This all happened about a year ago. I’m splitting the story into two parts because my ADHD brain prohibits me from focusing long enough to tell the whole thing at once. ????

I’ve always been a very vivid dreamer. As a young kid, I’d dream of people or places over and over, then years later, find them in the real world. So because there’s always been some continuity between dream and reality for me, I’ve learned to pay attention.

About a year ago, an old woman began appearing in my dreams. Now, I wasn’t dreaming of or about her, and she never said or did anything. But she would appear, interrupt my dream and her presence would disturb me out of sleep.

This woman had a pale, sunken face and wore faded, almost Medieval robes. It’s a corny reference to a not-great movie, she looked a lot like the eponymous Nun. Tall, imposing. Pretty freaky. This went on for maybe a couple weeks, not every night, but it started becoming more frequent. At some point, though, I realized that every time it happened, I would wake up at 3:30. Always on the dot.

Like I said, I’m typically a very perceptive person, but I’m easily distracted and so can sometimes be real slow on the uptake. This means that I wasn’t convinced that anything was going on… until one night, when all of us in the house (dog, cat, husband, self) were jolted awake by one of the guest room doors slamming shut with an emphatic BANG. At 3:30 am. Now, we keep our windows open at night, and because we live near the sea, sometimes strong winds will blow through suddenly, rattling the pictures and fluttering the curtains. That night though, the air was totally still. Also of note: the heavy, wooden doors in the apartment are all held open by very strong magnets attached to the walls near the baseboards. You’ve gotta pull pretty hard to detach them from the magnet.

So, like every wise white woman in a horror movie, I got up alone to investigate. Upon opening the firmly closed door, I stepped into an ice-cold guest room. We live in the tropics where the temperature rarely dips below 25C/77F, so the walk-in freezer air in the room was markedly colder than the temperature anywhere else. And I could feel… something. I wasn’t scared. I didn’t feel threatened. But I knew something else was in that room with me, and concluded that it must have been the woman who’d been interrupting my dreams for all those weeks. As I climbed back into bed, I murmured to my husband, “I think we have a ghost.”

We all went back to sleep that night, but in the days to follow, I paid closer attention to the things happening in the apartment. Though the door slam remained the biggest event, I started to notice this spirit more and more. It seemed she would move through the walls. At night, I’d see or feel her hovering at the threshold of our bedroom. The cat and dog would startle for no reason, or fixate on seemingly empty corners. My husband, who often stays up late playing video games, would see her roaming from room to room, or standing just at the edge of his vision.

She never bothered me, not really. But her constant shifting around began to disturb my husband and the animals quite a bit. It seemed like she was trying to get my attention. I’m sensitive to spiritual energy, but not experienced at communicating across the veil. I was stuck as to how to handle things, and ultimately sought advice from a friend and seer on how to proceed.

This has already gotten hella long, so I’ll leave off here & share part 2 in a separate post. If you made it this far, thanks for reading.