March 12, 2025 • 15 mins
Sleep should be a time of rest and escape—but for some, the night brings something far worse. In this chilling collection, real encounters with sleep paralysis and waking nightmares blur the line between dream and reality. A child’s nighttime terror grows stronger each night, a boy questions whether the figure standing over him is really his mother, and a woman living by the woods wakes to noises that shouldn’t be there. Are these hallucinations of the mind, or is something lurking in the darkness, waiting for you to wake?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
I'm not someone who grew up with any kind of
sleep disorder like sleep paralysis or night terrors. I've always
been a very heavy sleeper, which is why this was
such a shock to me. We all have the occasional nightmare.
I used to think of nightmares as free three D
immersive horror movies. In a weird way. I sometimes enjoyed
(00:33):
the thrill of waking up after a nightmare. At the time,
I was living with my roommate Patricia, who I called Trish.
We had very different work schedules, so we didn't see
much of each other during the week. This happened in July.
I remember because it was so hot that I had
(00:53):
the window a sea unit blasting every night, which provided
white noise that helped me sleep better. It was during
one of those nights that I had the first nightmare.
A few days after my ex and I had broken up.
Life wasn't exactly great at the time. I don't remember
much of the dream, but the part that sticks with
(01:15):
me was being in a room full of my family,
all silently sitting around a dinner table. Across from me.
Standing on the other side of the table was what
I can only describe as a creature. It looked like
some kind of alien with horns and claws. It was terrifying,
(01:39):
like what you'd imagine a sleep paralysis demon could look like,
except I was still fully asleep and dreaming. The next
thing I knew, the creature was standing right next to me,
staring down. I panicked and started running in my dream
until I was in my bedroom. That's the last thing
(02:02):
I remember before waking up. My room was pitch black
and the A C was humming on full blast. My
heart was racing from the nightmare, and I sat there
for a moment, thinking how creepy that dream was. Then
I lied back down and fell asleep again. The following night,
(02:25):
I woke up in the middle of the night to
find my bedroom door wide open. My immediate thought was
that Trish had opened it to check if I was home.
I got up, shut the door and went back to
sleep pretty quickly. The next day, I texted Trish asking
if she had come into my room the previous night.
(02:46):
She said she hadn't. I figured it was possible that
I got up in the middle of the night to
use the bathroom or kitchen and I just didn't remember.
Then the next night, I had another nightmare that same
demon like creature from the previous dream appeared again. Instead
(03:06):
of being with my family, though, I was in a dark, empty,
square room with this creature. It kept getting closer and
closer to me. It didn't move its limbs to walk,
It just kept appearing closer until it was on top
of me and I couldn't move. The creature took a
(03:27):
claw and scratched my thigh. I could feel the pain
and then nothing. I don't think I woke up right
after that. I just don't remember what happened next in
the dream. But when I did wake up and my
room was dark again and the A C was on
(03:48):
full blast, I felt something on my skin, and when
I rushed the bathroom and looked in the mirror, I
screamed there was a gash on my thigh. I ran
to Trisha's room and woke her up. We went back
to my room together and flipped the sheets off my bed,
(04:09):
searching for any bugs, spiders, or sharp objects I could
have laid on. Then Trish suddenly stopped, held up her
finger and told me to be quiet. We walked over
to the AC unit and turned it off, and for
the first time in days, the room went silent. That's
when we heard something coming from under my bed, that
(04:33):
faint kind of sound that comes from someone else's presence
in a room. I'm still impressed that neither one of
us screamed. Right then, we looked at each other, and
without a word, we bolted from the room and out
of the apartment. We ran over to our neighbor's house
(04:53):
and frantically knocked until he answered. He was an older guy,
so we didn't expect him to go fight the stranger
for but he let us use his phone to call
nine one one. While we waited for the police, we
heard the sound of our front door slamming, but none
of us made it to the window in time to
see who it was. The police arrived and confirmed that
(05:15):
the intruder was gone. After the police left, I started
reflecting on my dreams and realized what they actually meant.
The demon in my dreams had been the intruder, and
the night my door had been open, that meant that
he or she had probably been roaming around our apartment,
(05:37):
maybe even eating our food. To think this person could
scratch my thigh so hard it left a mark still
disturbs me. But this experience forever changed the way I
think about dreams and nightmares. One night, when I was
(06:03):
six years old, I awoke to find my mother standing
over my bed, staring down at me with a creepy
smile on her face. There was something wrong. I couldn't
put my finger on it, but there was definitely something off.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Mom. I said, yes, she replied. Her voice was flat, monotone.
What are you doing? I asked, watching you sleep? She
said why, But she didn't say anything more. I don't
(06:51):
know how, but I knew, without a doubt in my
mind that whoever I was speaking to was not my mother.
It stared down at me and I stared up at it.
We maintained constant eye contact. Neither one of us blinked.
(07:13):
We both knew that we were playing a game. It
knew that I knew, and the trick was to see
who would blink first time. For betty By's it said.
I didn't reply, I just kept staring. Time to close
your eyes, it said, I'm not closing my eyes, I whispered.
(07:40):
I fought against it for the longest time, straining every
nerve in my body, desperately willing myself not to blink.
Then very carefully, without turning around or breaking eye contact.
It reached behind itself for the closet door, sliding it
open soundlessly. When it was fully open, it stepped backwards inside,
(08:04):
settling back until only its smiling face and wide eyes
were visible. Then, just as carefully, just as silently, it
slid the closet door shut again. I lay there for
a long time, silently, trembling with fear. I kept my
(08:25):
eyes trained on the closet door, watching for any sign
of movement. Slowly, ever so slowly, I slid out of bed,
keeping my eyes on the closet door. Cautiously. I took
three or four steps to my right until I came
(08:46):
to the bedroom doorway. Never for one moment did I
take my eyes off that closet. Then I made a
run for it. I sprinted across the dark hallway and
into the safety of my mother's bed. She was lying
there in her bed, sleeping peacefully. A wave of terror
(09:07):
washed over me as my worst fears were confirmed, And
only then did I allow myself to blink. What I'm
about to tell you is the reason why my parents
(09:29):
moved out of a house that's been in our family
for three generations. I've struggled with depression for most of
my life. It's always been hard for me to shake
the feeling of being useless. I'm doing better now, but
when I was a kid, it was much worse. Because
(09:49):
of that, I spent a lot of time alone in
my room. Our house was nestled in a very woodsy area,
with trees on three sides of it and a forest
separated aid us from any neighbors. My room was pretty
big for a bedroom, located in the back corner of
the house. The windows on two of the walls faced
(10:10):
the woods. For a kid my age who was still
afraid of the dark, it was honestly pretty terrifying. Things
started when I was about ten years old in fifth grade.
It was the age where it was no longer acceptable
to sleep in my parents bed after a nightmare. The
(10:31):
first thing I noticed was my night light. It had
different color settings, so I could change the l ed
if I wanted to. I usually kept it on red,
which is how I fell asleep most nights. One night,
I woke up randomly in the middle of the night,
and I noticed that the night light had turned blue.
(10:54):
But I fell back to sleep almost immediately and didn't
think anything of it at the time. When it happened
again a week later, I asked my parents why they
were messing with it when I was asleep, but they
seemed genuinely confused and said they hadn't touched it. They
just shrugged it off, suggesting that the night light had
(11:16):
always been glitchy. They seemed pretty sure of themselves, so
I accepted it, at least for.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
A little while. Then one morning I woke up and
my night light was completely unplugged from the wall, lying
on the floor in the center of the room. I
told my parents, but once again they dismissed it. My
dad said I was getting too old for a night
light anyway, and that I needed to focus on school.
(11:46):
A few days later, my night light vanished completely. I
was convinced my parents were lying to me and that
they had taken it away to force me to outgrow it.
This led to a massive fight between us. Both sides
accused the other of hiding the night light, and nobody
was budging. I couldn't believe my parents would lie to
(12:09):
me like that over something like this, but there was
nothing I could do to prove it. After that, things
went back to normal for about a week, but then
three nights in a row, I woke up randomly in
the middle of the night. Each time I had no
(12:30):
idea what had awoken me. On the fourth night, when
it happened again, I told my parents. They said it
was just puberty and that changes in my sleep were natural.
So the next time it happened, I forced myself to
stay awake instead of falling back asleep, and a few
(12:52):
minutes after I woke up, I heard faint, rustling noises
coming from my closet. I told my parents in morning,
but they didn't believe me. The next four days were
the most traumatizing nights of my life. Every night I
woke up to rustling sounds coming from the closet. It
(13:15):
was torture. I couldn't take it any more, and I
begged my parents to believe me. My furious father dragged
me to the closet to prove to me that there
was nothing there. He started throwing toys around my room,
clearing out the closet bit by bit, yelling at me
the entire time until he pulled a poster off the wall.
(13:39):
Behind the poster was a massive hole in the wall.
My mother started screaming and my dad pulled out a flashlight.
The hole was so deep that we couldn't see where
it led. Panicked, my dad ran outside to look at
the exterior of the house. He found a tiny hole
(13:59):
in the door at the base of the house, and
after a little digging, he discovered that it was more
than just a divid it was a passageway that led
from the woods directly to my room. That night, we
stayed at my aunt's house and we moved out shortly
(14:20):
after that. I don't like thinking about this experience, but
I know I'll have to face it eventually. My parents
still refuse to talk about it, and I think it's
because they feel guilty for not taking me seriously. It's
terrifying to think that there was a stranger in my
(14:40):
room every night for a month. I've no idea what
they wanted, and I'm sure i'll never know. But if
your kids come to you with something that sounds off,
it's best that you believe them.
I'm not someone who grew up with any kind of
sleep disorder like sleep paralysis or night terrors. I've always
been a very heavy sleeper, which is why this was
such a shock to me. We all have the occasional nightmare.
I used to think of nightmares as free three D
immersive horror movies. In a weird way. I sometimes enjoyed
(00:33):
the thrill of waking up after a nightmare. At the time,
I was living with my roommate Patricia, who I called Trish.
We had very different work schedules, so we didn't see
much of each other during the week. This happened in July.
I remember because it was so hot that I had
(00:53):
the window a sea unit blasting every night, which provided
white noise that helped me sleep better. It was during
one of those nights that I had the first nightmare.
A few days after my ex and I had broken up.
Life wasn't exactly great at the time. I don't remember
much of the dream, but the part that sticks with
(01:15):
me was being in a room full of my family,
all silently sitting around a dinner table. Across from me.
Standing on the other side of the table was what
I can only describe as a creature. It looked like
some kind of alien with horns and claws. It was terrifying,
(01:39):
like what you'd imagine a sleep paralysis demon could look like,
except I was still fully asleep and dreaming. The next
thing I knew, the creature was standing right next to me,
staring down. I panicked and started running in my dream
until I was in my bedroom. That's the last thing
(02:02):
I remember before waking up. My room was pitch black
and the A C was humming on full blast. My
heart was racing from the nightmare, and I sat there
for a moment, thinking how creepy that dream was. Then
I lied back down and fell asleep again. The following night,
(02:25):
I woke up in the middle of the night to
find my bedroom door wide open. My immediate thought was
that Trish had opened it to check if I was home.
I got up, shut the door and went back to
sleep pretty quickly. The next day, I texted Trish asking
if she had come into my room the previous night.
(02:46):
She said she hadn't. I figured it was possible that
I got up in the middle of the night to
use the bathroom or kitchen and I just didn't remember.
Then the next night, I had another nightmare that same
demon like creature from the previous dream appeared again. Instead
(03:06):
of being with my family, though, I was in a dark, empty,
square room with this creature. It kept getting closer and
closer to me. It didn't move its limbs to walk,
It just kept appearing closer until it was on top
of me and I couldn't move. The creature took a
(03:27):
claw and scratched my thigh. I could feel the pain
and then nothing. I don't think I woke up right
after that. I just don't remember what happened next in
the dream. But when I did wake up and my
room was dark again and the A C was on
(03:48):
full blast, I felt something on my skin, and when
I rushed the bathroom and looked in the mirror, I
screamed there was a gash on my thigh. I ran
to Trisha's room and woke her up. We went back
to my room together and flipped the sheets off my bed,
(04:09):
searching for any bugs, spiders, or sharp objects I could
have laid on. Then Trish suddenly stopped, held up her
finger and told me to be quiet. We walked over
to the AC unit and turned it off, and for
the first time in days, the room went silent. That's
when we heard something coming from under my bed, that
(04:33):
faint kind of sound that comes from someone else's presence
in a room. I'm still impressed that neither one of
us screamed. Right then, we looked at each other, and
without a word, we bolted from the room and out
of the apartment. We ran over to our neighbor's house
(04:53):
and frantically knocked until he answered. He was an older guy,
so we didn't expect him to go fight the stranger
for but he let us use his phone to call
nine one one. While we waited for the police, we
heard the sound of our front door slamming, but none
of us made it to the window in time to
see who it was. The police arrived and confirmed that
(05:15):
the intruder was gone. After the police left, I started
reflecting on my dreams and realized what they actually meant.
The demon in my dreams had been the intruder, and
the night my door had been open, that meant that
he or she had probably been roaming around our apartment,
(05:37):
maybe even eating our food. To think this person could
scratch my thigh so hard it left a mark still
disturbs me. But this experience forever changed the way I
think about dreams and nightmares. One night, when I was
(06:03):
six years old, I awoke to find my mother standing
over my bed, staring down at me with a creepy
smile on her face. There was something wrong. I couldn't
put my finger on it, but there was definitely something off.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Mom. I said, yes, she replied. Her voice was flat, monotone.
What are you doing? I asked, watching you sleep? She
said why, But she didn't say anything more. I don't
(06:51):
know how, but I knew, without a doubt in my
mind that whoever I was speaking to was not my mother.
It stared down at me and I stared up at it.
We maintained constant eye contact. Neither one of us blinked.
(07:13):
We both knew that we were playing a game. It
knew that I knew, and the trick was to see
who would blink first time. For betty By's it said.
I didn't reply, I just kept staring. Time to close
your eyes, it said, I'm not closing my eyes, I whispered.
(07:40):
I fought against it for the longest time, straining every
nerve in my body, desperately willing myself not to blink.
Then very carefully, without turning around or breaking eye contact.
It reached behind itself for the closet door, sliding it
open soundlessly. When it was fully open, it stepped backwards inside,
(08:04):
settling back until only its smiling face and wide eyes
were visible. Then, just as carefully, just as silently, it
slid the closet door shut again. I lay there for
a long time, silently, trembling with fear. I kept my
(08:25):
eyes trained on the closet door, watching for any sign
of movement. Slowly, ever so slowly, I slid out of bed,
keeping my eyes on the closet door. Cautiously. I took
three or four steps to my right until I came
(08:46):
to the bedroom doorway. Never for one moment did I
take my eyes off that closet. Then I made a
run for it. I sprinted across the dark hallway and
into the safety of my mother's bed. She was lying
there in her bed, sleeping peacefully. A wave of terror
(09:07):
washed over me as my worst fears were confirmed, And
only then did I allow myself to blink. What I'm
about to tell you is the reason why my parents
(09:29):
moved out of a house that's been in our family
for three generations. I've struggled with depression for most of
my life. It's always been hard for me to shake
the feeling of being useless. I'm doing better now, but
when I was a kid, it was much worse. Because
(09:49):
of that, I spent a lot of time alone in
my room. Our house was nestled in a very woodsy area,
with trees on three sides of it and a forest
separated aid us from any neighbors. My room was pretty
big for a bedroom, located in the back corner of
the house. The windows on two of the walls faced
(10:10):
the woods. For a kid my age who was still
afraid of the dark, it was honestly pretty terrifying. Things
started when I was about ten years old in fifth grade.
It was the age where it was no longer acceptable
to sleep in my parents bed after a nightmare. The
(10:31):
first thing I noticed was my night light. It had
different color settings, so I could change the l ed
if I wanted to. I usually kept it on red,
which is how I fell asleep most nights. One night,
I woke up randomly in the middle of the night,
and I noticed that the night light had turned blue.
(10:54):
But I fell back to sleep almost immediately and didn't
think anything of it at the time. When it happened
again a week later, I asked my parents why they
were messing with it when I was asleep, but they
seemed genuinely confused and said they hadn't touched it. They
just shrugged it off, suggesting that the night light had
(11:16):
always been glitchy. They seemed pretty sure of themselves, so
I accepted it, at least for.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
A little while. Then one morning I woke up and
my night light was completely unplugged from the wall, lying
on the floor in the center of the room. I
told my parents, but once again they dismissed it. My
dad said I was getting too old for a night
light anyway, and that I needed to focus on school.
(11:46):
A few days later, my night light vanished completely. I
was convinced my parents were lying to me and that
they had taken it away to force me to outgrow it.
This led to a massive fight between us. Both sides
accused the other of hiding the night light, and nobody
was budging. I couldn't believe my parents would lie to
(12:09):
me like that over something like this, but there was
nothing I could do to prove it. After that, things
went back to normal for about a week, but then
three nights in a row, I woke up randomly in
the middle of the night. Each time I had no
(12:30):
idea what had awoken me. On the fourth night, when
it happened again, I told my parents. They said it
was just puberty and that changes in my sleep were natural.
So the next time it happened, I forced myself to
stay awake instead of falling back asleep, and a few
(12:52):
minutes after I woke up, I heard faint, rustling noises
coming from my closet. I told my parents in morning,
but they didn't believe me. The next four days were
the most traumatizing nights of my life. Every night I
woke up to rustling sounds coming from the closet. It
(13:15):
was torture. I couldn't take it any more, and I
begged my parents to believe me. My furious father dragged
me to the closet to prove to me that there
was nothing there. He started throwing toys around my room,
clearing out the closet bit by bit, yelling at me
the entire time until he pulled a poster off the wall.
(13:39):
Behind the poster was a massive hole in the wall.
My mother started screaming and my dad pulled out a flashlight.
The hole was so deep that we couldn't see where
it led. Panicked, my dad ran outside to look at
the exterior of the house. He found a tiny hole
(13:59):
in the door at the base of the house, and
after a little digging, he discovered that it was more
than just a divid it was a passageway that led
from the woods directly to my room. That night, we
stayed at my aunt's house and we moved out shortly
(14:20):
after that. I don't like thinking about this experience, but
I know I'll have to face it eventually. My parents
still refuse to talk about it, and I think it's
because they feel guilty for not taking me seriously. It's
terrifying to think that there was a stranger in my
(14:40):
room every night for a month. I've no idea what
they wanted, and I'm sure i'll never know. But if
your kids come to you with something that sounds off,
it's best that you believe them.
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