As The Raven Dreams Podcast - ATRD Ep. 31 - Delivery Driver And Subscriber Submitted Stories (FT. TDN) - 11 True Scary Stories

Episode Date: June 24, 2022

Hello and Welcome to the 31st episode of The ATRD Podcast! Today we have some intriguing and terrifying stories submitted by everyday people. In Today's Episode we will have stories about The horrors faced by Deliver drivers, as well as stories sent my way by listeners like you! ➤ Want your story featured? Go to https://www.astheravendreams.com/Submit ➤ Want to know where to follow me on the internet? Go to https://www.astheravendreams.com/the-nevermore for all my links! ➤ You can also get EARLY ACCESS By joining my Patreon! https://patreon.com/astheravendreams Today's Video contains stories by the following Authors... Haunted mom, Si1kSatin, makiiscxbra, ImmortalSoFar, Kris, Curtis Miller, Sailorjune04, And Authors that chose to request anonymity.  ➤ All stories within are used w/ Either direct permission from the author- or under some level of CC license (where noted) True Stories are not verified, and should all be considered 'supposedly true'.  And Remember; You are loved, you are important, and you are valid. Never let anyone tell you otherwise. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/astheravendreams/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/astheravendreams/support Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you have a story that you would like to hear featured on this podcast, please consider sending it my way. Just go to as-the-ravendreams.com and click the button to submit your story. And of course, thank you. I have a really messed up story from when I was a delivery driver for a pizza place, which would have been back in 2010. I only worked there for a little over a year, and I left because I learned that my pizza place. My city was not as nice of a place as I thought it was. Well, that and the fact that the store manager really did not care about his employees, and would write people up for literally the most minor of infractions.

I know this is a bit off topic, but he would write you up if your shirt wasn't tucked into your pants, or if your pants weren't the right color. Mind you, there was no written policy that stated what color your pants had to be, And at the time, corporate basically just said they couldn't be jeans or shorts. But he was adamant that the requirements for working there was to wear black pants. Working at this particular store for this particular management was an absolute nightmare in and of itself. There were two neighborhoods that were actually marked as no deliveries after 6 p.m. for very specific reasons. and despite this, if they called an order in instead of doing the online order, the manager would say that we had to take it.

I will say it again. There were very specifically documented reasons as to why we were not supposed to go into these areas after dark. They were high-crime sections of the city, and walking around with cash in your pocket and a cap that said, Pizza Place, was literally asking to be robbed. Thankfully, we rarely got a call for these areas. But there were a couple of residents that had figured out the workaround, and we would always dread taking them. And while this part of the story isn't mine,

this part is where the inevitable happened. One of the newer delivery drivers, and I mean newer as in only there for like two months or so, got the delivery to go to one of these neighborhoods. When she mentioned that she was nervous about driving into the area, the manager just told her not to put the topper on her car and to not wear her cap so that she didn't stand out. Well, she took the order as was requested,

and after about 30 minutes, we got a call to the store, which was her yelling at the manager, that she was carjacked. Apparently the person that ordered the pizza just used a random address on the street, and when she pulled up, he waved her down saying it was his. She didn't know what to do, so she started to unbag the pizza to give it to him, and he pulled a gun on her, telling her to get out of the car. She did, and this guy literally drove off with the pizza and her car.

She had to walk for about 20 minutes to a gas station so she could call. call the cops and the store. I was actually at the store when the manager got the call, and I remember him asking if they took the store's money that she had on her. I could hear her screaming at him, asking how the hell he could be so concerned about the cash when she was literally held at gunpoint and had her car stolen. After she hung up on him, I recall he mentioned something about how she'd better return to the store to cash out and give him back the money, or else he would call the police and say that she stole the money. That was the first event that made me realize that this place was hell.

Well, the first event that really drove the point home, at least. The fact that he didn't care about her and was worried about like $30 in change was really messed up. The event that got me to actually quit the job happened about a month or so after that. To literally no one's surprise, the driver getting carjacked did not stop the manager from taking those deliveries to those two neighborhoods. And obviously, all of us were on edge when they came in. Unfortunately, the next event that happened was a delivery that I got. It was actually to the the other neighborhood, which was a gated community, on the southern end of the delivery square. The community was on the very edge of where we would go as a store, and was actually partially

outside of the delivery square, but of course if they called, we had to take it. Now, when I say this was a gated community, some people may think that means that it was nice houses and that it was like that to keep the less desirable people out. It was actually the opposite. The rumor around town was that there were so many people living there on house arrest and people that had a required legal curfew that the local PD had actually requested the property management to put a fence around the area to make it harder for them to leave the zone. Now, I don't know if that's true, but I wouldn't doubt that it wasn't completely fictitious.

So, we had a delivery called into the store from this area, and it was, of course, after 6 p.m. And I was, of course, the one that got to the delivery. At this point, I was pretty done with this job, so I told my manager that I wanted someone else to come with me if I took it. He very quickly shot me down and just told me to man up and take the damn delivery. I rolled my eyes and decided to just get it over with, grabbed the pizza, and took it out to my car and then headed in that direction. I pulled up to the house that the delivery was for and was actually a bit relieved. It was at the very end of the property and was actually just outside the fenced area. To me, that meant that this person was just unfortunate in their home-buying decisions.

I got out with the pizza and went to the front door and rang the bell a couple of times, as I did. And there was no answer. Then I hit the doorbell once or twice more, and knocked. After waiting for five or so minutes of knocking, I was pretty done with the whole delivery, and was trying to figure out what exactly I should do. I, for some reason, decided that my best course of action would be to call the store and tell them that no one was answering. Why I thought this was the best idea? I honestly do not know, but it's what I did.

The manager answered, and I told him that I was on the delivery to this address, and I informed him that the person was not answering the door. He then told me that I needed to stay until the pizza was delivered. and that he would call the number on the account to get a hold of the guy. I angrily asked him how long he expected me to stick around for this one delivery, and he basically told me to shut it, and that he would tell me when I could come back. Then he hung up on me. I decided to basically just chill out and wait for him to call me back,

because, at this point, I was already here, so whatever was going to happen, was already going to happen. After a few minutes, I heard what sounded like glass-breaking, and someone shoving furniture around coming from inside the house. I took a bit of initiative and walked around to the side of the house to look into the window, which was where things went from bad to worse. When I looked in, I saw a man lying on the floor surrounded in a large pool of blood, and the living room was an absolute mess.

Worse yet, there was someone in the room that was rifling through the furniture and throwing things around, clearly looking for something specific. I booked it back to my car and grabbed my phone to call the cops. I drove to the end of the street and then called 911, telling them what I saw. They asked me if I was able to stay in the area and see if anyone left the house, while they headed in that direction. And I told him that I would, though looking back, this was kind of a dumb request, and a stupid thing for me to agree to.

I stayed on the phone with them until the officer showed up, and then I told him what I saw. This whole delivery turned into a fiasco, and I was parked a house or so down watching the multiple armed officers kick in the door. and then they shot the guy that was in the house. Around the time they got an ambulance to get the guy out of the house, I actually got a call from my manager. At this point, mind you, it had been around 20 or so minutes.

I answered, and I told him that the police were on the scene and that they had shot someone. I probably told him a lot about the whole thing, but I was definitely shaking and freaking out. He then told me to come back to the store and hung up. I motioned to one of the officers and asked him if I was free to go back to the store. He took my information and told me that it was okay for me to leave, and then mentioned that I should tell my manager to not let us do deliveries at night in this area.

I thanked him for the advice, and I left. I got back to the store, and as soon as I walked in, my manager, asked me where the pizza was. It was at this point that I realized I left it along with my delivery bag on the front porch when I went to look in the side window.

I told him that I had left it, to which he responded with, that's coming out of your paycheck then. I'm pretty sure I just stared at him dumbfounded, and he said that since I hadn't collected payment and didn't have the pizza, he was going to just assume that I ate it so it was coming out of my check. I'm pretty sure I screamed at him, calling him every name that I could think of,

and then told him to shove this job up his ass. I went off. I threw my name tag and hat at him, and I left. I was beyond pissed that he had went that route with it after what had just happened. I saw someone that had just lost their life. I was there when the police shot someone else and pulled them out to an ambulance. I had given my information to a police officer

because I was more or less a witness to all of this. And he was worried about $15 in pizza. I have no idea what happened at that house, and I was only contacted one other time about the whole thing, but I can tell you that I have personally never ordered from that specific pizza place, and I never will again. Lazzangue surgelley,

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The conditions apply. This is a story that was shared with me years ago by an old-school friend named Mary. And is about a strange discovery that her uncle made when he was in high school. His known nickname, too, is Dali. And is also the name he went by for the story event below. Dali explored an old-fashioned. house behind an abandoned mall in New Hampshire with his friends Sally and Jonathan during their

spring break in 1996. They went to explore it too to see if the rumors about it being haunted were true or not. It was filled with old items from the late 17th century and was rumored to be haunted by the spirit of a man named Dr. Valner. The building is green and red in color. and has three floors. On the second floor, you can sometimes hear heavy bootsteps on the wooden planks while you explore there. Then the first floor has a parlor on the left side of the entryway, near the front door.

Past the parlor, lies a kitchen in a laundry room on the right-hand side. In these rooms, too, you can sometimes hear loud singing, and without finding a radio on or anything else being activated, to cause the singing to occur. In addition to the rooms mentioned above, the first floor also has a winding black-colored and redwood-made staircase that leads up to the second floor. On this floor, several bedrooms can be found on the left-hand side of the stairs.

Also another set of stairs in the right leads into the attic. In it lies a small maintenance room. On this floor, there usually isn't haunted activity. that happens, except for the reports of doors slamming that occur once a night, at around 11.30 p.m. In the maintenance room is a big bookcase. In the bookcase, there are a few science reports on strange activity that happened in the area surrounding the home, one of which was the tale of a missing girl named Lucy. The report said that she went missing, and three days after, her mother heard weird whistling noises coming from up in the third floor attic, and when she went to

see if her daughter was still playing in the room next to it. On the last page, it said that the mother was named Victoria, and it gave a description of her and her daughter on the report as well. Their home was also described, and it was said to be an old farmhouse style one that is in the tail end of a forest that lies in a town named Crescent Creek as well. This is really long, and I'm sorry in advance, but as most of the major happenings over the past 13-plus years. I've lived with what I was told by a medium is the spirit of a baby that I lost during pregnancy,

and to this day have daily experiences with. I also shared on here my glitch story, so needless to say, my life can get pretty freaky at times. This is a true story, and is only a few instances of some of the scarier things that have happened to us over the past 13-plus years. I am sorry for how long it is, but as mentioned below, it really is a tiny percentage,

but some of the scarier things that we've gone through and still go through on a daily basis. a little context for our living situation and where this all took place. Four months after I gave birth to my first child, my mom offered to sell me her in-home child care business because she was ready to do something else after running her daycare for 20-plus years. I essentially grew up in the daycare and started working there in my teenage years. I helped run the business with my mom after.

after I graduated high school, so taking it over completely in my early 20s was an easy transition. My dad had built a second house on their property, so she wasn't living in the house that the in-home daycare was run out of. It's more a classification for the state licensing board. There's daycare centers, in-home child care, etc.,

but that's not important. In fall of 2005, when my daughter was five months old, her dad and I thought it was best to buy my mom's daycare and move from the small two-bedroom apartment we had in a not-so-great part of town to the five-bedroom house in the small town I grew up in, next door to my childhood home. About six months after moving into our new home, we found out that we were expecting another child,

and I gave birth to my son in the winter of 2006. For a few years, things were relatively quiet, so let's fast forward to 2009, when my son is three and my daughter is four and a half. They were playing in the front part of the house that was technically considered a daycare, and I had been sitting in the living room while they played. Out of nowhere, they both started.

started simultaneously screaming and crying hysterically as they came running out of the living room. After I got them calmed down, my daughter explained through tears that there was a little boy with glowing green eyes watching them play. She said he was peeking over the half wall that separates what was then the craft area from the kitchen. In my opinion, they were too young to make something like that up. They both told the same story for weeks after it happened, and for them to start crying at the exact same time. The daycare had been closed for the evening, and there was obviously no one there when I went to take a look. So I 100% believe that they both saw something, and the events that followed confirmed that our house was in fact haunted. After the first sighting, activity picked up but was relatively innocent.

Every day, as long as it was nice out, my employees would take all the kids outside to the playground while I stayed inside to cook lunch. Quite a few times, I would see, out of the corner of my eye, a little boy running across the room. Out of habit, I would remind him that we don't run inside before realizing I was. was alone, and that all the children were outside and accounted for. Over time, it got worse. I had just gotten into bed one night when I heard a strange noise over my son's baby monitor. I went in to check on him, and when I reached his door, I noticed a pillow over his face.

I flipped the light on to see two small indentations in the pillow, and in that same split second, my son started gasping for air. There was some invisible thing trying to smother my baby with his pillow. After a few weeks of hell, trying to get him back to sleep in his own bed, things went back to normal for a while. I say normal, but at the very least it wasn't actively trying to hurt my kids. A few times a week, always at night, and usually between the hours of time, 10 p.m. and 3 a.m., we would hear faint chance in old church songs coming over the baby monitors. I can't explain what it sounded like exactly, but it was by no means anything that would be sung or said in any modern church. Things would get knocked off shelves. I'd feel what felt

like something crawling into the bed with me. I would see things at the corner of my eye, but more importantly, my kids weren't being affected. and for a while I was hopeful that the worst was over. About four months go by. My daughter was probably around five years old, when just like before, as I was getting into bed, I heard her call out for me over the monitor. First, in a quiet voice, she whispered yells,

Mommy. But then a second later, she started crying and said, That wasn't nice. I run in there, and after I got her calmed down, she said there was someone watching her. And when she got scared and called out for me, it had made him mad, and he had scratched her. I pulled up her sleep shirt to find three deep scrapes on her back that went from her left hip to her right shoulder, which would have been impossible for her to do herself, unless she was secretly a contortionist at the ripe old age of her back. five. After that, I started calling anyone and everyone I could find online to get help, or at the very

least, get some answers as to what we may be dealing with. After a week or so of emails and phone calls, I got a call from a well-known medium in my state. He asked a handful of questions about the activity in my house, but nothing about my job, marital status, nothing that could have led him to the answers that he gave me. I was literally in the middle of answering a random question when he interrupted me and said that the spirit in my house was my child. He somehow knew that I had previously had a miscarriage, and he explained that my son was jealous of the attention his brother and sister got, and he was angry with them for getting

to have a life with me that he would never get. He told me what I needed to do to stop at all, to get rid of the spirit in my home, but I could never do it. If this medium is to be believed, I would be casting out my own child. Obviously, I had to put my living children first, their safety was and always will be my top priority. But after acknowledging what was in my house and walking around, probably looking like a crazy person talking to him, him whenever I was alone, everything got better. The kids would see him once in a while, up until they both reached around the age of seven and eight.

And for the most part, he left them alone. They both, over time, have forgotten most of what they went through when they were young. My son, who is 13 now, will see things, and he remembers quite a bit since he never actually stopped having encounters with the spirit. Not long ago, he came running in the living room. He said he thought he saw the shadow of a person, and didn't know why, but he felt like he was being chased. So, other than small things like them hearing

what sounds like someone walking up and down the stairs, someone whispering their name, things being pushed off of shelves or doors being opened, and the activity in my house, as far as my kids are concerned, has pretty much stopped. This is an edit that I'm adding. This was the original story that I posted on Reddit over a year ago,

and in that small amount of time, things have kicked up again. My daughter, who's very practical, she's 17 now, did not believe the things that were happening to her brother and I, and sometimes her dad, over the years. Unfortunately for her, she voiced her skepticism often. And I would warn her to be careful of what she says, as I've learned that stuff like that can definitely cause it to go out of its way to prove that person wrong.

My husband learned that the hard way. But she didn't believe me. And in the past year and a half has seen that it is in fact real. She left her drink on her nightstand only to come back in her room, a few minutes later and eventually find it high up on a shelf she couldn't have reached without a stepstool. She had her school laptop on her bed and went back in her room to it missing. After a lengthy search, she found it in her library, a room that she hadn't been in in days. We've figured out that most of the things that go missing from her room end up somewhere in the library,

so it's gotten easier to find her missing item. After it started happening to her, we recently had a family meeting, and I laid it all out for them. Like I said, and they forgot the bulk of the things that had happened when they were little, but I felt like now that they were 15 and 17, they needed to know the truth, so they understood what it was that was doing all of this, and we were all better about ignoring and not drawing attention to the things that happened, because that seems to keep the happenings to a minimum. I know people are going to judge,

and you're all probably thinking that I'm an absolute idiot for not doing what the medium said and gone through with getting rid of him. But I didn't make that decision lately. Please understand that. I read into a lot of things after that, and I wasn't 100% convinced it was the baby that I lost. Spirits don't usually hurt people, but poltergeists do.

On one hand, what if it was my child, and the steps to get rid of him didn't work, and it only made him more angry? What if he lashed out and succeeded in smothering one of my kids with the pillow? And that goes for it being something else completely. What if I only made it more angry by trying to get rid of it? At that point it was extremely annoying but no longer hurting my children. I just couldn't take the chance of undoing the peace that I finally had in my home. This story may be long and I'm sorry for that, but it really is the bare bones of what we went through and what we are still going through today. I can't explain why, but I honestly felt like it would all get a hundred times worse if I had tried to get rid of him completely.

And yes, ten-plus years later, he is still here. At least a few times a month, I will hear what sounds like my living son's voice outside my bedroom door at night, saying, Mom. He would do that a lot when he was little and got scared. Instead of coming in my room, he would stand in my doorway calling out for me. The strange part is, is that the voice that I hear now is not the crackly voice he has as a 13-year-old pre-pubescent teen. It's the sweet, innocent voice he had as a small child. Many people have told me that this is not just the jealous spirit of my unborn child,

that it's some sort of poltergeist, and that regular spirits cannot do what we have seen him do. But, for whatever reason, the way we've chosen to approach the situation has made coexisting possible. And for me, that's enough. I just don't have it in me to make it leave And I don't think I ever will I have a story that happened a few years back when I was 19

And I was a delivery driver for a certain pizza place I won't give the name of the actual restaurant But I think you can figure out who it is if I call it Pizza House This happened in what I would call a fairly small town That resided in the suburbs of a much larger city And I thought that it was a pretty safe area up until this point What happened could have happened to anyone really But it happened to me because I happened to be the delivery driver that got sent to this delivery

It was a pretty normal night at the pizza house We were fairly busy but weren't being slammed too bad I was one of the three drivers that were on the clock that night We were busy enough that we didn't get to relax between drives I remember I was on a double delivery when this took place For those that don't know a double delivery is literally what it sounds like your task with taking two delivery at the same time. You basically drive to the closest location and then to the furthest location and then back. It's an incredible pain in the ass because you usually end up late to the second

delivery and the customers get angry. So as I said, I had to take a double delivery and both of them were pretty far from the store. In fact, they were actually on the outer ring of our deliveries. When it came in, I grabbed the bags, put the light slash sign for Pizza House on the top of my car, which was a requirement, and headed off to the first location. Everything was going normal. I was talking to my girlfriend while the GPS told me which way to go. I was most of the way to the first location when I pulled up to a red light and stopped like I had to.

I was complaining to my girlfriend about how much I genuinely disliked being the pizza boy. When I glanced over and saw a couple of guys crossing the road, I made eye contact with one of them and pretty much just kept talking about random nothingness. as I was watching the one cross the road I noticed that the other guy walked a little closer to the lane I was in and my mind immediately clicked that something bad was about to happen

I was just sitting there defenseless at the red light chatting about literally nothing with my girlfriend on the phone and it didn't occur to me until it was too late that these guys were up to no good by the time it seriously clicked the guy that was in the lane

was pulling on my door handle and shouting that I needed to unlock the door I thought about slamming my gas pedal and driving off. I thought about just running the light to get the hell away from this. But then I saw the first guy was standing in front of my car and pointing a gun at me. I was literally sitting there and staring down the barrel of some handgun on some street that I didn't know with two guys about to carjack me. Well, that's what I thought they were going to do. I thought they were seriously about to rob me, carjack me, steal all the store's cash,

and leave me on the side of the road. I even said that to my girlfriend. I told her to stay on the phone, but not to say anything. And that I was being robbed. She quickly stopped talking and did exactly as I asked. I looked back over to the guy at my passenger door. He was shouting at me to unlock it. I slowly did as he asked.

I reached down to hit the unlock button. As soon as I did, he pulled the door open and grabbed the two delivery bags with the pizza, then slammed the door. And then the two guys ran off. I literally just sat there with my heart pounding and blood pressure seriously spiking hard as I watched the two men run off with the food and nothing else. These guys seriously held me at gunpoint for pizza.

Pizza! They didn't even take my money, they didn't even take my phone, my car, nothing. Just about $85 worth of pizza. I even told my girlfriend, between adrenaline-fueled tears, that I was just robbed, but they only took the pizza. I remember her asking if I was serious and even laughing slightly. I told her I needed to call the store and tell them. I hung up from the call and called my manager directly. I told him that I was robbed and he at first asked if I was okay, but when I told him that they just stole the pizza, he seemed a bit less serious about the situation. Obviously, I was

terrified. I was seriously thinking that I was going to be hurt or lose my livelihood. I'm actually thankful that these guys just wanted the food and decided not to take anything else. There have been recent developments with my poltergeist to the point where I'm not even sure it belongs in paranormal tales anymore.

But I guess it's still interesting in its own right. So, buckle up for a scientific examination of paracinetic activity, which is probably the most boring, spooky story you will ever come across. I'm a skeptic.

Even the most unlikely natural explanation is by definition, more likely than a supernatural one, and what are the odds is not good enough reason to overturn a tried and tested model of the universe. Having said that, unexplained things do happen, and I've tended to file them away under, huh, until I had gathered enough data points to form a working hypothesis. Things behave as if this were the case, and then figure out if it, A, explains existing data, and B, predicts future data. Of course, any fresh evidence or unexpected lack thereof means it has to be completely overhauled. Also, when I use terms such as poltergeist, I'm using it as a shortcut for things moving about, presumably from an external source. I'm not subscribing to the spooks, ghost, and demons that are commonly ascribed to the cause.

I don't know the cause. I have no information to indicate that, so I just stick to the facts available. Oh, and in case it's relevant, I am bipolar. I learned to handle it without medication by recognizing when my brain meat was messing with me and slamming the brakes on the downward spiral. If things are as bad as they seem, then they will be just as bad when my brain is functioning properly. So I need to write out the current down swing and look again when things are back to normal. This is relevant later on.

My first recollection of a definite event was when I was 14. We had just moved houses and school, which I hated. On several occasions, while I was doing homework in my room, there would be a knock on my door, which was not too unusual. Three clear knocks. The first few times I said come in, and there was no response, and it turned out that everyone was downstairs. The last time it happened, I paused before answering.

The knocks came again, and I asked who is it? No response. Nobody there. And it didn't happen again. 17 was a bad year, but nothing really happened. But at 19, I moved into my own place and things started up again. I was very fond of switches, something that always fascinated me as a child, and the water heater with its hefty high-wattage clunk switch turned itself off a couple of times when I was home alone.

My radio, again with the physical slighty click switch, turned itself on while my cousins were upstairs on my computer, and my hi-fi would suddenly start playing back badly, although I can't say for certain what that was. I was teaching my cousin to program on the C-64. I told him about the events, and the winter was cold, so my computer was downstairs in the living room. We took a break for a coffee, and we went into the kitchen,

about 10 feet from where we were sitting. and he asked if I had opened the curtains. I told him no, but I hadn't closed them. But he said that he had, but now they were open. I shrugged and closed him, pulling them hard along the curtain wire. No easy glide there. We got back to the computer, went to make another coffee, and stopped dead on the threshold.

The curtains were open wide again, despite being only a few feet from where we were sitting, and only slightly behind us. My attitude at the time was, oh, I know what that is, and I got on with making the coffee. My cousin wouldn't go in, and I asked him what was wrong,

since I told him stuff like this happens, and he replied, I know, but I didn't believe you. Time went on, decades passed, and nothing major happened. It became just something that happened, to me in my younger days. I moved continents,

ended up living on an anarchist commune, looking after animals and life was good, until my now ex decided that she had the right to cheat on me. We'd been together for 16 years, and I was totally committed to the relationship, so I was trying to get things back on course while she refused to even consider any changes to her behavior. Then things started up again,

We lived in an RV and the water pump would turn on just after we went to bed. Even when it was left on, the water pressure would drop over around 10 minutes, and the pump would kick in with the loud dur, dur, dur, dur, dur, so we only turned it on when we needed to. About once a week, we would go to bed and have the pump kick in, so the switch became known as the bugger switch, based on what I said because I had to get out of bed. When we were camping and she was in her own tent, she complained that the lantern in there kept turning itself on throughout the night and threatened to perform a banishing ritual if it didn't stop. I told her to leave my buddy alone. Other things moved and fell over, but nothing I can

definitively say wasn't a coincidence. My ex, for a Fortunately, had the same approach as me. I didn't think that sort of thing happened, but evidently I was wrong, so we lived with it. Things got worse between us, and I started taking St. John's Wart. I hate that stuff, because it makes the world flat, gray, and boring, but I had used it before to get my mental state back to a zero point, usually a couple of weeks. This time, I was on it for three months and everything stopped. Nothing unusual happened. I later did some research and found that in the Middle Ages,

it was supposed to ward off evil spirits, so yes, I can see to their mindset that would be what was happening, or maybe they thought depression was possession by demons. When I did stop, things kicked back in with a vengeance. Things falling off of tables became a disdemeanor. daily occurrence, and one day we were both sitting at the table working on our computers when I heard of scratching. I figured the mice had gotten into the RV and thought that I'd best set traps before going to

bed that night. Then the scratching got louder, and I figured I had better set the rat trap, too, just in case. Then my hairbrush landed on my shoulder. It had been further along the dynet seat and lower than shoulder. level, but my ex, who was facing me, said she'd seen it move. After I got over the goddamn it factor, I had to admit it was a pretty good prank. And that was the thing, it seemed, to kick in to annoy me and prevent me spiraling down

into a depression, so it appeared to be looking out for me. Again, this was a temporary working hypothesis, and now that I had more data coming in, I could try to figure out what was behind it. I was volunteering at a food bank, and things started happening there, to the point where my boss was beginning to freak out. I filled her in on what was happening, and she told me I needed to get rid of those demons. I pointed out that it was mischievous, but not malevolent, and seemed to be trying to stop me from sinking into depression. She accepted that. I got in one morning and found that a very heavy steel table had been moved exactly.

its width forward. It hadn't moved for years, so the dust rectangle plainly showed where it should have been, and it took two of us to move it back. I figured someone had moved it to Hoover under it, but she said it wasn't there when she left the night before. I pointed to the video cameras in the corner and said that it must have been caught on them.

I was excited because I would finally have video evidence of what was going on, but she said that they hadn't worked for years, so that idea was gone. Things with my ex fell apart. I moved back into my home country and fell into a severe depression. My doctor said he wasn't surprised, and getting a therapist for the first time, he later admitted that at first he wasn't sure

whether there was anything to do to help me. Sometimes, I would find myself missing the 22 rifle we had on the farm. Hell, I didn't like living here when I left 25 years before. It certainly hadn't improved then, so for three years I wasn't utter despair. And what did my spooky sidekick do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Even the events that could be dismissed as a coincidence kind of feel different,

but at the lowest point in my life, when I could have really done with the company, there was nothing there. I kind of missed him. Now that I'm coming out of the other side, I've been able to evaluate everything that has happened and revise my working hypothesis. If it was about watching out for me, then this period would have been when it was needed most. That it wasn't there undermined that whole idea. On all of the occasions when things did happen, it occurred to me that my mindset was pretty much the same. Stress, desperation, but with just a chance.

of getting out of the situation combined with being distracted. Depression didn't cut it. Since it's so dependent on my state of mind, Occam's razor says not to add unnecessary variables to a hypothesis, so I figure I can set aside the idea of an external entity for now and put it down to an internal cause to telekinetic, is more likely than poltergeidic, which is disappointing on so many levels.

It would be comforting to think that something was watching out for you, and that would suggest something about the nature of the universe and reality. Telekinesis, on the other hand, might make changing a light bulb easier if it could be mastered, but is otherwise relatively mundane. If this is true, then it could offer some explanations to the traditional view of the poltergeist. My trigger is desperation, and I've always approached fear as something to be overcome as quickly as possible.

When I found I was afraid of climbing vertical surfaces, I joined a climbing club to get over it within my own terms in my own time, so fear wouldn't be a trigger. If someone didn't do this and fear was their trigger, I could imagine a feedback loop that might lead to the traditional room flying around you type events. So, where to from here? I have no idea. It's taken me a lifetime to get the facts that I have,

and recreating the mindset to try and trigger it is not something I've ever tried before. Then there's the problem that having achieved that state of mind would be followed by, oh good, oh, bugger, because feeling pleased about it would replace it. Even if I could recreate it, how do you direct the results? Since distraction is also a factor, concentrating on what you want to. to happen would be counterproductive. I have a feeling that it's just a symptom of the mindset and not a direct result.

So, while some definitely don't work, it doesn't feel like precision would be that crucial. The way my life is going, I'm pretty sure that I'll stumble across it again over the next few years. And I'll see what, if anything, I can do with it. I have a story about a delivery driver that actually freaked me right the hell out when it happened, and is one of those stories that led to me actually being a bit paranoid whenever I order anything from anywhere.

This happened last year, in 2021, when the world was going absolutely crazy, and I wasn't able to leave my house because I had COVID. The pandemic was pretty well underway at this point, I think it was April or so, and I was about a week out from getting my shot when I had apparently slipped up around some people I knew and caught it. My fault, I blame myself entirely, and it absolutely sucked. Do not recommend one out of ten. That said, I was already pretty well established with the world of grocery delivery, as I had driven for one of the delivery companies a bit back in 2020 when I was late.

laid off from my office job, and had actually relied on them after I was finally brought back into my company as a remote employee. Thankfully, the time between these two events was only four months, so unemployment, driving for DoorDash and begging my parents for rent money, was enough to at least keep me afloat. When I wasn't able to get out to get groceries or food for myself, I would put in orders to have them delivered. If I may say, this service is something that I absolutely love,

and still use it to this day, even though I'm fine and my life has mostly gone back to normal. Most of the time, the drivers are decent at what they do. They will pick up what you ordered, bring it to your house, and we'll just leave it on your front porch, or just outside your door. I live in an apartment complex,

so sometimes they'll contact me and ask me to come out and get it, and sometimes they will come into the building and leave it at the front door. I live on the bottom level, so it's not like they have to go up or downstairs at all. They just walk in, turn left, and I'm right there. However, if they ask me to come outside to get my order, I will. I get that they're in a rush, and sometimes they just want to get it over, with quickly and, well, I respect that. Unfortunately, as I said, I did end up getting sick.

When it hit me, it hit me like a literal bus. I was barely able to get off the couch. I couldn't really speak. And I was coughing so hard that the room would spin when I stopped. That was just the first three days. After that, it honestly felt like it was getting worse. and I really wasn't sure if I was going to come out of it. Despite feeling like I was at my end, I was also craving Cheetos.

And I had been one of those lucky ones that hadn't lost my sense of taste, so I really, really wanted Cheetos. I figured I could get a delivery of a few things that wouldn't perish, and just kind of let them sit outside my door until I got the strength to get. get up and get it that afternoon. I decided that having it delivered at around three would give me time to get up at one, stop myself from falling over for an hour as I walked to the door, and grab it by the time they got there. I put the order into the app and requested the time for delivery, setting my alarm on my phone for 3 p.m. just in case I didn't wake up to it. I also added a note that I needed them to deliver the

groceries to my door as I was positive and possibly contagious, and I would not be able to meet them into the parking lots to collect the items. I emphasized that I was sick several times in my notes, hoping that the driver would see it and would get the hint to come in and leave the items. I put the order in around nine and requested the 3 p.m. delivery, and then went over to the couch and passed out. Unfortunately, I was out, out, and I slept through my alarm. I, however, did not sleep through the sound of my front door opening. At first, I thought that it was just the delivery driver knocking or maybe hitting the door,

but as I slowly opened my eyes, I saw some random guys slowly walking into my apartment and through the front door. Now, I will say that I was not fully there. I thought I was hallucinating at first, or dreaming that this was happening. But when I looked over and saw him reaching over to rifle through my jacket's pocket, I realized what he was doing.

And it clicked that this was very real. I sat up as quickly as I could and asked what the hell he thought he was doing. He jumped and turned pale, and then basically threw my groceries into my apartment, and then ran away without as much as a word. I think I sat there for close to 20 minutes just staring at my scattered groceries, trying to piece together what all had just happened.

Like, I was completely uncertain as to whether or not what he was doing was normal. Was he just coming in to drop off my stuff? But why was he going through my jacket? Like I said, I was completely out of it, so I just landed on it was normal and moved on to getting up to get my Cheetos. It wasn't until I was sitting there eating my junk food that it really hit me what had just happened. He was taking advantage of the fact that I said I was sick, and he was trying to rob me. That guy came in hoping I would be passed out, and he was looking for my wallet, and I didn't. just happened to catch him in the act.

Even worse, he probably could have followed through and just told me he was dropping my food off, and I wouldn't have been coherent enough to really say anything about it. That's how out of my mind I was at that moment. I called the delivery company, and I notified them that the driver had come into my apartment, and they really didn't seem to care. Ever since that happened, I've always made sure to lock my door. or at least connect the chain when I order anything for delivery. But thankfully, there haven't been any more events like that.

And I really hope there never are. This happened to me back when I was around six or seven. It's one of those stories that you can look back on and think that it was super creepy because of what could have happened. Some people may look at it and think it's not a huge deal, but for me, it was freaky. And I'm glad that I got away from the scenario mostly unscained. I think this was also the event that led to my mom being overprotective of me, and it's around when she stopped letting me walk around by myself. I guess I should add a little bit of perspective on that last part. Yes, I was like seven, but I lived in a small neighborhood with only a few houses, and my mom knew each and every one of our neighbors.

It was a real slice of Americana to the point that the entire neighborhood would get together for a cookout on the 4th of July. It was that kind of tight-knit community. So while I was pretty young, my mom didn't have a problem with me riding my bike from one end of the block to the other. So back when this happened, there was a certain food company that was just starting to deliver in my area. It was one of those companies like Schwann, but it wasn't Schwann. This company was more focused on selling and delivering meat cuts to people than the full delivery that Schwan does. I honestly can't even remember the name of the company, but it was like top cuts or something like that. Anyways, they started delivering in my city and they had actually gotten quite.

quite a bit of business in my area, including my mom and dad. When they first moved into the area, the local manager slash owner did his introductions by doing door-to-door sales. I remember the first time I saw him. He showed up at our door at like 7.30 at night, and I just remember him looking incredibly tired. Even with how many years have passed, I can still see his dark eyes and greasy hair standing at our front door.

So he showed up and introduced himself, and I think my mom told him that we weren't interested. but then he mentioned something about the first order being completely free, up to like $30. That caught my dad's attention, because he was a sucker for deals, and they let him in to talk to us about what he was selling. I don't really remember his whole presentation, I just remember thinking about how tired he looked, and that he kind of smelled bad. I actually said something about it while he was talking. I do remember that. My dad told me that I was being rude, and I remember him laughing about it and saying that he'd been walking around the city since seven that morning, suddenly, meat to old people. So he agreed that he probably did smell bad. Even back then, something about him struck me as odd. Something about him was repulsive to me, and I think my fight or flight was

saying that I should get away from him. Of course, he was in my living room, so that wasn't really an option. He did his whole presentation, my dad signed up for something to be delivered once every other week or something, and then he left. I was hoping I would never see him again, but that was not how things went. After that night, I kept seeing him drive around the area in what I could only describe as a kidnappers van. It was a brown van with no windows on the side or back, and it had top cuts on the side, stuck with what looked like magnetic letters. Now, I have to mention that most of the time that I saw him, he wasn't just driving around. He was typically going to houses to make deliveries, but there were some days where I swear I would see him just slowly driving down

the street and not going anywhere in particular. When he saw me outside, he was. He was a lot of side. He would always stop and wave. Sometimes he would ask me how I was doing and try to make small talk. Again, I was no older than seven, so I wasn't exactly a small talk master. And being social wasn't something I had mastered. So I would always just say hi and answer with yes or no, or okay, or just small responses like that. Now all of this was a bit weird, sure. But the really creepy situation happened a few weeks after he had established himself in the neighborhood as the meat guy. And yes, we all called him the meat guy. when we talked about him. On the day in question, I was riding my bike around the street,

going down to one end of the road and back, and trying to do so as quickly as I could, trying to beat some arbitrary record time I had set for myself. I was going down the hill pretty fast, and as I was turning around, I saw the meat man's van pulling around the corner. As soon as I saw him turning, I decided I would keep going straight a bit up the next hill before I turned around, so I didn't have to deal with him. As I passed him, I saw him waving and smiling at me. I ignored him and just kept pedaling. To my surprise, he quickly changed his direction from turning left to go up my street, to turning the same way that I was going. After a few seconds of going up the next hill, I decided I was going too far from home and just stopped on the side of the road, deciding I would

wait for him to pass me and then turn around and go home. To my surprise, he didn't pass me, but I heard his van pulling up behind me. I thought he was just going to stop and talk to me. But then I felt the front of his van hit the back of my bike. He didn't hit me hard, but it was enough to knock my bike down and knock me off the bike. I was a bit shocked and also in pain from hitting the concrete, but I was beyond confused as to why that had happened. I stood up and looked down at my scraped knee and then saw that my back wheel was bent in and I remember being super mad about it. I remember starting to cry and then him getting out of the van and walking up toward me to ask if I was okay. I told him he broke my bike and I yelled at him asking why he had hit me.

He was telling me to be quiet and kept asking me if I was injured or hurt. I told him that I scraped my knee because at this point I was just an angry kid and I couldn't really logically explain my rage. The second that I said that, he knelt down. down to me and said, oh no, it's okay. I'll take you to the hospital. And then motion towards his van and tried to help me up. I remember yelling that I didn't need to go to the hospital, that I just wanted to walk home. And he kept insisting that I needed to get into his van so he could take me to the hospital. After some back and forth, he grabbed my arm and looked me dead in the eyes saying, listen here, you little brat, you're getting in my van one way or another.

So shut the hell up and come on. When he said that, I started screaming as loudly as I could. While I didn't understand what exactly was going on, I knew it wasn't good, and all I could think to do to solve the problem was to scream. Thankfully, that was enough. One of the neighbors came outside to see what was going on, and all he saw was this man with the windowless van, trying to basically abduct a seven-year-old boy. Thankfully, this old guy was also the type to not just stand and watch it play out. This old dude came at the meet guy with what I think was a hammer, and he started swinging on him until he got in his van and drove off. The old guy was asking me if I was okay

and telling me that he would walk me home so we could talk to my mom about what had happened. We got to my house and my mom came out to talk to the old man about the situation, and I tried my best to explain to her what had happened. I was a sobbing mess, so I probably didn't get many coherent thoughts out, but she was able to piece together what had occurred. I'm pretty sure I was grounded for going too far up the road, but I was perfectly fine with staying home for the rest of the rest of the time. of the summer, to be honest. I know my mom

called the police and she and the old man made a report, but I have no idea if they ever caught the guy. Obviously we never saw him again, much to everyone's relief. My dad was upset that he didn't get to approach the man about the situation, that he was swindled out of like $150 for the month's deliveries. Like I mentioned,

my mom was way more protective of me after this. When I got a new bike of my birthday, she had told me I can go two houses down in either direction, which was fine me. So, Top Cut's Meet Guy. If you're out there and you hear this, I hope you and I never meet again. If we do, I'll make sure to let my dad know where you are. I think he still wants to have a talk with you about what happened back then. Back in 2012, I fell asleep on the sofa one night. My husband turned off the TV and went to bed without disturbing me. I woke at some point in the night,

and saw two iridescent blue humanoid figures standing in front of me with their backs to me. One appeared to be male and the other female. The male was somewhat taller and wore a white coat with a high collar. The female wore basic military-style clothing. They seemed to be looking down at something, and the male appeared to be explaining something to the female. This is strange, I thought. I must still be asleep in dreaming this, but I feel very much awake.

I can sometimes lucid dream if I have a hint that I'm dreaming by asking myself, do you remember waking up today? Because I had just woken up, my usual method of checking to see if I was dreaming wouldn't work. My brain was pretty adept at preventing me from lucid dreaming usually. I can read till time and dodge any number of other tricks set out in lucid dream. guides. So I really only have that one sure-fire method that works, and my brain had likely just beaten it, too. As I laid there, trying to think of some other method to prove that I was dreaming, it occurred to me that this might be sleep paralysis. I'd never experienced sleep paralysis

before, but as far as I know, there's no rule stating it must always be terrifying. Besides, if If anyone was going to do something sleep-related abnormally, it would be me. I decided to see if I could move. I pushed myself up off the couch, not sleep paralysis. When I pushed myself up, however, a couple of things happened. The two figures turned to look at me. It also woke up my dog who was sleeping between my feet. The two figures looked at me and gasped.

The male grabbed the female's arm and they bolted down my hallway. My dog leapt off the couch and chased them. I got up and followed my dog, but they were gone. I didn't go back to sleep after that. I've had more than my fair share of weird sleep-related things happen, but this was by far the strangest. The following story is not mine, but my great-grandmother's told to me by my grandfather. Some context before the story. My great-grandmother grew up in the Ecuadorian countryside.

And like most kids at the time, late 1910s to 1920s, she worked in the fields with her parents, who in turn worked as farmhands for homestead owners. The homesteads generally were some ways away from the nearest town, at least a few hours by horse or foot, and only a few people owned horses or mules. One night, a few hours after dark, my great-grandmother was coming back from getting water from a nearby creek for her mother.

She was walking along a lonely dirt path, leading to the homestead where her family worked and lived, surrounded by trees on one side and a field on the other. As she walked down the path, she spotted a man dressed in a long black coat and a black top hat. When my grandmother got closer, she noticed that his boots were shiny and had to be. no dust on them, which was weird for someone who she assumed had been walking down this dirt path, but she didn't think much of it. As she passed him, she said, Buenos noche, signor, which is good evening, sir, but he didn't reply, like he hadn't

heard her, or just ignored her. My great-grandmother continued walking, and after some time, she turned around to look behind her to see if the man was still there. but the path was empty, like no one had been there in the first place. From what my grandfather knows, she never told her parents about the man in the top hat, and only told him about it as part of some stranger danger lecture. However, my grandfather staunchly believes the man in the top hat that my grandmother saw when she was a girl was the devil. And I myself doubt that the man with the top hat was human.

Like many things that I have experienced, I only realize or perhaps notice how strange or scary they are after listening to myself as I tell others about them. This story is like that, in which I realized I was scaring the person that I was recounting it to, and that perplexity made me significantly more scared than when it was actually happening to me. I think it might be in our evolutionary interest as a species to try to preserve our own sanity when we tell ourselves to brush things off, or that a particular event was not that traumatizing. You know, just to keep going through a life that, to varying extents, cannot be entirely explained in a rational way.

There are 22 years between the events that happened to me as a teenager, and when I told the story to my own teenager just earlier this year. We were driving through the local orchards at night, on our way home from the next town over, and it was very dark. He grinned and asked me if I ever had a scary thing happened to me that I couldn't explain. I told him that I had many freaky things happened to me over my life, but I would tell him about one since he was obviously excited to hear about it, and we agreed some time ago to tell each other more things about our lives when it came to unexplained events,

because he has always liked spooky forms of entertainment. I started off with asking him to imagine all the vast numbers of humans that existed in the world before sleep paralysis had a name, or before his own Gen Z. That even goes as far as calling the shadowy figure accompanying the paralysis as a slidious as a slid paralysis, sleep paralysis a demon. I asked him, and now I'll ask you, imagine how many people have lived through such a thing, and never told a soul,

because no one ever used to talk about these things, until they permeated society as a collectively experienced thing that we can all accept, and now joke about at times. By joking, I mean all the memes and the comedy videos you can find online having to do, with this particular subject. The running joke seems to be that you're trying to sleep

when a person covered head to toe in black clothing, or sometimes I've even seen trash bags come twerking out of the closet at 3 a.m. to party and wake you up. I told my son that, for me, I had started having sleep paralysis around the age of four or five, as far as I know, and that by the time I was a teenager, it had become this very annoying thing that very much pissed me off when I was trying to sleep. That is why I find those kinds of videos so funny, because that underlying anger at having to deal with this annoying bastard

keeping you up at night was something that I could totally identify with. When it first happened, I was so extremely terrified. I was frozen, but I could see my room. I tried to call from my mom and no sound would come out of my vocal cords. just the characteristic strained breathing of the word mom, because that was all that would come out. I'm writing this in the assumption as I told it to my son, that most people know what sleep paralysis is

and how terrifying it can be, if not by experience, than by some other account that you've probably heard somewhere. That was when I was four or five. I could hear my parents in the living room watching TV. I heard them laughing and talking, as the view of the living room was visible through my open bedroom door, but had no way to move or speak. I remember telling my mom about it after I could move again, and she told me it was just a bad dream and nothing real. It was like 1990, so sleep paralysis would not have been part of my mom's

vocabulary at all back then. Anytime this happened and I regained control of my body, eventually, I ran out and would tell my mom about it. Then she would tell me it was a bad dream and to just go back to bed. I think eventually I just realized that this is something I have to deal with on my own because my mom doesn't believe me. I will admit that the first time I had sleep paralysis, it was terrifyingly accompanied by a deep and commanding male voice speaking to me from the general direction of my closet,

and I was moved off of the bed to the middle of the floor, so that probably made it seem all the more unbelievable to her as a real thing that could have happened. I genuinely believed my house was haunted as a child, and this is how I explained it to myself internally all those years growing up there, going through these kinds of things. We lived in an old Victorian house, and my parents would always joke when they couldn't find their belongings where they should have been, or when their things would return to them without explanation,

then it was the ghost of the house playing tricks on them. So, my little kid brain just ate that up, and used the ghost of the house concept to explain anything that scared me there. I never heard the male voice or any voice talking to me again after that first traumatizing experience when I was so little. But there were times that I would wake up on the other side of the room. I'm not sure if I was moved in my sleep, or I had a phase of sleepwalking that I was completely unaware of besides waking up on the floor. When the episodes would come, I started to learn that I could force my toes or fingers to move

eventually if I kept trying really hard to kick my legs or fling my arms about. I was a pro at what I called wriggling out of it by the time I was in middle school, and the occurrence of experiencing sleep paralysis dropped off significantly as I became a teenager. In the year 2000, my family was on their second computer ever, and I got my first cell phone, a little digital brick thing that burned your cheek if you talked for too long on it. I remember my friends and I all texted a mile a minute using the T9 keypad, and our MP3 players only had buttons. no screens.

9-11 hadn't happened yet. I had my first boyfriend and my first job ever that year. I was 16 years old. This is the world I was living in when I believe I saw my first sleep paralysis demon. I obviously did not have a word for it at the time, so I'll try to detail what happened to me one night when I was 16. I honestly cannot remember where I heard about it for. from, maybe friends at school or something, but people were talking about how they could sleep

better after meditation, and I had no idea what meditation was, so I looked it up online. Google existed, but it wasn't the search engine I used most back then. It was called Alta Vista. I found several blog posts labeled meditation for beginners, and I read through them. I had stayed up late studying and texting friends all night. I recall feeling dumb because I only had a few hours before I had to go to school the next morning when I finally decided to go to sleep. My bed was a twin daybed under a window with blinds. I recall when I lied down that the angle of the blinds brought the moonlight right into my eyes and made a pattern of light and dark lines across my pillow. The moon was very full and the sky was clear.

No clouds. At the foot of my bed, I had a small bookshelf and no other furniture on that side of the room. Other than the moonlight, there was a green digital alarm clock next to me and another one coming from the blue display on my obnoxiously large CD player reading No Disc, in texts that just moved and wrapped over and over across the display.

What I'm trying to say is that the line. light in the room was sort of all pointed towards the corner of the room next to the bookshelf, especially the bright moonlight. This is where I say the obligatory, this information will be important later on. Lying down, I decided to try a meditation I had read about earlier that day in order for me to fall asleep quickly because I wanted to get the most out of the few hours I had left before school. It was what I now know to be a rather typical bu.

body relaxation exercise, the kind where you do a slow body scan from head to toe and relax all your muscles along the way. So, I completed the body relaxation meditation, willing away tense spots until I reached my toes. I had never tried a meditation before, so I had my eyes open as I was following the path of my mindfulness. When I reached my toes, I noticed something unsettling. I was just staring beyond the shape of my toes, poking the blanket up, kind of squinting and puzzling over how the shadow of the bookcase could be so large and so dark. I thought, that's not possible. I sleep in this room every night, and I've never seen a weird shadow like that. Like, it was physically impossible for a shadow to be there with the objects

and lighting, positioning in the room. It should have been empty and illuminated, but there was a small area of blackness there instead. As I'm remembering it, it honestly feels like I was just kind of stumped, and then it slowly became alarmed, and I don't know what in the hell possessed me in that instance, but it really felt like fight or flight were my only options. At that point, I know I was not paralyzed yet

because I started to sit up, and the freaking shadow, I kid you not, wiggled like a flame of a candle, except it was all blackness. It was still smaller than a person, but unnaturally larger than my tiny bookshelf that only came to the height of my small bed. When I say that I don't know what the hell possessed me, I mean that I was angry, like furious. I wanted to go to sleep and this little thing was in my room making me uncomfortable. I stared directly at it and I said out loud, you're not real.

At this point, you may be expecting the story to end neatly, but my son on our drive, as I told this to him, said what I'm sure many of you are thinking. Oh no. Yeah. Oh no is a natural reaction to telling the sleep paralysis demon that they are not real, apparently. But 16-year-old me, 22 years ago,

did not know any of these things. The thing moved away from the wall. So, yeah, definitely not just a shadow, and started to grow a little, taking up half of one of my closet doors as it moved along the next wall, over from where I originally saw it, covering the door in wavy, formless blackness. I held on to my anger like it was the only thing that could save me, and honestly maybe it did. This time I yelled at it.

You're not real. and this is where things just went insane in my room. The thing grew until my entire field of vision was just blackness. I was completely paralyzed, and the loudest thundering wind I have ever heard in my life was swirling around my room, but only the sound of it was present. My hair was not being moved at all,

and my skin could not feel all this horrible wind that I was hearing. If I could describe it, it was like a demon screaming in both ears at once, and having a hurricane going at the same time. That little shadow had become a cloak that surrounded me, held me in the tightest grip, and would not let me go. I was forced down onto my back in this attack, and although I could not talk, I screamed at this thing in my mind. I can't remember exactly what I was screaming. I remember yelling, Frick off, with my whole being as I struggled to move, but with the actual F word.

That was the general sentiment that I was feeling. I have no idea what would have happened to me if I just got scared and let it take over my mind as well. It felt like that was what was happening. People who have sleep paralysis might know what I'm talking about, like when it first comes on and it feels like pressure dragging the back of your head, in a way that makes you struggle in order to not lose consciousness. Having had sleep paralysis so many times at this point,

albeit not with the phenomenon anything close to this, I can tell you that this is the most constrained my body has ever been when paralyzed. I was sweating as I tried to move against being unable to. I could not move anything but my fingers a little, and being able to move them was not helping the rest of my. my body come online, or whatever it is that happens when people escape sleep paralysis. Normally, wiggling fingers and toes leads to limbs moving and eventually regaining control of the body. At least that's how it's always worked for me before this.

It was such a struggle to get that first finger or toe to move, but once I did, I could always control my body again very quickly after that. This time was different, though. I could sort of flick my fingers occasionally, but everything else was just as I said. I was paralyzed, couldn't speak. Everything was pitch black, and a hurricane demon had spawned in my room three hours before I had to be at school the next day. At that age, I'd become enamored with a set of fantasy books that my dad had gotten me from the neighbor. The neighbors were an elderly couple, and the wife had passed away naturally at a ripe old age,

leaving all of her books behind, which took up most of the same. space in their small house. Every fantasy writer at that time that was popular, she had all their works. But my dad, not knowing any of this, just randomly filled a box up for me with one or two books from different sets, after the husband said he could take whatever he wanted for me. In one of these books, I had read at some point. There was a tale where a mage was so evil the good guys had to destroy his very soul, so that his evil would not reincarnate.

That particular fantasy world had reincarnation and magic that it could apparently destroy souls, mages that could see the soul and permanently disintegrated. That thought crossed my mind in the middle of the raging dark storm gripping me. I felt like this thing, whatever it was, was screaming in my face. I have no idea how much time passed. I just knew I had struggled more against this thing in a more awakened and heightened cognitive state

than any other sleep paralysis episode I'd ever been through. As in, I was very awake and aware of what was happening to me, and I was pretty much awake and just not trying to sleep. And, God, I was so angry at this thing. I screamed in my mind at it. F off, or I'll destroy your soul!

And I thought about the imagery in the book of a flame shaped like a phoenix flying out of a dying person, only to be chased down and ripped to shreds by other birds made out of light and flames, until not even ashes were left. The deafening wind sounds stopped, and it really felt like this thing was taken aback. Like how when we first met when I had to repeat myself earlier in saying, you're not real. I looked where I felt it in front of my face in the quiet, and to my whisper that I could barely manage through the paralysis, I said, I will destroy your soul and you will cease to exist if you don't get out right now. And then literally everything went back to normal.

There was no blackness. The wind sound did not pick back up after it had died in my first statement. Like, I had no idea how to destroy a soul, but when I was facing off with that thing, I really convinced myself that I had to scare it worse than it was scaring me. and my bluff or overconfidence or whatever left me covered in sweat back in my bed in my room with nothing strange going on in any of the corners. The normal lighting had returned, and so had the normal shadows in my room with them. And I went back to bed.

Since that time, I've only felt darker presences and sleep paralysis starting to happen in times of my life where I'm sleep deprived, and also going through. through a rough time emotionally. Like, it occurred frequently in my 20s when I was working overtime all the time, and I dated a guy that treated me very badly. I feel like if there's negative energy surrounding you, you're more likely to experience these kinds of things. Only in my 30s have I become somewhat comfortable sleeping alone.

It was really hard for a long time. As for what the demons or whatever they were said to me, the one with the deep voice near my closet as a child, and the screaming banshee thing from when I was 16, I don't wish to disclose that as the content of their words just truly frightens me, and I don't even want to recreate them anywhere. I do want to end with going back to my mom not believing me all those years when I was very small. My poor mom had her own episode with sleep paralysis in her 50s.

It happened once. There was no demon or demonic voices present, and she reacted to this by sleeping in a different room for three whole years, and having the lights on at night ever since then. She was that terrified by just the paralysis, and she always randomly apologizes to me for not believing me until she herself experienced it, and my little brother started having even wilder stuff happened to him, like getting dragged by his ankles off the bed while paralyzed. neither of them have ever experienced anything on the level I have experienced, and neither of them have had any experience with it as a child, just randomly as adults. So that was my wild sleep paralysis story. It scared my son so much. I had to step out of the denial of events I can't explain box and kind of accept that a really frightening thing happened to me.

and I somehow crazily met it with unrelenting anger and bluffing. I often wonder what would have happened to me if I just let the thing take over my consciousness and couldn't fight it away. I wonder if my life would have ended, or turned out differently. Or, if I would have forgotten the whole thing and just listen to its scream like a raging storm for all eternity. My husband and I have gone the last ten years, without any of our friends and family believing us about what we saw one night. It would be amazing to have just one person believe our story

because it 100% happened. We are not crazy. We're not on any substances. We've made it 35 years of life with never seeing anything like this, aside from this one time. So here's our story. Ten years ago, late on a Saturday night, we were headed to a friend's house party in Bendell, Mississippi. Very rural area, with nothing but woods and small winding roads.

I was riding shotgun in our little red Honda. I look over at my husband and he had both hands on the steering wheel, leaned forward, looking straight up out of the windshield, staring at the sky, not looking at the road at all. So I say, What are you looking at? Look at the road before you wreck. He didn't answer. Didn't move.

So I leaned forward to see what he's looking at. And floating right above us at tree level was a neon green craft of some sorts, the same size as our car. No sound. It was going the exact speed that we were. were just hovering right above us. I saw it for about ten seconds before it shot up into the sky and disappeared completely out of view, never making a sound.

No flashing lights, just straight neon green. We were so baffled. We didn't know what the hell we had just seen. The second we got to our friend's house, we told them, and nobody believed us. They all just laughed and thought we were on something. to make us delusional. We still talk about this experience at least once a month. We will never forget it.

It was absolutely unbelievable to see something so strange like that. That was today's episode of the As the Raven Dreams podcast. Thank you so very much for listening, and I really hope you enjoyed these scary stories. If you want to support the channel further, please do consider checking out my YouTube channel. Just search As the Raven Dreams on YouTube. And subscribing.

You can also join the channel or go to my Patreon for early access to all of my content, all of it's appreciated and never expected. But if it happens, thank you. All that said, friends, I will see you on the next episode of the As the Raven Dreams podcast. But of course, until then, sleep well.