HAG - A Story Of Sleep Paralysis - Part 1

She first came to him when he was only a child, and in the hours when darkness grew from the shadows in the corners of the room. Little Ellis Peters had fallen into a sound sleep, his mother having just read to him, and sang him a song, probably 'Half Way Down The Stairs', that was always his favorite back then, and he had fallen sound asleep, his head full of the innocent thoughts of a child, unprepared for the horror that was destined to enter his life.

When he woke, it wasn't how he usually woke. It wasn't a slow stirring, slowly adjusting from the lethargy into the actual, but a snap, as if something had woken him suddenly. Maybe something had, too, because he had a terrible feeling that something not of this world was in the room with him but there was only silence throughout the house, the kind of silence that left your ears ringing. A foreboding sense of dread had taken hold of him, and it was a new and alien feeling too, unwelcome to an adult, but horrific to a child.

The first thing he tried to do was move, to sit up, but he couldn't. He was numb, his limbs weren't heavy and lead-like so much as not even there. As though the connection from brain to appendages had been severed, or jammed, and that panicked him. He tried to cry out to his parents, but he couldn't do that either. It was as though he was fully awake but paralyzed, and it was terrifying. But, oh, how he wished that that had been all that occurred.

In his panic, and his futile attempts to move or cry out, that sense of dread suddenly felt more definite, and when he noticed a slow movement in the far corner of the room, he froze. His senses heightened as he watched the dark shadowy patch that he knew was only his dressing gown hung over his cupboard door begin to slowly spew out into the room. His breath quickened, his heart raced, as the shadow moved further and further into the room, edging closer to him, and starting to take on a new, solid form.

Hunched over, cloaked in a black shawl, she came into being. Ellis could see her crooked pale nose first, reaching out from the hood. Two hands, gnarled and crooked, like twisted oak branches, stretched out ahead of her, stretched towards him. She moved like smoke through still air, closer, and closer. He could see now her face, the sharp cheekbones, the down turned mouth and her eyes, my God her eyes. Misty white with a deathly black pupil, so small yet so piercing.

Before long, she was up on the edge of his bed and looming over him. Her hands, cold and leathery, hooked around his throat as her knees bared down onto his chest. He tried to gasp, to fill his lungs, but her weight grew, and her grip tightened. Her face now was almost pressing into his, could smell her dank, earthy breath in his nostrils, like damp stale moss.

Who was this woman? Why did she want to harm him? Where had she come from? Was she real? Because this felt real. It seemed like a nightmare but it felt so real.

He thought of his parents. He thought of his sister. He tried to reach to the happy thoughts of his mind, as if this was some kind of salvation, but it only made him feel more certain that he was never going to see them again. He was sure this was it. This was his end.