It's Scary In There

Last night, I had another weird experience. Part of me wants to blame my lack of sleep and, of course, my vivid imagination for the unusual dream. If you’ve been keeping up with my blog you know these sort of things are nothing to which I am a stranger. See here and here.


I had dozed off around 2-ish and woke up to a light tapping at my bedroom door and no it wasn't the Raven. This isn’t an unusual occurrence as I have two children that from time to time come to my room during the night because they have had a bad dream or what not. I have my kids trained to not walk into my room…to always knock first. This is just a precaution. I’d hate for my kids to see a nip slip or something. Who knows what happens when you rigamaroo (wiggle around) in your sleep?

“What do you want?” I said. No answer. I sat up and looked at the faint light streaming under the door. Normally there is a shadow there if one of the kids is standing on the other side. There was nothing. I'm not sure exactly what would be scarier...a knock, no shadow, and no answer or a knock, a shadow, and no answer.  The verdict hasn't come back yet on that one.  A shadow would mean there's a chance of a demon clown. 

I managed to convinced myself that I dreamed the knock but just to be sure I got up to go check on the kids.

Now, I love to watch scary movies and the whole time I was walking to the bedroom it was like a scene from a movie…slow motion of a hand reaching to turn a doorknob.

Enter Friday the 13th soundtrack here.



Even the walk across the house to their rooms was a bit surreal. When I peeked into their rooms, both of them were soundly sleeping. Even the dog was snoring, loudly I might add, curled up next to my daughter. So, I went back to my room and cozied back into the bed under the comforter. After a while, I fell back asleep.

In my “dream”, I was sleeping on my side when I felt a presence. I tried to roll over to see what was behind me. The presence seemed to put me almost in a half nelson. I fought with it to a point that I toppled off the bed and hit my head on my dresser. During the time I was wrestling with whatever it was, I must have sensed it was all a dream. I tried to convince myself to wake up, trying to will my eyes open.

When I finally managed to force myself awake it was around 4 in the morning, my heart was racing and my head ached. When I reached up to the spot throbbing on my cranium, I found a knot the size of a quarter. I had that fuzzy “I just woke up” feeling. Of course, in my experience that feeling is the same as the “I’ve been knocked unconscious” one.  I guess it's possible that I was thrashing my sleep and may have hit my head some way on the head board.

I tried to settle back down in my bed. Then I heard the familiar sound that always seems to accompany dreams such as these…the hoot of an owl. I looked out of my window to see if I could see the culprit. It took me a few moments to locate it in the darkness outside. I saw it as it in the tree as it turned its head around to face me. It seemed as if we made eye contact just before it spread its wings and flew away.

As I’ve stated a lot lately, sleep and I just aren’t getting along well right now. So just imagine my disappointment (also known as utter terror) when this event transpired and I was left on the verge of a panic attack in my bed trying to settle myself back down to sleep. My body and mind were just beginning to relax enough to drift back to Land of Nod when there was a knock at the bedroom door again. It startled me to a point that I nearly jumped out of my skin. It’s probably good that I had used the restroom just before climbing back into bed or I would have been changing the sheets.

This time when I called out, “What do you want?” My daughter answered back. She said she had a bad dream and wanted to sleep in my bed. How sad is it that I was relieved she wanted to sleep in the bed with me? I mean, good thing my seven year old is here to protect her scaredy cat mommy.