A while back, I used to serve in the military as an officer in the Navy. During one of my appointments at a base off of Trincomalee harbor, I was given cabin number 15 of a two storied building housing officers of the fleet. A peculiar thing I noticed on the first day I settled in my cabin was that there was no room mate for myself and the cabin was fully allocated to myself while all other cabins accommodated two officers each. I was not a senior officer of the fleet at the time and there were much senior officers accommodated adjacent to the room I was allocated.
I had a batch mate of mine in an adjoining room and when he returned after duties I asked him why I was singled out while everyone else had room mates which was the routine procedure when allocating accommodation. My batchmate told me that there was a superstition surrounding the cabin number 15 and that people belive it to be haunted. I asked around regarding the origin story about the superstition and I was not able to find any at the time but I was able to find out why I was given the cabin.
While I was in the Navy, I was pretty infamous for debunking ghost encounters among our junior officers a lot and I’ve even taken up open challenges to stay the night alone in some post war encampments where a lot of carnage took place during the civil war period in the country. I’ve even stayed a whole week in a RADAR outpost where an officer ran for his life after a supernatural encounter without any incident all alone and won a few bets even. So, the officers who plan the allocation of cabins had decided to give the sole ownership of cabin number 15 to myself just to test me out on my claims of being a debunker.
A few days passed by without incident but not like in other places I’ve stayed, I felt that this cabin has an eery vibe especially around 3 am where I found myself to wake up for no reason at all. When I wake up, its not out of fear or surprise, I just open my eyes for no reason and when ever I check the time it is around 3 am or close to it and I find myself unable to doze off afterwards and feel tired in the morning. During the day while I carry on with my routine duties, I investigated about the cabin expecting to find the typical someone died or hanged himself in the cabin story but there was none. Even the building was relatively new but officers who slept in the cabin even for a single day claim that the cabin is haunted.
I asked around what type of experiences the officers who slept in the cabins had and they all sounded exactly like your typical haunting. An apparation appearing besides the bed, shaking you out of bed or scratching and pulling on the leg but I did not experience any. The only oddity I experienced was the waking up at 3 am. A few more days passed by and now I experience a recurring dream where I find myself staring at what people call a “Shadow person” standing beside my bed. I do not jump up scared from my bed but keep on staring at the entity who does not have any facial features but just the empty and dark shadow. And again I open my eyes and to see the time is around 3 am.
I experienced the same dream continuously for about 10 to 15 days and really found it hard to fall back asleep usually entertaining my self on a mobile game or on youtube till sun rise. Some how from the day I got accommodated in cabin 15, I could not get any sleep past 3 am. A few more days passed and one day as I went to bed expecting to see the same dream and wake up at 3 am, I dreamed of the shadow holding out its dark hand out and cover my mouth and for the firt time in many years I woke up frightened and felt my heart racing with fear but this time the clock read 2 am.
From that day on, I felt my whole personality change from being optimistic to cautious and even my taste in food had changed. My love of spicy food changed to the point where now I cannot stand the site of too much spice. I felt emptiness sweeping me away and I felt so demotivated in work and even in life. Even now when I am no longer in the military service, I do not feel myself and I always feel a dark presence inside of me. Am I possessed or is my life taken over by this shadow entity? Is cabin 15 a portal to the shadow world? Was this shadow waiting for the perfect host while scaring everyone else away with parlor tricks ? These are the questions I wonder to this day.