Since I was a child, I was always scared of being alone in my room. I never slept alone. I always had nightmares, night terrors and just general feelings of fear. My parents never understood why, but I always slept with them or I made my mom come and sleep with me.
Every single night spent in my room led to nightmares. It never stopped. It started when I was 4. It’s been 12 years. Every single night I have really disturbing nightmares.
I remember the very first nightmare, the one that started it all : I was all alone in my apartment because my mom was at the hospital and my dad was buying groceries, and I would start to panic and try to open the door but it was closed (even though it’s the kind of door you can always open from the inside) and I would cry as a horrible man would get out of the TV, hold me and say “I’m here, I will never leave so don’t you dare leave me”. He didn’t lie. He never left me and he was involved in most of my nightmares.
I saw therapists, psychiatrists and all kind of doctors, trying to solve the problem I had with sleep. I always believed that the problem came from me. Spoiler : nothing solved the problems. Nothing stopped the nightmares. I just got used to it. I started sleeping alone at 12. The feelings of fear, of being watched and the nightmares just became part of my daily life. Just like the coldness of my room, the hands that would grab me in my sleep and in the middle of the day, and the corner besides my closet that felt like it was never empty. I always thought that I was just paranoid, that I was watching too many scary movies and that my imagination was too wild.
Then I noticed that when I slept in other rooms, other houses, I never had nightmares or anything like that. For exemple, right now I am in vacation and I haven’t had a single nightmare since I got here.
Then the phenomenon got worse : as soon as I closed my eyes, when I was wide awake in the middle of the day, I would think about a hanged man. I would just see him but it was like someone was forcing me to think about him. I started to hear voices. I got strangled in my sleep once : I felt someone trying to strangle me but no one was there ! I thought I was going crazy but the marks on my pale neck started to make me think that something really was wrong. One time, I was hinding my plate of food in my closet, pretending I was going to eat it in my room (I had some problems with food at that time). I went to the bathroom, came back and the plate was turned upside down and the food was splattered on the walls. And I started to think “maybe nothing is wrong with me. maybe there’s really… something in my room”. so I talked to my mom even though I didn’t want to scare her, but I thought that if there is really something weird going on, she might get hurt because she has a really weak health and she is the most vulnerable person in the house and she lived a lot of paranormal things. So she got scared but she also told me “I always felt something evil in your room but I didn’t want to scare you. I thought I was just being paranoid.” My big brother also told me several times that he hated my room, and he didn’t want to stay more that 5 minutes in it.
One time I had a friend over for the night and she didn’t want to sleep in my room, she said to me “I feel weird. Like someone’s watching me.” but she ended up sleeping in my room because she had no choice. But she woke up in the middle of the night, panting and with wet cheeks, and she asked if she could sleep in my bed with me. I let her in and asked her why, she said “I had the worst nightmare of my entire life” but when I asked her about it she didn’t want to tell more. To this day, she refuses to talk about it. I can understand her : the nightmares I usually have are really, really gross, unsettling, disturbing. More than any classic nightmare, but I just got used to it.
Things kept getting worse. Everytime I spent too much time in my room, I was evil. I would scream at my parents, tell them horrible things and make them cry. I would tell my mother “you’re a horrible mother”, she would cry and I would think “why did I even say that ? that’s not even true”.
And the phenomenon expended to the whole apartment : it was not just my room anymore. One time I was with her in the apartment, it was around midnight and we were watching TV. My dad was not here because he was at the mosque for a late night prayer. We heard three knocks on the door. I went to open the door, thinking it was my dad but everythink was dark and there was no one on the other side. I said to my mom that it must’ve been the wind. Then someone knocked on the door again. But this time it was really violent, it was like someone was kicking the door. I saw that my mom was started to get scared and since she is very anxious and has heart problems, I told her to stay in her room and I went to open the door. At this point I was not even scared, just pissed off so I open the door and, no one. I lied to my mom and told her that it was just stupid kids playing a prank on us. But I told her the truth two weeks later.
One time my dad got in a big rage and started yelling at the apartment. He said that he was sick of this apartment, that he wanted to move out, that he couldn’t stand anything about it. My mom and I agreed with him and he looked at us and there was this moment when everyone just understood. We needed to move out.
That’s just 1/10th of the story : I didn’t mention the random screams we heard coming from my room, the big noises, my dad who got kicked on the floor while he prayed and a lot of other stuff. Now we are actively looking for a house and I am just hoping our future house will be, well, ghost-free.
I’m sorry if I made any mistakes but English is not my first language, I’m French. If anyone had similar experiences they can talk to me, or even if they are just interested.
