A Twitter mutual and brother in Christ passes along this personal account. Spiritual battle, high strangeness, or flight of fancy? You decide.
I had a very vivid dream last night. I dream fairly regularly, but every once in a while I have one that’s different from the rest & usually precedes some kind of important event, either for me personally or for friends, family, or the wider world.
In this dream I awoke suddenly in a Church. I knew it was a Church, but other than some smashed stained glass windows, there wasn’t anything obviously marking it as a Church. All the statues, icons, art, etc had been removed.
I was in an alcove next to a large hallway & there were bodies that had been torn apart, littering the hallway. I could hear something large, like an animal, lumbering through the building. I had the distinct impression that I should hide but…
I heard a woman or child (I can’t remember which) crying so I ventured out to confront the monster. I rounded a corner & the beast was standing over a prostrate figure. It turned towards me. It was large & black with fur standing out in all directions.
It reminded me of a cross between a wolf & some kind of alien. It opened its mouth & its face unnaturally came apart. It was vividly demonic. It came at me with such speed that I had almost no time to react. I tried to scream “stop in the name of Christ Jesus,”…
my voice came out hoarse. barely a whisper, but it did stop. My hand was on the top of its head, its jaws opened towards my chest. I yelled louder, my voice returning, “Leave in the name of Christ Jesus & the Virgin Mary.” The beast disappeared & I woke up.
I don’t have any particular interpretation to share. Maybe you all have some thoughts? I would suggest that it was a clear supernatural battle, there’s a lot of demonic activity going on, especially as we enter lent. Keep your heads on a swivel & pray fervently!
And there’s a postscript …
We’ve had some strange characters show up at Mass lately.
I kind of viewed it as an attack on me personally. A spiritual attack which I was able to overcome with our Lord & Lady’s help.
I mainly shared it as I tend to experience these kinds of things before big events.
My wife tends to have them as well. She had a big one about demons experimenting on peoples genetics right before Covid kicked off.
She had another one last week. In Hers, she’s usually a spectator watching demonic entities put some plan into motion.
Mine have a pattern where I end up drawing the entity’s attention & have to “fight” it.
The fight is upon us whether we wish it or not.
Happily, God has gifted us with this season of spiritual growth and repentance to get in fighting shape.
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I used to get the sleep-paralysis version. Half-awake, half-asleep, couldn’t move or breathe, could never *see* the darn things, but they radiated malevolence. Ran across a recommendation on crossing yourself when your hands aren’t free (in context it was about when you’re occupied holding the kids or something): use your eyes to look in the directions of the cross. So I tried that the next time, and lo, it worked! They can’t take it. They go away and I wake up. Three or four go-rounds after that, and they haven’t been back. They gave up. That was many years ago now.
I can relate. When I had just starting college, over the span of a week, I was visited by various things. The first night, I woke up and saw an (female) angel in the corner of my room looking out a widow. Problem was, the only window in my room was directly behind the headboard of my bed. She didn’t look at me, she was just intently gazing out the window at the moon in the sky. I felt at peace and privileged to see such a graceful creature. I think she may have been a reminder she was watching over me for what was to come.
The next night, I woke up and saw the silhouette of a cobra in my bed. In that moment, I felt like Goku with instant transmission because I just remember throwing back my covers and found myself immediately hitting the light switch, heart about to pound out of my chest.
The next night was a giant silhouette of a spider descending from the ceiling above my face. I had a similar reaction as the night before.
The night after was the first time I felt any kind of physical paralysis. I woke up and the silhouette of an old lady was sitting next to my bed. I thought it was my grandma at first (she would stay with us during the weekends) but after a few seconds of starting at the lady, I remembered my grandmother wasn’t with us that night. I didn’t sense any malice from her and after a while of just staring at her, I went back to sleep. Looking back, I chuckle at this incident because, while I couldn’t move or speak, my mind just smugly asked “I’ve been visited by so many other things this week, what do you want?”
The last thing I saw was waking up and seeing the ornaments on my bed post had changed from a wooden ball to a wooden block. I started to see wood shavings peel off the center of up to eventually reveal a mouse was eating its way from it. You can imagine, I jumped out of bed immediately in fright.
I know these weren’t dreams because I didn’t feel like I was dreaming but more importantly in each incident I counted from 1 to 3 which normally in a dream is mentally straining enough to break the dream. No such awakening happened when I did that.
Since then I occasionally see things in the dark, it’s not fun, but I try to pray my heart rate down and go to sleep. The other solution is staring into the darkness until my vision adjusts and the shades disappear.
The demon attacks part of Lent made me think I was crazy the first couple years I tried it
Things definitely amplify during this season. I initially got into it because I feel it brightens the celebration of Easter, but ignored the temptation side of the fast.
Strange stuff.
Satan always picks this time of year to do his worst. And he ramps up his efforts the closer we get to Easter. He even brings in the media. Expect a fresh glut of “Jesus’ Bones Found!” and “Roman Pranksters Invented Jesus” copypasta pieces – sometimes unironically in the same publication.
I’m too desensitized by Millennial horror to be frightened by monsters, so my attacks are less obnoxious.
One example: Opening a shower curtain in a dark bathroom in a dream. Seeing a darkness inside that complete enshrouds me—and then, seeing two pairs of pin-sized, red-glowing eyes waltz over to me from ahead.
My heart becomes tachycardic each time one of them enters me. I don’t realize what happens until I miss my window to speak up—and then, I wake up.
Having studied the paranormal for decades, I’m at a loss regarding these nocturnal afflictions suffered by Millennials and Zoomers. Night hag reports have been around forever. So have prophetic dreams. But what we seem to have here are different categories of phenomena intermixing somehow.
My youngest daughter was born during Lent last year. I had one of those dreams that’s different somehow; more detailed, more real, makes more real-life sense. I’m not a stranger to them.
In the dream, it was very early morning, maybe 2 or 3 am, and I was in my kitchen washing up a round of bottles. That was something I did for real enough times, it was a boring enough start. But then, a thick darkness began to descend on the house. When facing the kitchen sink, your view is the living room (open concept), and the whole area just got darker and darker. It was perhaps darker at the edges, or maybe that was just my vision. Whispers began to emanate from those black edges.
I put down the bottles, backed up a step, and with great difficulty croaked out the Saint Michael prayer as best as I could, finding it strangely hard to make a noise. My throat loosened up as I continued, and though I don’t remember for sure, I think the whispers stopped and the darkness receded, but I also woke up right as I finished the prayer, so the ending is quite muddy in my memory.
Though not a common thing for me, that was not the first time, nor do I expect it will be the last. It’s never quite the same, but I don’t see creatures or anything of that sort. It’s usually darkness or shadows, sometimes over a wide area, sometimes in a specific spot; sometimes, I only sense the presence of darkness without seeing anything unusual.