Haunted Closet Or Sleep Paralysis

Here's another experience that I wanted to share since long... But had been too lazy and would 'haunt' this site, reading other stories, but never putting mine down.

Around 2009-2010, I shifted to a new apartment and that is when I experienced sleep paralysis/old hag for the first time. Unlike what many posters here say though, I was never awake. I would be deep in sleep and feel an entity "trying to take my soul down with it". Though a writer by profession, that is one feeling I can't yet put into words properly. I would feel like my soul and life was being sucked into some whirlpool of sorts and would wake up tired and groggy after 9-10 hours of sleep!

The experiences worsened when I got pregnant. In fact, one day, I was asleep at about 8-8.30 am, I experienced the usual attack.

I felt like I had somehow managed to escape and walked up to the door of my bedroom, but a force pushed me back in. When I finally did walk out, I walked through the hallway to the kitchen to find strangers cooking in there. They took no notice of me, but I could see a whole bunch of strangers inhabiting my apartment. It was like some parallel universe because my family was nowhere to be seen and I was the only one from this realm in that apartment! That was the freakiest feeling, and I am getting goosebumps recalling it, 5 years later, today.

Then I went back to my bedroom and prayed fervently--that's when I woke up finally and found myself in 'our world'. The soul sucking continued until one day, I had a dream in which I saw my family deity (again...had such a dream before when I was being troubled by the paranormal around year 2000, when I was in MD, US) saying there was an evil entity in the space where my closet was-right next to my bed. (I know... The classic monster in the closet... Sounds cliche...LoL). That morning I stuck a picture of Goddess Durga (who also happens to be a form of my family deity) and prayed to it and over the closet. The 'soul sucking' incidents immediately stopped. No more apartment hijacks by strangers from the other realm. End of story. Touchwood, I lived in that apartment until June of this year, without a single episode. Carried that picture I'd stuck on the closet door to my new apartment, framed it and pray to it everyday:). Hope you guys found this story interesting.