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The original was posted on /r/highstrangeness by /u/rvolland on 2025-06-06 20:31:03+00:00.

First time posting here! I live in the south of the UK and as a child in the late 70s / early 80s I had some experiences in my parents’ home which have stuck in my mind. These occurred when I was somewhere between roughly four and six years old.

The first one is when I walked into my bedroom from the upstairs landing and saw what appeared to be a disembodied man’s head poking through my bed and facing me. I don’t remember much about what it looked like, but I got the impression that the person it had once been was several hundred years old. It was slightly transparent and seemed to lack a lot of colour. I watched it for a few moments before it simply disappeared, and it hadn’t seemed to have been aware of me. There wasn’t any sense of dread or fear, and I recall being quite calm and only later on thinking that it was bit weird seeing a ghostly head in my bedroom!

The second experience is a recurring nightmare that I had for some months, with some variation. I would ‘wake up’ in my bed and be aware that it was early morning. The door to my room is at the foot of the bed, near the left-hand wall and there is space between the foot of the bed and the wall to comfortably walk through.

The door would be slightly ajar, and I would hear Dad in the bathroom - next to my room - getting ready for work. Then, some heavy footsteps would start coming up the stairs and I would be utterly terrified, calling for my parents but they didn’t hear me. The dream would end only when whatever-it-was reached my bedroom door. I never did see what the horror actually looked like, though.

The alternative version of this dream would start the same way, but instead of the horror coming up the stairs, I would become aware of something behind my head but couldn’t turn my head to look at it. As my terror grew, two dark hands (or claws?) would appear very quickly from behind me and grab my face. Then the dream would end. Occasionally, I would ‘wake up’ only to be in the same dream and this would occur once more before I woke up for real. I’m actually getting heart palpitations now, as I haven’t properly thought about these dreams for years!

Hope this is interesting to some. Comments or observations welcomed.