My first experience, as far as I can recall, was in our first home in Adelaide, South Australia. We were renting in the city centre. A lot of the buildings in Australia in those days had been built by English convicts. I don't know if that's relevant or not.
In the old flat there was a small living room, my parents' bedroom and a dining room which we three sisters used as a bedroom. Next to our room was a lean-to made of corrugated iron which housed a tiny kitchen, then a cement trough for washing clothes then a dingy shower cubicle. The toilet was outside.
I used to have a lot of 'nightmares' in that flat. One night, I 'woke up' and felt the bed slowly split in half across the middle and I slipped down through it to... I don't know where. On the floor under the bed? I was never sure where I went. There was no bump or thump, always a soft landing. Once down, I was trapped. I raised my hand over my head and felt a resistance. It was the same when I felt to the sides, in front and behind me. I was boxed in. I slept in a double bed with my older sister and tried calling out for help but couldn't wake her. I could not understand why it was only me who slipped down through the opening in the mattress and not the both of us.
There was a small window in the wall between my parents' room and ours and I always slept next to the wall so I would feel closer to them. Whenever I fell through the bed, I screamed and my parents would flick on their light switch and come running into our room. But, as soon as their light shone through that little window, I found myself back in bed.
The first time this happened, I actually soiled myself, I guess from fear. It was easy for my parents to presume that the 'nightmare' was caused by my need to use the bathroom in my sleep. That presumption scared me more than the experience itself. They cleaned me up and we all went back to bed.
But the next night, I had a similar experience. I felt myself slide down through the middle of the mattress again. I told myself "I'm dreaming. Get up and go back to bed!" To my pleasant surprise... I was able to do just that! The following night, again I found myself slowly going down. I tried to get up but unlike the previous night, I couldn't. I was boxed in again. I screamed out to my parents and the light came on and again I was back in bed by the time they rounded the corner. Naturally, my parents wrote it off as child nightmares because they always found me in bed. However, I'm sure that I was fully conscious and aware.
I got used to the experience and stopped screaming with fear; I just called out and waited until I found myself back in bed. However, apart from that one time, I couldn't free myself from being boxed in until the light went on in my parents' room. Another night, I called out to them but when their light came on, I didn't find myself back in bed! I was still boxed in when they came in. Not finding me in bed, they looked around and couldn't see me anywhere. They called out in panic when they couldn't see me anywhere, and I told them that I thought I was under the bed, but not sure. They told me to come out but I was still boxed in. I told them I couldn't move because I was trapped and they would have to come and get me. As soon as they got down on their knees and looked under the bed, I was "released" from the boxed in feeling and they helped me to crawl out.
The bed was an old second hand brass bed which was a lot higher off the floor than beds are these days. My sister was asked if she felt me crawl over her and pull myself down off the bed each night but she never saw or heard anything at all.
I can't honestly remember how old I was at the time. I'm guessing between 4 and 6 years old. I can tell you that I was too young to know about ghosts or spirits or anything of the like. My parents had never told us any "monster" stories and we had no TV in those days to watch horror movies. I have never believed that I was experiencing nightmares or that I was sleep walking because I was so fully aware.
To this day, I do not believe that I physically crawled over my sister without ever being heard by her or my parents. Even if I was able to, what was going on with the boxed in feeling? The experience was not exactly the same each time. Was there a nasty game being played with me by a presence of some sort?
I was relieved when it finally stopped. But not long after, something else started up. There was one more experience in that flat which I will write about in Part 2. This time, I actually saw a presence. Could the two experiences be related? I don't know!
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Thank you all for your comments and I apologise for taking so long to come back.
I've learned a bit about residual feelings here on site and am still trying to learn more about it. Makes sense though, thanks.
And yes, it doesn't suggest a ghost just yet but a presence soon followed which you will see in part 2. I may be wrong, but I wrote this up first because I think it might relate to the presence in some way or other. I'm anxious for any opinions, at all. I don't think it was lucid dreams or sleep walking but I respect that opinion, too.
As for the bed, well that's something that never crossed my mind. Perhaps somebody had died in it who had feelings of being trapped or was later even buried alive! Horrible thought but makes sense.
That suggestion brings me back to the recurring thought that those old homes were mostly built by convict labourers. Most were good people whose only crime was being poor. They had been transported from England for simply stealing a loaf of bread to feed their kids. So those people would certainly have had very strong emotions and/or feelings of being trapped. Perhaps someone had literally been buried alive somewhere close by.
Thanks, gives me a lot to think about.
Jav, lots of things occurred in our next home also but given my age, this affected me the most. Any suggestion you can come up with will be appreciated. ❤