Speaker 1: This episode is brought to you by my newest supporters, Ramona, Meredith, Gail, Tosh,
Jen and Missy. Thank you for making the show possible.
Welcome to Paranormal Mysteries, and thank you for joining me
as we explore the unknown. I'm your host, Nick Ryan.
Let's begin tonight's journey with Almah, who calls their experience
sleep Demon. Hello. Nick, I have been listening to your
podcast for nearly five years, and I thought it was
time I shared my stories. Before I was born, my
parents used to live in a three bedroom flat on
the fifth floor of an old building. My parents bought
this flat from my grandparents on my father's side, who
inherited it from my great grandparents. Despite my best efforts,
I have not been able to find any history of
huntings or deaths in this building, as most of the
records disappeared during the Spanish dictatorship and my father's family
are not the type to speak of such things. After
I was born and was able to remember things from
my childhood, I always had this unknown fear of not
wanting to be left alone at night in the corridor
that had the toilet, bathroom, my parents' bedroom, and my
own bedroom. I refused to go to sleep in the dark,
so my parents left the corridor light on for me
to go to sleep. But as my parents recall, I
had trouble staying asleep and every night I would wake
up crying and screaming. They thought that I just had
nightmares or bad dreams every night until I was six
years old. When my brother was born and I was
six years old, the nightmares suddenly stopped. The third bedroom
of the flat was next to the front door, so
my parents, during the first one or two years after
my brother was born, put his crib in their bedroom,
and every night he would wake up crying and screaming,
which my parents thought was just a baby thing. When
he was two or three years old and still quite
young and little to sleep in his own bed, my
parents moved his crib into my room, which was unfair,
I know, but my bedroom was the closest to the
toilet and the bathroom. For the two years that we
shared my room, he would continue to wake up every
night screaming and crying. My parents thought that I was
doing something to him, like pinching, scratching, or even hitting him,
which I definitely was not, and of course he never
had a visible injury mark or even a scratch on him.
When they would ask him why he was crying and screaming,
he could only say, it scares me. I, now in
my adult years, believed that he didn't understand what was
happening or what he was feeling that scared of, and
the fact that my parents were or art that open
minded to the supernatural. My brother never managed to understand
what was happening to him, or ever explained what was
so scary or terrifying. I asked him, not many years ago,
if he remembers any of this. At first, he said
that he didn't, growing up in a family where our
feelings don't matter, and any attempt to open up end
up in arguments and victim blaming. I had to open
up to him and talk about what I had experienced
before he was born so that he would feel comfortable
enough to talk to me. He does not remember much,
only having that feeling that something or someone with bad
intentions was with him every night, and that it would
only go away when he would wake up and start screaming.
The feeling that there was someone or something else in
that flat never left me, and to be honest, I
was glad that I was not the one waking up
in fear, crying and screaming. And if you're wondering, when
my brother eventually moved into his room, neither of us
woke up crying or scream But if I remember correctly,
we did not like to go to the toilet at
night or being alone in the corridor. We would still
experience that something or someone was there with no good intentions.
And when the time came to move to another flat,
we were more than happy to leave that cursed flat behind.
It would be the end of feeling scared and afraid
of being in our own home. We moved to another
three bedroom flat on a third floor when I was
ten or eleven years old, and here is where physical
things started to happen. The flat, which my parents still
live at, has a U shaped layout. After you come
in through the door, you have a short corridor with
my brothers and parents' bedroom. Then you turn right into
another short corridor with the kitchen and the toilet are.
At the end of this corridor, you have the living
room and on the left of it is my bedroom.
One night, when I was a teenager, maybe twelve or
thirteen years old, I woke up because I needed to
use the toilet. I turned my bedside lamp on and
walked through the living room to the toilet, using only
the light from the bedroom as illumination. As I obviously
knew the layout of the living room. Even with a
very dimmed light, or even in the darkness, I could
see the dining room table, and I would use the
back of the three chairs closest to my bedroom door
to guide myself when walking to the toilet. Well after
I finished my business and walked back to my room,
I thought that something was wrong, but I wasn't sure what.
I couldn't properly see all the living room as the
light from my bedside lamp was dimmed, but I thought
I saw that the six chairs that were usually placed
around the dining room table weren't there. I then stopped
and looked more attentively into the living room. What I
thought I was looking at was that the six chairs
were now in the middle of the living room, not
placed in a specific order, just out of their usual place.
With my heart pounding, I turned the living room lights
on to see if my eyes deceived me. My mother,
who was a light sleeper, heard the lights being turned on,
got up and to walk through the corridors to the
living room. She found me there, frozen, staring at the
chairs placed in the middle of the living room. She
looked at me, obviously angry, and asked me why I
did that. After trying to explain unsuccessfully that I hadn't
and that I had just come back from the toilet,
she did not believe me. Now. Mind you, the chairs
were carved oak, heavy chairs, and if you tried to
move them, they would have made a terrible noise over
the linoleum floor. It goes without saying that neither her
nor I heard the chairs being moved. We put the
chairs back where they belonged, lifting them up rather than
dragging them across the floor, and we then went back
to sleep. But I could still feel that there was
something wrong, and it took me a few hours to
fall asleep. From that night until I moved in with
my partner several years later, I slept with my bedroom
door always closed, and I would make sure that I
did my business in the toilet before going to sleep
so that I would not wake up in the middle
of the night. A few nights later, though, I woke
up in the middle of the night with a strange
sensation that there was something wrong. I looked at the
clock and it was three twenty nine a m. When
I turned around to try to fall asleep again, I
heard a very loud thump noise, followed straight away by
glass shattering. My first thought was that someone threw something
against one of the windows and broke it, which would
have been quite a difficult achievement as the flat is
on the third floor. At this point, I turned on
my bedside lamp and I stayed still listening, thinking that
maybe it did not happen in the flat, and that
maybe it was one of the neighbors who dropped something.
I then heard my parents talking loudly in the corridor,
so I got up and walked across the living room.
They were standing in front of a painting that had
fallen to the floor. This painting, which was not a
regular oil or water color painting, was sort of a
heavy tempered glass painting. It had different layers of colored
glass that was positioned in front of each of the layers.
It showed a vibrant and colorful fruit bowl, which, according
to my father, my great grandmother had bought before the
Spanish Civil war, and it was a family heirloom, And
yes it was in the first flat that I talked
about earlier. It was so heavy that when my father
first hung it up after moving in two or three
years ago, he had to use heavy duty steel plates
with curved bends. These bends were screwed into the wall
with several big loophole screws which were in the back frame.
Now all the colored glass layers were completely shattered and
the floor was covered in glass. But what really struck
me was that the steel plates were still screwed onto
the wall and on the back of the frame. The
big loophole screws were still in place. There were no
tears or drag marks on it, nor on the wall.
Whatever or whomever broke the painting had to lift it
up to get the loophole screws out of the bend
of the steel plates and then smashed it on the floor,
leaving the back frame intact. The painting had a very
thick front frame with deep thin lines carved into it
where the different layers of the colored temper glass were
were inserted. There were six different colored glass panels, one
after another to create the image of the fruit bowl.
I wished that I had a picture of it, but
unfortunately that family heirloom was not photograph worthy in all
its years. My parents obviously didn't think that there was
anything strange about this, as my mother blamed it on
my father for not securing the picture properly, even though
it was hung up for two or three years without
any issues. A few nights later, I woke up again
in the middle of the night, feeling that there was
something wrong, and again I checked the clock to see
that it was three twenty nine a m. I once
again turned around to go back to sleep, and this
time I heard a thumping noise followed straight away by
glass shattering, then two or three seconds later another one,
and two or three seconds later another one. Again scared
out of my mind, and with my heart pounding loudly,
I turned the light on and I walked to the
corridor to meet my parents, who were standing in the
corridor where there were three small framed photographs that were
hanging on the opposite wall of where the tempered glass
painting used to be. They showed my mother's grandfather's corner shop,
and they were shattered on the floor except for the
back frames. Again, the hooks were still on the wall,
and on the back of the frames the loophole screws
were still in place. Again, my parents didn't believe that
there was something strange about all of this. They kept
saying that the photographs weren't properly hung up, and apparently
the fact that those photos and the big tempered glass
painting were hung up for two or three years before
and never fell off didn't matter. Nevertheless, my mother, as
she always does, told my grandmother about these occurrences and
the odd chair arrangement as an anecdote or a joke.
My grandmother, who is quite sensitive and a bit of
a witch, became suspicious and started to literally interrogate my mother,
and she didn't think that it was a joke. My
amazing grandmother is a Christian believer that praised daily and
she can sense things as she calls it in Spain,
and I don't mean this in a disrespectful way. We
have Spanish Gypsy communities who are Christian believers and practitioners
with their own superstitions and beliefs about the supernatural or
from beyond the veil. My grandma, who used to be
a very popular hairdresser and owned a salon was and
still is a very well known woman in my town.
Everyone knows who she is and who we all are,
meaning that it sucked being a teenager and having little
birds telling my grandma what I was up to and
who I was with. She had a lot of friends
in the Gypsy community. After my mother mentioned the strange
happenings in the flat, my grandma contacted her friends in
the Gypsy community, who advised that the flat needed to
be blessed and cleansed. I'm not going to lie, but
it took my grandmother a week or two to convince
my mother to let the Gypsy women into the flat
to do this. After my mother agreed, the next day,
three women came to the flat and they asked us
to leave for a few hours to bless and cleanse
the flat, which my mother did not like at all.
They placed several crucifixes around in the flat and they
told us to never move them. If any of them
were moved, it had to be returned to its place
straight away whilst praying the Lord's prayer. My dad, though baptized,
is not a believer regarding anything supernatural or religious, and
never bought the idea of the flat being possessed, but
after hearing my mother complain several times and then shout
every time the crucifixes were moved, he left them alone
and never touched them. Even when they got the living
room remodeled three or four years ago and bought new furniture,
they kept the crucifixes in the same places, although they
won't tell me even if I ask. I don't believe
there has been any strange occurrences in the flat ever since.
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to have you here. Now, please stay tuned and I'll
be right back after these brief messages. Now fast forward
ten or twelve years later to when I was living
on my own in a two bedroom flat which was
situated on the first floor in England. The building was
old and definitely needed more repairs than anything else. The
flat had the structure of a chimney in the living room,
as I believe the building used to be a couple
of semi detached houses that got converted into flats. The
chimney structure was filled with concrete and cement so you
could not use it, and it had a gas heater
in front of it, which was not working when I
moved in, and the landlord never bothered to fix it.
While I was living there, I used to have several
candles on the structure of the chimney mantle because it
it didn't matter how many times you'd cleaned the flat
or hired a professional to do it, it always smelled
like ashes, old curry and dampness. One morning, I woke
up at six to go to work and sat in
the living room drinking my coffee as usual, and I
did not notice anything strange, just the small, messy nest
in the sofa where I was watching TV the night before.
The nest was three big pillows to support my head
and neck, as well as a big thick blanket. I
went to work as usual and came back home around
four p m. I took off my uniform, had a shower,
and got dressed, and I then walked into the living
room to find all the candles scattered and broken all
over the living room floor. In the kitchen floor, which
was next to the living room through a small archway,
the pillows and blanket that were on the sofa when
I left were now scattered all over the floor. My
first thought was that someone was in the flat. I
remember grabbing a knife from the kitchen and walking to
my bedroom and looking under the bed and in the closet.
I then walke to the other small bedroom that only
had a clothes dryer in it. I checked behind the door,
and I made sure that the windows were closed. Nobody
or nothing was there. My TV consoles and laptop were
still in the living room, so if someone broke into
the flat and they didn't take the important stuff, why bother.
I then called my landlord to check if maybe he
had let some handyman in, or if he came around
to do some checks or fix something. When he answered,
he noted my trembling voice and he asked me what
was wrong. I told him everything. I was so shaken
by the situation that I didn't care if he thought
that I was crazy. He calmly listened to me and
came around ten minutes later to check on me and
see what had happened in the flat. He saw the mass,
and he told me that no one was scheduled to
come to fix anything in the flat that day. However,
whilst helping me to clean the mass, he arranged for
a locksmith to come in the next day to change
all the locks in the door as well as the windows.
As I mentioned, the flat was on the first floor,
and in England the first floor refers to the floor
above the street level. However, I think in America the
first floor is the floor at the street level and
the second floor is the one above. Now I'm not
saying that it's impossible for someone to break into the
flat one floor above street level. I'm just saying that
it would be quite difficult and honestly pretty stupid, especially
in broad daylight in the middle of a busy street.
After my landlord left and I was alone in the flat,
I still felt uneasy, and I kept telling myself that
maybe a strong gust of wind came down the chimney
structure and then pushed all the candles away. What else
could it have been. My brain did not want to
think about the pillows and the blankets, because there was
no gust of wind strong enough that could have done that,
and thinking that the only option left was that there
was something or someone else left in the flat didn't
make me feel any safer. That same night is when
the sleep demon started to show up. I went to
sleep that night and I had the most terrifying nightmare
I ever remembered having. In the nightmare, I was walking
up the stairs of my parents old flat, yes, the
one that was on the fifth floor, And when I
got to the landing in front of the flat's door,
I suddenly had a cold, strong and heavy fear and
dread feeling wash over me. I could not move. The
door of the flat slowly opened in front of me,
and the interior was pitch black, so dark that I
could not see anything through it, and something from that
darkness started to crawl towards me. It was a figure
made of complete darkness, but it had two very long arms,
and when I tried to turn around to run down
the stairs, I couldn't move, and it grabbed me by
my ankles and it dragged me into the darkness, and
it closed the door. I woke up instantly with my
heart pounding and covered in cold sweat. Now this is
why I can still remember the nightmare as if it
happened last night. My ankles hurt a lot. When I
woke up, I threw off the duvet to check my
feet and my ankles. My socks were still in place,
and when I took them off, there was nothing out
of the ordinary. All toes, the ten of them, were
accounted for. No scratches, bruises, or marks on either of
my feet, but they hurt a lot. They hurt as
if I had been sitting cross legged for hours with
my whole weight sat on just my ankles. I could
not fall asleep again. The pain passed after a few minutes,
but the sense of fear and terror did not disappear
until I went back to work and I got my
mind busy with other things. The next night, I woke
up in the middle of the night, unable to move.
With the dim street light shining through the curtains, I
saw a tall, dark figure with no facial features, opening
the bedroom door. I want to say that it was walking,
but it was more like sliding towards my side of
the bed. It was very tall, to the point where
its head nearly touched the ceiling. It bent forward and
put its hands with more fingers than I could count,
around my neck and started to squeeze. I couldn't scream,
I couldn't move, and I was feeling like I was
going to die. I think that I fought so hard
to try to breathe and fight back that I moved
my arm slightly toward it. And I woke up alone
in my bed, covered again in cold sweat and the
feeling of having been holding my breath for so long.
I needed to take several deep breaths to catch some air.
I turned the light on to check and see if
that thing had left a mark, but there was nothing
on my neck, only a tiny scratch on the arm
that I managed to move. Now, this could be reasonably
explained as me scratching my arm against the bedside table,
or even getting that scratch at work. But when I
think about this, my brain does not want to believe
that it was something so trivial, and that the sleep
demon hurt me like the night before, and I still
believe this. This kept occurring for at least a week
or two, when every night the sleep demon would try
to choke me. Every night I would fight and manage
to move my arm toward it, and I would wake
up struggling to catch my breath, drenched in cold sweat,
and having a constant fe feeling of dread and fear.
I was so exhausted mentally and physically that my colleagues
noticed it, and they were concerned about me. But I
never told anyone what was really going on. I didn't
want anyone to think that I was crazy or imagining things.
After another week of not sleeping more than three or
four hours, I decided to skype with my grandmother. I
told her everything that happened to me, because I knew
she would believe me, as she has always done with
these types of strange things. She listened to me carefully,
asking questions here and there to make sure she was
getting all the details right, and she then very seriously
told me to buy a pure white candle. She specified
that it had to be a church white candle, one
that has been blessed upon. She also told me to
get a stick of sage and fresh rosemary, not the
dried one for cooking, but a fresh branch of rosemary. Now,
if anyone is interested in why my witchy grandmother sent
me grocery and church shopping for these specific things, this
is why. The candle needs to be blessed to have
the power to expel and cleanse bad omens, and the
color white signifies the light of the Holy Spirit to
burn the evil. First, you close all the windows to
make sure there are no air currents, and you light
the white candle. If the flame is blown out before
reaching the end of the candle, this means there is
something there that you need to get rid of. Open
the windows while reciting the Lord's prayer and a hail Mary.
Light the sage and the fresh rosemary branch, and slowly
cleanse every room while praying. Do this over and over
until the sage and rosemary are all but ashes. Keep
praying while slowly closing all the windows, Light the white
candle again, and wait. According to my grandma, the waiting
depends on how fast the first candle light was blown,
but to be safe, she told me to keep the
candlelight until it was consumed. I bought the biggest white
candle the church had, so let's just say that it
was burning for at least six hours it worked. No
more sleep Demon encounters or odds things being out of
place for now. Fast forward four years later to when
my partner and I bought our own house and moved in.
I have not been able to find much history of
this house, only that it was built in the eighties
and only two families lived here until they moved out.
There were no deaths or anything like that. Six months
after moving in, one night, I woke up unable to
move or scream, and in the corner of my eye
I could see that the sleep Demon was in the bedroom.
It was tall, nearly touching the ceiling, and it was
slowly sliding toward me. He bent forward and put his
hands over my mouth and my nose and pressed down.
I could not scream, and I could not breathe. I
could not move, and this time I could not fight it.
Deeply inside, I was afraid this was going to be
the time where he would finally kill me. What happens next, though,
still baffles me and my partner. My then and only cat, Billy,
came to my rescue. Now, mind you, Billy did not
give a damn about being around us. After we adopted him,
a couple of months earlier, as he was still getting
used to us, nor was he sleeping in the same
room as us. He jumped on to the bed and
walked all over me and stopped on my chest, ears
back and flat on his head, his back arched, all
his furs standing, and he started to growl. I suddenly
was free, able to move and breathe, and I let
out a small scream. My partner, woken up, confused by
my scream, turned the light on to find me drenched
in sweat, shaking and pale, and Billy still standing guard
on my chest. His ears were still back and flat
on his head, back arched first, standing on end, and
he was looking a couple of inches to my right
side without moving. My partner knows that I have had
issues with this sleep demon in the past, but never
gave too much thought or consideration to it. He stared
at Billy for a good couple of minutes until Billy
suddenly relaxed and went back to normal, jumped to the floor,
and then left the bedroom. I sat up in bed,
still shaking, and then my partner passed me a glass
of water and asked me what had happened. After I
told him, including how Billy saved me. He was puzzled,
not wanting to really believe that there was something in
the house that now my cat could see or sense
as well, and I didn't blame him. It was a
one time only situation, right well, it would turn out
to be a constant from that night on. For the
next two months to nearly a year, the sleep Demon
visited me two or three times per week, and for
the first two or three months, it would be the
same thing over and over again, having my mouth and
nose covered, being unable to move, scream, breathe, or even
fight back, until Billy would jump on the bed, stand
on my chest on guard, and growl at the sleep
Demon until I was able to move and breathe. After
three months of this happening every week, Billy started sleeping
in the bed between me and my partner to protect
me from the sleep Demon getting close and hurting me.
But I would still wake up in the middle of
the night being unable to move or scream, but I
would be able to see the sleep Demon watching me
from the bedroom door. It did not slide or approach
the bed. It would just stare at me for what
felt like hours. This would stop when Billy would wake
up and walk toward the door growling. At this point,
suddenly I would be free, able to move and breathe
once again. My partner and I were so exhausted and
tired of this happening that I decided to speak with
my grandma once again and ask her what to do.
Her recommendation was the same one as before, but the
only difference is that I needed to do a full
cleanse of the house when the three of us were in,
and then do another one when it was only me.
This was to make sure that the sleep demon didn't
attach itself to anyone or anything. I believe this sleep
demon was the thing that was in the flats I
lived in, but what I haven't been able to understand
is how it went from just making me and my
brother wake up screaming and crying in fear, to moving
chairs and breaking pictures, and years later, trying to choke
and smother me. If anyone has any idea of what
this thing is, I would greatly appreciate the insight. As
of now, touch would. I have not had a visit
from it for two years, and I keep praying that
it stays away for a very long time. Thank you
for letting me share my stories, and I hope they
make it to your amazing podcast. Keep up the good work,
and I cannot wait to listen to the next episode.
With love Almah, Almah, I'll be keeping you in my
thoughts and prayers, and if anyone listening has advice that
they'd like to share, please don't hesitate to get in
touch with me. Before I bring tonight's episode to an end,
I'd like to thank Almah for coming forward with their experience,
and of course I truly appreciate each and every one
of you for listening and showing your support. With a
being said, I hope you all have a wonderful rest
of your evening and I'll be back in just a
few short days with more tales of the unexplained. Until then,
stay open minded and stay safe, because, after all, the
next person that comes face to face with a paranormal
mystery might be you. S