Throughout my life, I've often experienced strange things in the middle of the night, but have almost always passed them off as coincidences or figments of my imagination. I also consider myself a religious person - not religious to the extent of claiming a certain denomination, but most certainly spiritual. I abide by the rules of Christianity, but believe that, essentially, we all worship the same higher power regardless. So every time these strange happenings occurred, I would pray, and eventually, I would feel as though I was able to go back to sleep.
Some of the things I am about to tell you, I realize, are a bit unbelievable. I do not expect most of you to find this plausible; to be quite honest, before this sequence of events, I would not have believed the story, myself. But now I do not doubt the presence of a demon or ghost, most certainly this one.
There has only been one other time previous to this story that I confirm to myself that I felt the presence of a demon. I was very young, and was on a camping trip with my parents. My brother and I were sleeping in the same bed, but for some strange reason I could not get to sleep. While I was tossing and turning, I began to feel something creep into the room - I cannot describe the feeling as anything other than a chill working its way up my spine and remaining at the base of my neck. As soon as I felt it, I closed my eyes, thinking this would counteract the fear, but instead, all I saw in my closed eyelids was a pair of frightening demon eyes. I wish I could give you details on what this face looked like, but it is rather difficult for me to put into words. However, I can assure you that it evoked pure terror within me.
At this point I began to pray silently and tried to control my breathing. One of my elementary friends had told me once about demons and said that they fed off of one's fear; that the presence of a demon was meant simply to scare you and nothing else. However, the more I prayed, the more scared I felt. Eventually I sang "Jesus Loves Me" in a whisper, and the more I spoke aloud, the better I began to feel. And, all at once, the overhead light above the bed in the camper came on, unprovoked, and I instantly felt better. When I got up to turn it off, I noticed that the switch was still on OFF - I had to switch it to on and back off again for it to flip off. The switch never did it again, to my knowledge.
That was my first experience with what I consider a demon. The second, however, is much scarier and threatening than the first.
The second time was just in December of 2009. Then, I was 22 years old, and my son was 11 months old. My husband was working overnight shifts at that time, and I had just finished a semester of college, so I was on break for the time being. Two of my friends (whose names have been changed) and I decided that we would take a trip to my parents' lake house in Greers Ferry, Arkansas for the mid-week, just to get away and enjoy our time off. It was an early Christmas celebration of sorts.
While on the way, we passed by a certain clearing visible from the road which showed the beautiful lake down below. It was night, and the lake was shimmering with the moon's reflection. I motioned for my friend, Sarah, who was in the passenger's seat, to check it out, but she nervous and maybe a tad "out-of-it." I asked her what was wrong, and she whispered back, "nothing," and I let it go, figuring she was scaring herself.
Sarah had mentioned before that she was a spiritual person; that she had dreams that often came true and she could sense when something evil or good was around. I loved the girl to death, but this was a trait that I didn't believe was true. When she told her stories, I would nod my head and make all of the correct motions, but most of what she said went in one ear and out of the other. So when she became so pale in my passenger's seat, I passed it off as nothing and turned the music louder.
When we got to the house, we went inside and Sarah seemed to feel much better. Our friend Jack met us there, and for a while we simply unpacked and chatted and whatnot. We designated Jack's room - the room nearest the door and furthest away from me, Sarah's room - the room diagonal from mine, and mine and my son's room - my parents' bedroom, i.e., the master bedroom.
At first, Sarah discussed sleeping with me, junior high girl style, but for some odd reason she changed her mind when we got there. When I asked her why, she told me, politely, that she would just rather have a bed to herself for the night, as she'd been sleeping with people all week. I understood.
At around 8 o'clock, my son grew tired, so I put him to bed in my room and shut the door. He fell asleep for only around five minutes before he began to scream uncontrollably - it didn't make much sense to me, so I went to calm him down. He was sobbing, scared, and usually he falls right to sleep and sleeps for the rest of the night. After calming him down, I laid him back down and he went right to sleep, so I left Sarah to watch him while I ran to the store with Jack for some groceries.
When I got back, Sarah was frantic; as soon as I left, my son, Chase, began to cry uncontrollably again, and simply would not sleep. She told me that as long as she held him, he wouldn't cry, but as soon as she tried to put him to bed, he would become angry and upset. I attempted to put him to bed myself, but he began crying as soon as we crossed the room's threshold. So I took him back into the living room, rocked him to sleep, and finally laid him down to rest in his port-a-crib. Luckily, he stayed asleep, so we stayed up until watching movies and catching up and whatnot until about one o'clock. At this point, we decided we were tired and needed to go to bed.
I went to bed and fell asleep quickly, at first with no issues. However, I began to have quite a strange dream; I was in a bright room full of laughing people, but I, for some strange reason, was angry and did not want to be around them. So I passed through them and into the next room, a very copy of the same room, though empty, and sat down on the couch. I looked into the glass-top coffee table and saw my reflection, asleep. At this point I began banging on the coffee table to "wake it up", and the reflection's eyes opened to reveal bright red eyes just as the table shattered.
I woke up with a chill running up and down my spine. It was already there; it very well could have been watching me sleep. My son began to whine, scared, from the crib next to me. I had never heard a sound like that spill from his lips, and I haven't since. It was true terror. I glanced down at him, and he was still asleep, the sound still escaping from his lips. I rolled onto my back, as I felt safer in that position. The door to my bedroom was wide open, and the shadow behind the door, as odd as this sounds, just seemed abnormally dark to be a normal shadow. It was as if I was looking right at the presence. At this point, I began to tell myself that I was overreacting, that this was not actually happening, and attempted to go back to sleep.
I have experienced a strange sleeping disorder called "sleeping paralysis" since I was a child. The way this disorder manifests itself is by messing up your REM sleep; during normal REM sleep, which usually takes around 2 hours to begin, your body shuts off voluntary signals to the rest of your body and you basically become "paralyzed." Sleep Paralysis is a disorder in which the victim wakes up early, during a cycle of REM sleep, and finds herself unable to move for a few moments to a few minutes. Also, the body of a victim can go into REM sleep fairly quickly, sometimes within five minutes or so. Some actually experience strange visions during these episodes, but I never have.
However, that night, every single time I closed my eyes, it seemed, I would go straight into REM sleep and into sleep paralysis. Thus, I would be unable to move for a few moments. At some point, just after I broke the paralysis, I felt something against the corner of my bed; I felt something genuinely sit down on it and lean towards me. I sat up immediately and looked around, but nothing was there - by this point, Chase was softly crying in his sleep.
I called for my dog, but she had gone under the bed and would not come out. I began to feel scared; not only did I have the feeling that something was there, but Chase was upset, and so was my dog. She always slept on the bed with me. I looked back to the door, and the shadow seemingly had moved away from the door and closer to my bed, though obviously still against the wall. My breath caught in my throat; at this point, I knew something was here. I figured my best defense would be to pray and ignore, so I did just that. I prayed to God to save me, sang songs under my breath just as I did as a child, and closed my eyes so that he would not bother me. I curled up in the bed, and soothed myself slightly, but just as I felt myself beginning to feel alright, I felt a gust of hot breath against my face.
When I opened my eyes, nothing was there, but I needed no more excuses to leave the room. I called my dog, who came forth willingly this time, and grabbed my baby and ran into Sarah's room. She was asleep, and at first I didn't want to wake her up, but when I glanced down at the phone and saw the time - 3:45AM - I knew that there was no way I could deal with this demon peacefully.
I woke her up, and when she saw my face, I didn't have to say anything. She immediately helped me get Chase's port-a-crib out of the room - with the light on, no less - as quickly as possible, and we set up in her room, which had a tiny twin bed that we both slept on that night. However, as we turned to shut her bedroom door, it seemingly wouldn't shut; every time we pulled it closed, it would open back up again, and she mentioned that there was a strange resistance, as if someone was pulling the doorknob from the other side. Finally, however, we got it shut and locked.
We discussed quite a few things that night, one being that, while we were on our way there, and she turned pale like she did, she had just recalled a dream from the night before. In the dream she was driving through the forest, and just after seeing a lake, passing through a mass of trees that turned into the mouth of a demon. This scared me. She also revealed to me that the reason she didn't want to sleep with me wasn't because she wanted room, but was because that room, for some reason she couldn't explain, scared her. We prayed together for a long time, and finally, I fell asleep. When Chase awoke the next morning, I got up with him, and we played and were normal and happy and everything. At around 10 AM, however, I began to feel abnormally cranky. Usually I am not a very angry person, but for some odd reason, the feeling crept up on me without any provocation. I felt on edge all the time; I figured it must have been from the lack of sleep. My friends were still asleep themselves.
I went back into the bedroom from the night before to grab a diaper so that I could change Chase, who was in my arms. When I made my way back to the door, he turned and looked over my shoulder at something and smiled - and then proceeded to laugh hysterically. I turned around, but nothing was there. Needless to say, I high-tailed it out of there, shut the door tightly, and didn't go back for the rest of the day.
Later, however, my anger got to me; Chase wouldn't nap. I put him down in his crib and yelled at him to "SHUT UP!" an act I normally NEVER do. As a matter of fact, I don't believe I have told him to "shut up" whatsoever before this incident or afterwards since. I was strangely angry, shaking, and nervous. Sarah got out of bed at this point and told me to go take a nap, as she was worried about me. When I woke up, I was fine, but I was able to recognize that something had most certainly been wrong with me before. However, the feeling never returned, so I passed it off as nothing.
Later that night, we were cooking, and the smoke alarm went off. Here's the only problem - there are two smoke alarms, one of which is in the kitchen, and the other is just by that bedroom door, clear across the house. We tried to pass it off jokingly, but I could tell we were all scared, even Jack. Jack believed in and loved to see supernatural things, so that night he offered to stay with me. However, we moved into the room next to it, with two twin beds, and slept there instead. I was nervous, however, so I made him close the other bedroom door tightly, as well as ours, and Chase went to sleep just fine, unlike the night before, and I began to drift off, as well. However, just as I did so, I heard a loud CRASH from outside the door. I glanced at Jack, who looked back at me, his eyes as big as dinner plates, and we both began to laugh nervously. I remember him saying "surely not," but since I was nervous, I asked him to please shut the closet doors. He did so, and while he was up, he mentioned that he was going to open our door to see if the other bedroom door was open.
It was wide open, he said, and moving back and forth, as if it had slammed against the wall. I got up to check and saw the same, and both of us were very scared; Sarah joined us soon. Sarah, Jack, and I proceeded to talk about other scary experiences we'd had with things like this in the past, and somehow got on the topic of God, who we all believed in. We began to share our enjoyable experiences with God and began to laugh a little, as well as sing tunes that we remembered from our younger days. Sarah and I talked, explaining what our ideas of angels were like, and discovered that, the night before, we had both dreamed of angels. And I remember one thing for sure - at exactly the same time, all of our eyes light up, and we stared at each other in astonishment.
Sarah and I said in unison, "It's gone." The weight - a weight I was unaware had even been there until that moment - on my chest was completely gone, and I was able to breathe again. I went to sleep with no issues and drove home in the morning.
I believe the demon followed me home, as much milder occurrences happened there at night, and Jack told me I should go out and tell it that it wouldn't scare me, as I was a child of God, and so was my child, and the demon was claiming no victims here. I did it, and I'm proud to say that I have not felt that presence or even that creepy feeling - which I used to get perhaps once a month beforehand - ever since.
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