I thought it was sleep paralysis.
I’ve always been a skeptic, so when I started getting the nighttime visitor a few months ago, I was initially terrified, but when the light of the morning crept through my window, I convinced myself I’d experienced sleep paralysis, and pushed the event to the back of my mind as I went throughout my day.
But it wasn’t. It never was.
We moved into this trailer at the end of April. It’s a brand new 2 bedroom in a quiet community, not like a camper style trailer. It’s nicer than any apartment I’ve lived in, and my partner and I are without kids (or careers) so the cheap rent and modest, yet fully functional accommodations suited our needs well.
I’ve always been an anxious person, and we moved states, so I had been dealing with a fair bit of stress. Add to that the financial strain of having to find a new job and pay for all the bullshit fees that come with transfering titles, licenses, etc and you’ve got a recipe for poor sleep. My partner was away for the night, spending some time out of state with their mother for her birthday, and I turned in at around 11 pm, after having a couple drinks and listening to some over-the-top readings of “true ghost stories” on Youtube. My interests are morbid. I’m sure many of you can relate. I love horror, true crime, the supernatural and paranormal, but I’ve never believed in any of it really. It’s like kids and santa claus, you believe cause you want to but deep down you know it’s just a story (except for the true crime of course, but a sturdy lock on the door and a heavy and routinely sharpened hunting knife on my bedside table kept my mind at ease of serial killers or bloodthirsty maniacs).
I passed out shortly after my head hits the pillow, but at around 1 am I was ripped from my pleasant slumber with a gut wrenching feeling of absolute terror. My eyes fluttered open and in the confusion that comes with the first moments of consciousness and the fact that I’m not wearing my glasses, I struggle to process what I’m looking at. There’s a dark figure hovering over me, barely illuminated by the moonlight streaming through a crack in the curtains. My chest tightened, and I held my breath. I couldn’t make out facial features or anything really, just the silhouette of a human-shaped figure leaning over me and watching me as I lay there, paralyzed, unable or unwilling to move for at least 5 minutes, then squeezed my eyes shut, breathed deeply several times, and opened them. And the figure was gone. I scrambled to turn on my lamp, grabbed the hunting knife, and inspected every room of the house for signs of trespassers. Wiggled the doorknobs, locks, and windows to make sure they were all secure, and hesitantly crawled back into bed, leaving my lamp on to ease my shaken mind.
I felt silly in the morning. It had to have been a dream, and I felt foolish for keeping the light on like a scared child. Then I remembered my friend recounting her experience with sleep paralysis, did some mild research online, and convinced myself that that’s exactly what I had experienced the night before. A completely reasonable explanation.
The nighttime visitor (as I began to think of him in my head) would appear to me about once a week. Sure it was scary as shit every time, and didn’t stop my heart from pounding, but I would tell myself “this is sleep paralysis, it’s not real and you’re safe, and close my eyes, breathing deeply until I was able to settle my racing heart, and go back to sleep. I never told my partner about it cause I didn’t want them to worry about me, and it just never seemed relevant. By the time I woke up every morning and saw the sunshine it didn’t bother me enough to bring it up.
But last night was different.
Around 3 am I awoke to the usual unsettling silhouette. I closed my eyes as soon as my mind caught up to what was happening ,and tried to steady my breathing. After about 5 breaths, I was calming down, and going to attempt to drift back to sleep, when I heard a low deep sigh from directly above me, and a hand gripped my throat like a vice.
The fingers were rough, calloused, and unnaturally cold. I couldn’t manage to croak any type of warning to my partner next to me as the iron grip of the hand tightened around my neck. My eyes felt like they were bulging out of my head, and sheer panic overcame me. In a sudden moment of clarity I fumbled for the hunting knife on my nightstand and plunged it into where I assumed the body of my attacker would be. Just like that the pressure around my throat disappeared. To say I screamed does not begin to describe the sound of primal fear that escaped my lips once my breath had returned. My partner bolted upright, terrified out of their mind and turned the light on. I was sobbing, knife in hand, and scanning the room for any evidence of the intruder. No blood on the knife, no sign of any kind of disturbance. I broke down in their arms, and told them about the night terrors that had been plaguing me since we moved in. After a long while, we determined that I had awoken from an extremely terrifying and vivid nightmare, as there was absolutely no evidence of an intruder, and my partner held me tight until I was able to once again fall asleep.
But this morning, as I shuffled my way into the bathroom to get in the shower, I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror out of the corner of my eye. Bruising. Unmistakable. In the shape of a hand. Four fingers and a thumb around my throat.