She is not alive

I used to live alone in my room with the lights off and the door locked, only some faint light coming through the windows. One day, I started having this recurring dream: I’d “wake up” in my sleep and see a woman sitting on the edge of the bed, right by my hip, just staring at me with a weird smile. Never did anything to me. Everytime, I’d try to scream or move, but nothing worked, until I finally jolted awake, sweating.

The dream kept repeating, over and over, every night for almost a month. It got so frequent that I started remembering her face in detail. I became scared to even go to sleep. I’ve always been distant from my family, so I didn’t tell anyone. Being an atheist, I brushed it off as sleep paralysis or stress, and just started keeping the light on while sleeping. Eventually, the dreams stopped.

A year later, I went to our neighbour’s house to pick up something they’d borrowed from my mom. On the wall, I saw a framed photo with a garland around it. The woman in the photo was the exact same person from my dreams. I was in complete shock. I immediately went back home and told my mom everything I remembered.

She told me that this woman had died with a smiling face around the exact time my dreams started. She also mentioned that I wasn’t the only one who’d had such dreams, my elder sister had experienced something similar around that time too. Absolutely insane stuff.