A Strange Night

We had a very strange night on Sept 16/17.  I hesitate to even go into it, but I want to remember it so I'm going to write it down.

Before I start, let me say that I'm married to a bit of a cynic when it comes to paranormal things.  He is ironically the polar opposite of myself as I believe in ghosts, possessions, ESP, and things like that.  In fact, I provide endless amusement for Jon because I'm always the one who wants to rent movies like "The Gift", "The Exorcist", "What Lies Beneath", but then I never actually see the movies because my eyes are covered the entire time.

That's what makes this particular night all the more strange.

Around 4:30 AM, Jon woke up from a nightmare.  Before we went to sleep, he had been reading The International Herald Tribune and the page that listed the pictures and details of some of the flight victims of the WTC/Pentagon attack.  This explains why the nightmare happened the way it did.  In the dream, he was in his childhood home in Jacksonville, FL, and he and his Mom were looking at the newspaper page.  He pointed to the picture of a particular pilot and said to his Mom, "Didn't this pilot used to work with Dad in the Navy?".  She looked at the picture and said, "Yes.  He did.".  Jon looked up and - over his mother's shoulder, in the doorway of the room - saw the ghost of the pilot.  This was the nightmare.

His heart was beating so quickly and he was breathing so hard that he woke himself up.  As he was laying in bed, he was rubbing his eye because his contact was dry.  This is when he heard me get up and walk to the bathroom.  From the light of the bathroom, he could see a silhouette of someone standing in the doorway which he naturally assumed to be me.

Only - unknown to Jon - I didn't get up to go to the bathroom.  I was still in bed.

For whatever reason, I suddenly woke up at this particular moment.  And although the room was dark and I noticed nothing strange, I knew that he was awake from his breathing and I also knew that the air conditioner was off (because the hotel staff turns it off centrally in the middle of the night hoping that no one will notice).  I thought I heard him fumble for the phone to call the front desk and said, "Why don't you turn on the light on so you can see?".  He stopped, turned the light on, and said, "Didn't you just go to the bathroom?".  I of course had no idea what he was talking about and said "No".  So he made the call to tell them to turn the air back on, and then lay back in bed.  He said, "I heard footsteps.  Are you sure you didn't go to the bathroom?".  Of course I was, because I had to go just then.

When I came back from the bathroom I said, "Are you all right?".  He was really disturbed.  He told me the whole story: the nightmare, the footsteps, the figure in the light.  And I tried to convince him that the footsteps and figure in the doorway must have been a continuation of the dream.  He said, "No.  I was fixing my contact.  I was definitely awake."  The fact that he was taking this so seriously really freaked me out, so I tried to make light of it.  I said, "You were definitely dreaming.  Do you know how I know that?"  He said no and I joked, "Because why would this pilot come all the way from New York to Shanghai just to haunt YOU?"  And without even thinking about it, he said with absolute certainty, "No.  It wasn't the pilot."

I swear, I've never had chills go up my spine that quickly. 

We turned on some lights, and I spent the rest of the night curled up next to him in his little twin bed until the sun came up and I could finally fall into a restless sleep.

It all sounds so silly now in the light of day and in print, but we were really freaked out.  We realize that your mind can play tricks on you in the middle of the night after a nightmare, and we're probably hallucinating things because of the stress and shock of the past week.  So we decided against switching rooms because it's too much of a pain in the butt, but I really hated being in the room by myself after that.