As a child, I went with my family to one of those “park your car and wait for the ghost” type attractions in rural Illinois.
The memory of exactly what happened is distorted by fear, but I will type the event as I can recount. As we parked idly on that gravel road by the cemetery, the fabled lantern appeared in the distance, perhaps 100 meters away, and slowly drew closer. Once our mother, the driver, decided the ominous light was a little too close – and likely fearing that the lantern’s carrier was a dangerous individual stalking the night – she took the car through a U-shaped dirt path through the cemetery itself.
Being a kid, I unbuckled my seatbelt and turned to look out our rear window. Through the passing headstones, I saw the lantern burst into a column of fire, and then darkness. It and its carrier had vanished.
As we were exiting the cemetery through dense woods, another shock came as my mother slammed the brakes. A speeding truck passed right in front of us, and we were an instant away from being T-boned. Or so it seemed… once we caught our breath and resumed, it became clear that the truck had come from nowhere. No road, not even a gap between trees big enough for one. Came from nothing and went into nothing.
I dont have an experience that scarred me, but I did have one yesterday actually.
So I am a teacher and I was in my classroom at 7: 30am. The lights in my room turn off if it doesn’t sense motion for a while. Alright, no biggie I’m on my computer anyway.
However, out of the corner of my eye as I’m looking at some papers, it looks like an animal is walking from the entrance of my door to one of my students desks. It lasted a good 3-5 seconds. I looked up and of course nothing is there, but I got a weird feeling after. I would say the shadow was the size of a small dog.
Couldn’t have been an old pet because we never had pets that size and mainly cats. Also, I checked the hallway and no one was walking by. Nobody was walking by my window either. Just a weird shadow.
I used to, still do but less frequently, have terrible sleep paralysis. Like you know you are asleep and trying to wake up but can’t, it was awful.
Once I had really terrible nightmares for over a week, and hence sleep paralysis too. I used to sleep facing the door so it went something like this:
Day 1:- Saw a child standing at the doorway. Just watching me.
Day 2:- He brought someone with him and hurried to me, I couldn’t see the kid’s face but he took my hand. I woke up in cold sweat. I could barely breathe.
Day 3:- The kid was standing near me and there was a dead body beside my bed and the child whispered a name. I tried to wake up but couldn’t. It was horrible.
Day 4:- The kid was now accompanied by atleast 15 people and a horribly disfigured dog and the dead body just kept staring at me.
And so on it went, getting worse everyday. So, after 10 days I refused to go to sleep. Didn’t sleep for almost 2 days when my mom forced me to lie down in the afternoon. She said it’s not night and I’m right beside you. So, despite not wanting to, I went to sleep.
As soon as I was in half slumber I saw two black shadows near the door and when I looked at them directly they were on the ceiling and in the next breath on top of me. One was holding my legs and the other was sitting on chest, it’s hand around my neck. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, even though my mom was just a few inch beside me. She must have sensed something was wrong though because before I could pass out she woke me up.
Still don’t sleep facing the door.
Ooh, do I have one. So, one night in 2017 i think, middle of summer, I woke up at 3: 33 AM. I look at my door, and I can see an eye and a part of a hand peeking in. I live alone. I turn on the light on my phone, nothing. I go back to sleep. Next night, I woke back up at 3: 33 AM. This time, I see the whole head, a shoulder, etc. So I turn on the light, gone. I stay up, fall asleep after sunrise. Next night, 3: 33 AM. The whole thing is in the doorway, and when I turn on the light, it lunges at me, disappears at the foot of my bed, then I black out.
When I was younger I shared a room with my 2 sisters and they like to sleep with are door open. When the door was open you could see the small piece of wall which had the light switch on it. When it was the middle of the night I would wake up and see what looked like the grim reaper standing there watching us sleep at that wall. It was terrifying. From the moment it appear I would have the most vivid and realistic nightmares of my whole life. It continued for a whole year or so and then it just disappeared. I am now an adult an I can’t bear to sleep with my door open to this day.