One night I overheard my friend having a conversation about something she called the Old Hag Phenomena. I asked her to tell me about it. She said it was a scenario where people are woken up at night because they can’t breathe. When they wake up, they see an old Hag sitting on their chest and they are usually paralyzed. It brought back a memory of an experience I had years ago.
In the mid 70s I was in the Navy. Me and a group of buddies were on leave. We were out partying and stayed in a small hotel in Carolton Illinois. Nothing unusual just having fun. Sometime in the middle of the night I just woke up. I don’t remember anything specific waking me up. I was laying on my back and I opened my eyes. There was an older lady standing by the side of my bed. She wasn’t floating and didn’t look ghostly. She was just a regular lady as real looking as me. She wasn’t really old looking, but I was only about 21 so 50 looked old to me. She was wearing a patterned dress and had gray hair that was pulled back. She never said anything but was just standing there waving her hands around. I was freaked out and pulled the covers over my head. I’m not sure how long it took for me to get brave enough to pull the covers back down. When I did, she was gone. She never took my breath away and I wasn’t paralyzed, but I sure was scared.
The next morning being young and dumb, I jumped out of my hotel window. Our room was on the second floor. I wasn’t trying to hurt myself. I was just a fool. I landed safely on the grass. As I got up and started walking away, the ground where I landed caved in. Apparently, I landed on an old well that had been covered over and the impact broke the cover. Maybe she wasn’t an Old Hag but a Guardian Angel.
