The one when I started to sleep with my lights on.

If I hadn’t made it any more obvious, it’s a ghost story. Even though horror stories scare the

life out of me, I was pretty confident it won’t interrupt me and my sleep because once I'm out

cold nothing could wake me up. So I had no problem sleeping with my lights off, until the

incident.

I was 17 and had just started my undergrad , begun living in a shared accommodation near

University. The accommodation was supervised by a nunnery and they were very strict. I

shared my room with 2 others and had our beds positioned on each corner of the room, each

far away from the other. The eery nature of the convent accompanied by the graveyard of the

nearby church complimented the whole ghostly scenario, but since we shared the space and it

was an only girls accommodation, there was no room for fear. Girls sure made it cheerful.

It was a long night and I had a lot of work left to be done. I was tired and fell asleep almost

after I finished it. I am not sure how much time passed. I was having a dreamless sleep and

suddenly I woke up. My eyes were open and I couldn’t dive back into my sleep. I tried

turning sides, surprisingly realised I couldn’t move an inch of my body how much I tried.

And there, I saw in the centre of the room, an old lady, bending on her back looking at me.

Her eyes were white as snow with no iris. For a minute there I thought, ‘wait, this is

impossible, I might be dreaming’. So I blinked and looked at her. But she is still there,

looking at me. It began to sink. I shut my eyes and pray this was all just a dream. I was so

scared, so scared to even open my eyes, frightened if I did open them she will be just near

looking at me with those ghostly white eyes.No thanks. I’m happy shutting my eyes off for

the whole day than having a face-off with a ghost. In that process I somehow fell asleep and
woke up with sweats all over. I just realised what I had gone through and looked all over for

her but she was nowhere to be found. I know it might be just a dream but could never forget

how she looked at me.

That morning I told my friends what happened but they thought I was bluffing of course. But

after that day I bought a small lamp near my bedside table so that I won't mistake anything in

the dark and to my surprise, my roommates didn’t object. I guess they were also quite shaken

up by the news of granny ghost in their room. One of my friends told me I might have gone

through a minor episode of sleep paralysis which explains me not being able to move my

body.Anyway on the bright side, this gave me a good excuse of a horror story to share,

especially to scare the kids. By kids I meant my fully fledged 20 something old friends. They

still likes my ‘ the one where I fell asleep while talking’ story just because they were live

audience. But from that day onwards I started sleeping with my lights on, especially when

I’m alone. And the most terrifying part, as I was writing about her, the light starts flickering

and it did scare me a bit. I remember I couldn't sleep for 2 days after the incident, because I

was so scared she would appear again. That made me wonder what if I saw was not just a

dream or an episode of sleep paralysis.aaW if what I saw was somewhat real. I mean who

knows, right?

The End.