Odd Dreams
From: Story type: Ghost Location: My house Source: Form Submission Date submitted: Sun Oct 28 19:19:24 2007
This happened awhile back when I was younger; around the age of 7 or 8 I think.
I used to be a heavy sleeper when I was a baby. My mother and father both agree that I never gave them too much trouble at night. That all changed when I turned about 6 or 7. I started "sleepwalking" for lack of a better word, ending up either in my own bed or somewhere else around the house.
One night when I was sleepwalking, I remembered what I was doing. My memories of the event are slightly different because I was in a sort of trance when I was walking around, but the general physical setting of my house and where I was walking was real.
I woke up suddenly from either a dream or a nightmare, feeling as if something was watching me or was close to me. In the corner of my eye, I could a presence shifting within the darkness, but I couldn't make out what it was exactly. I remember feeling frightened when I first woke up but after a moment I became more curious than anything. Let me remind you that when I say "I woke up," I didn't necessarily wake up, but was rather caught in that odd trance of being half awake and half dreaming.
The shadowy presence shifted itself slowly into the entrance of my room, waiting at the threshold, as if looking back at me and wondering if I was going to follow. I did, standing from my bed and walking towards my door. The shadowy presence had already disappeared and was standing at the end of the hallway at the top of the steps, again looking back at me.
As I flipped on my light in my room to partially illuminate the hallway, maybe just to get a glance of what this presence was, it quickly made haste down the stairs silently to avoid the light. I walked down to the end of the hallway and peered down the stairs, seeing the presence waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Again, I flipped the hallway light on to see down the stairway, but the presence was gone yet again.
This song and dance continued as I made my way two levels downward into my basement. Back when I was younger, my basement was set up with three rooms: The first room was directly ahead, which was the laundry room; the second room, which was to the immediate left, was the living area; in the very corner of the basement was an area dubbed "the toy room," which was where my mother had her sewing machine and my brother and I stored our toys and other playthings.
When I had turned almost every light on in the house just to catch a glimpse of this presence, I found myself in the basement of the house. The presence was either sitting or standing(stationary) in the middle of the room, and as I went to flip on the light switch to the living area, I stopped. I realized that if I were to do that, I wasn't going to see this presence. It was almost as if this presence knew I wasn't going to turn on the light, as it made no attempt to move anywhere else.
I approached the presence slowly, still not being able to discern any features even after advancing to but a few feet from the presence. I reached out slowly and touched the presence; it was cool and damp, actually leaving my finger slightly moist from the touch. There was a moment where neither of us did anything; we just stood there looking at each other. I mean, I was looking at it...not entirely sure if it was looking back at me.
Eventually the presence moved into the darkness of the toy room, but I did not follow. For some reason I felt that I wasn't supposed to follow into the toy room as the toy was the only part of the house that I seemed to fear when it was dark. I tried to find the presence within the darkness of the toy room, but could not. I then laid down on the couch and fell asleep after a little while.
I awoke to my mother waking up and giving me a lecture about how electricity costs money. She was more curious about why I turned on all the lights in the house in the first place. I didn't really remember at first, but during the course of the day it came back to me. I didn't think about it as much at first; I was a kid, and not much phased me. As I thought about a few times more when became older, I started to realize just how odd that dream really was.
Was the presence real? When I awoke that morning, my finger still felt cool and damp like it did the night before when I touched the presence. Was I simply dreaming? There are a few pieces to this puzzle that I feel you must know.
My best friend since 7th grade always told me that our toy room creeped him out. As a believer in ghosts, he would always say that he felt like something was watching him when he was in or near the room. There were very few times he ventured into the toy room because of this. I shrugged it off and didn't think too much about it because I never really believed in ghosts or spirits.
Interestingly enough, my parents renovated the basement, and the toy room was turned into my bedroom. You know how people say that rooms that are haunted are usually colder? Not my room. The basement used to be cold, but now its probably one of the warmest rooms in the house oddly enough. My friend still can't be in my bedroom, and usually gets freaked out when there is a noise or a shift of air within my new living area.
I'm not really sure what I believe when I think about everything, but I have been known to wake up during the middle of the night and act a certain way. Within a few moments, I'll realize where I am and what I'm doing and wake up, so I guess what I experienced could've been some sort of sleepwalking dream. Maybe?