Haunted Purse?
This is my first time ever posting on Reddit, so not really sure how this works or if I’m posting this in the right spot… but I feel the need to share this experience.
For context, I am borderline believer of the supernatural and paranormal. I have never had a direct experience before, only exposure would be what I maybe believe and don’t believe on seeing posts about experiences and “based on a true story” films. I love horror movies, don’t easily get scared and have never been afraid to sleep at night. The encounter I’m about to share below changed my perspective completely.
Two days ago, I got home around noon-time from a weekend golf trip with some friends. Of course, I barely got any sleep all weekend and was eager to catch up on sleep that night. When I got home, my wife excitedly shared with me all of the things she bought earlier that day at a local thrift/ antique store. She was showing me some old dishes, some scarves, a wooden stole, and this really old purse. The purse was made of a purple alligator skin-like material, with a copper chain you’d use to wear it over your shoulder. My wife typically enjoys buying more classy/clean pocketbooks and purses, she owns a Gucci and Luis Vuitton bag, and various simple-looking, classy bags. So when she showed me this old purse she bought, I was pretty surprised she bought it, especially for $90. This purse did not seem like something she would ever wear or use, but she was very excited about it so I expressed that I liked it as well. The day goes on as normal, I unpack, we cook dinner, clean, hangout on the couch for a little, and we get ready to go to bed. My wife is the type to fall asleep within 10 minutes of hitting the pillow, whereas I like to be on my phone and scroll tik-tok for a little while before going to sleep. That night, we are in bed, my wife is asleep next to me and I’m laying on my side, facing her and on my phone. It’s hot in the room and my dog who usually sleeps in bed with us is sleeping on the cool hardwood floor outside our bedroom door. It’s around 11:30 pm. I’m getting pretty tired and put my phone down and roll on my back to fall asleep. As I roll onto my back, I see something maybe a foot away from my face. The room is darkish, so I think I take a second to sort of adjust my eyes to see what is right in front of me. I focus in on this old woman’s head, at about my chest level, and maybe a foot above my chest. I’ll never forget the face I saw once I realized what I was looking at…Raggedy messed up hair, old wrinkly face (normal wrinkles I guess, nothing too crazy). Her mouth was slightly open, and she had this evil and sinister expression on her face… her top lip was snarled upwards and her nose was crinkled up. The most distinct feature I remember was her eyes, big bulging eyes staring… not at me but directly at my wife sleeping next to me. I only saw her head in this second, but the way she was positioned over my body I’m assuming she was standing on my side of the bed, leaned over my chest at a 90° angle, chin pointed up and staring harshly at my wife. It felt like I was staring at her forever, but in reality I know the second I saw her I freaked out and jumped on top of my wife. I think I did this out of natural instincts, to put myself between my wife and something that wanted to clearly harm her. My wife woke up frantically and asked me what was wrong. She turned her night stand lamp on and said to me “I have never seen you look at me like this before”. She described my face as absolute shock, that I have just witnessed the most horrible thing you could imagine. My heart is absolutely racing out of my chest, I thought I was having a panic attack. I described to her exactly what I just saw, except I left out the part of that thing staring at her, I didn’t want to freak her out any more than I already did. We are both so freaked out at this point and we laid in bed talking for about an hour, trying to process what the hell I just saw. My heart is still pounding and I am so tired but cannot fall asleep at this point. During this time, I remember just feeling off, and my wife said the same thing. The energy in the room just felt weird, and I felt like I was being watched. I remember getting up to go to the bathroom and just felt weird walking. I felt like I was just walking through thick air, like a resistance, and it was almost like I was watching myself walk to the bathroom. I don’t really know how to explain that part of the experience, everything was just very off. Getting back into bed, I was so exhausted and started dozing off. Every time I would start to nod off, I would get this aggressive feeling that something very bad was about to happen in that instant, and it would immediately wake me up. This happened probably 3-5ish times before I ultimately fall back to sleep. A few hours later, around 3 am, my wife and I wake up to our dog growling and barking. We turn on a light and my dog is at the foot of our bed, whimpering and staring at that purse my wife bought from earlier. That’s when it clicks. There has to be something attached to this purse. We take the purse out of the bedroom and move it downstairs. We go back to sleep and don’t wake up again until our alarms go off for work. When we wake up, my wife told me about a dream she had after we went back to bed. She told me that in her dream, she got out of bed in the middle of the night and looked out our bedroom window. She saw my neighbor in his window, staring back at her. As they are just staring at each other, she watches my neighbor lift a pew pew and put it to his head and unalives himself. She said this dream felt so real and she could not even tell it was a dream.
My wife works from home and I drive to my job that next morning. I immediately call up my friend who is super into paranormal stuff. I explain everything to him and he tells me there is something very negative attached to that purse, and does not want my wife to have it. He said best thing to do is the return the purse to where you found it, and immediately sage the house. I tell my wife all this and of course the store she got it from doesn’t reopen for another 3 days, but she doesn’t care. She takes the purse and leaves it on the doorstep of the business, takes the loss on the $90 she spent. She gets home and sages all day.
Update: The next night, getting home after work I couldn’t tell if the energy was still off or if my anxiety is just through the roof now that it’s nighttime again. We get into bed, both can’t sleep, and just lay in bed watching comedy movies until we both falls asleep around 1 am. We slept through the night, no issues or any disturbances.
I’m hoping returning the purse cleared all of this up and we are ok going forward. Can anyone provide insight on what was happening, did we do everything right to get rid of whatever was in our house, and should that be the last of it?