. For those who do not know much about old guns, a Mosin Nagant is the battle rifle of Russia from pre-WW1 to the end of WW2 and the M44 designation is for a shortened rifle version with a bayonet that can be folded out.

So we had the rifle for a while, I had shot it and everything before this event occurred. I had researched the marks of the rifle, which is why I knew where it was made and all the little details of the gun. Me being a curious history lover I love learning anything I can about items I have. It was months since getting it, the initial thrill of getting a gun had long since worn off and so really other than hoping to go shooting sometime soon it was not on my mind when I went to bed. The reason I mention this is that it's not assumed I am just overly imaginative and after getting an old military gun, I just imagined all this. Anyway, the rifle was at this point the only real gun we had besides our few 22 caliber rifles for plinking and they were stored in my closet.

So anyway for the actual experience I went to bed, it was during a break so no school, which is great because of what unfolded I didn't sleep much. I was asleep when I woke up in the middle of the night at 2 am for no reason. I looked to my closet near my bed and the door was open, which it was never this open normally though I never really shut the door. When looking into the closet it was like I saw something, I walked literally into the closet that was not my closet. I can only describe it as if I was transported by the closet to a different place which was also nighttime and I can see ahead of me, what seems to be a watchtower. I too was in a watchtower, a fence was near the watchtowers and then another further away from it. I then am alerted to a figure moving near the fence and I raised my Mosin Nagant and fired a round off which caused a horrible scream, chambered the next round, and fired again which ceased the memory.

I am standing in my closet now, truly my closet. Nothing happened really in this change it's like having some hologram disappear and reveal my real surroundings or something. The feeling though is as if I was pulled back though, it's hard to describe. With this, I left my closet and sat down in bed wondering what the actual f*** happened. But I did end up falling back to sleep and the next morning I woke up early (8am or so) which is abnormal for me as I am more of a 10 am person, don't judge I am just not a morning person unless I must be. As I woke up, I looked to my closet and saw a dark figure peaking out of my closet. I didn't even scream, I let out a squeak of fear. I wasn't even thinking of last night, I just felt there was someone that broke into my house and was looking at me, even though there was no reason he would be a dark shadow instead of a detailed human being as my room was very well lit by now. But yet nothing was there.

The next night I woke up at 2 am to find a dark shadow once more looking at me from my closet, I will overstate the obvious, it was pitch black night and I am seeing a shadow figure yes this sounds absolutely absurd because black on black doesn't show itself really. I am a long-time drama club kid and I know this which is why this freaks me out still. Yet I saw this figure, a dark figure as clear as the one I saw before. I immediately bolted for my parents' room screaming my lungs out as I ran. I explained in a sheer panic how there was a person in my closet and that someone was in the house. But once we are back in my room, nothing. This repeated the following night, the only difference is the figure was outside of the closet now and the same effect I ran screaming. The following night the same thing but now it's looking down at me from next to my bed and again I ran fleeing. By this point, something connected for me, and I also demanded the rifle be removed from my closet and it was placed in my parents' bedroom. With this it ceased, all of it. Since then I refuse to ever have the gun in my bedroom when I sleep and it remains locked away in a gun safe we now have.

Now I am a pretty skeptical person, more so today than I was then. With that I am very much aware of sleep paralysis and all those things, but that makes no sense here as none of the times was I unable to move, I was able to get up and move to the closet and get up and flee screaming like a mad man. An atheist, non believing friend I told actually referenced some gulag pictures which matched my dream extremely close which freaked me out as I had never even really heard of a gulag yet when I had the experience and I had never researched them before. More so is the fact that gulags shouldn't explain it as they were not a Polish thing, but a Stalinist thing which ended with his death in 1953. Everything in my mind wants to explain this way but yet nothing explains why this happened. I don't disbelieve in the paranormal, even as a skeptic I do believe stuff can happen and I can only reach the conclusion that I saw something that once happened but to who, why and where I truly don't know. I put this as debunk this simply because honestly I would love to believe it was not real and have someone explain it away because the thought that someone is attached to this gun is tragic.