Child Ghost or Old Hag?
March 4, 2010
Sunday night, during that awkward time when it’s technically Monday morning but you aren’t asleep yet, I had an experience. Basically, I opened my eyes at 2:30 and a little girl was standing beside my bed. I know this is hardly a strange thing for most people, but I don’t have children.
And she was translucent…
So, let’s look at this rationally before I pull out the flashlight and start telling campfire stories. It was either:
- A dream
- Old Hag Syndrome
- A child ghost standing beside my bed
Yeah, yeah…I know hallucination is always a good fourth option, but I don’t drink or do drugs and I wasn’t even on so much as a muscle relaxer from the prescription world. That’s going off the table. Then there were three.
A Ghost Dream?
This may well be a valid conclusion. How many times have you had a vivid dream where you really though you were awake? Oh…you haven’t? I have.
I suppose having a dream about a ghost child standing beside my bed is within the realm of possibility. I’ve had visitations in my sleep before. The problem with this is that I hadn’t fallen asleep yet. I know because Sunday was one of those nights where I traded off between staring at the inside of my eyelids, the ceiling and the alarm clock. No REM cycle. No dreaming for Jen.
And then there were two.
Old Hag Syndrome?
I’m no stranger to this one either. This is where you wake up and see an old woman staring at you from beside the bed. She often points in a menacing manner. In almost all reports from people, they’re paralyzed an unable to shrink away from her touch. Just as suddenly as she appears, the paralysis vanishes…along with the visitor.
Simple explanation: The Old Hag isn’t paranormal; she’s psychological. The paralysis isn’t a dark means of holding you prisoner; it’s the only thing that keeps you from acting out your dreams and hurting yourself in sleep.
As I said, I know her well. Me and the Hag go WAY back. She’s never once appeared to me as a child, but since she’s a figment of my imagination, it’s still possible. Well, wait…no. I had total freedom of movement. And there’s the fact that my cat could not only see her, but was trying to sniff her.
And then there was one.
Ghost Child?
Since 2:00-3:33 seems to be a hotbed of paranormal activity in general, I can’t rule out a ghost standing by my bed. In fact, I suppose it even makes sense for me to have a visitor at that time of night when there’s just a different feel to the air. The problem is that I don’t particularly care about learning why a ghost is next to the bed at that time of night. I want to be asleep.
Let’s face it – or I suppose, I’ll face it – my house is active. As long as there are no attacks, we all co-exist. I don’t attempt to make contact and it seemed content to do the same. Looks like that’s over. This is the point where I have to either do some hardcore meditation to see if I can pick up on the thoughts (which is quite frustrating when I usually expend all my energy trying NOT to pick up on anything), or I need to find my recorder and do an EVP session.
Ugh…I’ve gone nearly six years in this house without having to resort to this. For whatever reason, I don’t like the idea of EVP in my house. It’s already active enough. I don’t want to give anything else the green light to come play.
But I’ve got a problem. I can’t hear her. Once I got over the surprise of waking up to see a translucent child beside the bed, I realized she was talking to me…yet I can’t hear her. This isn’t the first time I’ve had this problem either. I can sense things, see things and know things, but I’m not clairaudient unless an angel is shouting a warning.
So what do I do? From experience – and the cat’s response – this isn’t demonic energy, but it’s not angelic energy either. I get the distinct impression I’m dealing with a human spirit. If anyone has a suggestion for how I can find out what this little girl wants without resorting to setting out the recorder, I’m open to it.
March 5, 2010 at 1:22 AM
Do you know the history of the house in which you are living? You can possibly validate it being a ghost if there was a history of a child dying there or near there. You probably already thought of this, but I thought I’d throw it in just in case.
March 5, 2010 at 4:32 AM
Our house was new construction, built six years ago. We’re the original owners. In the time we’ve lived here, this is the first time the little girl has appeared.
But if I’m honest, I almost never get site specific spirits drawn to me. I tend to get things that are drawn specifically to me or that are tied to me. That’s what sort of worries me about it. :(
March 5, 2010 at 7:26 PM
The figure standing in front of your bed is a very, very common hypnopompic hallucination, and has nothing to do with what you ate or drank the night before.
Sometimes, he or she or they might be accompanied by paralysis of the limbs, a typical physiological reaction. This is because, when you are asleep, you literally *are* paralyzed. During “sleep paralysis” and succubi/incubi experiences, you just wake up enough to be aware of your body’s normal, natural paralysis. Typically when our brain wakes up from sleep, the paralyis shuts off first, then our conscience mind wakes from the dream. Occasionally, the opposite happens, and a person’s body shuts back on when our mind is dreaming–sleep-walking!
What is interesting, to me at least, is how the hallucination varies from person to person. Aliens are often seen by some (you’ll hear alien abductees describe aliens around the bed while they were paralyzed), people in Victorian times saw fairies and goblins and so on.
Some people see a young man, or a child or ugly old woman.
It would be interesting to know what causes one person to see one kind of person or being in the hallucination, or another. People rarely seem to see someone they know, except in some succubi/incubi night terrors. My mom saw monkeys in front of her bed when she was a child–though she’s never had an especial affinity for monkeys.
All in all, what you saw was a hallucination, and a common one at that, but the main question is why your hallucination took the form of a child and what it could mean for you.
I dream (just regular dreams) about whales all the time, and I still don’t know why–they always leap over bridges.
Some dreams I take to be random re-hashes of my day’s experiences, but some come of left field, and leave me puzzled–if they are recurring dreams, I do believe we are being told something important.
It’s very possible you hallucinated a child for some important reason, though I’d have no idea why.
March 5, 2010 at 7:31 PM
The whole not being able to hear her speak thing is what bugs me about this whole situation. I wonder whether a psychological hallucination could/would be so specific. I’ve seen forms and figures likely due to sleep paralysis, but nothing ever tried to talk to me.
If she needs something and is a ghost, she’ll likely try to manifest again (why would she not?) It’s not likely you’ll only get one shot at figuring this out.
March 5, 2010 at 10:30 PM
Vampire Seal – You’re describing the Old Hag, which I’ve already considered and dismissed. (Though I wouldn’t lump in all people who claim to see aliens into this category.) For concerns of not turning this into a dissertation, I discussed only the events of Sunday night/Monday morning, and did not go into the other things happening at the moment. Paranormal explanations aren’t those I go to first, they’re a last resort for me.
Unfortunately, we’ve found that in this house, last resort is often the case…
March 5, 2010 at 10:41 PM
Tara – I know. If I were hallucinating, my mind should be turning up the volume. When I used to take Ambien years ago to sleep, it would make me hallucinate – or, I’m assuming they were hallucinations because I wasn’t open to the possibility of anything else at the time – and I could ALWAYS here rustling and movement and the occasional creepy whisper.
What bothers me the most about this is that the time before when a spirit visited and I couldn’t hear it, it was connected to a loss…which I can’t really talk about because I think there are only a small handful of people who know I knew about it beforehand – and frankly, it freaked them out. But in that case, I was given the spirit’s name, so the situation isn’t quite the same….I think. I hope.
Oh, I finally got around to telling Jay about this last night and he wasn’t surprised. He already knew there was something, just not that it was a child. Drawback – he wants to do an EVP session. *shakes head* It’s like I’m the only person in the world not comfortable with trying to talk to ghosts in their own home.
November 22, 2010 at 4:19 PM
i need to no what to do to stop this old hag that is tourmenting me at night last night was the worst in a long time please if anyone has a suggestion let me no email me at dgrills25@yahoo.com
March 27, 2011 at 5:15 AM
she wants to be acknoledged,like all spirts and they pick very intimate times and places,mostly when where alone i could tell you some family stories that would creep you out.