I always thought that this was just a chronic nightmare that I somehow passed onto my child, though I never spoke of it before. Then I found this site and saw that I’m not the only one who’s seen him…
When i was young, I would get nightmares frequently, they’d go on for a few weeks, then stop. When i was about 9, i started getting nightmares again. I started having one that repeated every night. In my room, there was a full body mirror on the back of my door. Every night, my nightmare would start with a tapping sound “waking” me from sleep. It always came from my door. So, i’d look over. There would be this extremely tall, void dark figure in the door with red eyes, a brimmed hat, and a wide, terrifying smile staring at me. It would tap on the mirror from the inside with long, curved fingers that looked like claws. No matter what i did, i couldn’t move, and i couldn’t wake up.
Over time, the nightmare escalated to him pounding on the inside of the mirror. I had this dream every night for 4 years, and on the night it ended, it was the same as usual. I “woke up” to tapping, looked over to my door, and saw him tapping on the mirror from the inside, staring at me with red eyes and a wide smile. He tapped harder and harder, then started pounding. He pounded so hard the whole mirror shook, then cracked. I was terrified, and finally actually woke up when my mirror crashed to the ground, breaking. And i don’t mean in my dream. My mirror had somehow fallen off my door and shatterred against the ground.
I didn’t have the same nightmare anymore. After that, he’d be leaning over me in my dreams.
I stopped having these dreams when i was about 15 or 16, and had mostly forgotten them. That is, until two years ago when my then 6 year old son woke up crying in the middle of the night. I went to investigate, and he described the same void black figure with red eyes and claws for fingers leaning over him in his bed, smiling. He had the same nightmare every night for a month, and wouldn’t sleep alone. They finally stopped when we got him worry dolls, and dream catchers. We have to replace them every few months, or the nightmares start up again.