To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Ghosts. Are. Scary.

Something able to appear out of thin air, when you’re possibly not expecting it? Something that indicates you could get stuck, maybe miserable and full of rage, even after the trauma of death? Hell no. So much no. Would really rather not, thanks.

All that being said, it feels a bit ridiculous to tell you, then, that I love ghost stories. (Why are the things we love the things that hurt us the most??? lol)

I think ghosts, or something like them, are real. But - I also think our brains can trick us into believing something’s real. It’s why I found Netflix’s Haunting of Hill House so deeply fascinating. The only mildly spoiler-y thing I’ll include that’s relevant to this, is that it tries to navigate the suspense between whether a ghostly encounter is actually supernatural, or if it’s “just” sleep paralysis. The nuance and interplay in that, as well as its commentary on mental illness, thrills and terrifies me the most - because I’ve had not one, not two, but (at least) three separate instances of “sleep paralysis” that I can remember. Vividly. And that’s just in the last ten years, never mind about what I could’ve forgotten from childhood.

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The first was either shortly before or shortly after my grandpa passed away. I was still living in my parents’ house.

My bed was a squishy twin on a creaky frame, pushed up against the far wall. I’d fallen asleep facing the closet, a curled, concave shape with the blankets pushed off, caught in a place that felt like true waking, but shaded like a dream. My eyes were wide, but I can’t remember if I blinked; I only recall that I couldn’t look away from the closed closet door. Everything was quiet, because the suburbs have this special kind of noiselessness that seeps, buzzing, into every crevice. My breathing was deep, even. And then - well, it wasn’t so much a sensing as it was a bolt of knowing.

There was something just below the edge of the bed.

The agony of anticipation turned my whole body into a sharp prickle of fear. My mouth dropped open a little, breath coming faster, but I still couldn’t look away from the closet door. It didn’t stop me from seeing the fingers of a hand creep up, slow, purposeful, over the edge of the mattress in my peripheral vision.

There was nothing outwardly gruesome or horrific about the hand - in the memory it had smooth, pale skin, clean fingernails, a slender shape. It kept moving, with that same purposeful speed that implied intent, until it splayed wide in the vulnerable space in front of my belly and pressed down on the mattress.

I didn’t realize I was screaming until I already was, pushing and pushing and pushing until it felt like every muscle locked up to help sustain the noise, except - there was no noise. All I could hear was the wheeze of my breath forced out of my throat, the shape of a scream that couldn’t be heard.

I don’t remember waking up. I don’t remember falling asleep again.

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The second time, I think I was going through a bout of depression.

This was in my first real apartment, with an ensuite bathroom and a second bedroom and a fireplace that didn’t work. All that space. I never got rid of the paranoia that something was hiding in there with me.

Again, I fell asleep more or less facing the closet, though the bed was bigger - a queen. I usually sleep on a diagonal, head on one side and feet on the other, because once, in elementary school, my sister’s friend told us that if you leave enough space, a ghost will slip in beside you. (That kind of stuff sticks with you.)

Between one blink and the next I was asleep-but-not. The lamp was still on, the light warm, soft, low. My right hand was open and half-curled, upturned, on the pillow beside me.

And - there was a man standing beside the bed.

Well, to be fair, it was more the impression of a torso, the shape of a person, dressed in black. It felt masculine more than anything else. But this time around, the anticipation was heavier, somehow, like something was just waiting waiting waiting to take my hand. I don’t know how to describe it besides an almost tangible weight, a held breath before you trip and take a tumble. The terror was also muted; confused, in a way.

I do vaguely remember waking up then. Same position. Lamp still on.

I think I might have been crying.

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The last one happened recently. Sometime in the last six months. This one is both scarier and also more easily dismissed, because it was during a bad period of insomnia, coupled with hormones up to their usual shenanigans.

Same queen bed, except I got one of those pregnancy pillows because they’re good for your hips and back, but it meant I wasn’t sleeping on a diagonal. My brain might’ve translated that into leaving myself open and vulnerable, and filled in the blanks.

The lamp was on again, because I’d forgotten to turn it off. I fell asleep and woke up several times, and I only know that because the first time something embraced me from behind I was able to force myself awake.

But - ah.

None of them were a proper waking. It was like blinking again, or maybe having really short, temporary amnesia. I never remembered falling asleep. It was scary. And I was so tired.

But it was so real.

Up until then, nothing had physically touched me before; it was all things I had seen, or felt in an abstract way. My arms were bare, and this wasn’t something alien or unknown. It was someone’s arms. I felt skin, and the bulk of a body curled up against me. Whether they were a person (or had been, at some point) is something only they, or my imagination, will ever know.

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There are other stories, other memories, that I think about, every so often: voices from basements; a seance on cassette; faces in the dark. But those are things a little harder to dismiss as simple dreaming. Things that happened when we were wide awake.

… Maybe I’ll tell them to you next time.