The Old Lady and Shaking Bed

Witness: Caroline Gilmore
Location: Northern Ireland, August 12
Date of Encounter: 2006

I was sleeping one night beside my boyfriend in a house we'd recently moved into. I had never had any problems sleeping there before, and it was just a normal night to begin with. I was having a really nice dream, just a normal dream about day-to-day things — I was in the kind of sleep that you're aware that you're dreaming.

I was lying right at the edge of my double bed, facing the window, and avoiding my boyfriend's heat because I was so warm. All of a sudden I was woken from the dream. My eyes opened and a couple of inches away from my face there was an old woman on her hands and knees beside my bed speaking into my face with an urgent tone of voice, saying something like "get out!" (It was clear what she said at the time, but by the time I calmed down to think about her message, I couldn't remember it exactly.) I can remember her image vividly even now. Her hair was gray and black with tight curls, and she was fattish, with big arms. I leapt backwards across the bed screaming, landing on my sleeping boyfriend. He awoke with my screams and asked me what was wrong. I started crying and told him there was a woman down the side of the bed. He crawled over the bed immediately and looked down the side and underneath, but there was nothing there. He told me I must have been dreaming, and to go back to sleep. I started doubting myself, but I still insisted on him taking that side of the bed and I cuddled into him like I've never cuddled in before, still shaken from the vision of the old lady.

As time went on I began to drift off to sleep, now convinced that I was being stupid and that my boyfriend was right. He was now lying in the position I was in when the woman woke me, and I was cuddling his back when he started shaking violently. The shaking felt like it was going through the whole mattress so I sat up and tried to wake him. He wouldn't wake up so I thought to myself he must just be shaking from a dream and that once again I was just being paranoid. His shaking stopped so I lay back down on my side, with my back touching his and my arms crossed over my chest because I felt much colder than I had earlier on. When I was trying to get back to sleep, the bed started shaking, and this time it was worse. It wasn't coming from my boyfriend — I tried to get up, but I realized I was paralyzed. I couldn't move at all, my crossed arms felt like they were choking me, and I could barely breathe. I tried to call out to my boyfriend — my lips were moving but no words were coming out. I was terrified, paralyzed for about 20 seconds, the shaking of the bed seemed now to be coming from me – like currents of energy (for want of a word that could describe the feeling) were pulsing downward through my body as if something had taken over me. The shaking stopped and I could move again, but this time I knew I wasn't being paranoid, or dreaming, I was wide awake when it happened. I used to be a ghost skeptic but after that I have no doubt at all in the supernatural. We moved out of the house shortly after this. I just hope that nothing like this ever happens to me again.