My husband and I get home at around 9pm. We eat our very late fast food dinner and I begin putting what we grabbed from the store away. This is our first Christmas in our first home, so we mainly grabbed Christmas decor. I ask my husband if he’d like to join me putting up our new ornaments and he replies with “no, I’m too tired. I think I’ll head to bed.”
Which was unlike him, we normally stay up til midnight and it was only 9:30pm. He informed me he will be up around 2am to make our famous slow cooker chili for a pot luck the following day, but he was just too tired to do so at the moment. “Sounds good” I reply. I finish putting up the rest of the Christmas decor and head to bed around 10pm. This is early for me but I know he’ll wake me up when he gets up at 2, so some extra sleep shouldn’t hurt.
I have a hard time trying to shut my brain down. I am almost 6 months pregnant for context, so insomnia and minor anxiety is something I deal with right before bed. But my mind is racing. I normally pray before bed to ease my mind. It’s always the same prayer “Please protect us and our baby from anything or anyone that could do us any harm, protect me from nightmares…” etc. But I can’t focus on my prayer… I even apologize to God for not being able to focus. My mind is racing too much.
My hormones have not been too kind on my night terrors but I’ve slept peacefully for the past couple weeks so I’m not too worried. The dreams are always the same… some creepy man chasing me, a loved one passing away, or getting lost somewhere. Once and awhile I’ll have a PTSD dream of something that happened a few years ago, those are the worst. But my husband is always fantastic in comforting me. He’s used to my dreams, sleep talking, sleep walking, and sleep laughing.
I manage to fall into a light sleep, no dreams. But asleep. Peaceful. My husband gets up at 2am and starts making chili, takes him about 40 minutes. I am up and unable to sleep at this point until he gets back to bed. I sarcastically say “This better be the best chili I’ve ever had for keeping me up for 40 minutes.” Although he doesn’t laugh, just rolls over and says “Goodnight, I love you”. I’ll admit I was a tad disappointed that he wasn’t in the cuddling mood but that’s okay. He seemed really really tired.
He I once again fall into a light sleep, no dreams, but peaceful. I awaken to hear what sounds like foot steps and small banging noises. It’s cold outside I thought to myself, it’s just the house. More noises. I remind myself the slow cooker is on, probably just hearing the small noises it makes or even the dishes settling in the drying rack. More noises. My eyes are open and I’m anxious at this point. My body doesn’t feel like its 100% awake yet. Almost like sleep paralysis but not fully. My chest feels heavy. I start praying again… “Please protect us from anything or anyone…” Interrupted. I hear coughing coming from the other room… way too far away to be my husband who is sleeping right next to me.
He is a heavy sleeper so I’m not surprised he isn’t hearing any of this, as it is just faint noises coming from across the house. The door isn’t open, but I look underneath the door to see if there are any lights on. Completely dark. I wake him up anyway, I’m scared. “Honey, there’s someone in the house.” He says, “No there’s not, it’s just normal house noises.” I say, “No, no… I’ve been hearing someone for the past couple minutes.” He pauses to listen. I try once again to reassure myself.
If it is in fact a robber, my purse is right on the counter. Hopefully he will take what he’s looking for and leave without coming into our room or hurting us. I start recalling our valuables that we might lose, which isn’t much. About $40 in cash and I can always shut off my credit card, it’s not worth losing my life over at all. It’s not much, we will be okay. My husband says “it’s probably just the slow cooker, you’re fine.” to try to ease my anxiety. But he knows I’m still scared. He begins saying “Will it help you sleep better if I go check…” CLASH. The noises are obvious at this point and he admits there may be someone or at least an animal causing a ruckus in the kitchen.
He puts on his sweatpants to go scope out the noises and I ask if I should quietly call the police just in case, since my phone was right next to me. I was too startled to even check the time but I figured it was about an hour after he came back to bed from making the chili. He once again reassures me almost laughing at this point, “It’s probably just a mouse, you’re okay honey”.
He opens our door and goes out to catch the “mouse” that is keeping me awake. Not even 5 seconds later he comes back through the doorway… thats too soon… it takes longer than that to walk to the other side of the house and back… He gets back into bed and doesn’t say a word. I’m sort of embarrassed at this point, I woke him up for nothing and now he must be slightly irritated that I made him get out of bed. I figure it’s time to make a joke to lighten the mood… “haha, what was it honey? Just the dishes?” He says “No… it wasn’t.” “Well???” I ask, waiting for some sort of punchline…
“It was neither man, nor animal…” He replies in a friendly but empty voice. Like an automated answering machine. I now realize he is scared too, but not entirely himself… “…what?” I ask in a small voice, hoping there is a joke coming… I’ve never heard my husband scared before. He repeats himself, “It was neither man, nor animal…” I once again look to the doorway to see if there are any lights on and now the hallway light is on. The door is open just the smallest crack and I see a tall human figure looking back at me. I can’t see without my glasses on, but I can only assume we are making eye contact. No thoughts going through my head, just fear from now on.
What ever it is, it swoops through the door and to the end of our bed, then up towards the middle, hovering. It was my husband… but not my husband, he was laying right next to me. Same face. Eyes rolled all the way back, mouth open. Getting closer to me. “He took my soul.” my husband says, in his empty voice. I am face to face with this… thing. My husband is next to me but gone. I am alone. Whatever took my husband was seeming to morph into him as well. It latches onto my hand and I feel everything I have inside of me leave into this creature like liquid in a straw… This is it for me… I am leaving my body behind as an empty husk and it feels exactly like you think it would.
My eyes shoot open. I’m not laying on my back like I was, I’m on my side now. There’s no demon. I’m curled into a ball holding all of our blankets in my hands tightly. Our son is kicking me, he will kick when I have dreams. I somehow forgot he was there… I am slowly coming back to reality. It was just a dream. But I can normally tell the difference, this time it was hard. I feel guilty, hoping my baby wasn’t feeling the same fear I was.
I take a second, but my breathing and movements have picked up to the point where my husband notices. He’s awake now so I feel obligated to say, “I just had a night terror. This one wasn’t fair. I’ve never had a dream THAT bad before.” He holds me tight and rubs my stomach where our baby is kicking to calm us down. It’s quiet now and everything feels better. He experienced demon/ghost related nightmares when he was younger, so he understands my fear. I feel safe. I almost feel obligated to ask him if he’s okay, but I didn’t. That would be silly. It was just a dream, he didn’t feel any of it, right?
He says,
“I just had really bad sleep paralysis.”