For a while every morning when I would wake up I had things sitting on my chest, whispering awful things into my ears.

I could not see them and I did not want to. It stopped every-time I started to pray. It eventually stopped happening all together. I do not fear these things anymore because I have a God who is greater than these things. I don't know if they were hallucinations or some remnant of dreaming or not. At this point I don't care.

I also once felt myself being...Attacked (not sure of the right word) while I was volunteering at a weekend camp. I could not speak, I could not think, all I could do was fantasize about killing myself. I carved into my arm with a knife and bashed my head on a log repeatedly, I wandered around in the rain for hours. I heard no words but it felt as if someone was spitting hateful things into my ears. I crawled through the mud trying to stop my own hands from hurting me.

Memories were hidden from me, things I knew to be true were obscured as if someone had drawn a curtain across parts of my mind. I eventually sat down with the preacher and sought help, he gave me passages to read and prayed over me. I continued to cut myself. This oppressive sensation did not stop until I crawled into the sanctuary during a worship session and began to sing.

I saw nothing out of the ordinary except for two things. My own reflection was very dark and sickly, my eyes were terrible. But no one noticed anything different. I tried to leave the sanctuary at one point just after asking for help and saw a dark shape in the forest, maybe 20 feet tall and 60 feet away. It appeared to move towards me slowly. I closed the door and returned to the worship session. I don't know if it was anything, but it was darker than the trees around it.

I've heard many similar stories from other people. I think I was vulnerable because I feared. Whatever the hell those things are (or aren't) they only have the power we give them over us.