Night Terrors, Sleep Paralysis…Ghost?

 by Sommer Marsden

 It’s human nature to want to explain away what is hard to define with something easy to define. Science is easy to define. So…those of us who like things tied up in neat little packages, tend to employ science as string for tying said packages.

If you’re familiar with current culture, you know the term skeptic. And I like to think of myself as a skeptic. Which is a lie. Actually, I like to think of myself as a clever, logical person who isn’t easily duped. When I watch shows about ghosts or go on the occasional ghost tour, I always take into consideration the spook factor. How much scare has been pre-planted in my noggin? How much prep work has the guide or the TV host invested in me? Am I a little on edge before the thing even begins? Like a frozen turkey, have I been pre-brined with fear? Probably.

A long, long time ago (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth) and I was but a young thing of fifteen, I had an experience that to this day I can re-experience, if you will, just by thinking of it. And I can’t tie it up in string or consider myself pre-brined.

Over *ahem* all these years, I’ve had tons of dreams. I’ve had a night terror or two. I have experienced sleep paralysis on a different occasion. But none of those phenomena come close to this one experience in my life. None of them. So the vivid nature of this experience, and the ability to recall it freshly now at *cough* 40, plays a huge factor in me saying, I think I had a paranormal experience.

You can call it a night terror: A night terror, also known as a sleep terror or pavor nocturnus, is a parasomnia disorder, causing feelings of terror or dread, and typically occurring in the first few hours of sleep during stage 3 or 4 non-rapid eye movement NREM sleep.^[1] However, they can also occur during daytime naps.^[2] (Wikipedia)

You can call it sleep paralysis: Sleep paralysis a phenomenon in which people, either when falling asleep or wakening, temporarily experience a sense of inability to move, similar to when an arm or leg goes to sleep, but not associated with numbness. More formally, it is a transition state between wakefulness and rest characterized by complete muscle atonia (muscle weakness). It can occur at sleep onset or when awakening. It is believed a result of disrupted REM sleep, which is normally characterized by complete muscle atonia that prevents individuals from acting out their dreams. (Wikipedia)

You can call it Aunt Martha, for all I care. But I have to say this: barring one dream that I have had over and over and over again for my whole life and one very odd cartoon dream (where a body lit up from the inside showing the bones. No shit) and one other dream where I was being chased by a demon in a pickup truck while Bullet the Blue Sky by U2 played as a soundtrack (so that’s 3 dreams out of a kajillion)…I can’t remember any of my dreams. Especially not a 25 year old dream.

Furthermore, the memory of the dreams mentioned above does nothing to me when I recall them. If anything, I find the two ‘scary’ ones mildly amusing now. But that’s not how I feel when I think back to that night. My heart rate picks up a little, I can still picture the light. And the shape. The inability to move, and yeah, how incredibly juiced I was after it ended. Every cell in my body has ‘muscle memory’ from that event.

To me that alone says it was something…more.

Here goes. When all is said and done, you are more than welcome to be the judge:

Steve Winwood. "Higher Love" from 99Tigers on Vimeo.

It was 1986 and Steve Winwood was singing about a Higher Love. In fact, he was singing about it as this event occurred. That alone gives me a rough guesstimate of how long it took (there’s a bit of science string for you—time elapsed—it was gauged—the video runs 4:25). I was visiting my aunt in New England and as we were prone to doing when I visited, we stayed up late in her bed talking, watching MTV (back when they actually played music) and catching up while her sons slept in their room. Usually we both conked out sitting there mid-conversation. This time wasn’t much different.

She’d fallen asleep ahead of me, but my plane ride that night had me more awake than normal. I was thinking about going to sleep. Too lazy to get up and go into the guest room where all my stuff was, I rolled on my side and shut my eyes, waiting to watch the new video for Higher Love. They’d just announced it would be airing. I do know I drifted for a minute. But I heard that drum beat start and knowing that was the intro to the song, having heard it on the radio, I figured it was time to open my eyes. When I did, a blinding light was penetrating the door to her room. When I say penetrating, I mean it in the truest sense of the word. The light was coming around, under, over and through the door. And then…voila…the door seemed to be gone. Just like that. It was an amazing whitish blue light and it backlit perfectly the figure of a man. I say man because it was a humanoid figure and it was large. Much larger than me (and at the time I was 5’ 10”…p.s. I am shrinking). Anyway, it seemed like a grand idea to wake up my aunt.

Mind you, in some weird part of my brain—the logical rational not-freaking-out part, I am hearing this song play on her TV and in my very peripheral part of my peripheral vision, I can see some of the video. Why my most peripheral peripheral bits? Because I’ve just realized I can’t move. Not a lick. I can’t open my mouth to scream. I can’t say her name. I can’t even move my tongue. So, obviously my stupid hands won’t work to touch her. I might as well have flippers sewn to the ends of my wrists for all the good those hands did me. My legs are equally immobile, but my brain is just fine. It’s rambling along trying to a) observe this figure through the light, because the thing has not moved. It seems to just be…watching me and b) track that song. Because my brain knows the song is what’s going to save my sanity in the morning (and for the next 25 years).

It seems like an eternity, I admit. But as I said, less than 4 minutes and 25 seconds. I have the video to prove it.

The dark thing never moved and I wasn’t really afraid of it. A control freak to the marrow, my fear stemmed solely from the fact that I was perfectly alert but couldn’t move or cry out. As I watched, the light eventually faded. I thought if I shut my eyes it might go faster, so I made a conscious decision to do so. When I opened them, the light was gone, the dark man gone, and the video was ending. The flickering images still just visible in the corner of my eye. I’d never seen the video before, but when I watched it the next day, there were parts I knew already from having seen them. To me, that proves I was awake. Some may argue, so be it.

I’ve never had something wake me up so much. I found myself too vibratey and wired to sleep. I wasn’t so much scared as rattled. It was tea and my aunt’s big rocking chair in her kitchen until sunrise. I played it over in my mind every way I could and still couldn’t bring myself to think I’d been sleeping. It felt like a cop out. And that was at a time where it felt like any explanation would have been good enough. Except really, saying it had been a dream felt like cheating. I finally gave up trying to explain it, and journaled it instead.

When I told my aunt about it, she asked if I thought it was my dad—he died when I was four. I told her unless my dad’s mission was to scare the shit out of me from the great beyond (a beyond I wasn’t sure I even believed in), then probably not. A friend of hers offered up spirit walking. As in, I had a run in with the spirit of a human still alive, just having an out of body romp. A subject I’ve read up on. I could see why she’d think that. Going on description, I’ve had people toss out “alien encounter”. That feels wrong too—but I see where they’d think that. Fox Mulder would probably agree with them. I have no clue what it was, to be honest. What I can say for certain is, to this day, I can shut my eyes and see that bluish white light. That figure. Feel that horrible feeling of utter helplessness and well, Steve Winwood has never been the same to me.

That’s not a very big and frightening story is it? It all seems rather tame. Even as I try to capture it to tell you. All I can say is, even now, when I say “That time at J’s” my mother knows what I mean and we will launch into a whole new conversation trying to decipher what that experience might have been. And my mother is as logical and tightly laced as they come. But she watched my face as I described it. Read my journal entry (which I tried to find to scan for this blog and failed). Plus, she knows her daughter. There was never a moment where she doubted my sincerity.

Now if you feel brave, tell me what you think it was. I have no emotional attachment to the event beyond its vividness in the tapestry of my life. If you have a theory, do tell!

XOXO

Sommer

***

Sommer Marsden is the prolific author of countless sizzling novels and some scintillating short fiction. 

Author of: Boys Next Door, Restless Spirit, Learning to Drown and Wanderlust.

What's new? Boys Next Door from Mischief Books.

Coming Soon: Lion Hearted from Xcite.

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To find out more about Sommer's writing, visit: http://sommermarsden.blogspot.co.uk/