-I felt true fear in that moment...
Some background info: I’m a 27y M, living in Australia, Chinese/Papua New Guinean/German background.
Dad & his side of the family is largely superstitious. My siblings and I are rather out of touch with spiritual beliefs and Chinese culture as we grew up in Australia.
My story was thought nothing more of but a sleepy night terror until I remembered something my grandmother told me as a teenager. I thought you might enjoy my story, it begins below:
About 14 years ago, when I was living in my family home. I was getting into the habit of rearranging my room just for the satisfaction of it, it always felt refreshing to do a mass clean and reset the layout of my bedroom.
My Grandmother had travelled interstate to visit my dad and the rest of our family. My Dads side of the family lives around his mother.
My Grandmother walked by my bedroom to say hello & she saw I had rearranged my bed to face the door.
She warned me that it can attract spirits and ruin your sleep, continuing to explain that it was a bad omen to arrange your bed in such a way, our family has a Chinese background.
A quick google and you’ll find things linked to bad feng shui and feelings of dissatisfaction etc. etc.
The scariest thing I’ve found is the cultural belief that “spirits may drag you out the door against your will”.
All cultural superstition about feet facing the door whilst sleeping.
(Prior to sharing this story, I found a comment on YouTube of someone sharing a similar “legend”: “sleeping facing an open doorway can create a spiritual portal between worlds, can attract bad omens and spirits” etc. Which is not far off from what my own family has spoken about before)
Raised in western culture in Australia, my grandmothers warning wasn’t so much something I believed but it did scare me a little at the time, I was like 12-13 living at home.
Nothing ever happened in that house, probably because I lived in a house full of family, I kept the door closed as a kid because I was terrified of the dark, as a teenager I kept it closed for privacy.
Years later when I had moved out as an adult on my own in 2017, I once again set up my bedroom with the bed facing the door.
I loved this apartment and had since outgrown my fear of the dark, which meant I wouldn’t close my bedroom door at night whilst I slept anymore... basically the whole apartment felt like it was my bedroom right. I was situated in a nice enough suburb about 15-minute drive from the city so not rural. Safe enough to walk to the gym at 12am when I couldn’t sleep. I felt very safe here.
In that same apartment, I’m on the phone with a friend, it’s a long call from 10pm till around 3am at this point. She says, “I’ll be right back I need to use the bathroom”. I'm extremely sleep deprived at this point and the only thing that was keeping me up was our conversation.
So, I’m in bed, staring through my open bedroom door, it’s a pitch-black hallway that leads to the front door. All the curtains are shut up at the front end of the apartment, but I have some slight moonlight peaking through the blinds behind my bed. I'm fighting to stay awake, but I’m falling in and out of consciousness, my head is dropping like its as heavy as bricks.
My eyes close and I open them, nothing. They close again and I fight to open them, nothing. My eyes close again for a third time, I open them, there’s a woman standing in my bedroom door way, roughly 2 paces away from the foot of my bed. She is tall, has long arms, pale skin, long black hair covering her face, wearing dirty white rags and hunched over, it’s the only way she can fit inside the door frame.
My eyes shot open in fear, I’m literally staring at this thing. I blink and she has lunged at the bed, the moment her hand touched the foot of my bed, I blinked again. The woman had vanished.
My grandmother may have been right, or it could have been the one and only night terror I’ve ever experienced. But I felt true fear in that moment.
I got out of bed and closed my door, don’t think I ever slept without the door closed in that apartment after that night. Conveniently my friend returns to the phone call once this is over.
My grandmother was Chinese/Papua New Guinean, for any background on her spiritual relation to ghosts and legends.
I’ve had one other “ghost” sighting since then as an adult in my family home in 2020, not nearly as dramatic thankfully. However, my dad experienced a lot as a young man typically around times of loss in the family.
Story by Redditor u/NiceTrex
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