HHi, I'm ©Œnter¢o®€. This happened to me a long time ago, in the 8th grade (I'm graduating now). This could be classified as sleep paralysis, a dream, a hallucination, or anything else. But there was certainly much more to it than that.
One day I was lying on the couch in my family room. The day was serene, no storms, no rain, just bright weather, and my TV was on. The volume wasn't very clamorous; At that point I was trying to sleep. But either way, suddenly I couldn't move. I knew I had fallen asleep for a while. I tried to get up, but not only did I feel tied to the couch, but I also had a strange feeling that something was watching me. I know it sounds weird, it wasn't FEELING hallucinatory, but it wasn't. I really had this strange feeling that there was someone else nearby and I was the only one at home.
As I lay there, it wasn't long before I heard a strange cough in the living room (I was in the family room). I could move my eyes and definitely open them a little wider for sleep paralysis. I began to notice a shadow traveling across the linoleum, creeping to the beginning of the carpet in the family room. The lithe above the dining room table was on, as was the kitchen lithe, where it cast a shadow. Before anything else could happen, I was wide awake when the phone rang. I jumped up from the couch, rubbed my eyes and ran to the phone, not thinking about what had just happened.
As soon as I got to the phone, I noticed something strange about the caller ID. An odd number was displayed. I knew it couldn't be a phone number. But I picked up the phone and put it to my ear. “Hi?” – I mumbled. I heard a strange noise, similar to what you hear when the person on the other end isn't talking, and it was just a inert buzzing. “Hi?!” I called again. This time I heard the inhalation of a voice that was about to say something. “Your day is going to be weird.” I heard a raspy Scooby Doo villain voice. Then there was a strange clicking sound, almost as if they had disconnected. I heard two more clicks and just as I was about to hang up, “Now this is getting weirder…”
I was too surprised to speak, so I listened for a while longer. I heard more rustling, like the caller was fumbling with the phone cord or something. Then, faster than the previous line, He/She/It said, “Now this is getting really weird…” And then I heard more rustling, and then another voice joined them, and they both moaned, and then one (the more “normal” one) he said, “That's pretty much what he said in the movie, right?” And then: “Exactly.”
Then, almost immediately, the only sound was a dial tone. I slowly put my phone down and looked around a bit. It's just a dream, right? Well, I wasn't sure. You know when you are awake and when you are dreaming. In a dream, you cannot fully understand the world around you. Strange and inexplicable things are happening. In real life, when you're awake, you just know it. I wasn't dreaming. But then I checked the caller ID and gasped. This conversation was not recorded in the caller history.
I heard another strange sound upstairs. It was the same cough I had heard before. It sounded unhealthy, as if whoever it was was about to vomit. I gathered some courage and headed towards the stairs in the huge living room. My mom was at work and my dad lived in Denver (we lived in Castle Rock, CO). Of course, I wasn't alone. It felt like forever before I reached the top of the stairs and looked around for whatever was making the coughing sound I heard. It would be reasonable to guess that someone was playing a prank on me, but I had no friends (or enemies) at the time, so it baffled me. I did not detect any signs of forced entry anywhere in the house. All the doors and windows were closed, there was no broken glass anywhere, and the basement door was always closed and locked.
I briefly peeked into my mother's room, and when I found it empty, I walked through the miniature hallway to the laundry room. It was barely substantial enough for one person and quite obscure. There's no way anyone was there. The only option left was to search my room and the guest room, which were on either side of the laundry room and connected by a long bathroom. I heard two feet moving somewhere. I dared to enter the guest room because as a child I always felt a strange presence there (that's another story). But then I began to wonder if that same presence had materialized as a ghost. I immediately scolded myself for such a bizarre thought. But then it seemed as if something – some voice or force responded to my thoughts. I crept into the guest room and looked around. I didn't feel as robust a presence now as I always did, but it was definitely there.
The room was as it always was – a made bed, unused for over six years, a dusty bookcase littered with remnants of the good ancient days, and a miniature blue shelf with a lamp. Then I looked at the bathroom door. Until now, it always seemed like I heard strange noises coming from the guest room and bathroom every time I approached them. But my mother never said anything about it. I may never know if she heard these things or not, but I know she did. The guest room used to belong to my sister when she lived with us. When she moved out, I always felt this strange presence there. Now, as I crawled towards the bathroom door, I felt a strange chill run through my body. Not from excitement, but from sudden and inexplicable fear.
I got closer and closer until my teeth were almost chattering. I've never felt like this before. It was about 50°F in the house that day and it was summer. I felt uncomfortably sultry all day and all week. I closed my eyes, swallowed, opened them again, and looked into the bathroom, where I found… Nothing out of the ordinary. Light streamed in through a miniature rectangular window, the bathtub was glowing, the sink at the other end of the room was still (sometimes it dripped for no reason), and overall the strange feeling seemed to have subsided. What was that all about!? Wait, wait, something was weird…. First, I went to the mirror to make sure there was nothing weird about me. No, it's not strange at all. I just stared at my reflection for a moment, then turned around when I heard a strange noise coming from the bathtub.
The sound of a miniature piece of something hitting the bathtub floor caught my attention. Then two more. Then the sound of a larger piece hit the floor. Then three more medium-sized ones. I turned and looked out from behind the half-wall separating the two sides of the room. What the hell? The tile wall began to fall apart. A huge section of the wall was gone, just off the corner. After a while, a piece fell off, revealing a miniature hole. Then more fell off around it, increasing the size of the hole. I stepped back, ready to defend myself. But a few minutes passed and the crumbling stopped. When everything seemed serene enough, I slowly took a step towards the bathtub.
I got into the tub and kept my eyes on the hole, afraid to look away in case it was a hallucination and it disappeared. I blinked. It was still there. I reached out to touch the edge and it definitely wasn't eyes playing tricks on me. I looked inside the pitch black hole and suddenly saw a pale white arm slide through the hole from the other side. It was like someone was standing on the left side of the hole, against the wall, and he scratched his cheek or something, and his arm fell back to his side. That's the best way to put it. Afraid to take a closer look inside, I stepped back. I heard the person sitting there exhale and instead of running away, I angrily said, “What do you want?” But no one answered. In fact, the strange feeling of having a presence around me suddenly disappeared. I walked over to the hole and prepared to stick my head in and look around. But pain shot through my head as I hit a solid wall. I closed my eyes in pain and rubbed the spot, then looked up. The hole disappeared.
