My sleep paralysis story

When I was twelve years old, my cousins and I went to see the film The Woman in Black starring Daniel Radcliffe. The movie itself was mostly scary to twelve-year-old me, but that’s not what haunted me. After our trip to the theatre, I spent the night at my older cousin’s house. His home was the birthplace of many strange experiences I and the rest of my family remember. However, being the skeptic that I am, I could disprove most of these instances. For example, whenever I slept on the couch in the living room, whispers echoed through the halls, but I was quick to realize that these were not whispers. The old filter of the fish tank sounded like incoherent ramblings of many voices. But the one night I slept in the guest room, I awoke at a time I still don’t know to this day. My chest felt heavy, as if someone were lying on top of me. At first, I assumed one of the dogs had decided I was cozy enough to use as a bed, but much to my surprise, he was lying next to me. I also found that I could only turn my head. My body was completely paralyzed from the neck down. The room felt cold as I lay there helplessly. That’s when I saw a black figure in a wedding dress standing in the corner of my room. I couldn’t see their face through their black veil, but I assumed they were woman due to her figure. I don’t know how much time passed, but she never moved. Instead, she stared at me with a slight hunch. Time became blurry. It felt like I drifted off to sleep only to awaken in the same position with the same woman staring at me. Eventually, the next time I closed my eyes and opened them once again, she was gone and sunlight filtered through the windows. The dog stretched his legs and licked my face. Finally, I could move. As always, I tried to find an explanation for this. I groggily marched to the home office to log on to the computer, where I searched the internet for similar experiences. That’s when I found out about sleep paralysis. For the time being, my head felt clear. But later that day, when I went home, I stepped into my bathroom to take a shower. The moment I removed my shirt; I noticed three diagonal cuts were on my side. Mind you, they weren’t deep, but I still couldn’t figure out how they happened. Strangely enough, my cousin also stated that waking up with cuts on his chest was the norm for him, and just like me, those cuts were three diagonal slashes. I could explain everything else, but to this day, I can’t figure out how those cuts appeared and why they only happened at his house.