Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

I am male, 29. The following happened in 2003 when I was 23.

In 2003 I was living with my girlfriend and two male friends. The two guys’ rooms were at one end of the apartment, the room my girlfriend and I shared was at the other. One morning I woke up suddenly, hearing my girlfriend screaming in terror beside me. I sat up quickly and asked her what was wrong and why was she crying. It took a few minutes for her to calm down enough to be able to speak properly, and she eventually said “It was holding me down, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breath”. I had heard of this happening to people and always heard it explained as sleep paralysis, a trick of the mind where you wake up but are not fully awake and haven’t yet gained control of your muscles. I asked her if that was what it was and she was insistent that it wasn’t. She was very distressed and I tried to calm her down, I held her until she stopped crying and shaking.

When she seemed back to normal (but still a little freaked), she explained to me that this had happened many times in her life, a few times a year. She said it started as a young girl when both her and her sister were affected by the same thing. She could see a dark form over her whenever it happened. The dark form would crush her and breath on her, not letting her speak or move. This is why she was sure it wasn’t sleep paralysis, this was some kind of entity. This was freaky enough, but then she said she was worried that it would attach itself to me. Apparently two of her ex-boyfriends ended up with this thing traumatizing them while they were with her… I asked why she hadn’t mentioned it before, and she said it was because it hadn’t happened in quite a while and she preferred to put it out of her mind as much as possible. This worried me a bit, because I have had my own experiences with evil things (that’s for an entirely different post) but I tried to forget about it.

So that morning went on and by the end of the day everything was fine, just a normal day. The next morning came without incident. So did the next three or four days. Then came the morning where it happened to me. I remember opening my eyes, feeling totally awake all of a sudden, not half awake and definitely not dreaming. I could feel something crushing my chest, it felt like I had been winded, and the dead weight was getting heavier. I couldn’t move a single muscle, not even a twitch. Breathing was very difficult, almost impossible. I was really panicking now and thought maybe my spinal cord had somehow snapped or something. My girlfriend was sleeping beside me, I could see her in the side of my vision, and hear her breathing. But I couldn’t turn my head. I tried to call her name… nothing happened. I tried again and again, each time nothing. Then I started to hear something. Something besides the sounds of my girlfriends soft breathing, it was a voice. A murmur, to be more precise.. It was low and guttural and I could not understand the words, or even hear them properly. It was like it was coming from through a wall, except it was right on either side of my ears. I could feel breath on my face (my girlfriend was turned away from me). I really thought I was going to die from either the crushing sensation, or just from fear. I could definitely feel something else there, something hateful. I tried to call out again but to no avail, but I could feel tears streaming down my cheeks and onto the pillow.

After I don’t really know how long, maybe 10 minutes, of complete and utter terror, I eventually tried to summon all of my energy (which felt like it was being slowly but steadily drained from me) and put every piece of strength I could find into a huge effort to call out and try to move. It worked! All at once, I screamed out and my limbs flailed as I sprang into a sitting position, every muscle aching like I had just climbed a mountain. This woke my girlfriend, who instantly knew what had happened to me. “I’m so sorry”, she said over and over.. “I didn’t want to pass it on to you”.. as she held me, crying herself. It took me quite a while to calm down, and now I knew what it was like for her; it was far worse than I thought.

We are not together anymore, I am living with a different girlfriend now, but that is not the reason we split up; she was from a different country and had to return home for money and education reasons a few months later. Strangely though, I have not experienced this since she left.. It happened once more to me about a month after the first time, when she was still there, but never again since. I really hope she is not still afflicted with whatever that thing is, because a lifetime of being tormented like that would be unbearable. I must get in contact with her actually, and ask her about it.

So now when I hear the term “Sleep Paralysis” being thrown around I think twice, and would really like to know if anyone else has had a similar experience. I don’t think science can explain this one.

I would just like to state that at no time did I pray to god, I am not a Christian (or a member of any organized religion). I do believe in demonic entities (from quite a few personal experiences), as well as good ones but I do not believe in heaven or hell. There are forces out there that sit on each side but no one religion has got it completely right. I’m saying this because I don’t want someone saying that god would have helped me, or that it was Satan’s chief commander or something. Any insight into what it could be would be much appreciated though. Thanks for your time.

Sent in by “Shroomy”, Copyright 2009 TrueGhostTales.com