Party Ghost 2

Ok, where were we..?

Everyone was in my room, I was wrapped around HArry Potter, and the room temperature had dropped cold enough for us to see our breath.

"What the fuck is this?" I asked the Prof.

"I'm not sure," he said, slowly looking around the room as I adjusted my top to cover my boobs a bit better. I was still nippling something horrible, but at least I was now covered. "Some cultures believe that a spirit can attach itself to someone with a stronger energy field than the one to which they had previously been attached, but I've never seen it."

"No way could she be more attarctive to the dead dad than his own daughter," said Raj. "No offense, Liz."

"None taken," I muttered.

Raj's girlfriend stuck her head in the room and looked confused. "What are we doing?" she asked.

And then I screamed.

Although everyone jumped about a foot, and Raj's girlfriend almost pissed her pants (if she ever wore any), it wasn't them. It was a shadow I saw out of the corner of my eye. It darted across the room in a way that shadows really shouldn't. And when it crossed into my direct line of site, it looked at me. Then it was gone.

The room began to warm up immediately.

"It wasn't the waiting father ghost," I said, trying to be heard over the pounding of my heart. "But I don't know what it was."

Bleck

I'm sick as a dog with some horrible tummy bug. Since late Saturday I've been in the bathroom doing things that are so unladylike that I'm even grossing myself out. With luck, I'll either be better by tomorrow, or dead.

Just so no one gets bored, I'll throw in a little something I read about as an undergrad that is often confused with a ghostly visit (or, much farther back, a visit from a demon like a Succubus. Although a Succubus visit was also often explained away by wet dreams). It's a type of sleep paralysis that feels like someone is on top of you, holding you down. I had this happen to me once when I was in high school, and let me tell you, it scared the shit out of me. It really felt like

someone was on top of me.

It usually happens when you're just coming out of sleep, and it's your body's muscles "turned off". As they turn back on, it feels like someone getting off of you. It's also called Hag Phenomenon. About.com has a good description:

So what causes it? Dr. Max Hirshkowitz, director of the Sleep Disorders Center
at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Houston, says that sleep
paralysis occurs when the brain is in the transition state between deep,
dreaming sleep (known as REM sleep for its rapid eye movement) and waking up.
During REM dreaming sleep, the brain has turned off most of the body's muscle
function so we cannot act out our dreams - we are temporarily
paralyzed.

"Sometimes your brain doesn't fully switch off those
dreams - or the paralysis - when you wake up," Hirshkowitz told ABC News. "That
would explain the 'frozen' feeling and hallucinations associated with sleep
paralysis." According to his research, the effect only really lasts from a few
seconds to as long as a minute, but in this half-dream half-awake state, to the
victim it can seem much longer.