The foundations of my Material World shook.

5:30 this morning I experienced something I won't soon forget.

I've never really thought about a "spiritual" world around my own. I just assumed demons and ghosts and all that stuff is within the minds of those who see them. However, if that is the case, then my mind is on the bandwagon. I had never felt a presence of evil within myself like I did this morning.

I was asleep. Dreaming. I can't recall what happened for the majority of my dream, but I remember it wasn't anything happy or fantastic. Long story short, my dream found me lying in a bed in a room. If there was color in this room, then it was a very dull color. I was on a bed with a wall touching my left side. Two pictures hung up side-by-side on that wall.
I hear a boy's voice. This kid had to be in elementary school like 7-9 years old. Even though the voice came from another room, I knew that it was a black boy talking to two white men. I knew that the men were in their late twenties to thirties. One man was blond, the other had brown hair. I could not hear any of the words either man said in the other room, but I knew that one of them was the child's father. The other of the two either knew the boy very well, or was partners with the man, but I can't say for sure.

I heard the boy ask about religion. He asked what racism was. Somehow (in dreams things don't have to really connect for understanding) this lead to the boy's final statement, "why are my pictures different than theirs?"
With that statement I looked upon the wall nearest to the bed I lay on. Both pictures were fairly blurry, but I could see that a playground or a carousal was on the left portion of each picture. The same carousal. In one picture a little girl with brown hair was in the bottom right corner, the other had a black boy (whether or not it is the same boy I will never know). It seemed the photographer had missed because both pictures had only the top half of each child's head.

The moment I recognized the photographs, I instantly became conscious of everything around me. I suddenly realized I was in a dream and needed to wake up, but before I could a dark, blurry figure had come up from behind me and held my head down.
I've written this out twice now and both times the hair on my body has stood on its end.
For lack of a better description, I will call this figure a blurry man. His fingers pressed against my forehead, temples and crown. He started shaking me violently and I knew I was asleep, but it was impossible to wake up. I just felt him pressing harder and harder and harder into my skull as he continued to shake me. I knew I needed to escape, and I knew that this man could not be overpowered. I had to wake up, I understood that that was my only way out. He just pressed harder and harder I was just waiting for his fingers to break bone. I couldn't see, as if my eyes were trying to focus on an image after living months in a dark cave.

This seemed to last minutes, but it probably was only a few seconds.

I awoke with a jolt. I knew I was out of that room, but I still knew something was wrong. I felt as if the figure had jumped across the synapse with me from dream to reality. I still felt his presence. It very well could have been mere panic but I felt as if that figure were inside of me. That sensation you get before a body part goes numb... it was moving from my head to my feet. I don't think my whole body was going numb, so why would I feel that? It resided in my feet and then hovered back up to my knees.
I prayed.
That's the only thing I could do. I threw away all the skepticism I had been building up these past years and prayed wholeheartedly. Something was wrong with the world and it needed to be fixed by the only power I could think of. As I prayed the sensation moved back to my head and I felt it in my jaw, trying to get to my tongue. I didn't stop, and it moved back down my throat to reside at my knees again.
In the quietest, most timid and scared voice I was able to muster in my room, I recited worship songs. There was a fear within me I have never felt before in my life.

I quelled the fear and anxiety I had attained in a matter of minutes, but the last image from my dream was burned into the inside of my eyelids. When I closed my eyes, all I saw was this shadow-figure. I turned over and kept mouthing words, "You are God high above the earth,"

"As you catch my tears with your nail-scarred hands"

"He reigns"
I was able to eventually return to sleep, but my body still knows something is wrong.
I knew I had to write this when it was still fresh in my memory, but typing those words seriously sent my blood to circulate at a faster pace. I'm not claiming I know anything about other worlds or even spirits and ghosts, but I am claiming that I had legitimate fear this morning. I have a desire to witness people acting on spirits all of a sudden. I don't think I can shrug off people who claim to have seen demons because I have felt what they have felt.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I can't deny something like this.

- Ian Charbonnet


P.S. Yes, I still love you, dearest reader.