When I was a child, I had horrific nightmares, mostly about a man slowly walking down the hallway of my parents’ home. I would be hanging out with my parents on the couch, watching a movie, and when I looked behind us, I would see a man with a skeleton face slowly pacing towards us. When I looked back at my parents, they had vanished. Another dream I always had was of a long black car slowly driving down my street. All my neighbors would be gone, and my parents were nowhere to be found. I would run and hide behind a bush and hear someone open and slam the car door. They would start walking around, crunching through the grass, and then I would wake up.

These dreams eventually lead up to an experience I witnessed when I was awake. I remember one night when I woke up. I was about 7-9 years old. I noticed a mosquito hawk floating around in my closet. I remembered my dad telling me not to be afraid of them because they were there to eat mosquitoes. So, I calmed my fear down and shifted my eyes from my double door closet to the door of my bedroom. It was cracked open, and there stood a man, taller than the 7ft door, standing behind it. He was dark and cloudy with piercing green eyes, staring at me. He had a hat on. I screamed for my parents! And there was my dad, running towards me in a frenzy, right past the hat man. My dad picked me up in his arms, and together we went past the man. I woke up the next morning in my parents’ bed. I asked my dad if he had seen the man in my room, and he said there wasn’t anyone there. I remember telling myself that it had to have all been real because I woke up in my parents’ bed that morning.

Ever since then, I have had several paranormal experiences throughout my life. Mostly, it was about young girls speaking to me, asking me to save them or find them, or save myself from a male figure. I don’t think it’s related, but when I am scared and in a new location, like on vacation, I pray that I won’t experience something like these again because I have had a tendency to save someone while sleepwalking, and that’s just disturbing. I worry that it could go too far. I have found that being intentional before sleep to not welcome these spirits is the best way to get rid of them.