I Think I Made A Ghost Mad Last Night

I find as I get older, my belief in the “supernatural” increases. Sometimes, you simply have experiences that you yourself can’t explain, and even when those events are per se easily explainable, there is a nagging voice in the back of your head that says “are you really convinced that’s what happened?”

Case in point: Last night, I decided to crawl into bed fairly early. I took my book “In Cold Blood” (I”m so close to finishing this book like 30 pages left), my Fleshlight and my phone. My plan was to dance with my Fleshlight for a little bit, then read until I drifted off to sleep. I had my bedside light on, but much to my surprise, as soon as I got settled under the blankets, my eyelids became heavy.

My sleep has been so precarious as of late, that when I’m in the midst of it, I try my best to stay in that lane. So when I woke up to find the light on, I simply rolled over to put my back to my lamp and continue sleeping.

Now this is when weirdness ensues. I don’t know how much time had passed, but it was at some point here, lying in bed with my back to my lamp, that someone hit me fairly hard on my hip/back region. It was like a push, and I bolted upright. Of course no one was there, but in my head, there was an overwhelming feeling of “turn off the lamp!”. For a moment I was tempted to leave it on, and attempt to return to sleep, but the feeling was overwhelming, not like a voice in my head, but like a feeling that if someone were there, they’d be saying “how do you expect to get good sleep when the room is so bright?”

I turned off the lamp, while continuing to scan the room, as if I expected suddenly for something or someone to appear, and I settled back into bed and fell asleep in short order.

This isn’t the first time I’ve felt that feeling that someone else is in my apartment with me at times. Now, the easy explanation is because of my totally ridiculous sleep, and how easily I seem to transition from asleep to awake and vice versa, what I experienced was simply some variation of lucid dreaming, or perhaps a variation of a night terror. Simple right?

Previously, I’ve had moments when transitioning from sleep to awake, I’d find myself in conversations, like actively talking with my mouth and often giggling. When I wake up, I can never remember exactly what elicits the giggles, but I find there is a nagging voice in the back of my head saying “were you talking in your dream…or were you actually talking to someone?” I’ve had many variations of this. Once I damn near shot up the walls when I bolted out of sleep when I felt, or thought I felt, someone sit on my bed.

I think my deepest worry is that I’m losing my mind. I survived 40 years of Chicago and the world, and a year in Afghanistan, to simply lose my mind living in a self-imposed prison of my own making. Seems oddly poetic…right?

I tell myself that if there is something unexplainable, at least it doesn’t appear to be hostile. In fact seems to be looking out for my well being. God knows I would pay just about anything to have someone hold my hand, or play with my hair as I drift off to sleep. That would make the world dynamically better in my brain, and in my eyes.

And I still can’t find myself on a 4th date. What a time to be alive.

How has your sleeping been during covid? Have you experienced sleep issues, or have you either during covid or before had experiences that you would deem supernatural? If so, tell me all about them down in the comment box.

Photo by Stefano Pollio on Unsplash