My name is Karen. To start off, I don't think I have a problem, although, when I was younger, I used to think the end of the world was coming. I am the middle child and have one older brother and one younger sister. I was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and lived in a house on the south side until I turned eight.
I can't tell you when I started to notice weird things. When I was six years old, I was outside playing on my bike. My older brother was supposed to be watching me but as always, he left me behind to hang out with his older friends. There is four years between my brother and I. As he rode off on his bike to hang out with his friends, I tried to follow him. I don't remember much else of that day except that I, on my bike, went down my driveway to follow my brother and that's really the last thing I remember. Now, at the age of 22, I can recall staring up at the sky and hearing the sound of my own breathing. I faintly remember my brother by my side and I think he was crying. I had been hit by a speeding car that had turned into the neighborhood going close to 40 mph. I don't remember what happened after that and so, the only things I have to go on is what my brother and my parents have told me.
Apparently, I had a very good chance of dying. The doctors told my mother that I had severe bleeding in my brain and that it was swelling. Since my brain had begun to swell, the doctors told my parents that there was a good chance I wasn't going to wake up and that if I did, I might not be the same because of the brain damage. I had severe internal bleeding and was in a bad way. My parents were told that even if my body healed, I might not wake up and they might have to pull the plug on me.
My mother is Catholic and refused to give up on me. She called the entire family in and they all came to the hospital to perhaps, say goodbye. Miraculously, I didn't die. Even more unbelievable, I healed without any lingering problems. My grandmother, who is deeply religious, said it was because my time was not over. The only thing that bothers me, and still does to this day, are headaches.
They come randomly and will disappear just as quickly as they come. I've had my brain MRI'd and all that other good stuff and nothing is out of place except that I still experience horrible headaches. Soon after I came home from the hospital, we moved to the Edmond area as my parents didn't want to stay around the area that I almost died in. It was really at this point that I noticed weird things.
My parents aren't perfect and they did fight but they always made up. At this time, Edmond was a small town, nothing like the bustling town it is now. For the first time ever, I had my own room. The first couple of weeks, it was great! I had my own room that I didn't have to share and the house was huge! Soon after the excitement wore off, I started to get these horrible dreams. I'd never had a bad dream before this and I did everything I could to stay away from horror films because I didn't enjoy the feeling of being scared. It was always the same dream over and over. I was in this field of corn? Maybe even wheat, I'm not sure, the only thing I know is that it is higher than my head and I am always running.
I can hear whatever is chasing me running through the field after me and I never turned around because I felt that if I did, it would get me. I would dream of running through this field and finally clearing it and seeing this huge, old victorian house in front of me. I would run up to the house, up the steps, run in, and slam the door behind me. Then, I would feel the presence of whatever had chased me through the field, behind me. At this I would wake up. Eventually, it got to the point that the only dream that I would get was this nightmare.
My parents started having really bad fights. Really bad. In fact, every time they saw each other they would fight. My brother, sister, and I would stay in our rooms and stay as far away from them as possible. At the same time, I was still having the same nightmare over and over. One evening, after waking up from the same horrible nightmare, I heard what sounded like scratching on wood. I turned over in bed and looked towards my desk and saw an older woman standing at my desk, scratching it. She wore blacks and gray, or that's what it looked like in the moonlight, streaming from my window. She was just standing there, back towards me, scratching at my desk. I was so scared, I ran out of the room, and slept with my brother in the next room.
The next morning, I walked up to my desk and noticed long gouges on my desk. My mother saw it too and punished me for scraping up my desk. From then on, I hated going into my room. I always felt like somebody was watching me. My grades suffered. One day, in second grade, I walked home from the bus to my father telling me that my mother had left. She had taken all of her stuff and my little sister and disappeared without saying goodbye to me. Apparently, that's how bad it got between my father and her. My father became an alcoholic and a gambler. My grandmother decided to adopt me and took me in so I didn't have to be around my father, unfortunately, my brother had to live with my father.
After moving in my grandmother, things were okay for a little while until the dreams came back. Always the same dream. I put it out of my head and forced myself to stay focused. My mother had abandoned me, my father was useless, and my grandmother, for all her kindness, was old and I didn't want to be a burden. Every time I saw a flicker out of my peripheral, I told myself I didn't see it and that if I pretended it wasn't there, then it couldn't harm me. At this time, my headaches became almost unbearable but I managed.
Fast forward to when I was in 6th grade, my mother reappeared in my life. She bought a house and my grandmother and I moved in with my mother and my sister. My sister and I shared a room but it was no bid deal because I had a sister again. I had no dreams and no headaches for a couple of weeks and then they came back. I always slept with my door closed and when you open the door, you can always hear the rush of the a.c. Coming in to the room. As I was having the same nightmare one night, the sound of my door opening woke me up. I am a very light sleeper; a noise in the kitchen would wake me up. I tried to open my eyes and sit up to see who had come into my room but I couldn't move. I couldn't open my eyes, I couldn't talk, and I couldn't move, all this while my sister slept right next to me! Slowly, I heard whoever had come into my room come closer to me. I could hear their footsteps on the carpet. Yes, that's right, I could hear their footsteps on the carpet. I don't know if anyone else can but I definitely did.
Whatever it was, it moved my blanket up over my head and then slowly, moved it back down to lay around my belly button. Painfully, I managed to open my eyes in little slits. It was the same sensation as if I had just poked myself in the eye balls. I saw the figure of a man, dressed in a white shirt with a vest over it. I couldn't keep my eyes open and I yelled at myself over and over to move. As quickly as it had come in, it left. I heard my door close and then I shot up in bed. I've researched sleep paralysis before and think that is what happened to me except for the fact that my grandmother saw him too.
Shortly after sitting up in bed in terror, I shook my snoring little sister awake and told her what happened to me. Before I finished telling her, we both heard my grandmother, who was sleeping in the room next to us, sobbing. My sister and I went to see what was wrong. Like I said before, my grandmother is deeply religious. Her entire room is filled to the brim with religious icons. When my sister and I came into her room, she was sitting at the foot of her bed praying profusely and sobbing. I sent my sister to go wake up our mother while I sat with my grandmother. When I asked her what was wrong, she told me that she had dreamed that a "demon" had come into her room, pulled off her sheets, and spun her bed around. I put demon in quotes because I am Vietnamese and the translation is somewhere between monster and demon.
My grandmother had actually gotten one of those extremely heavy temperpedic beds, complete with the remote action, when we had moved into the house. I had watched the guys deliver it to our house and set it up in her room. Looking around her room, I noticed that yes, her sheets were in a puddle on the floor, and looking closely at her mattress, it was misaligned. What freaked me out the most was that she described this man who had come up next to her exactly perfect. My sister looked at me and went white. Of course, my mother didn't believe us and thought we were just stressed and told us all go back to bed but my grandmother, sister, and I were scared. Shortly after this event, the headaches came back with a vengeance, coming randomly and debilitating me and just as quickly, vanishing.
After that night, my insomnia started. Every night, I would wake up at the same time, usually at or around 3 am. When it first started, I would toss and turn trying to go back to sleep but eventually, I would give up and grab a book and read until I fell asleep. I'm not sure exactly when I started noticing it, but eventually I started hearing footsteps walking back and forth on the carpet, just outside my closed door. After I noticed that, I noticed it every night that I woke up. I thought it was my grandmother at first but it would literally, walk back and forth right in front of my door. I thought I was crazy and hearing things so I woke up my sister one night. She put her ear on our door and then looked back at me, her eyes large. If I was crazy, she was too because she heard it as well. I never had the nerve to open the door to see what it was and neither did she. We would just crawl back into bed. Other weird things happened to me as well along my life but what stood out the most was that the footsteps followed me everywhere. I moved to Arkansas in the 9th grade and it stopped for awhile but would eventually come back. Always pacing back and forth in front of my room.
As I got older, I learned that if I meditated and closed my mind before falling asleep, I wouldn't get the same nightmares. The headaches still come and go even now at 22. So do the nightmares if I fail to do my breathing exercises before falling asleep. The footsteps have followed me even now. I have dogs and cats now and I notice that when the pacing starts, my large husky will jump onto my bed and lay right across my legs, with his ears twitching. My cat will lay down in the middle of my room and just stare at the door. This is how we stay until I fall asleep and wake up the next day. At 22, it doesn't scare me like it used to but looking back at the things I saw, things that I won't share at this moment, still causes me to tremble. All in all though, I live my life just fine. I just wanted to share this and see if anybody has also experienced stuff like this?
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