One night, I overheard a friend talking about something she called Old Hag Syndrome. She described a terrifying scenario where people wake up unable to breathe, often seeing a sinister old woman sitting on their chest while they remain paralyzed. Hearing her description immediately brought back a vivid memory of an experience I had decades ago while serving in the Navy.
An Unusual Guest in Carrollton
In the mid-70s, a group of buddies and I were on leave. We were out partying and stayed in a small hotel in Carrollton, Illinois. It was a typical night of fun until I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night. I wasn’t experiencing the paralysis often associated with Old Hag Syndrome, but what I saw scared me stiff.
Lying on my back, I opened my eyes to see an older lady standing right by the side of my bed. She didn’t look like a ghost or a floating apparition; she looked as real as you or me. She appeared to be in her 50s, wearing a patterned dress with her gray hair pulled back. She didn’t speak, but she was frantically waving her hands around. Terrified, I pulled the covers over my head and stayed there until I finally gathered the courage to look again. When I did, she was gone.
The Warning at the Well
The next morning, being young and full of adrenaline, I decided to jump out of our second-story hotel window just for the fun of it. I landed safely on the grass, but as I stood up to walk away, the ground where I had just landed suddenly caved in.
I had landed directly on an old, hidden well. The impact of my jump had shattered the rotted cover. Had I stayed standing there for even a second longer, I would have fallen into the deep hole. It occurred to me then that the woman I saw wasn’t an example of Old Hag Syndrome at all—she was a guardian angel trying to warn me of the danger waiting outside my window.
