Have you ever

[specialmama]

convinced yourself that someone was in your house in the middle of the night? Have you ever sat up and stared at something and thought for sure it was an intruder? Have you ever stopped breathing because you're absolutely positive that the person moved and therefore *must* be real and your heart almost jumps into your throat? Then you turn the light on, arm yourself with a brass vase and look in every room? Then you can't fall asleep? :glare: Has that ever happened to anyone else?

[Hedgehog]

I didn't quite arm myself with anything, but yes, I woke from a vivid dream once being convinced there was someone in the hallway, and I made DH get up and check for me. :blush:

[Molly]

Yep, do it quite regularly, especially after getting woken one night with someone hurtling themselves through our back door. Was very thankful DH was there to sort that one out. Freaked me out no end.

[nd293]

Umm, last night, actually. Dh was away. The benefit of a small house is that there really is nowhere for anyone to hide, but still I lie there stiff as a board trying not to breathe... And I have both kids sleeping in bed with me, just to be sure.

 

It's not every night he is away, though, and I'm much better now that I'm out of South Africa and the chance of actually waking up and finding someone in my bedroom is greatly reduced.

 

When my sister was in high school she woke me to say she'd woken up and someone was in her room touching her foot. I went through to her room, ready to scare away the boogie man. The window to the bathroom off her bedroom was wide open, and there were muddy footprints on the edge of the bath. I looked out the window and saw someone climbing down the last bit of drainpipe (we were one floor up) and getting on a bike. Although he was never caught, it was assumed to be a boy in her class. Subsequently another girl had to get a restraining order against him. These things tend to stay with you, even when you're no longer consciously anxious...

Edited June 10, 2011 by nd293

[laundrycrisis]

When I was single and living alone (except for dogs) in old houses in iffy neighborhoods - yes, I went through this a lot. The only reason I could sleep at all was sheer fatigue and having two barky little dogs and being well armed.

 

When I was about 20 and living alone during a summer internship, I had the experience of coming back to my apartment late at night, unlocking the door, and finding a man standing in my living room in the dark. It turned out to be my angry boyfriend who had driven from 9 hours away without telling me he was coming and the brilliant landlady let him into my apartment to wait for me. I was not expecting him and did not recognize him standing in the dark. That was a good life experience to have - I was not really in danger but it has made me instinctively security-conscious ever since.

[dm379]

All the time. But I'm not usually bright enough to arm myself. I turn the alarm sound way up so it beeps in my bedroom when somebody opens any door whether the alarm is set or not and that helps.

 

I have a door in my bedroom that leads to the outside. The other night the wind was blowing so hard it blew open. It's embarrassing how loud I screamed thinking somebody was breaking in.

[momofkhm]

I have never gotten to the point of arming myself and checking the house. If I think someone is there, I check the cats and the dog. If they are all ok, then I assume it's nothing. If they are on edge, then I'd wake up dh. (Who claims that the slightest thing wakes him, so he'd already be up anyway, right?)

[SweetMissMagnolia]

oh yeah......lol don't have any vases that would do good as a weapon though...lol

[Impish]

No more ice caps before bed for you!

[specialmama]

No more ice caps before bed for you!

 

Who me? I'd never do something so reckless!

:001_tt2:

[Impish]

Like tell a pregnant woman she's growing into elephant pants? :001_huh:

[specialmama]

Like tell a pregnant woman she's growing into elephant pants? :001_huh:

 

um, ya, that would be beyond reckless! *runs for cover*

Edited June 10, 2011 by specialmama

[texasmama]

Yes.:grouphug:

 

This is different, but last night I had a bad dream (which I do not remember) and sat up in bed screaming my head off. My husband was not pleased.:glare:

[texasmama]

Also, I recall one time hearing a loud noise in the middle of the night. Dh and I both bolted out of bed. He grabbed a baseball bat and ran one way in his underwear, and I ran the other way in my underwear and a tank top (blind as a bat because I didn't have my glasses on) towards the kids' rooms. I'm sure we could have really done some damage to an intruder like that. Fear the half asleep, barely clad, unarmed, blind woman in the dark. :glare:

[Impish]

um, ya, that would be beyond reckless! *runs for cover*

I know where you live. :D

[Karen in CO]

I have two hyper-vigilant, barky dogs so I don't usually fear someone sneaking into the house without them warning me. They'll even bark if one of us goes downstairs for a glass of water at night. Typically, if I get the feeling that someone is sneaking inside my house, there is a child standing over me in the dark hoping to sneak into to my bed.

[MrsBasil]

Yes, I have. Except for arming myself with a vase. I used to keep a nice heavy baseball bat for that purpose.

 

Here's the thing. I have a dog who barks if a bunny gets into "her" yard, who lets the whole neighborhood know when the teen who lives across the street is still in her boyfriend's car 3 minutes after he parks, and who was growling like a maniac last time the power was out and workmen went into the backyard that is kitty corner from our backyard even though she's gated into the front of the house at night.

 

Still...I get worried irrationally.

[NanceXToo]

Yep lol. In fact if hubby is working late I can't go to sleep til he gets home because I will keep hearing noises that must be intruders lol

[Annie Laurie]

Yep lol. In fact if hubby is working late I can't go to sleep til he gets home because I will keep hearing noises that must be intruders lol

 

My dh was recently out of town on business. There is a rapist on the loose who has been in my neighborhood and I could not sleep any of those nights. It was awful. I think I got a total of 4 hours sleep each night.

[aggieamy]

I have two hyper-vigilant, barky dogs so I don't usually fear someone sneaking into the house without them warning me. They'll even bark if one of us goes downstairs for a glass of water at night. Typically, if I get the feeling that someone is sneaking inside my house, there is a child standing over me in the dark hoping to sneak into to my bed.

 

Oh I know this feeling exactly. I've taken to locking our bedroom door at night because otherwise Little Librarian will try to sneak into our room in the middle of the night and it scares me to death. Her knocking on the door is a lot less terrifying at 2 am.

[Jean in Newcastle]

For me, this is part of night terrors. I would have sort of a waking dream where I would "see" someone there. I would wake up drenched in sweat with my heart pounding. It would take me a few minutes to reorient myself to reality because my dreamlike experience would be so real. Taking magnesium (I like a powder called Calm) has helped me with this.

[Mrs Mungo]

Incident one:

 

The first time we lived in NC (we had just moved) you could see directly into my bedroom and see the bathroom in my bedroom from the sofa in the living room. My dh was out late at a range or something. The house was dark, my bathroom light was the only light on. I was watching tv and saw my bathroom door slam shut. I seriously thought someone must be in there. I grabbed a baseball bat and jerked open the door, but there was nobody there. I think it must have been the a/c or something that caused the door to close like that.

 

Incident two:

 

Dh had recently come home from a deployment. Our bedroom was at the back of the house, the kid bedrooms were at the front of the house. I was awake, reading in bed; dh was asleep. There was a noise like something hit one of the windows at the front of the house. Before I could even sit up DH has sprung *over* me *and* the bed and had raced down the hall. We didn't find anything, we decided it must have been a squirrel or something.

 

Incident three:

 

Dh was deployed. I woke up, wide awake, out of a dead sleep because I heard a man's voice. I flipped on my bedroom lights and checked inside my house, didn't see anything. I picked up my shotgun and a flashlight and checked the backyard. I still didn't see anything. However, the next morning I found out that the next door neighbor's front door had been busted down (they weren't home). Nothing was stolen. I think they woke me up busting down the door and my activity scared them off.

Edited June 10, 2011 by Mrs Mungo

[duckabell]

I remember once as a young teenager I heard the front door open around 1:00 in the morning. The door was on the other side of my wall, but I was surprised my parents didn't hear anything. I was too scared to get out of bed and so I stayed awake most of the night until I fell into a fitful sleep. Later that week I had found out that my sister, who lived across town, had come in to get something. I don't know if she ever knew how much she had scared me.

 

I heard another story on a related noted to this thread the other day. A lady who used to attend our church saw a teenage boy with a baseball bat walking around her neighbor's yard and peeking in the windows. She didn't think he had any affiliation with the family and so she stepped out into the backyard and asked him if he were lost. He said, "No." She then asked him if he wanted her to call the neighbors and let him know he was there. Again he said, "No," and left.

 

My friend said it had never occurred to this lady until later that the man with the baseball bat could have hurt her. She was just curious what he was up to. I have to think that she probably did a better job scaring him off with her naivete then going outside yelling; although the better course to take would have been to call the police.

[Sushi's Mom]

This happens to me weekly. It doesn't help that our house is very creaky. We are looking to buy a new house and some of them are near train tracks, or close enough that you can hear it. My husband said that we can definitely not buy one of those houses, because he would never get any sleep with me panicking every night!

[fairfarmhand]

I don't need to read this thread since my dh will be gone tonight camping...

 

 

lalala...I can't hear you.....

[venusmom]

Kind-of funny...I had just stayed up too late watching 'Criminal Minds' and 'Without a Trace' about 3 nights ago....I should not do that - but sometimes I just enjoy those shows. So....keeping it brief:

 

1.) Went to restroom before finally going to bed - turn out light & opened door into darkened hall

2.) A hand silently grips my wrist tightly while it is still clasping the door knob to open the door - heart sinks, I think I quit breathing - I frantically reach with the other hand to get the light on so I can bravely face my attacker

3.) When I got the light on - DH standing in front of me can barely keep from laughing - he said the terror on my face was very evident....I was SO relieved to see him and furious at the same time - very funny the next day when he told the kids on me!!!! :sneaky2:

 

We all had a good laugh then - but I'm telling you - that night - I was really frightened!

[hsbaby]

I'm always convinced someone is in our garage....trying to get in, of course. The other night I could have swore I heard someone trying to pick the lock. Dh ignores me.

[texasmama]

For me, this is part of night terrors. I would have sort of a waking dream where I would "see" someone there. I would wake up drenched in sweat with my heart pounding. It would take me a few minutes to reorient myself to reality because my dreamlike experience would be so real. Taking magnesium (I like a powder called Calm) has helped me with this.

 

This is similar to what happens regularly to me in the beginning of the night when I am in a light part of the sleep cycle. No matter how quietly dh comes in, if he is not there when I go to sleep, I sit up in bed screaming my head off, heart pounding, terrified because "someone is coming to get me".

[Jean in Newcastle]

3.) When I got the light on - DH standing in front of me can barely keep from laughing - he said the terror on my face was very evident....I was SO relieved to see him and furious at the same time - very funny the next day when he told the kids on me!!!! :sneaky2:

 

 

 

I wouldn't think that was funny at all. I have a very finely tuned - Fight or flight response with the Fight part winning out almost every time. I kneed a guy in the groin once when he snuck up on me while walking to my dorm in the dark. I was only partly sorry when I found out it was a friend and not a foe. We were still friends after that but he never did that again!

[MissKNG]

Yes but I arm myself with my pepper spray!

[~Tara~]

I've yet to arm myself and venture out...but otherwise, yes, this happens to me. More so when hubs is not home. And here I mention he was away from home for most of the last 3 weeks. Eek! I stay up later and sleep with the tv on when he is not home. And check the locks 100 times. And still freak out. *sigh*

[LostSurprise]

This does happen occasionally. Usually I lie in bed and listen until I feel better and drift back to sleep.

 

A few years ago it was the real thing. Some drunk guy came in our side door at about 4am. He went to the bathroom, fumbled around, urinated, came out, knocked a picture of the wall, slurred 'sorry' and went into the living room to lie down.

 

Dh and I both woke up at him walking around the hall (before he went into the bathroom). Dh called out 'how's it going?' He usually does that when the boys get up to urinate in the night (drives me crazy). When the guy said sorry (when knocking the pic off the wall) several octaves lower then any child in our house we both flew into gear. I threw on some pants. Dh threw on some underwear and grabbed a bat (yes we have a bat next to our bed). I grabbed the phone and locked myself into the baby's room. Dh went out and told the guy to leave and then locked himself into the other's boy's room with the phone until the police came.

 

Fun stuff. The drunk guy had crashed his car a mile away on the edge of town. He stumbled around until he thought he found his friend's house (wrong) and went in to pass out. They were already looking for this guy because they'd found his car. They took him out still insisting that we were his friends and we let him crash on the couch.

 

Yeah, we have a dog now. I just sit up. The dog notices, does a perimeter walk, comes back.

[Sputterduck]

Yeah. I sleep with a bat. That may be weird, but I'm alone with a little one every night. I'm not 100 percent comfortable at night.

[Jean in Newcastle]

There was one time when the alarm went off in the middle of the night while housesitting. I armed myself with a hairbrush.:tongue_smilie: The alarm co. called and I asked them to call the police. When the officer arrived, he checked in on me and told me he was going to check the perimeter outside. I told him "No, check inside where I am first!" He laughed at my hairbrush. It turned out to be a false alarm because the owner's son hadn't closed the garage door properly. But they yelled at me because they got charged for the false alarm fee.

[laundrycrisis]

I heard another story on a related noted to this thread the other day. A lady who used to attend our church saw a teenage boy with a baseball bat walking around her neighbor's yard and peeking in the windows. She didn't think he had any affiliation with the family and so she stepped out into the backyard and asked him if he were lost. He said, "No." She then asked him if he wanted her to call the neighbors and let him know he was there. Again he said, "No," and left.

.

 

I did something similar years ago - my next door neighbor was hospitalized for a long period of time. We shared a driveway. I was working in my carport and I saw someone looking into the windows of his house around 8 pm. I came barreling up the driveway yelling, "EXCUSE ME, CAN I HELP YOU ? CAN I HELP YOU ?" at the top of my lungs. I don't know why that is what I said, it just came out...I wanted all the other neighbors to be able to hear me but not sound crazy hostile I guess. The guy jumped in his car and peeled out, then I called 911. Looking back I realized that since I was in my detached carport without any cell phone, there was no way I could have made it back into my house to call 911 without him possibly seeing me from inside the neighbor's house, and the back end of the long driveway was a pretty isolated place. There was no place for me to hide in the carport or to leave it without being in plain sight. Suddenly hurtling myself toward the street while making a lot of noise was a pretty good thing to do considering the alternatives I guess. After I called 911 they put a patrol on the house and his relatives came and closed all of his curtains and had some exterior lights put on a timer.

 

BTW I have also dealt with a peeping Tom....teenage neighbor from across the street who was obsessed with looking into my windows while wearing a ski mask. Nice. This was all when I was single and living alone in old houses in iffy neighborhoods. So I have reasons for my paranoia.

[Lovin Learnin]

Years ago my df woke up in the middle of the night convinced that someone was in her apartment. She never left her bed but sat in silence for awhile. When she didn't hear anything she assumed it must have been a bad dream and she drifted back to sleep. In the morning she discovered that she had been robbed that night and, among other things, someone had taken all of the money out of the wallet that she kept on her bedroom dresser. As you can imagine, she was pretty messed up psychologically for a long while.

[joannqn]

Well....

 

I hallucinated a very large man the size of a 6 foot tall, 3 foot wide bookshelf with a plant on top of it in my room. I couldn't sleep for hours, and is the reason I refuse to take anything with codeine in it ever again.

[HSMom2One]

No, can't say I have. I'm so sorry you had that experience!

 

Blessings,

Lucinda

[Saujana]

Has anyone suspected any cause of spiritual activities instead?

Things like these do happen.

[Tap]

When I was a teenager, my parents house was 3 stories tall, but there was a spot on the back that the roof was only one story off the ground. My bedroom was on the top floor and my windows were a 12ft long dormer window about mid-way down the roof. The ceiling and the roof were the same boards with no insulation between them (the house was built in the 1800s). The house was surrounded by large trees and and animals would sometimes get on the roof like cats or squirrels, so noise at night on the roof was very common. The trees would drop walnuts or the birds/animals would drop their stash on accident and it would roll down the roof.

 

One night it was maybe 3am or so, I was working on a drawing project. I heard some gravel roll down the roof. I wasn't concerned, just figuring it was an animal. A few minutes passed, then I heard some thumps. Then I heard A lot of gravel, like something sliding down the roof. I turned my head and glanced outside expecting to see some cats fly by the window. My eyes settle onto the shadow of the roof line, cast by full moon on the grass below....with a man, standing right over my bedroom on the roof. From where I was sitting he was within 10 feet of me, just separated by the roof.

 

I shut my window, flew out of the room, clicking off the light, slamming my bedroom door, and the door at the bottom of the staircase and propped a chair up underneath it as well.

 

I didn't tell anyone, didn't wake my parents, didn't call the police. I just sat downstairs on the couch, in the silence.... listening.

 

I didn't hear anything (to get in he would have had to slide open heavy wood frame windows) and when I went to the window to look and see if he was still there, his shadow was gone. I slept downstairs. The next day I asked my dad to take down the ladder. When he asked why, I said it just worried me. I never told them what had happened. (I was worried they would make me move out of the upstairs rooms and I had the whole upstairs to myself, because the windows didn't have locks. lol)

[venusmom]

Has anyone suspected any cause of spiritual activities instead?

Things like these do happen.

 

I did not actually want to bring it up in case I'm just an oddball...but they definitely do. I think when I really am walking the way God wants me to be and really serving Him the way he wants me to - when I am closest to Him is when this happens - that's when I have had a frightening presence waking me in the night - a feeling of my breath being stolen from me. It's pretty scary - but I listened someone teach on the subject and found out that it happens to others. I think he called it spiritual or demonic warfare...I can't remember that for certain. But I remember some of how he said to deal with it - get in prayer and get in the Word - demand that the evil spirit lurking around your home to flee. I pray for God to place a hedge of protection around my family and around my home and I keep praying that I belong to Christ. It is a very scary thing. It makes me want to gather my children in my room and keep them all at arms length to sleep - I don't want them weakened by the spirit of evil. However - facing it head on does help return peace to my home.