u/igansty

1. When I was a teenager, I used to read Tarot cards for my friends for free, just for fun. Sometimes I did readings when I was home alone, and in those moments I had this feeling that someone was nearby. One day, after school, I decided to take a short nap before volleyball practice. I was lying on the edge of the bed on my side and was almost falling asleep. Then, in my head, I heard a voice say: “don’t read Tarot.” I didn’t think of anything better than telling it to go away.
At that moment I opened my eyes and saw something in front of me, squatting and facing me. It was a bald being with pale, wrinkled skin. I remember large dark, reddened eyes and yellow rotten teeth. On its head there were literally about 20 long gray hairs. I actually generated an image of it, and if I can, I’ll attach it to the post. It looked terrifying. I don’t remember whether it said anything, but after that I closed my eyes and my body felt like it had been put into a washing machine and spun around.
When I opened my eyes again, it was gone, but everything was either bright white or bright red. At some point, the spinning stopped. I couldn’t see anything anymore—just darkness. I felt like I was in a cold place (like a cave). I could hear the sound of water droplets slowly falling onto something heavy. But the most terrifying thing was the scream of a woman. It was so loud and full of suffering that it was horrifying.
At that moment I realized I needed to try to open my eyes (it was very difficult), and I don’t remember how I managed to do it, but everything stopped. I showed my husband a picture of the creature, and he said it looked like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, but I haven’t really watched it, so I don’t think that’s what my mind was influenced by. I still don’t know what it was, but it was terrifying.
2. The second experience was more traumatic for me. I messed up my sleep schedule and decided to stay awake for a full day to reset it, but I couldn’t hold out and around 1 PM I decided to take a nap for a couple of hours. I was lying on my stomach, my cat was next to me, and I slowly started drifting off.
Suddenly, I felt like someone was hugging me—a warm, pleasant, enveloping embrace. But then it hit me that I was home alone and no one could be hugging me. Around the same time, I heard a voice. It was neither male nor female, but very familiar. It was speaking in a strange language I didn’t recognize, but somehow I felt like I understood it.
I got scared and started trying to remember any prayer I could. At that moment, the voice turned into a scream—one I had never heard in my life. Honestly, it was so terrifying it felt like it was coming straight from hell. I somehow managed to get up and sit on the bed; my cat was just calmly looking at me. And right then I blacked out. I’m such a coward that I would normally have run to the neighbors immediately, but instead I just lost consciousness, as if all my energy had been drained.
I’m very impressionable, so after that I slept with the lights on for a while and kept seeing silhouettes around the house, but eventually it passed. (By the way, I also went to a fortune-telling grandmother once—this is quite common in Russia—and she said there was a demon inside me. But honestly, she herself looked like she had one inside her.)
I eventually stopped thinking about it and just moved on with my life.
What do you think could have been happening? Was it something paranormal or just my imagination? Has anything like this ever happened to you?
I don’t have any diagnosed mental or psychological issues. Everything happened in the same apartment. And when my husband lived with me there, he suffered from very intense sleepwalking episodes—sometimes they were so disturbing that they made me cry and panic (it really scared me). When we moved out, the sleepwalking stopped.
Thanks to everyone who read this.