Written Confession: Recurring Nightmare of an Invisible Man in a Dressing Gown
The following written confession was submitted via email:
From the age of 4 to 8 years, I and my family lived in a small rural village in North Wales (UK) in a property called "the old school house" which was, obviously, formerly a school house. I'm not sure of the age of the building but I would guess at least 50-60 years when we were there in the early 80s.
During our time there we were happy but I experienced a persistent recurring nightmare (if I had to guess I would say about once per month on average). Each time the dream was identical and vividly real, in that the place was exactly as it appears and feels in real life and there was none of the usual hazy dream weirdness.
I was in my bed facing the door to my room with my dressing gown hanging on a hook on the back of the door. I would feel a great sense of fear and be unable to move. As I watched, the dressing gown would lift up of the hook and begin to fill out as if an invisible person was growing inside of it. It would slowly turn to face me and then I would wake up. My parents reassured me I was only dreaming and after some time I stopped talking about it, believing them to be correct.
The dream continued throughout my time there until a short while before moving away. This time the dressing gown rose up and filled up as normal but when it turned I didn't wake. Instead I kept watching frozen in fear as a man materialised where the invisible wearer had been. He looked directly at me and looked like he was in pain or despairing and he started to double over screaming but almost without sound. It was like if someone on the tv was screaming but the volume was as low as possible without being off or if i had my ears covered and only got a muffled hint. As he lowered below the foot of my bed so I could no longer see him, I woke up in panic but I felt sad as much as scared this time because his pain was so visible. Until I saw that my dressing gown was not on the hook but on the floor a little in front of the door, then I was scared again.
We moved away shortly afterwards and I never had the dream again but some years later when I was in my early teens my sisters and parents admitted that there was "something strange about that house" and that they believed it may have been haunted.
Weirder to me is that at the time I thought of the man as looking "like jesus from the tv" having seen Robert Powell in 'Jesus of Nazareth' and he being the only similar looking person I could relate to him. In more recent times though, I find that I have come to look like the man I saw in my grown up years. Its a long time ago so I can't be sure of course but a couple of years ago when I was in a troubled state, I looked not so well and realised one day looking in the mirror that I look like I remember the man in my room looking (if that makes sense).
