Don't Watch Him Sleep

I’m not sure exactly where to begin my story, because if I go back to the very first time I ever experienced anything, I would be writing a book.

I was 4 years old (I’m 33 now) when my parents bought and moved into the house that they still live in today. I can remember seeing the house for the first time, and thinking it was too large and too scary. As it turned out, I was right. It was terribly scary.

During my childhood and adolescence, I resided in 3 different bedrooms of the old house. One I shared with my older sister when we were very young. It wasn’t too creepy, but then again I was rarely alone in that one. The next room I had was a small dormer room in the upstairs portion of the house. I still to this day do not like that room. It is used as a sewing/craft room now by my mom. I do not go in that room. The last room that I had in that house was a large room upstairs directly across from another large room that my older sister slept in. This room had some "activity" but never seemed threatening like the smaller room I had before. I have several stories about both of these rooms, but I won’t go into them now.

After 13 years in a bad marriage and a nasty divorce, I am now once again residing in this large room in the upstairs part of my parents’ house. I was a bit nervous about moving back in there, because as a child and teenager, I never once slept upstairs all alone. If my sister was ever not at home, I would sleep downstairs. However, being a rational adult, I convinced myself that I was probably just imagining things as a child, and settled in without much incidence. I guess when you get older, and you work 8 to 10 hours a day, and fall into bed exhausted, things that go bump in the night, just don’t stir you as badly. My mom also says that she thinks that all the activity stems around children because they rarely experienced anything after my sister and I got married and moved out. I tend to believe this theory because of some things that have happened lately when my 13-year-old son is staying with me.

My son confided in me a few weeks ago that he doesn’t like being upstairs alone because it seems like someone is watching him, and he hears someone walking up and down the stairs all the time. But the thing that floored me was his comment about the small dormer room at the front of the house that I do not like. I have never said anything about this room to him, and as far as I know he doesn’t know that I ever used it as a bedroom. He told me that it felt like something didn’t want him in that room. He said he gets the "creeps" anytime he goes down the hallway toward it. I just brushed it off and told him it was probably because it was so small and claustrophobic. There’s no sense scaring him about it. However I cannot brush off a couple of incidents that happened a few days ago. Because of a sleep disorder that causes my son to "go wild" in his sleep, and the steep stairwell to the ground floor, I have my son sleep in the same room I do.

It’s a huge room, with plenty of room for 2 double beds, a dresser for him and one for me, a T.V., a stereo, and still plenty of floor space left for moving around. My bed is closest to the door so that I can catch him if he tries to run out of the room in his sleep. His bed is across the room at sort of a right angle to mine and his head is facing toward my feet.

A few nights ago, I woke up to a strange woman standing by the wall at the foot of my sons’ bed. She was looking at him, not me. She was standing in a spot that she would have had to been about 3 inches thick to stand in, and she was sort of a shadowy haze. I couldn’t tell much about her, but that she had long dark hair hanging over her shoulders.

Now, this is not the first time that I have awakened to see a figure in this room, but it’s a first for it to be a woman. I was startled, but more than that I was mad. It’s bad enough for whatever/whoever to bother me, but as a mother, it just ticks me off to think that it’s going to start in on my son. So very quietly, but sternly, I said "NO! You leave him alone. He’s a child. Go away now!!" I reached up and turned the light on, and the figure was gone. My son did not wake up, and I reluctantly fell back to sleep and never mentioned it to anyone.

Two nights later my son wakes me up with a whisper from his bed saying, "Mom, she’s standing there looking at me!" I opened my eyes and sure enough, the same figure was there in the same spot. Hoping my son was in enough of a dreamlike state to not be too scared, I calmly said "Just tell her to go away and leave you alone, and that it’s rude to watch you while you are sleeping". I heard him say in a stern, but confused voice "Go away, you are being rude!!" I blinked my eyes a few times to clear the crud off my contacts, and she was gone. We both went back to sleep and the night was uneventful. I hoped he would not remember any of it the next day, but when he got up, he asked me who the heck the woman was that was bothering him in his sleep last night. I tried to tell him he was dreaming, but he didn’t buy it. He distinctly remembered me telling him to tell her to leave him alone.

We decided not to think anymore about it, and the woman hasn’t been back. I don’t know what the attraction to my son was, but I guess she just needed to hear it from him that he didn’t want her watching him sleep.

Wow sorry this was so long, and not too terribly scary. Maybe another time I’ll send in some of the scary childhood experiences I have had.