When I was a college student still living at home with my parents, I had an experience where it seemed that something invisible sat down on my bed one night and got up and left a few minutes later. There was enough light in the room that I could see that there was nobody there. I didn’t know what to do, so I lay there and pretended to be asleep until the experience passed. I had several experiences like that and I don’t know if I was asleep or awake. I do know I dreamed at least one of them because I rearranged the furniture, and in my dream, the bed was back in it’s old position.
Those experiences led to to do research into the experiences people have when they’re in that zone between sleep and wakefulness. Hypnogogic hallucinations are experiences people have when they’re falling asleep, and hypnopompic hallucinations are the ones they have when they’re waking up. Sleep paralysis is an experience in which you’re partly awake but unable to move and have an experience of something in the room with you–like a ghost or alien. Since that was the closest thing I ever had to a haunted encounter, it naturally ended up in my first haunted novel. You know, I really do hope I dreamed about that invisible presence. Sleep paralysis sounds a lot less threatening than the demonic oppression some of my friends talk about. Regardless, I did plenty of praying while I was lying there.