I don't have many memories of my childhood, but most of them have to do with me being scared to death for one reason or another. I have only told my children and my siblings about what I saw and how it made me feel. Now that I'm writing about it for the first time, the only words coming to mind seem to be "the demon."

I figure I was between the ages of 4 and 5 when it first occurred since I do know that I wasn't going to school yet.

The first time I remember I was in the kitchen with my mother eating breakfast or lunch. My mom was watching her soap operas on the television at the dining table and I was sitting at the counter on a bar stool. I was swinging my legs and my tennis shoes were hitting the counter wall in a continuous beat, over and over again until finally, my mom asked me to stop. I did. Then I swung my legs again faster and louder. She told me to "please stop." I did this a third time and I was sent to my bedroom.

I walked in, lay down on my bed and just waited and listened for my mom to call for me to come out of my room. When she called my name, I sat up and started to walk out of my room -- and that's when I froze. I just froze.

I was standing there right before the door, staring up at the ceiling, and in the space between the ceiling and the top of the door was a face. It was talking to me, telling me something, and it was clear as ever. I remember being terrified at what it told me and somehow I forced myself to look away and run out of my room to my mom, who was still sitting in the kitchen.

I was out of breath when I reached my mom. I was hugging her around her waist as she sat watching TV. I tried to remember what the face had said, but I couldn't. I still can't remember. Only years later did I realize that she didn't think it unusual because I always ran everywhere I went, so I was running out of breath quite often.

For reason's unknown, I never told her about what I saw and heard. Not even when it happened again... and again... and again. I'm 44 now and all of my life I have been trying to figure out what it said to me and why it terrified me to the point where I could not move a muscle. It had me paralyzed for what, I think, were only seconds.

I moved out of that house many years ago and it never happened anywhere else except in that bedroom, in that house. I have often thought throughout my troubled life if, maybe, this demon had something to do with the way my life turned out. This demon always comes to mind when I disect my past.

I also wondered, most of all, why I understood it and saw its face so clearly until I snapped myself out of the trance and ran out of my room, but could never remember what it said or what it looked like the moment I stepped out of that room.

All I do know for sure is that it was pure evil. I felt it throughout my whole body. My soul has suffered from it my whole life. Only evil could make a child so scared, as I was. It was evil.

Well, I might, one day or night, discover the answer to what happened to me. I would be interested in reading stories by anybody who might have had a similar experience.

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