When I was a little girl, I developed an incredible fear towards darkness. We obviously have our parents that always tell us that certain things do not exist, like ghosts, vampires, zombies, and many other creatures. I believed them, and I grew up with that thought of ghosts being inexistent, but there was always something that kept dragging me close to the exact opposite of what my parents told me. I grew up living with uninvited guests, whom I had to face them a couple of times during my life. I never realized the severity of the subject until this year, which just keeps surprising me. It has been a non-stop journey, in which my family is now with me. Experiencing paranormal entities during my whole life helped me realize that we are not alone even when we feel like we are. My mom now says: “You should fear the living, not the dead.” She started telling me this a little bit after I have had a lot of encounters for a sixteen year-old.

My childhood is categorized a normal one unless by the fact that I lived in a big house, which some of my friends considered “scary”. It is totally understandable though, since it looked really spooky whenever it was nighttime. Just imagine a big house, with dark wood details on the walls, lightless and not with the enough amounts of people to equal the vast size of the house. These factors did not really help my fear, which I strongly believe I developed by living in that house with the help of my mean cousins. They are not really mean now. Back then, they just wanted to laugh at the fact of me being terrified of staying alone in a room with them holding the door closed. In that room, we never used the lights. We had this window from where we would get our source of light, which was not really much. So we would be playing hide and seek, they would make me run to that room. They would tell me that either the werewolf was going to eat me or that the bogeyman was coming to get me while they held the door closed. I fell for that a couple of times, until my parents told me that those things did not exist. I was fine with it and I actually carried on and never believed my cousins again but I still felt really uncomfortable in darkness.

I just thought that every single child in the world feared the dark when little. Maybe it was something traumatic after those pranks of my cousins, and I never realized that. As I grew, I gained a little more knowledge about things. For instance, ghosts were my friends’ topic of chitchat. They began to talk about their paranormal experiences and then it popped in my head that I wasn’t afraid of the dark but of what darkness resembled. To me, it was loneliness and I felt really vulnerable whenever I was in a dark place. Every time I was alone in a room in the house, I would feel somebody staring at right at me and it was truly uncomfortable to deal with. It was either that feeling of being stared at or hearing footsteps going down the stairs towards the room I was in. Also every time I walked downstairs, I felt like I was being followed. I always felt so anxious when that happened. I never looked back because I was scared of turning around and having not a pleasant figure standing behind me. When it came to sleeping, it was a real nightmare. I would be so uncomfortable that I always cried silently just so I would not wake up my parents. Sometimes it was too much that I could not handle it, and I just went to my mom’s room next door but she would always say “It is fine, just go to bed” Then I would go back to my bed and tried to think about jolly things. Other times I would not stay at my room, I would just run for the door, go all the way downstairs to my godmother’s room and spend the night there. These things kept happening over and over until it became a routine. I was still very uncomfortable about because I would tell my mom that I was feeling these things that were not normal, but obviously my mom thought that it was just kids’ imagination.

Let’s say my imagination became infinite then. I heard things everyday at my house, especially at night. Footsteps, things being moved, hits on the walls were a few of the things I would hear. One day, when I was eight years old, I had a dream that I was sleeping on my bed and a tall man walked into my room. This figure was just a silhouette; like there was too much brightness behind him so I could not really see his front side. As I said, he was tall and wearing a coat. He also had something that looked like a hat and he was looking at me; I did not know if he was because I could not see his face, but I felt the energy and the chills going through my whole body. In the dream I was not asleep. I was actually looking at him while hiding under the sheets of my bed because I was just too frightened of him. He walked towards me slowly, like he didn't know if I was awake or asleep. He grabbed the little mermaid’s water dispenser that my mom always left ready for me to drink with a glass right besides my bed. He held it high just as if he was going to throw it at me, but something happened; he stopped and put the dispenser on top of my bookshelf. After that, I hesitated and woke up. I was sweating and shaking like crazy. I felt a bit of curiosity, so I turned to look towards the bookshelf and the water dispenser was exactly where he, it, or whatever that was, left it. After that night, I had a huge suspicion that my house was probably haunted. I became a hundred percent sure of it when my dad asked me if I had ever felt anything weird at home. The rest of the things that happened, I just kept them to myself since my mom did not seem to believe me. I actually never told my mom about that encounter until three months ago, almost nine years later. Someone else told her; funny fact is I never told this person about it. I never really told anyone about my encounters or anything because I wasn’t open about the subject until a couple of months ago. In March, things were not going well on the family so we decided all decided to fly back to Venezuela for spring break.

Being back home brought with it a vast size of feelings I did not remember. I had forgotten what it felt like to be in the house alone at night. That was when one of the strongest encounters happened. Nobody was at the house, just me with my dogs and the security guard outside; it was like being alone anyways. I started to feel uncomfortable so I decided to go to my brother’s room to get my speakers and go outside to play pool. When I got to the room, it was so incredibly uncomfortable. I felt someone standing next to me, almost like it was holding its chest against my left shoulder. I felt mad though because I could not do anything about it, it would not go away. I saw a bible on top of my brother’s side table, I reached for it and said some Psalms of protection, but it did not work. I felt this force that just kept pushing and pushing and there was no way to get rid of it. I felt overwhelmed by this thing. I tried to be brave and I turned to the side I felt the power coming from but I could see nothing, just the room’s white walls. I went for the door but when I was about to go out, I dropped everything I was carrying. As I went down to pick up everything, I looked towards the bathroom with the corner of my eye; there was a tall shadow standing outside of the door. My hands were shaking like a boiling teapot. I felt this rush of heat going through all my body. I ran to the door and left. Later that night, I decided to open up about it to someone because keeping feelings to yourself is harmful to your body. I told my cousin and I begged her to not tell anyone, but she did. My cousin told her mom about what happened to me that night. Her mom went to my house and talked to me about the subject and made me realize that it was not right what was happening and that I should talk to my mom about it. As soon as my cousin’s mom knew, my mom got the word of it. My mom first got really mad at my cousin’s mom because my mom “had her own way of saying things to me” and she did not accept that anyone else would give me an advice about the subject. That was when it hit me; my mom was hiding things from me.

The first thing my mom did was calling the bishop and with his permission she took me to church. At church, the bishop and me talked about what happened, but he knew it all along. He has The Gift, so he knew what I went through before I even said anything about it. It was supernatural. I would talk and at the same I did, he was finishing my sentences. There was one thing he said that it just sent my brain and all my logic over the rooftop; he said “This shadow you saw, you have seen it before” obviously I was looking at him like as if he had his nose growing or something like that. He told me “You have seen him. He’s tall, he wears a black coat and he wears something like a beret. Remember, you were little.” I was really struggling to remember anything. He had a kind grin on his face and asked me to look right at him while was talking to me. I could not look at him, I was so nervous. I tried to focus and think about what he was talking about, and then the dream popped in my head. The dream was not really a dream; I really did live it, I just thought it was a nightmare. Before the Bishop decided to make a prayer for me, he said many things about my life; things that no one else would know and also told me what He was saying to him. During the prayer things got even weirder. He interrupted the prayer and asked me if I had ever played with an Ouija board. I honestly had not and I will never play it either. But following my answer, he told me; “Curious, because he is standing over there and he says that you belong to him” So now I was certain that the thing that kept bugging me when I was little until now is a “he”.

The talk with the Bishop made me even more nervous about what happened everyday in my life. It did not help much when my mom decided to come clean about things. She explained why she never told me about the paranormal things. She was afraid of me getting too involved into it. She had mind-blowing stories from my grandparents and their parents. Let’s say it comes from her whole side of the family before her or me were even born, and that’s something I’m not really open to talk about. The advices we got from the Bishop were to go to church again and that I should never be left alone. He did have a conversation with my mom later, which I was not allowed to listen to. But we took his advice and we prayed every day with another bishop for strength and health to every member of the family, especially for my dad who was not doing well. We went more often to church and believe or not, my encounters got better. Yes, they kept happening but I did not feel as weak as used to and I did not get easily mad. I was never left alone; my cousins were always with me, what made me feel good and more confident.

My fear is not fully gone. I’m still afraid of the dark because of what symbolizes to me; all those lonely nights when I got molested, heard things and had rough nights of sleep. I still feel varied sorts of energy sometimes but I am more controlled about it than before. After that spring break, things became clearer for me. This year has been filled with epiphanies; in this case, I realized some things about my life with my mom’s help. I also understood my mom a little bit more about how she acted they way she did and it was not she did not care. Paranormal entities are not something everyone is cool with. I am sure every human being will experience a paranormal encounter some time in his or her lifetime. It has to do with whether we believe in it or not. Most people that refuse to believe it end up having the worst encounters, but not every one is the same so they might say they have never “experienced” anything. But even with the experiences I have had, I am still strongly attracted to all those paranormal shows, movies, etc. and that makes my mom get mad at me. I figured that we got to live with some boundless things, experiences or rough patches even if our parents do not want us to go through them. They cannot do anything about it but neither can I. Actually having my mom backing me up felt good, and it helped me having a little more confidence because she believed everything, which also helped our mother-daughter communication. There is something that made me more mature about the situation, and it was knowing about it and not letting it change me for worst; I mean, they were here before I knew it, the only difference is that now I’m certain these “things” are here. I think that is the key of these experiences I got. I might have changed me later but I’m sure it was for better; I’m more open to my mom about my feelings on the subject and whenever I do not feel comfortable, I will make sure she is the first one to know about it. I strongly believe that adapting to these situations plays a huge role when it comes to maturity in the topic, since it is something that I will have to live with my whole life. I guess I am already getting used to walking into my house in Venezuela and seeing all the paintings tilted to one side.