From Anon
I have a close friend named Harold.
We have known each other for about 30 years. (He and I, at one point, had very strange encounters with the Ouija board, with some of the happenings including teleportation, although the following experience had nothing to do with our Ouija experiences, I don't believe. I mention the Ouija as being illustrative of the fact that Harold and I have had more than one shared paranormal experience.)
When we were first introduced by a mutual friend, it was as though we had known each for years. We have always been very close.
The paranormal encounter that I consider the most frightening of life was also simultaneously experienced by Harold, in slightly different form, but with the major elements of the experience coinciding.
About 25 years ago, while I was living at my parents' house. I awoke one morning to see my bedroom door opening. Immediately, I thought, with distinct clarity, "My father is coming in to empty the trash can."
As the door opened more widely, and I didn't see my father enter the room, I realized that something else was going on, and I began to panic, thinking someone had broken into the house. I believed myself to be thinking in a waking-consciousness, and did not feel that I was dreaming.
I also realized, as I became more aware that someone unwanted and dangerous was about to enter the room, that was lying on my back and could not move. I then saw, a black two-dimensional, shadowed outline of a man in what appeared to be a pointy trenchcoat and pointy rimmed hat enter the room.
I have NEVER been more frightened in my life.
I somehow knew, as the figure made its way to me in the bed, that it was going to do something to my neck and kill me. Along with the paralyzation, this thought was excrucatingly horrific.
As the figure, the most malevolent feeling thing I have ever
experienced, got to the side of my bed, near my neck, I "woke" up.
The room, as I looked around for the 'thing,' was just as it had looked moments before during the 'dream,' with shadows and early morning light exactly as I had thought it was moments before.
As bad as the 'dream' was I filed it under 'nightmares beyond all
nightmares' and somewhat forgot about it
About a week later, I went to visit Harold, who had had a string of bad things to endure.
His father had died during the prior year, his mother had run over his cat, and he had been fired from his job. His older brother, going through a divorce, had moved in with Harold and his mother.
During my visit, Harold mentioned that he'd recently had a horrible
dream.
He said that one morning, he woke up and thought his brother was coming into his room "to borrow some socks." But he eventually realized that the door opening was not done by his brother, but some malevolent entity determined to kill him.
I said "Stop, Harold, was it a shadow type thing with a pointy
trenchcoat shaped body?"
Harold said, "Yes. With a pointy kind of hat on." He was also unable to move as the thing came around to the side of the bed and Harold also felt it would do something to his neck.
During the discussion, we both later remarked how the ideas about my father emptying trash and his brother borrowing socks just kind of come into heads as a complete thought that almost was too placating....since neither my father came into my room to empty my trashcan and his brother never entered Harold's room unbidden, let alone to take some socks.
We both agreed that it was terrifying. We've never talked to anyone else with a similar experience, although since then, in my researches, I've run across references to 'the hag,' a Scandinavian myth, I believe, about a succubus type creature that somewhat mirrors the paralyzation and fear elements of our experience.
This sounds like something I used to be _really_ scared of in my old room when I was younger. A slow, heavy rythmic breathing, almost like a prank caller used to eminate from somewhere over the other side of the room, leaving me frozen in my bed.