Hello, I’m currently on an alt account. I want to start by asking that people stay respectful. This is my actual life, my real experiences and I’m honestly coming to ask for genuine help in trying to figure out exactly what these were and why I saw them so often as a child. This was NOT sleep paralysis, one of these experiences is a memory shared by at least 2 other people in my family.
Okay, I’ll get to it. I’m from New Mexico, if you know anything about our state it’s probably SW, aliens, and green chile. The neighborhood that I grew up in is built on miles of native burial ground. Everyone in my family has grown up there, and they have all seen strange things. My family told me as a child to never look out my window at night if I heard tapping outside, because something would be looking back at me.
I saw dead people as a child, so bizarre things weren’t rare. However, I’ve been thinking about a certain occurrence that happened often throughout my childhood that I have never been able to figure out. I really hope that someone on reddit will know what these things were and why the hell they tormented me.
The first occurrence was when I was only 5 months old. I personally do not remember this, but both my mother and grandmother remember the night vividly. It was July 4, 1995 and the men in our family had gone on a camping trip. The three of us who stayed behind had just returned from watching the city lights parade and fireworks. My grandmother went to her bedroom to sleep, while my mom and I slept on the couch since my mom didn’t want to drive back to town so late. My mom had just fallen asleep when she woke up to a bright light from the front windows. She thought it was the boys returning home for some reason from camping. But instead, she was suddenly surrounded by clowns. I know, it sounds ridiculous- but I want to clarify my mother is TERRIFIED of clowns. She said she couldn’t move. The experience was very much like sleep paralysis, but she could scream. And she did. She yelled for my grandmother who did not come. My mom watched as these clowns surrounding us and began to offer me gifts. Bears, rattles, any toy you could think a 5 month old would want. The way my mother slept with me was always with her arm wrapped around me, and since she could not move- neither could I. She never stopped yelling for my grandmother and eventually, the light went away and so did the clowns. Seconds after they left, my grandmother came running from her bedroom. My mom asked her why she hadn’t come when she called and my grandmother said she couldn’t move, that these strange figures were surrounding her bed. She described them as like dark moving gel.
Throughout my childhood, I had similar experiences by myself. I would wake up in the middle of the night for seemingly no reason. Tall figures in black robes would stand around my bed, often 10 at a time. It happened often, so often that my mom became a very light sleeper. She would hear me unlocking the front door (the couch was next to it) and I would be running down the street screaming. It didn’t stop when we moved states, even in small town Tennessee, I was plagued in the middle of the night by these figures that would surround my bed. I could always move, I always saw their heads turning as I ran past them.
The last occurrence was on Christmas break, we were visiting family in New Mexico. I was sleeping in the family room, and when I woke up I didn’t see anything. I looked around the room and only noticed something was wrong when my eyes landed on the black tv screen. In the screen, were countless white figures around the room. I looked away scanning the room multiple times, and each time I looked away and back at the screen the figures were closer to me. Then I started to see them with my naked eye, looking back at the tv I saw a giant white face with it’s mouth opened wide. I lost my shit, understandably I think. I first ran to the room my mom was sleeping in, door locked. I tried my uncles room, door locked. I tried waking my other uncle who was asleep in the other living room, out cold. Grandmothers room, locked. I DO NOT REMEMBER THE REST OF THIS NIGHT. I have no idea what happened. I just remember the next morning telling everyone that something had happened and that when I tried going to them for help, I couldn’t wake any of them up. Even when I was screaming and banging on doors, I swear to god I would have thought they had been under some type of sedation.
That was the last time I saw those specific things, though I did have one other instance maybe 4-5 years later in the middle of the night where I woke up to see a grey version of a schoolmate in bed with me sporting the most stomach turning grin I’ve ever seen. And then… I lost whatever gift I had to see spirits. I don’t know if I blocked it out from the trauma or what. But yeah thats pretty much all I remember of them. I know it’s really not much, but anytime I google figures standing around bed I understandably don’t get much. I’ve been thinking about them a lot lately, the last two days specifically it’s been bothering me. I’m still so paranoid when I wake up in the middle of the night, I think I instinctively expect to see something awful. I really hope someone has an idea of what the fuck was going on if for nothing more than peace of mind and to tell me it’s probably never going to happen again.