Close Encounters of the Possibly Paranormal Kind

I don’t think I’ve encountered anything more chilling than an unexplained object falling on my face in the middle of the night. When it happened, I tried to come up with a logical explanation, but there just wasn’t one. It was just too bizarre that I had to believe it was ghost related.

During my last couple years of college, I lived in an apartment building owned by the school. It was a few blocks off campus and only current students could live there. It was a nice change from the dorms, even though I still didn’t have my own room. Sure, there was a kitchen, bathroom, and living room, but there were two students for every bedroom. The apartment I lived in had only one bedroom so I only had one roommate, thank goodness.

I’d lived in this unit for a couple of years but nothing strange happened until my senior year… after I met my husband. A couple times my stereo would randomly turn itself up louder and louder until I intervened, but it was easy to pass that off as a technology glitch. My bedroom wall clock, on the other hand, was an entirely different matter.

Since we rented from the school, they supplied the beds… which were lofts. It was supposed to help give us each more space on our side of the room underneath the bed. At the foot of my bed was a shelf where I kept my alarm clock (forcing me to move around) and random other crap. On the wall next to my bed I hung my Dominik Hasek wall clock. (I was really into hockey for awhile and was obsessed with Hasek. He’s was an awesome goalie!)

Where the clock hung lined up between waist and knee level – so about the middle of my bed. I think it was closer to being above my knees. I never bumped it before.

One night the most bizarre thing happened. I woke up just in time to catch the clock as it fell on my face.

I laid there in the dark clutching my clock inches from my nose as my heart beat loudly in my ears. To scared to move, I don’t know how long it was before I finally put the clock down.

How it fell, I do not know. How I woke up just as I caught it is just as weird and chilling.

The next day I examined the nail in the wall, but it was fine. Not loose, not bent… just fine. That wall adjoined our living room so I couldn’t blame it on crazy neighbors. My roommate was fast asleep when I woke up, so she didn’t do anything to me. (It would have been tough to climb up my loft, reach over me, knock it down, crawl back down and up into her loft without me noticing.)

I took some measurements and tried to see if I could recreate knocking it off the wall if I kicked or flailed in my sleep.

Nothing.

The most that I could make happen was for the clock to fall straight down the wall. Nothing made sense for it to leap off the wall at such an angle as to land on my face.

Someone or something wanted my attention. For what… I’ll never know.

Darcy Zalewski

Darcy is the founder of “Life With Darcy and Brian,” where she combines her love for education, board games, and crafting to create engaging learning experiences for kids. Her creative projects and writing have been featured in outlets like The Toy Insider, CafeMom, Mom.com, Parents.com, Country Living, and The Pioneer Woman.