Friday, October 30, 2009

Once upon a dream

Whenever I was pregnant I had a recurring nightmare that sounds so foolish now how could it possibly have been so terrifying then?

It goes like this. In my dream I would awake in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. I'd walk in the room and flip the light switch. Nothing would happen, I'd think maybe the power was out. But somehow I knew that wasn't it. I could see the light from the neighbor's porch through my window. I would try the switch again, nothing. The hairs on the back of my neck would stand on end and I knew, I knew it was a malevolent presence keeping the lights off. I would run from room to room trying to turn on the lights, all to no avail. I would try to call out for Mr. O to help me but I could never make any sounds come. {Shudder}

One night I awoke from this dream for my middle of the night bathroom run. You can imagine my surprise and terror when I flipped the switch and nothing happened (freak power outage), I'm pretty sure I gave Mr. O his first crop of grays with all my screaming/freaking out that night. Poor man.

Two years years ago, right after things had settled down for us medically speaking, I would find myself waking to Mr. O shaking my shoulder. He said I'd been screaming in my sleep and it had scared the dickens out of him. I couldn't tell him what had made me scream.

The next night, my screaming woke me up. I was frantically directing Mr. O to turn on the light, turn on the light! I wouldn't open my eyes in the dark and let what I had just felt--the presence of a male adolescent standing over me--be there. I knew he'd been there, but I didn't want to see him.

The third night, my screaming woke me again. It felt like an out-of-body experience and that I couldn't possibly be making that sound, the sound of someone terrified, in pursuit. I looked up into the dark and saw him - the shadow of a young man standing next to my bed looking down at me.

I realized that he didn't mean me any harm, but it was disconcerting and I put a stop to it. I came up with a logical explanation, rearranged the furniture next to my bed (obviously it was casting strange shadows, right?) and never saw him again. Phew!

Thinking about it still gets my heart to racing though. How about you? Do you have any spooky stories? Unexplained phenomena? More scary stories here. Also the source of my night terrors.