I need help understanding an experience I had as a kid. Not sure if it was paranormal or a dream.
So my mom has an uncle that lives in Arkansas. Once or twice a year, my family makes the 12-hour drive to his house and stays there for about a week. This has been a thing in my household for as long as I can remember.
Well, this experience takes place at his house. I'm 20 now, and I would've been around 5-7 when this happened. That's important because I can't remember what happened very well. At this point, it's more like I can only remember myself remembering it, if that makes sense. For whatever reason, my mom and I were sleeping on the pull-out sofa bed and not in any of the 3 spare bedrooms her uncle has (my dad couldn't make it because of work, I presume).
Anyway, here's when something happens. It's about 4 in the morning. It's very dark in the house, not a single light on. I'm laying flat on my back when all of a sudden, I see something slowly move into my field of vision and look down at me. The thing has a decently long neck, a perfectly round head, and a pair of horns protruding from either side of its head. It it was real, it would have been standing to my right. My mom was on my left, so I didn't find comfort in my mom being between me and this... thing. The image above is a rough approximation created with Canva of what I remember it looking like. And yes, I know that the horns make it look like a stereotypical devil/demon. That's one thing that makes me think it may have been a nightmare.
For a while, I've thought that I had my eyes shut and somehow saw this thing through my eyelids, since I remember seeing a dark silhouette against a slightly less dark background. But as I'm typing this, I'm beginning to think that my eyes were open. Now, why would I be laying flat on my back with my eyes open at the 4 in the morning? I don't know, especially considering that I sleep on my sides. This is one thing that makes me thing it could've been a dream.
That's not all, though. If my memory is correct, it spoke. A simple "hello". This is another thing that makes me think this may have been some kind of nightmare. The voice sounded somewhat like the voice of Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean. As a kid, I was terrified of Davy Jones. Being raised in a Christian household, I also had a fear of the Devil, and I found my great uncle's house to be very creepy due to it being very "old people-y" and mildly secluded. So there's a chance that all these fears merged into a single nightmare.
One thing that may cast doubt on it being a nightmare, though, is that I don't remember waking up. Once it slowly left my field of vision, I remember just laying there, on my back with my eyes shut tight, scared to death to move or try to wake up my mom for hours because I was worried that it may still be in the room with us. I remember laying in the same position for so long that it actually started to get really uncomfortable. It's important to note that this was ONLY because of fear, and not because of paralysis. I don't have sleep paralysis often, but I don't remember this experience being like it.
That's all I can remember. I've never really had a paranormal experience, despite being a believer and finding the paranormal to be immensely interesting. This is the only exception. It's something I've wondered about a lot, and I hope this sub can help me to understand what may have happened better.