HORROR STORIES

Bad Dreams .

Bad Dreams

"Years ago I stayed for some nights at a hotel in the New Forest which is a national park on the South coast of England. The hotel was a large former hunting lodge built sometime in the 19th century. I felt very uncomfortable in my room and almost as though there were others there with me or someone watching me. I am not the kind of person that is normally given to such feelings but they were very strong and extremely uncomfortable. I was with a large group staying there and speaking to others after the first night many felt the same.

That first night it took me a long time to fall asleep and for the first time in my entire adult life I could not bring myself to turn out the lights before I went to bed. When I eventually fell asleep I had the most vivid dreams that felt extremely real of being in a trench somewhere during the Great War and hearing the constant banging of explosions and of artillery pieces firing. I woke up feeling extremely distressed and with a cold sweat. There was a banging noise which I assume must have been some metal roofing not affixed properly moving in the wind. I've never felt anything like it since and had never felt anything like it before. It felt so very real and I was completely overwhelmed with so many emotions and utterly terrified. I couldn't get back to sleep, I felt like I was in the company of others, I felt like someone was near or that feeling you get when you know people are looking at you, and I spent the rest of the night in a kind of daze.

In the morning I went downstairs for breakfast and saw a frame on the wall containing some photographs and a story about how the hotel was converted to a military hospital during World War I. I did not know anything about this before I arrived and before that night. I had also not been reading anything about the war or had seen anything on television recently about it.

I'm a practical and skeptical woman but I don't know what to make of that experience. I spent the remainder of the stay with one of my friends in another room. The oppressive atmosphere and general feeling of something wrong and frightening to me did not lift and my friend I stayed with was also afraid and was glad of me to stay with them in their room."