Things I Can't Seem To Explain

I have always been what you would call "sensitive" to things that most people have no awareness of. My mom would tell me that when I was young, I would be talking to someone in my room, or she would walk past and could hear me giggling as if playing with someone else. I don't recall much of that, but as I've gotten older (24 now), things have progressed and now, I'm wondering if I'm in some sort of danger.

Even when I was young I always hated walking in the dark, be it indoors or out, because I always felt as if someone were following me. That pit in the bottom of my stomach, the rise to my throat, and a cold chill that almost feels like a cold sweat breaks across my face. This still happens 3-4 times a week if I walk in the dark. Usually I'm pretty good about having some sort of light with me. Honestly, I'm not scared of the dark, just uncomfortable.

The first direct (not just the feeling of someone being around me) experience I can recall was when I was about 19. I was sleeping at my parents' house, and I woke up because I thought someone had touched my face. I rolled over and there was this small black figure on the corner of my bed near my face. It was shaped like a basketball, and about the same size. When I rolled over, it was briefly there, then it jumped from my bed so hard that it pushed it in to the head board that I had lining the side of my bed. I screamed in terror, my parents ran in, but nothing was seen. My dad told me that I was just having a nightmare, but I knew I felt my whole bed move and my headboard had items knocked off of it.

Last year I started having nightmares. Most of the time I couldn't remember exactly what they were about, but I would wake up extremely worried, with my heart racing, and usually in a deep sweat. For the most part, these were only a few times a month.

Last July I moved in to my apartment in Elk Grove, CA. I lived alone in my 1 bedroom space, and for the most part, the community is very quiet. Like most people my age, my cell phone is never far from me. I would leave it on my night stand, and often use it as my alarm to wake up in the mornings. Every time, and I mean every time, my alarm would go off while it was sitting on my night stand, I would roll over to turn it off. When I roll over, I hear this gut wrenching scream in my ear that sends chills down my spine. Each time I would leap from my bed and to the light switch. Now I sleep with my phone actually ON my bed and no longer have the problem. When it goes off, I can grab it with no problems.

This March, when my good friend needed a place to live, I upgraded my apartment to a 2 bedroom so that she could stay in the other. Since I moved, things have progressed much, much more.

My room mate has a dog. The dog will often sit and stare at odd places of my room and sometimes the living room. When she comes in to my room, she always stares at one particular corner, towards the ceiling, and growls.

I've awoken numerous times with cold sweats and chills, and even crying. Every couple of weeks, I have strange marks appear on my body. They look like scratch marks, but never break the skin. The most recent are a set of 2 approximately 2 inch long, very thin scratches on the front of my right shoulder. They almost look as if they're bruises. They appeared yesterday morning. Any time that I've received these scratches, I've never felt myself get injured and have never done anything in the days close to the injuries to explain them.

Today I came home and walked in to my room. My closet light was on which is very odd considering I did not go in to my closet before I left. I went to my restroom that is inside of my bedroom to take a shower. The last time I was in the shower/tub, I had taken a bubble bath. When I turned the water on, it went straight to shower status.

I laid down to go to sleep and heard something move near my bed. I assumed the dog had come in to my room since my room is usually the coolest in the house by about 7-10 degrees. Just as I was starting to doze off, my entire bed began to shake. I jumped out of my bed and ran towards the door and turned on the light. I realized then that my door was shut, and the dog had not been in my room to make the noise. When I opened the door to come out, the dog was on the other side of it growling and staring into my room.

I asked my room mate if she had been in there or if anybody else may have and she said no, trying to explain the light and the shower. I told her about my bed, and she stopped me in my tracks. She said that this weekend while I was out of town she was in her room on her computer. She heard a banging/knocking sound coming from the rest of the house. She came out and saw nothing except the light coming from under my door. I was gone, and no lights should have been on.

She described the sound as if someone were jiggling a door in the door jamb trying to open it. I have yet to walk back in to my room, she won't go near it, and the dog... Well she is just lying between me (on the couch) and the door to my bedroom, staring at the door. At one point she walked to the door and pressed her nose against it very hard, and began snorting. She barked once, growled a little, then positioned herself between me and the door once again.

From what I've read, ghosts are tied to locations, and rarely to people, but at this point I just have no explanations. I can't sleep in my own room and at this point, don't know what to do next.