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:
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.
