Real Ghost Story: What Happens When I Sleep? – I recently moved a long way away from home into university. I’m used to using sage regularly due to my use of crystals and tarot cards. However the halls I’m staying in are only 2 years old, and have an incredibly sensitive smoke detection system. Due to this, I haven’t used my sage, or properly cleansed my crystals, which I was fine with as I have been using my cards for a number of years, and am always wearing amethyst. But I’m not sure I feel safe anymore.
About 2 weeks ago I started waking up in the pitch black. I jolt up the way you do when you realise you’re late for work, with that rush of adrenaline. But every time I check my phone it’s 4am. On the dot, not a minute later, and I’d stay wide awake until my alarm woke me at 7:30, only then I’d realise I must have slept somehow.
I could deal with this, I thought, new place, new anxiety. Then something else started.
The first time, I woke up, around 3:30, disorientated and confused, more so that it wasn’t 4am than at being woken up. I remember looking in the shadows around me, I just had this feeling of ‘wrong’. When my eyes focused, I halted my breathing. I saw a large humanoid dark figure standing, facing my bed, it had its left hand in the air, I call it a hand because I could see fingers, or something that looked like fingers. It seemed to get bigger the longer I stared. I heard a loud hissing noise, and in my sleep deprived state I thought of air freshener. Odd, but as I started to wake up I realised this was because I could smell something awful, like rotten cheese or sulphuric eggs. I must have blacked out because I jolted my eyes open to drowsily see it walking away towards my wardrobe (and the door to my room) with slowed walking and slouched shoulders. I shouted something (my flatmate later said it sounded like “no”) but then I woke up at 4, as had become the norm. I didn’t know whether I should trust myself or write it off as some kind of bad dream, all I knew was that I was scared, and I felt physically awful.
The next day I was violently ill, tremors, vomiting, I couldn’t sleep. And there was a dreadful pounding in my head that paracetamol and ibuprofen wouldn’t relieve. The more I thought about it, the more I came to think that this figure had something to do with this unexplained and extremely sudden illness. But I still wasn’t entirely convinced, I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t see it again until 2 days later, same hissing, same figure, but this time it was closer to me, and the smell burned my nose. Again, I became sick, and all I could taste was rotten eggs like the smell was stuck up my nose. The third time was Sunday night, and almost exactly the same – he keeps getting closer.
I don’t know if this is some kind of sleep paralysis, or delusion, or something else. I have suffered with depression in the past, perhaps it’s linked, although I’m not on any kind of medication. I know I’ll just sound crazy, so I haven’t told anyone, I often talk in my sleep (so I’m told) so I can easily fake not remembering my shouts. But I’m scared, each time he has been getting closer to my bed, what happens when he reaches me? Or what if it truly is just some kind of psychosis? Do I trust my fuzzy, sleepy state? I am truly at a loss, I haven’t seen it in 2 nights and I’m scared to go to sleep. Please, I would appreciate any feedback you can give.