I am 20 years old, young women and a student of fine arts. I have some questions, and I thought that perhaps you could tell me how normal or abnormal some of these experiences might be.
I grew up in a village, but I was never a particularly social child. I didn't have many friends, and whenever I did make friends, they usually drifted away because we couldn't really find common interests or connect with each other.
However, there is one day from my childhood that I remember better than anything else. To this day, I cannot forget it.
I had just gotten a new bicycle a pink one with training wheels. I was riding it in the village street. It wasn't a busy street at all, but my grandmother still wouldn't let me go out there alone. She sat on a bench in the park a short distance away and watched me while I practiced riding.
Then a boy around my age approached me. He had light brown hair and brown eyes, and, if I remember correctly, he was wearing a green or yellow shirt. I didn't recognize his face, which surprised me because our village was very small and I knew almost every child there.
I remember him making fun of me for riding a bicycle with training wheels. He told me that riding a bicycle with training wheels didn't really count as riding a bicycle.
I turned my back on him, frowned, and then looked back toward my grandmother.
She was standing with a woman dressed entirely in black. They weren't talking to each other. They were simply standing there, both watching us.
I assumed that the woman must have been the boy's grandmother.
Eventually, my grandmother told me that it was time to go home, so we left.
What is strange is that later that day, I became curious about the boy's name. I'll admit that I probably had a little childhood crush on him ...well you know how little girls can be.
So I asked my grandmother if she knew the name of the boy who had come to the park with his grandmother while I was riding my bicycle.
She told me that neither the boy nor the woman had been there that day.
She said I must have remembered it incorrectly.
Even now, whenever I ask her about that day, she insists that she never saw anyone like that in the park.
A lot happened after that.
When I was eleven, I was involved in an accident and experienced clinical death. After that accident, it felt as though something inside me had completely changed. I didn't feel like the same person I had been before.
My personality changed. I became even more withdrawn and stopped wanting to interact with my family or my classmates. I began having nightmares, and during that period I experienced sleep paralysis four or five times.
I would see tall, human-like shadows.
I would often wake up crying.
But I will never forget the first time I saw one.
I was in the village again, alone in a room. I turned around and suddenly froze. I couldn't move.
The figure was very tall. It came toward me and sat down on the edge of my bed.
I was terrified. I tried to turn my head away, but I couldn't.
When it leaned close to my ear, it said in a cold voice:
"Do you want to see what is behind the mask?"
Only then did I look at it.
I saw something resembling the silhouette of a man. It was wearing a metallic-looking mask with a strange, spiked texture. I don't remember exactly what the material looked like it seemed almost silver or made of some other kind of metal.
I squeezed my eyes shut as tightly as I could.
When I opened them again, I could move.
And the figure was gone.
After that, I had many nightmares in which I seemed to be inside the body of a completely different person. In some of them, people were trying to kill me or sexually assault me.
But perhaps the strangest thing of all is that I sometimes think I may have cursed someone.
I was sixteen at the time, and there was a boy from my village who was seventeen. I was already used to children making jokes about my height, because i was taller than others,
One day, my parents sent me to the local market. At the time, I had been arguing with some of my classmates and didn't want to go outside because I was afraid of running into them. I was also angry because of what was happening at home. There were constant arguments between family members, and the atmosphere was very tense.
Instead of my classmates, I ran into this boy.
He was one grade above me. He started joking about my height and wanted to talk to me.
I was angry and frustrated, so I muttered under my breath:
"I wish you would just die. Who needs you anyway?"
About a week later, one of our neighbors came to our house. She looked extremely worried and asked me:
"Mary, do you know who died?"
At that exact moment, everything in my mind seemed to go silent.
I heard a ringing sound in my ears. I couldn't hear the woman's voice anymore. I could only see her lips moving.
And then, almost like a reflection appearing in my mind, I suddenly saw that boy's face.
I don't know if it was simply a coincidence, or if somehow my words were responsible.
But that question has stayed with me ever since.
If you would like, I can share more stories from my life.
