Dreaming Man
Witness: Ian
Location: Thornhill, Ontario Canada
Date of Encounter: April 5, 2003
I was sleeping in my bed, and was having a mild bad dream. The content of the dream, though I can recall perfectly, doesn't really matter; it was a rather silly and incoherent dream, and though the end was nightmarish, it wasn't exactly horror-story material. Somehow during the dream I KNEW it was a dream (I'm no stranger to bad dreams, and very often I would try to struggle my way out of them), so I struggled to wake up from it. Suddenly my vision shifted and I could see the corner of my room, so I knew I was becoming awake. But that's not all I saw. I also saw a faint profile of an elderly Caucasian man (I'm of Chinese descent), probably wearing glasses, standing next to my bed, with an apprehensive look to his face. He appears to be clothed in white. The vision was very faint, and I could not really make out the exact features of his face, but I'm rather sure I do not know this man personally and have never even met him before. I immediately thought he was a spirit and though I could not move at all at that time, I struggled yet harder to wake up. As I regained control of my body and my vision became less burred, I also saw an expression of awe in his face, and as he vanished I could literally feel the vibrations of an external force, possibly the very same which paralyzed my body, crumbling down. Shaken by what just happened, and unsure about the nature of "his" intentions, I calmly and slowly said "I don't know who you are, I don't care who you are, I don't have anything to do with you, please leave."
I've had many experiences of being paralyzed during sleep, and though I sometimes suspect it's spirit-related, this is by far the most explicit case and the closest thing to an encounter I've had. I'm Buddhist, and as such I do believe in spirits, and yet I can also honestly say that I do not fear them. I'm just perplexed by his intentions. On one side I fear that he was trying to prey on me during my most vulnerable time (Chinese people believe that, during one's depression or nightmares, he/she is most vulnerable to ghosts and spirits), and yet on the other hand, because of his seemingly benevolent appearance (curiously, his appearance reminds me of Catholic Priest), I also suspect he was trying to rescue me from my nightmare. I live in a newly-built townhouse in the suburbs that has no previous owner, and as far as I know the land on which it is built had never been home to another residence.
As the days go by I'm becoming more and more inclined to brush off the incident as simply my own hallucination, but the image of this creature, the look on his barely visible face, is still very real to me.
