It happened one night while my husband and I were in bed.

Our daughter was sleeping in her bedroom, which was attached to ours.

I don’t remember what I had been dreaming about, if anything. What I remember is waking up and seeing a male figure wearing a mask and a long hooded cape. His head was turned downward, as if he were looking at me.

He was right there.

In my bedroom.

And I screamed.

My husband woke up and asked what was wrong.

I threw the covers over my head and pointed toward the figure.

“Th-th-there’s a man!”

My husband looked.

“No one is there,” he said.

Well, that’s comforting.

I pulled the covers back down, and what I saw was the man disappearing.

Just fading away.

Not conveniently turning into a coat hanging on a chair.

Gone.

I was terrified.

I immediately checked on our daughter. She was still sleeping peacefully in her room, completely unaware that her mother had just experienced the kind of thing that makes a person reconsider every shadow in the house.

I slept with the nightlight on for weeks afterward.

And I mean weeks.

I wasn’t interested in proving how brave I was. I was interested in making sure I could see every damn corner of that bedroom.

The figure had looked to me like something I later associated with a bringer of death, although I hadn’t consciously registered that in the moment.

And naturally, I wanted answers.

This was back when the internet was still young. We weren’t carrying little computers in our pockets, and there weren’t a million websites ready to explain every strange experience in thirty seconds.

There were emails. There were forums.

And somehow, of all places, I found myself on a Christian forum discussing what had happened.

A woman there suggested that the figure might have been a manifestation of someone’s hatred or anger.

There were circumstances in my life at the time that made that interpretation resonate with me.

I’m not going into all of those details here. That’s another story entirely.

But her suggestion gave me something to think about.

Was that what I’d seen?

I don’t know.

And I want to be clear about that.

I know what I saw. I know I was awake, and I know how frightened I was. I didn’t make it up, and as far as I’m concerned, I wasn’t dreaming.

But I can’t tell you with certainty what caused it.

Maybe my mind was doing something extraordinary in that strange space between dreaming and waking. (Oh, I have stories about those experiences!)

Maybe there was an explanation I simply didn’t understand.

Whatever it was, it changed the direction of my curiosity.

I began looking beyond the explanations people usually refer to.

I searched for people who talked openly about unusual experiences, intuition, symbolism, and the mysteries of being human.

And eventually I found spiritual forums.

Oh, my goodness.

I had no idea there was an entire world of people exploring the very things I’d always been curious about.

People who noticed patterns.

People who felt connected to nature.

People who wondered about dreams and coincidences and the possibility that life might hold meanings we don’t fully understand.

For the first time, I wasn’t simply reading what somebody else said I was supposed to believe.

I was exploring.

Asking questions.

Finding ideas that resonated with me and leaving others behind.

That frightening night didn’t hand me all the answers.

It handed me a whole new collection of questions.

And strangely enough, that turned out to be the beginning of something wonderful.

Because in those forums, I discovered people who loved rocks as much as I did.

And apparently, some of those rocks had fancy names and came with entire books written about them!

Who knew?

That’s where Friday’s story begins.

Now, surely I’m not the only person who’s seen something that scared the living hell out of them and still can’t explain it years later.

Anybody else have a story like that? Because I’d sure love to hear it.

— The Barbed Belle

The Man Beside My Bed Who Wasn't There