The Beast and The Lady
I apologize in advance for such a long post, but these events happened over the span of a few years.
Now, I (30m) was never a superstitious or spiritual person before the start of this. My girlfriend at the time (30f) was (and still is, as far as I know) a practicing witch, and I was torn between finding that mildly entertaining and finding it completely ridiculous.. but it never bothered me or anything, and I liked that she seemed to have a hobby that she enjoyed.
I primarily lived at her place, but would occasionally spend a few nights at a time back home at my grandma's because, depending on the hours I had to work, the location was more convenient. It was during one of these times that I had what I would call my first encounter with something that I can't logically explain:
In 2021 I was alone in the garage late at night after my grandparents had gone to bed, smoking cigarettes and drinking vodka while sitting in a chair and listening to music. I had a door open that leads from the garage to the backyard and side yard, maybe about five feet away from me; just chilling and trying to relax before work in the morning. Then I suddenly hear a loud 'thud' on a lid of one of the trash bins in the side yard. Mildly startled, my immediate thought was that a cat or something had leapt from the fence onto the trash bin, and then after a couple of seconds I began hearing this strange sound; this gutteral, deep sound that quickly revved up to a higher pitch that was more along the lines of something I'd associate with a cat, except this things sounded much larger than a cat. My body went into flight mode and straight to the door, closing and locking it. I could still hear whatever it was out there, and promptly went into the house and upstairs to my room. There was no more noise from outside that I could hear that night.
The next day, after I get gome from work, I go to my grandparents and ask something along the lines of "Did either of you hear anything outside last night?", and they both tell me they hadn't. I describe what I heard to the best of my ability, and they kinda just shrug it off, so I did too. That night I was in the garage smoking and drinking once again with the door open again, and whatever it was fucking came back.. so I did the same thing and closed the door before heading back upstairs. I called my girlfriend (I had told her about it that afternoon too, and she also just left it at "that's strange") and I was like "Babe, what the fuck?! It came back!". At this point im starting to question my own sanity, because describing this sound never seems to do it justice; I tried to describe it to her again, and eventually just said "It sounded like suffering", which is honestly the closest description I could manage, however vague that sounds..
Fast forward about a week, and my grandparents are going out of town; I also hadn't heard anything unusual again since that second night. My grandparents have a large house compared to my girlfriend, and we both love to cook, so she came to stay with me so that we could take advantage of the space to do so. We enjoy our night together, and go into the garage to smoke and drink before bed. After about 20 minutes hanging out and loosening up, the 'thud' happens again, followed almost immediately by that awful sound; this time it was much louder, though. We both look at each other for a split second before I quickly close the door; but this time it sounds like it moved near the door and got even louder. Without saying anything, she starts rushing inside and I follow her upstairs to my room. We sit on my futon that is right below my window that overlooks the backyard. We look at each other, and I'm like "You fucking heard it!". She starts to respond, but is interrupted by the sound again; this time it starts slowly and gradually builds up a little, and this goes on for about 30 seconds while we look at each other in silence. She eventually says "It sounds like something is dying out there..", and I say "What should I do? Should we go out there and see what it is?". She says "What if something is hurt?". At this point the source of the sound says like it's coming from directly below my bedroom window. I grab my EDC gun and head downstairs, and she follows. We dont hear anything now. I switch on the backyard lights and we look out the kitchen window; there is no sign of anything out there. We go back upstairs and just kinda verbally walk through what happened and what it sounded like, she searches for and sort of similar sounds online, but we never find anything that even gets close. So eventually we just give up and watch stuff on TV until we fall asleep. That was the last time I ever heard whatever that was, but I was just so glad that someone else was with me to verify what I had been talking about.
Over the next few years, up until our breakup in early 2024, we would often bring that experience up, and she would often say that it sounded like something paranormal, and I actually agreed; I was finally open to the idea.
As stated previously, I haven't heard anything like that since. It sorta just became this interesting, perplexing thing that we bonded over for the next couple years. Nothing else too strange happened until mid to late 2023:
At this point our relationship was very rocky. I was having nightmares almost every night where I would be out somewhere with my girlfriend, and then I would suddenly not be able to find her; these got to the point where I was avoiding sleep altogether as much as I could bare. One night, after maybe 48 hours of not sleeping, I'm starting to doze off at her place. I roll over to face my girlfriend, and she is asleep on her back. Floating about a foot above her, body parallel and facing her, I see a woman with a twisted grin chanting something. I feel a vibration in my eyes and hear a high pitched ringing sound before my eyes snap open and I only see my girlfriend lying next to me. It felt like I had been awake, but I tell myself that I must not have been. I told her about this the next morning, which spooks her a bit, but once again, we both kinda just shrugged it off. That was the only time I saw this specific thing take place and in that context.
A couple weeks later my girlfriend is preparing to make some spaghetti. She leaves two jars of sauce on the counter, and then heads from our converted, finished garage that we stayed in, to the main house to get the pasta. Our small dog follows her out, leaving me alone on her bed with my laptop. Our setup had a small living room/kitchen combo, and walls in place to make a separate bedroom and bathroom. The kitchen area is not visible from my spot on the bed, and I suddenly hear a loud crash; I get out of bed and find that both jars of spaghetti sauce are shattered in the middle of the floor. My first instinct was to find my girlfriend, so I leave the garage and find her walking between the main house to where I'm standing just outside of her door. I tell her "I swear I was lying in bed, I did not do it..". I lead her into our place and she sees the mess on the floor. After this incident, any time we would hear the usual 'house noises' or anything like that, we would jokingly speak out and say things like "stop that" to whatever entity we suspected to be living among us. Nothing as bizarre as the jars happened again, though.
Around the beginning of 2024 we broke up after about 12 years. I went back to my grandma's to save money for a place of my own, and of course I was very distraught; i was drinking heavily, and had very little regard for my health or safety. I had moved from my previous room there into another room, just to have some sort of mild change, and I had started a routine of drinking alone every night while I avoided sleep and the nightmares that always came with it. After a month or two, one of the nights where my body had finally succumbed to sleep, I 'woke up' and saw the lady again, sitting at the foot of my bed in a white/grey gown. The vibrating sensation and ringing happened as well for several seconds before my eyes snapped open again and she was gone. Lying there instead was my new dog, a husky shepherd mix named Chloe.
Growing up, my grandfather was probably the closest I knew to somebody that was 'superstitious', aside from my ex. He had started noticing strange noises at night, and I had too, and we would discuss them during the day while my grandma, who apparently never heard or saw anything, looked at us like we were both insane. I'm pretty sure I was the only person seeing anything visually, but he would notice things being moved to different locations and hearing walking sounds upstairs when my dog and I were downstairs in the garage for most of the night while I was drinking bottles of vodka.
I began seeing the lady in my room pretty regularly, and could never quite tell if I was experiencing sleep paralysis or if some other thing was happening due to sleep deprivation or something, but one of those nights I saw her sitting at the foot of my bed with her legs curled up and her back against the wall. She was in her usual white/grey gown, but this time she was holding a balloon; and this is when I started calling her Nena, after the German singer.
As more and more unusual activity started happening, and with my grandpa experiencing these these too, I started getting into the idea of spirituality; in May of 2024 I started studying witchcraft and reading everything I could find at my local metaphysical shops, and eventually began setting up an altar in my room. I started with basic cleansing rituals like smudging and such, and eventually attempted an exorcism that was explained in one of my books. I can go into the details of it later if anybody would like to hear, but for now I'll just say that it seemed to work; things calmed down around the house, I stopped seeing Nena for a while, and even the nightmares stopped. I met another girl, dated her for about 6 months, and everything seemed to be completely normal until I started getting the feeling that she was going to leave me. The nightmares came back, as did occurrences in the house, along with Nena. Shortly after, the girl I was seeing did leave, and I was back at square one.
I have since stopped trying to rid myself or my living space (both when I was staying there still, and after I left my grandma's house around mid 2025) of Nena; it seems like she warns me of trouble, and I've sorta embraced her. I've maybe only seen her two or three times since moving, and it's almost comforting when I do.
I have no idea if my experiences with her and the 'creature' I was hearing in the backyard are related, or if that even matters, but after experiencing both I have become much more open-minded and curious, and I still practice witchcraft to this day.
Any thoughts, similar experiences, advice, or anything else related to this, would be very interesting to hear from you!!
Thank you for reading!