A friend of mine, the Brown Fox, emailed me this morning to alert me to a strange disturbance in her world. The Brown Fox is known well for her honesty, so it’s tough to call her out on this one. Was this a ghost? An incredibly lucid dream? A psychotropic hallucination? You decide.
I woke up at 2:40 or so last night and didn’t get back to sleep until about 4:30 a.m. During that time I was drifting in and out (mostly out) of a light slumber. Not at 3 a.m. but at some time during the 3 o’clock hour, I got out of bed to use the bathroom. As I walked back towards my bed, out of the corner of my eye I saw a small movement. One of the doors to my armoire, already ajar, had moved slightly. I stopped, fully prepared to write this off as a trick of the imagination.
Then, the door started moving…opening and shutting of its own accord, first slowly then more and more violently. This was no trick of the imagination–I was certain. I nearly screamed but my voice caught in my throat and all I could do was try to force it shut myself. I’d almost succeeded, when I felt two strong hands holding my arms down against me. The hands pushed me, turned me back towards my bed, pushing me until I fell on it, and scampered under the covers.
I lay there frightened for some time, certain that some thing, or some force, had been or was still in my room, in my apartment. After a few moments, I drifted back into an uneasy sleep. A while later–it might have been minutes, or just a moment, I opened my eyes again and the entire incident seemed as though it had been a dream. I still felt the same fright though, so I examined the evidence. My bladder, which earlier was full, was now empty. I’d gone to the bathroom. I thought about what I saw around me, or thought I’d seen. In the “dream” my room looked exactly as it was–the same belt strewn across the floor–the same shirt and jeans that I’d discarded earlier…everything looked as it did in reality. Did this happen? Had I made myself think it was a dream so as not to die of fright, so as to not have to acknowledge that there was an invisible being in my room? Or had this really been just a frighteningly realistic dream?
This morning…in broad daylight, I still can’t decide which trick my mind played on me–that this hadn’t happened, or that it had…
ah yes, a classic case of ye olde night creeper phantom. fear not, these type of apparitions are typically not known for celestial buggery, but more into breath play and invisible scat.
Bring back Martyn.