Not really sure how to begin this post, so I'll just jump in.
About a week and a half ago I had a complicated dream involving a hidden door at the back of my closet, leading to a variety of places as the dream progressed. In reality my kitchen is on the other side of my closet, so there's no way a secret door could lead anywhere. I wrote the dream down because I thought it was interesting, but I mostly forgot about it.
Then a few days ago the power went out in my neighborhood for a couple hours while I was home alone. I had no candles or lighters or flashlights on hand, so I was completely in the dark aside from the glow of my laptop screen. I was sort of just sitting there, when after about thirty seconds I heard a distinct scratching sound from the other side of the closed closet door, as though someone was dragging each of their fingernails across it quickly in succession. I couldn't think of any rational explanation for this, so I was terrified, and I'm pretty embarrassed to say I hid under the covers and blocked out my ears until the power came back on a couple hours later (thankfully I eventually fell asleep). Nothing else happened for the rest of the night, but the experience stayed on my mind and has really bothered me.
For the next few days I felt uneasy whenever I was left alone in my apartment, but nothing else happened that couldn't be explained away. Then, the night before last, I was falling asleep next to my husband, and again I heard the same scratching noise, only this time it seemed to be coming from the back of my nightstand (which is right next to the closet). I hadn't been thinking about the earlier experience at all that night, and while it's possible I was dreaming in a half-asleep state, I *felt* too awake for that, I felt I heard it too clearly.
I have been a skeptical atheist since about 14 (I'm 30 now), so my impulse is to try to come up with rational explanations for these kinds of experiences. But another, earlier incident shook up my worldview a bit, and maybe primed me to be more disturbed by this experience than I would have been normally. About a year ago I seem to have exactly predicted the death of my beloved pet bird before I possibly could have known what had happened, in a manner I have trouble rationally explaining away. Without going into too much detail, it happened like this: I was walking home from the store with my husband when a disturbing thought popped into my mind. It was so distinct I had to articulate it, so I turned to him and said randomly, "wouldn't it be awful if a cat climbed through the window we left open and killed Izzy?" I actually told him and he still remembers, so it wasn't just an unrecorded feeling or thought that could be waved away as hindsight bias looking back. When we went inside Izzy was gone, and her feathers were scattered around the room and near the window along with drops of blood. The screen on the open window had been pushed open. Our upstairs neighbor had 5 or 6 cats she frequently let out, but we'd left the window open before and nothing had ever happened. We stayed up all night looking for her, but we never found her body.
Maybe it's silly, but this experience had me questioning my entire perspective of things, and I'm still feeling... confused, I guess, that such a thing could be possible, somehow "knowing" something I couldn't possibly have known. How to explain it? My husband insists it was just a coincidence, but to me that seems unlikely. I'm not normally in the habit of predicting deaths, and what are the chances that the one time I do predict a death, it plays out exactly as I said it would?
We moved into a new place a couple months after that, and things were initially fine, but then they weren't at all, though there was no mysterious or supernatural catalyst for it. I left my job and for a time I was spending almost all my time in our apartment, rarely going out, and I somehow fell into reading ridiculous conspiracy theories on Reddit, mostly about things like the Mandela Effect and alternate dimensions, and the "machine elves" some people see after taking DMT (I never have). I didn't really believe in any of what I was reading, but somehow I felt oddly fascinated and I couldn't stop digging into it, and after a while I guess it just left me feeling really, really odd and bad. It was as though I was being sucked into a black fog, and if anyone has ever been aware of falling into insanity, I think what I felt must have been close to it. Out of nowhere I had an extreme dread of seeing beings or figures, and I somehow felt I *was* seeing them in my imagination even though I couldn't see them with my eyes. I was terrified I would actually begin seeing them with my eyes, or hearing voices, because it was always as though I was constantly having premonitions of these things-- it's difficult to explain, but it was like I was seeing and hearing ominous things with my imagination's eyes and ears without actually, physically seeing and hearing them.The closest I came was seeing things out of the corner of my eyes, but that may have been my mind playing tricks on me because of my anxious expectations. I almost constantly had a creepy feeling I wasn't alone. All this was accompanied by really bleak, paranoid thoughts about life in general, and near-constant extreme anxiety, like a fluttering panicked feeling in my chest that never went away, and a heavy dread like something horrible was always just about to happen.
I was actually afraid this was the onset of psychosis or other severe psychiatric problems, but I didn't have the resources to see a doctor. I stopped reading Reddit completely and began occupying myself with mindless sitcoms instead, and that actually really helped improve things. Within maybe two weeks I felt more or less back to normal, but I still was having trouble finding a job, and I'm still unemployed now. I quit marijuana cold turkey three weeks ago after smoking daily for ten years (not even sure what prompted it) and suddenly began having these really interesting vivid dreams like the one I described at the beginning of my post, and I thought things would improve for me after that, but now this experience with the scratching has left me feeling terrified and paranoid yet again, and I'm afraid I'm going to find myself sucked into the bizarre black fog experience all over again. I'm back to seeing things out of the corner of my eyes and fearing for my sanity, though the extreme anxiety and dread of before hasn't returned.
What to make of all this? I know this post was all over the place, so I really appreciate anyone who took the time to read it. I'm not even sure I should have written this-- maybe dwelling on these thoughts will somehow make everything worse.
About a week and a half ago I had a complicated dream involving a hidden door at the back of my closet, leading to a variety of places as the dream progressed. In reality my kitchen is on the other side of my closet, so there's no way a secret door could lead anywhere. I wrote the dream down because I thought it was interesting, but I mostly forgot about it.
Then a few days ago the power went out in my neighborhood for a couple hours while I was home alone. I had no candles or lighters or flashlights on hand, so I was completely in the dark aside from the glow of my laptop screen. I was sort of just sitting there, when after about thirty seconds I heard a distinct scratching sound from the other side of the closed closet door, as though someone was dragging each of their fingernails across it quickly in succession. I couldn't think of any rational explanation for this, so I was terrified, and I'm pretty embarrassed to say I hid under the covers and blocked out my ears until the power came back on a couple hours later (thankfully I eventually fell asleep). Nothing else happened for the rest of the night, but the experience stayed on my mind and has really bothered me.
For the next few days I felt uneasy whenever I was left alone in my apartment, but nothing else happened that couldn't be explained away. Then, the night before last, I was falling asleep next to my husband, and again I heard the same scratching noise, only this time it seemed to be coming from the back of my nightstand (which is right next to the closet). I hadn't been thinking about the earlier experience at all that night, and while it's possible I was dreaming in a half-asleep state, I *felt* too awake for that, I felt I heard it too clearly.
I have been a skeptical atheist since about 14 (I'm 30 now), so my impulse is to try to come up with rational explanations for these kinds of experiences. But another, earlier incident shook up my worldview a bit, and maybe primed me to be more disturbed by this experience than I would have been normally. About a year ago I seem to have exactly predicted the death of my beloved pet bird before I possibly could have known what had happened, in a manner I have trouble rationally explaining away. Without going into too much detail, it happened like this: I was walking home from the store with my husband when a disturbing thought popped into my mind. It was so distinct I had to articulate it, so I turned to him and said randomly, "wouldn't it be awful if a cat climbed through the window we left open and killed Izzy?" I actually told him and he still remembers, so it wasn't just an unrecorded feeling or thought that could be waved away as hindsight bias looking back. When we went inside Izzy was gone, and her feathers were scattered around the room and near the window along with drops of blood. The screen on the open window had been pushed open. Our upstairs neighbor had 5 or 6 cats she frequently let out, but we'd left the window open before and nothing had ever happened. We stayed up all night looking for her, but we never found her body.
Maybe it's silly, but this experience had me questioning my entire perspective of things, and I'm still feeling... confused, I guess, that such a thing could be possible, somehow "knowing" something I couldn't possibly have known. How to explain it? My husband insists it was just a coincidence, but to me that seems unlikely. I'm not normally in the habit of predicting deaths, and what are the chances that the one time I do predict a death, it plays out exactly as I said it would?
We moved into a new place a couple months after that, and things were initially fine, but then they weren't at all, though there was no mysterious or supernatural catalyst for it. I left my job and for a time I was spending almost all my time in our apartment, rarely going out, and I somehow fell into reading ridiculous conspiracy theories on Reddit, mostly about things like the Mandela Effect and alternate dimensions, and the "machine elves" some people see after taking DMT (I never have). I didn't really believe in any of what I was reading, but somehow I felt oddly fascinated and I couldn't stop digging into it, and after a while I guess it just left me feeling really, really odd and bad. It was as though I was being sucked into a black fog, and if anyone has ever been aware of falling into insanity, I think what I felt must have been close to it. Out of nowhere I had an extreme dread of seeing beings or figures, and I somehow felt I *was* seeing them in my imagination even though I couldn't see them with my eyes. I was terrified I would actually begin seeing them with my eyes, or hearing voices, because it was always as though I was constantly having premonitions of these things-- it's difficult to explain, but it was like I was seeing and hearing ominous things with my imagination's eyes and ears without actually, physically seeing and hearing them.The closest I came was seeing things out of the corner of my eyes, but that may have been my mind playing tricks on me because of my anxious expectations. I almost constantly had a creepy feeling I wasn't alone. All this was accompanied by really bleak, paranoid thoughts about life in general, and near-constant extreme anxiety, like a fluttering panicked feeling in my chest that never went away, and a heavy dread like something horrible was always just about to happen.
I was actually afraid this was the onset of psychosis or other severe psychiatric problems, but I didn't have the resources to see a doctor. I stopped reading Reddit completely and began occupying myself with mindless sitcoms instead, and that actually really helped improve things. Within maybe two weeks I felt more or less back to normal, but I still was having trouble finding a job, and I'm still unemployed now. I quit marijuana cold turkey three weeks ago after smoking daily for ten years (not even sure what prompted it) and suddenly began having these really interesting vivid dreams like the one I described at the beginning of my post, and I thought things would improve for me after that, but now this experience with the scratching has left me feeling terrified and paranoid yet again, and I'm afraid I'm going to find myself sucked into the bizarre black fog experience all over again. I'm back to seeing things out of the corner of my eyes and fearing for my sanity, though the extreme anxiety and dread of before hasn't returned.
What to make of all this? I know this post was all over the place, so I really appreciate anyone who took the time to read it. I'm not even sure I should have written this-- maybe dwelling on these thoughts will somehow make everything worse.
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