Listener Stories: Sleep Demons, Ghost Children, and more
Real life horror stories coming straight from listeners. We dive into stories of astral projecting, creepy toys buried in a backyard, evil imaginary friends, and more.
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Creepy stories from you all ;)
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of Horrors, Hauntings, and mysteries, as always, I’m your host, Kaelyn Moore.
We are finally in spooky season. Can I say that? It’s definitely not too early, right? It’s never too early. The Rogue Detecting society headquarters basically came decorated for halloween, there was a skeleton hand poking out in the front yard when I moved in. At least, I think that was a prop.
Usually, here at heart starts pounding, we look at the horrors of our world, but for today’s episode, I’m going to turn the mirror on you all, and show you the scary stories that reside within our little community, the rogue detecting society. I’ve been getting creepy little letters from you all, delivered to me here at the RDS Headquarters, and boy oh boy, you guys are so haunted. I’m not kidding, I’m ordering an exorcist to some of your homes because my GOD.
I got stories of ghosts, of close calls with killers, of demons that attack you when you sleep, but mostly I got stories of children seeing terrifying things, which brings me to our first story, which was sent in by a listener named Dawn
She writes:
This takes place back in 2017 when We bought our home. One night my husband was talking to our then 3 year old nephew when all of the sudden he stared past him through the windows that faced our very dark backyard.
So my husband said “Hey buddy, what you looking at?” Our nephew turns to him and goes “My friend” and my husband said “Who’s your friend?” you know, playing along with a little kids game but definitely freaked out. To which he responded “Little Johnny”.
Our house is over 100 years old, and over the years we swear we’ve heard things and sometimes we place things in space to only find it later in another.
about 2 years after that horrifying interaction with our nephew, my husband was digging up an overgrown garden box in the backyard when he found old little toys (army men, Fischer price little people). Yea, we were a little taken back by that one. I want to research the history of the home but don’t know where to begin.
You should definitely go down to the town hall and try to do some research on the house. And while you’re down there, You should find the deed to your house, and write Little Johnny’s name on it, because it sounds like it’s his house, not yours.
We have a whole bunch of terrifying tales sent directly from you all that we’re going to get into today, so buckle up and as always, listener discretion is advised.
And that’s just the beginning, I have more horrors in store for you, after a short break
Ok, before we jump in let me say, if you are new here–welcome to our community of the darkly curious. You’ll find us here in the study of the Rogue Detecting Society every Wednesday around 9pm Central Standard Time–that’s 7pm for those on the west coast of the US. As we are entering spooky season, I want to remind you, new and old listeners of a project I produced last year called The Timekeeper. It’s a four episode horror audio drama featuring Judah Lewis of the Babysitter franchise, Chandler Kinney of Pretty Little Liars and Arjun Athalye of Are You Afraid of the Dark. If you’re craving more horror going into October check it out. You can listen wherever you’re listening now, including YouTube where there’s a special visual component for each episode. It was really so much fun to make and I’m very proud of how it turned out. I’ll link in the episode description, or you can go to heartstartspounding dot com backslash timekeeper. Ok, let’s begin…
Now, I’ve talked about this before on the show, but I suffer from sleep paralysis, and I have a sleep paralysis demon that visits me. It’s always the same entity, for clarities sake let’s call him Walter.
Sometimes I awake in the middle of the night and will feel walter standing beside me. Sometimes he’ll wrap his arms around me and squeeze all of the air out of me so I can’t breathe. One time, and I’m not kidding about this, he dug his hands into my armpits. That was hands down the worst thing he’s ever done, and that includes the time he just banged on my door begging to be let in.
Occasionally I’ll hear from you all about sleep paralysis demons you’ve encountered. But every now and then I’ll get a story about sleep that’s unlike anything I’ve heard before, and shakes me to my core.
This story comes from Lara:
So I'm not exactly sure how I feel about this but allegedly the women of my family are psychic. I'm not strictly referring to visions of the future (though we have them from time to time); I mean that we possess the ability to perceive the imperceptible in some unique way.
To be honest, I've been gaslighting myself about it my entire life. Questioning whether it's all real or whether it's my imagination and psyche reacting in some way to growing up in a stressful and traumatic environment.. I suppose there's a fear of being perceived as a lunatic or an attention-seeker, so I don't really ever talk about it anymore.
But Today I wanted to tell you about some of my experiences with astral projecting.
I'm sure, being spooky folks, you already know what astral projecting is. But in case someone isn't familiar, it's essentially the act of the spiritual essence of a person leaving their physical body when asleep or entranced and being able to travel about on its own on the other side of the veil (give Insidious a watch if you find this concept interesting). I have this ability. As far as I know I'm the only one in the bloodline who can do this. Here's the catch...I can't control it. I can't consciously choose to do it- it just happens.
I can remember dreaming when I was a child that I was flying above myself and seeing my body sleep below me. Those kinds of dreams are fairly common for children, however, and would not have in and of themselves alerted me to my ability. It was when I was an adult that things got truly terrifying.
I was in undergrad and very depressed. I was drinking too much, I was experiencing a great deal of personal tragedy, and I was carrying this aura of distress with me wherever I went. I preface with my mental state because they say that dark entities are most attracted to preying on the mentally and emotionally vulnerable. That they can sense your pain and fear and are drawn to it.
During this period of my life, I began astral projecting again. Completely beyond my control. At first I didn't know what it was. I would wake up and see my bedroom exactly as it always was, everything in its proper place. But as I lay there I would realize that it wasn't quite my bedroom. It was a very skillful imitation of my bedroom. But the colors of everything were just a tiny bit off. Not the way colors are dimmer in a dark room; slightly different hues entirely. I have a near-photographic memory and it would clue me in to things being a little different than they should be. And it just...felt different. And then I would actually wake up and realize it had all been a dream. At least I thought they were dreams.
Gradually I realized that while in this "parallel" place I could move about. Sometimes I encountered other people there who would talk to me. But it still felt like a dreamland to me- I didn't realize I was acting as my astral body. Then I started seeing it. A creature.
A dark demonic creature. Its limbs were far too long in proportion to its humanoid body. It seemed to be made purely of shadow. It was very tall. It could crawl up walls and perch on the ceiling. Sometimes it had eyes and sometimes it didn't. It was very very thin.
At first I would see it kind of observing me. Just watching. And at first I wasn't really afraid- though it was disturbing- because I didn't think it could touch me. But it could. One night I had one of my astral dreams where it felt like I had woken up and was looking around at my room. Everything looked in order. But then I noticed the color difference and knew where I was.
I said out loud 'I know this isn't real' and then the thing melted out of a bookcase up against the wall. It stood at the foot of my bed and stared at me. The next time it happened I "awoke" in the astral place with it standing directly above me staring down at me. And that time I got scared. Really really truly scared. It was so close to me and it was so tall and I wasn't sure if it was an actual man who had broken into my home or whether I was dreaming. I woke up with a start. From then on it got really bad.
The next time I saw it I was terrified and I was screaming at it "I know you're not real! I know this isn't real! You can't fool me!" And it lunged for me. I retreated into my physical body and woke up gasping for air. I was paralyzed- sleep paralysis. I could move only my eyes and I felt like I was suffocating but my lungs wouldn't let me breathe. I remembered suddenly that this had happened to me before- in childhood- but that I had forgotten about it. And the thing was on my chest. Sitting on my chest. Crouched like a gargoyle. That's why I couldn't breathe. I felt this unbearable urge to fall back asleep like something was trying to drag me into unconsciousness.
But I knew that if I went back to sleep I would go back to astral-land and something inside me told me that the thing would hurt me if I did. So I fought to stay awake, gasping like a fish out of water. Finally I lost control and was dragged- for an instant- back into unconsciousness. And as soon as I realized that I was asleep again something inside me yelled "NO!" and I gathered all the energy I had towards the center of my chest and exploded it outward. I woke up fully and bolted up to a sitting position. I was actually awake and the thing was gone.
I learned that was the way to break the sleep-paralysis spell. And this was a skill I had to use many more times. The most terrifying of which I will tell you now.
I was in Europe in a hotel sharing the room with a close friend of mine. I hadn't had the paralysis episodes for a while because I had been blocking myself off energetically- essentially I was shutting down the psychic part of me to protect myself. My friend- I'll call her Bobbi-and I went to bed. Nothing was amiss.
I woke up in the middle of the night and looked around. I saw that Bobbi was sleeping soundly in her bed. I was trying to figure out what woke me but I couldn't hear anything unusual, so I settled down to go back to sleep. Then Bobbi started stirring and sat up. She said something to the effect of "you're awake too?" and I replied that I was. She sat at the foot of her bed and just started talking to me. It all seemed very normal- just two girlfriends chatting.
And then she asked me a question. It was a question that she already knew the answer to. A question where she knew the answer, and she would never in a million years need to ask it. I stopped talking and stared at her. She looked like herself. Sounded like herself. Moved like herself. She looked at my inquisitively as if silently asking me why I had clammed up. I was immediately covered in cold sweat as the horrible realization dawned on me- the colors in the room were just a little bit wrong. "You're not Bobbi", I said.
For a moment Bobbi said nothing; she just stared at me blankly. Then she smiled. A horrible malicious smile that just kept growing and growing and growing until it defied the angles that a human mouth is capable of creating. And then it started laughing- and it was not Bobbi's laugh. I watched in horror as Bobbi's face literally melted off her to reveal the entity that had tormented me back in the States.
I started screaming at it "You couldn't trick me! I'm smarter than you! I'm not afraid of you! I know how to get out of here! Watch me!" And then I gathered my energy in my chest, the same as I had before and catapulted myself into reality. I woke up for real. The second I woke up I woke Bobbi up- partially because I was terrified and partially because I wanted to make sure it was really her. She jolted awake and immediately yelled "Something terrible happened! Something terrible happened, I just know it! I just know it!" She lunged for her phone and saw a message from a family member telling her that her grandmother had just died. She packed up and left the next day.
I'm happy to report that I haven't seen the thing or astral projected for many years now. I'm not sure if that's an element of my psychic ability that I'll ever want to touch again. The last time I astral projected, though, it was actually really nice. Nothing bad happened- my astral body went and visited my mom's astral body while she was sleeping and we had a nice chat. I called her the next day and she said she remembered it. Isn't that neat?
Astral projection is something I have no experience with, surly I need to do a deep dive episode on it. I have so many questions, does it exist on the same plane where Walter lives? And what other things exist there, like how did Bobbi get the sense that something horrible had happened, is there information there that’s accessible?
I do tend to think that there is information only accessible to us while we sleep. And maybe it’s because we travel to a different world sometimes, or maybe it’s because sleep helps us access parts of our subconscious and our long term memory. Either way, There are things we can only see when we’re asleep, and apparently, there are also things we can only see when we are children.
I want to take us back to what I talked about in the beginning, children seeing the scariest stuff I’ve ever heard. This story comes from a listener named Molly:
my story starts when I was around 6 or 7. Its an experience I will never forget, and to this day it still creeps me out.
I was at a friends house, we will call her Anna, for the day to play. My mother had dropped me off that morning and was going to pick me up sometime after lunch. Anyway, Anna had ALWAYS talked about her imaginary friend, Jessie. And I mean always talked about her. We would be playing and she would just randomly start talking to Jessie like she was in the room with us.
Even at 6 years old, I never had imaginary friends. I thought it was silly and knew it was fake, or at least I thought they were fake.
So this day I guess Jessie was wanting to "play with us" because Anna kept talking to her, saying we need to let her sit next to us, etc etc. I, being a kid, started making fun of her ad saying Jessie is not real and its kind of annoying to keep pretending she is. I didn't want to pretend anymore. And throughout the day I kept denying Jessie and saying how I don't believe in imaginary friends and stuff.
Fast forward a few hours, Anna and I were looking for a book. I can't remember exactly what but it doesn't matter. All that matters is her dad's office had a book shelf that was one of those huge floor to ceiling book shelves that required a rolling ladder. Side note, I should preference that her mother was the only one home with us and at this time she was outside doing yard work. And her dad's office was on the opposite side of the house.
Keep in mind this was the early '90s so we were mostly always unsupervised. So to look for this book, we decided to start on the top top shelf. She got one chair and I got another and we started looking in opposite ends for this book. In the process, “Jessie” decided to make an appearance I guess, and Anna said Jessie was upset because I was leaving her out. I finally just yelled "Omg Jessie is not real. Imaginary friends aren't real!" And not a second later I felt a foot kick in my backside.
I knew it was a foot, there was no mistaking that feeling. I lurched forward and almost fell off the chair. I looked over at Anna (who keep in mind was probably 8 feet away from me standing on her chair and we are) and said "What was that for??" Anna looked at me and said "what was what for?" I said "you just kicked me!" Without missing a beat, Anna jumped off her chair and ran into her room and I heard her yell "Jessie STOP that. You have to be nice."
I remember having chills and thinking it had to be Anna. But there was no way she could have jumped off her chair, run over to me and kicked me and ran back to her chair and pretend to look for the book in the time frame that it occurred, especially without me seeing or hearing her. It was impossible. I still don't know what I believe and I know I was very young, but I remember it clear as day. That was 100% a foot that kicked me. I can tell you I never made fun of Jessie ever again. I never made fun of anything paranormal ever again. And I never went back to Anna's house.
I would also never go back to Anna’s house again because what the hell was that?! But seriously, every episode I do these, I have at least one story of a child having an imaginary friend gone wrong. What is going on?
More kids seeing terrifying things, after a short break
Another story comes from Amy, who writes
Hello, I have a story that I’d like to share which still gives me goosebumps till this day….
For part of my childhood I lived on my grandparents farm in the middle of the English countryside. The house is a large Victorian style farm house built by my ancestors around the 1800s, it’s rather beautiful if I don’t say so myself. The house has three floors, an upstairs, downstairs then a cellar at the bottom (which hasn’t been used in years).
I have 2 siblings an older brother and younger sister, at the time we were living there my sister was around 4, I was 7 and my brother was about 10. And we used to love playing hide and seek, as the house has so many places to hide.
But the only place we weren’t aloud to go was the cellar as it was quite damp down there and the stairs down to it were extremely slippery. So one day my siblings and I were playing hide and seek, I was the one counting while they went to hide.
I counted to one hundred and shouted ‘ready or not here I come!’ I was searching downstairs for around 10 minutes when I walked past the cellar door (the door was located under the stairs in the hall way).
As I walked past the door I heard some little giggles of what sounded like a little girl, I stopped and pressed my ear up to the wood on the door assuming that my little sister was the other side. As I pressed my ear up against the door I heard the giggles again, so I twisted the door knob but it was locked. I called out to her saying ‘are you okay, how did you manage to lock the door from the inside?’
But no answer I started to worry as we weren’t meant to be down there anyway and I didn’t know where the key was. As I turned to walk away from the door I heard her voice again saying ‘come on, I’m waiting come and find me’. So I quickly sprinted down the hall way to find my Mum but half way down the hallway I came across my little sister, I stood there looking at her my eyes wide. She asked what’s wrong, I explained I thought that she was locked in the cellar as I heard a voice down there.
She just giggles and says ‘that was probably the little girl that lives here with us, I play with her sometimes’ and then skipped away like it was nothing.
It was safe to say I was definitely put off playing hide and seek for a while after that.
The house still freaks me out till this day 13y years on!
I’m noticing a theme here, and that’s that children don’t like leaving the property. I mean, who can blame them, they probably didn’t know much else so they want to stay around their home. I will say though, Sometimes when kids see people or spirits we can’t see, it’s not always creepy. Sometimes it can be comforting. Like in this story from Riona, she writes
For context my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer and he requested to stay at home rather than going to a hospice, so he was able to be around me, my mum and my younger sister.
He was staying in the back room of my house with a window facing the garden and the back lane.
This story in particular happened about 3 days before he died so he was just sleeping and we were all spending lots of time with him. At the time my sister was 2 and a half so she was too young to realise what was going on ( this is important as she wasn't much of a talker either) .
She then just looked at my mum and told her that "there was a man in a coat and hat by the back gate waiting for daddy". When my mum tried to ask her more about it she just pointed to the back gate and repeated herself and then went back to playing with her toys. No one else saw anyone by the gate
We have some theories ourselves about who this mystery man is as we think it may be some old relative coming to help my dad cross over but I would be open to hear any ideas you have on who it might be.
Ok personally, I do believe it was someone in your family coming to help your father. I get way too many stories that specifically revolve around the time someone dies. Seeing strange visitors, being visited in dreams, even weird glitches in technology.
Actually, I want to read you another one of those stories, because it really touched me. This one is from Linett.
Hi there ! I have many stories but lately I’ve been thinking heavily of my best friend and grandfather who passed away. I use to question if there was an afterlife and because of them I believe there is. My best friend Imar passed away December 15th, 2017, a truck hit her while she was riding her motor cycle to work. For weeks after her passing all I did was cry… I begged for a sign that she was okay and got nothing. Then, on January 8th 2018 i saw her. It was my first day of college in Washington state, I was living alone since my husband was on Deployment, and I have this tendency to sleep with a pillow over my face. I woke up … pillow still on my face but as I’m waking I hear someone run down my hallway and into my bedroom, turn on my lights, and sit at the end of my bed. I’m slightly scared and in shock because I know I’m alone … I sit up and see Imar at the edge of my bed telling me to get up and get ready for school or I’ll be late… she sat there smiling at me and all I could do was stare back at her wide eyed …. Unable to speak. I saw my Alexa tablet behind her and the time was 4:57 am … suddenly I hear a man calling out to imar walking down my hallway … this man was very tall, dark skinned, small Afro, goat T beard cut, and he told Imar that they have to go. Imar smiled at me again and walked away with the man. I’ve never seen that man a day in my life…. Again I’m there shook. Then suddenly …. I wake up….. pillow over my face I jolt out of my bed to see the time is now 5:01 am …. My bedroom light is on…. My hallway light is on … my living room light is on and my front door is wide open. Everyone who knows me knows I can not stand sleeping with ANY light… i sleep in total darkness and living alone i never leave my front door open or even leave ALL my lights on …. I couldn’t explain what happened but I swear to you my best friend helped me get up for school because my alarm was supposed to wake me up at 4:30 and I completely missed it.
But guess what?
3 months after that situation I was in Miami visiting family and decided to go see Imar’s mom. I told her about the encounter I had and she told me told me that Imar had an uncle die when she was very tiny from a motorcycle accident…… she dug in her album and showed me a picture of the man and when I tell you the hairs in my body stood up…. I was looking at my best friends uncle…… who she never met because he died yearssss ago in Granada…. He was the one that told imar it was time to go….
I miss her so so much. I think about her every single day. After that encounter I had a dream with her that we were in a bright white room talking and i sadly didnt remember what was spoken but I did remember the end where she told me this would be the last time I would physically see her again…… she told me she has to cross on to the other side and told me to stop crying ….. and trust me….. i beg for another dream with her and like she said …. It was the last time.
I don’t know if there is an afterlife but I think there is one …. One where all our ancestors are just waiting to receive us and guid us back to wherever home is to the soul .
So, I’ve said this before in episodes but I LOVE when you guys hear an episode and it reminds you of something that happened in your own life. And I dont know what it was about this particular episode, but the Supernatural Survival Episode, where I talked about the third man syndrome really affected a lot of you guys.
A quick refresher, but the third many syndrome is when people are in survival situations, think dying of thirst, badly hurt, maybe they just got in a car wreck, and out of nowhere a supernatural being will show up and help them. We know these helpers are supernatural because no one else sees them, EMTs, witnesses at the scene, they are totally invisible to everyone involved except the person in the accident.
Sometimes these supernatural beings say they’re EMT’s or nurses. But sometimes they are someone a bit more familiar. This story is from Vivian:
I think I've listened to all of the Heart Starts Pounding episodes at least three times BUT re-listening to the episode where you talked about the third man syndrome I just remembered a kind of related experience my mom had about 25 years ago when I was still a baby.
When I was a kid, my family used to do a summer vacation in Cape Cod every year in July. We would sometimes take two cars, my dad driving one and my mom driving the other because we had lots of camping gear and had to fit myself and my two older brothers. Well, one year I was in the car with my mom (as a baby in a car seat) and a truck slammed into our car causing our car to flip twice and slide across the highway.
The point that we were at on the highway had a tall bridge - my mom told me how when this happened and our car flipped back upright but was still uncontrollably sliding toward the edge of the bridge she couldn't get the steering wheel to unlock for her turn the car away from flying off the bridge. The crazy part of the story is at the last moment, when my mom was convinced we were going to go off the bridge because the steering wheel wouldn't budge, she looked up and saw her mother (who sadly passed away when my mom was 18 years old) with her hand up as if to say "stop" - her mother then said something along the line of "no, it's not time" and suddenly my mom was able to jerk the steering wheel away from the bridge and skidded to a stop.
My mom came out of this with a neck injury (it could have been much worse) but I somehow was completely unharmed. The story always gives me chills and I've never shared it with anyone but I wanted to share it here. I'm not religious but I do believe in the supernatural/paranormal and my mom's experience makes me think that on some level we have something like a guardian angel.
And would you believe I got another letter about a third man story, just in the nick of time to make it into the episode. This one reads
I had just quit my job, after 5 years, and it went down rough. Anyway, I had packed my stuff bc I was also mid move from one state to another, and so I took the closest highway to get to my new place, but it was weird in a way that it basically was 4 massive highways all merging into one, with a weird bypass weaving through it.
Anyway, I get to the juncture of 3 of the highways, and it was like I just went airborne, I had no tires on the ground. Anyway, it was like slow motion. I was alone, and all of a sudden, my dads dad (who died in 1981, I was born in 1983) suddenly is sitting in the passenger seat, wearing his signature Irish cap, and he says to me (without talking, like psychic or something) “just stay down, protect your head, get in a ball, and trust me, this isn’t how you go.” It was BIZARRE.
Anyway, I had a 2015 Honda Civic (I know, what a douche but safe car!) and I hit a jersey barrier, a metal barrier, and careened across two highways landing in the traffic of the third right in the middle. When I got out, people were trying to get me in an ambulance bc no way could I walk away damage free. Now, the craziest part for me is the next: the guy in front of me said he saw a piece of paper fly out of my window right before I crashed, and I know I had my windows down bc it was a GORGEOUS day. Police arrive and say that bc I had NOT ONE PIECE OF BROKEN GLASS (HOW!?) my windows had to be up. The witnesses fought them and wrote the truth in their reports, whatever. So, along with clothes, electronics, books, jewelry, $1000 cash, all strewn around unable to be saved, I lost it all in a day.
But then, the tow truck driver arrived and as we towed my car a ways out he looked at me and said “I’ve done this job for 25 years and I have NEVER I mean EVER seen this level of sorcery. How did you survive that? I told him I got in a ball below the engine so it couldn’t push me, covered my head and stayed like that. He says “we regularly and I mean routinely pick up girls like you in wrecks like that with spatulas. Whatever happened here, get a lottery ticket and see if you can turn it around and if you lose, then you take a good hard look at what made God himself turn your car in an opposite direction bc you are ignoring his guidance.”
Samantha said that later on in life she felt that God, or the universe, or whatever you call it was probably trying to prevent her from the horrible living situation she was about to move into.
Anyways, thank you so much to everyone who sent in stories, some of you shared really intense and personal tales and I’m so grateful you wanted to share them with me and the show. I have some saved for another episode, so don’t worry if you didn’t hear yours read. And ALSO, if you want more, I will be sharing more of your listener tales with Leo in our Footnotes episode, available to the high council on Patreon. That will go up tomorrow.
I’ll need more stories for our next listener tales episode as well, so if you’re new here and you have a story, check out heart starts pounding . com