Detailed Account

Introduction

Hi to all. This is my first post, and actually I created this account for the sole purpose of sharing this experience and maybe shed some light to some strange events that happened to me when I was a child. I am now 26, but sometimes I still think about these things that happened to me and they still puzzle me.

Before I continue, please be wary that English is not my native language, so I may make some mistakes. Also, be wary that I will only describe the things I remember well and I'm 100% sure about: hence, some details will be omitted because I'm not certain about them. I may decide to share them in the future.

Purpose of the post

I decided to share these events here on reddit for a few reasons:

- I hope that someone has had similar experiences, so that maybe we can exchange information that may help us understand the nature of this phenomenon.

- I am reluctant in talking about these experiences with people who know me IRL, because there's a high chance I would be labeled as a liar or as delusional, and these facts could be used against me to mock me or damage my credibility. IRL, I only talked about these facts to a few trusted people.

- I hope that someone might think of some rational explanation I didn't think about.

Preliminary information

Some preliminary information: these facts I am going to talk about all happened when I was no more than 10 years old, although it is difficult for me to determine the exact date in which these events started taking place, nor I can determine the exact date in which they stopped happening. I remember that in that period of my life I used to play GameBoy in bed, I don't remember if GB Color or GB Advance SP, but I think the latter, since it had retro-illumination. Also, I remember that in the period of time these phenomenon occurred, I possessed, at a certain time, a cellphone. I clearly remember its shape, and digging on the internet I found out the name of the model: the LG U8110 3G. It was released in 2004, so I think that I was around 10 yo when these events took place. However, because they took place during an extended period of time, this phenomenon has most likely started before I was 10 yo. I think it started when I was about 8-9 yo and kept going on until I was about 10-11 yo.Also I know it's not a very reliable way of determining the period of time of interest, but these are the only certain details that I remember about it, and soon you'll get to know why. Furthermore, I think it is important that you know that I have a little sister (she was born in '94) and that I shared my room with her, so she was present at the time of the facts I'm going to talk about.

Also, it may be of some help to know some information about my room and its placement in the house.I live in a 2 story apartment inside a building: the access to my house is at 1st floor (not the ground floor), and my room is at 2nd floor. So, in order to enter my house you have to walk up a set of stairs in the building, from ground floor to first floor, then you enter my apartment and have to walk up another set of stairs inside the apartment in order to get to the floor on which my room is. On the upper floor of my apartment, there are a closet room, a toilet, and two bedrooms: one for me and my sister, one for my parents.

Here's a sketch of the floor (it is useful to make you understand some events I am going to share with you). Proportions are off but it gives you an idea of the placement of the rooms.

https://imgur.com/1HTEMIU

Also, here's a more detailed sketch of my room:

https://imgur.com/jCKW7x9

For now, I will omit personal considerations about the facts, so that you are unbiased. I will try to describe only the facts as they happened, without speculating about them.Now, that being said, I can start talking about the things that happened in my room in that period of time.

The phenomenon

General Description

When I was a kid, I started waking up during the night for unknown reasons. I almost always slept with my face towards the wall, so when I woke up and opened my eyes in the dark, I would only see the wall and nothing else. However, sometimes, when I turned my head towards the opposite direction (towards the rest of the room), I would see that there were floating lights in my room. They were stationary, and were often not on an object but suspended mid-air, motionless. These lights were green-ish in color, had the most bizarre shapes, and were slightly fluorescent. They reminded me of glow sticks, although the shape was different. They were something like between 20-40cm in size. Now, being a child, the sight of these things would terrify me, to the point that I often hyperventilated and started sweating profusely. I was often paralyzed by fear, unable to move a muscle. I even get goosebumps right now, only by remembering these episodes. When I was able to gather some courage in order to move, I would always put the sheets onto my head. in order to cover my body almost completely (sometimes I left a small open near my nose, in order to breathe more easily), as if I was somehow "protected" by doing so. However, even with the sheets that covered my head, I would always keep feeling a tremendous fear, and I would stay motionless, hoping that the strange lights would eventually go away and leave me alone. I would stay motionless for several minutes (even 20 or 30 minutes at a time), and then sometimes raise the sheets a little in order to peek outside and check if the strange lights were still there. In doing so, I started noticing that they would change shape or place between one peek and another, but never while I was staring at them. As I said, they were motionless when I looked at them, but they would move when I was not looking, something like the children game "statues".Now, these nights were extenuating to me: I struggled to stay awake, fearing that something terrible would happen if I feel asleep. Sometimes I would make it, staying awake until I started hearing the chirp of the birds outside: when I heard them, I somehow "knew" that morning was coming and that the strange lights would have left by then. I would peek, and I would see that there were no more strange lights in my room. Thus I would feel safe, remove the sheets from my head and fall asleep, exhausted. Some other times, however, I was not able to stay awake even if morning hadn't already come, and I would fall asleep even if the lights were still there.Some other times, however, I would peek only to see that the strange light had not only changed place or shape, but some of them were getting close to my bed. This would fill me with unbearable terror, seeing that these strange lights were somehow getting nearer and nearer. In these occasions, pushed to action by overwhelming fear, I would try and scream my lungs out, calling for my parents. Sometimes I wasn't able to scream on the first try: it was like the voice died in my lungs, and only a faint and choked sound would come out. I would try again, filled with even more fear of having been heard by the lights, but not by my parents, and eventually I would manage to scream. The screams were so strong and filled with terror that my father would come running in my room when he heard me. He would open the door and hit the light switch, turning the lights on, and the strange fluorescent shapes were gone the exact moment he would do so.Please note that, even if my sister was in the same room as me at night, merely at 4 meters from me, she would NEVER wake up during the nights these fluorescent shapes manifested. She would not wake up even when I screamed. This thing was very strange, since my screams were so strong that would successfully wake up my father, that was in another room of the floor -- a room that was behind the wall near my sister's bed, to be precise. Now, I'm not saying that my sister would never wake up during the night -- she would, sometimes, but only in the nights in which the strange lights wouldn't appear (with one exception, that I'll talk about later).

Frequency

Now, I can't remember when this strange events started happening, but these episodes would get more and more frequent, to the point that they would happen even twice or thrice a week. I am not able to be precise about the exact number of sightings and the total duration of the period in which these events took place, but I am sure that it happened many times (certainly 100+ times) and for an extended period of time, something like several months (at least around a year, probably more).

Impact on everyday life

I often tried to convince my parents about what was going on in my room at night, but I was not believed by them. Conversely, they started mocking me, and my father started getting annoyed by the fact that I would sometimes wake him up with my screams. He was also annoyed by the fact that, when he would come into my room after I called him screaming at night, he would find me completely soaked in sweat and had to dry me up and change my pajama in the middle of the night. Sometimes, as I said, I would fall asleep even if the lights were still in the room, and in the morning my parents would find me completely covered in sheets, even over my head, and often drenched in sweat. Since I would tuck the sheets tightly under my head, they started mocking me, calling this "strange habit" of mine "making the turbant". They would say things like "he made the turbant again tonight" and mock me about it. Now, all this situation made me feel great distress, and I was even more frustrated by the fact that my own parents wouldn't believe me. They even questioned my own mental sanity, proposing that I was daydreaming and that I was delusional, and I started to believe that maybe the strange lights were just in my head, although I had seen them many times, and I was very awake when these events happened, and they felt absolutely real to me. In fact, they felt so real to me that I started having fear of going to sleep and fear of the night. I would often bring the gameboy with me in bed an play well past bedtime, in an effort to postpone the time I would have to sleep, because I was scared of waking up in the night and see the strange lights. But obviously this postponing was nonsense, because in the end the tiredness would always force me to sleep. It was irrational of me, trying to postpone something that couldn't be avoided, but I was just a kid and I was very scared.

Don't get me wrong: the lights wouldn't ALWAYS appear, not every night, but roughly 2-3 nights per week. Some nights, I was able to sleep peacefully. Sometimes I woke up and, after checking that everything was ok and that the lights weren't in my room, I was even able to get up and go fetch a glass of water. Some other nights, however, I would wake up and realize that the strange fluorescent lights were there. I even remember some nights where I had the urge to drink, and yet didn't get up to do it because I was terribly scared of the strange lights that were in my room. In some occasions, the thirst was so great that I would fall asleep and dream of going to fetch a glass of water; however, the fear of the lights was greater, because although being so thirsty, I would choose not to get up to get the water, being terrorized that, if I moved, the strange lights would notice me and do something bad to me.

So, although the strange fluorescent lights didn't appear every night, there was no way of knowing if they would appear or not in a certain night. They could appear two nights in a row, or not show up for several nights before starting re-appearing. Hence my fear, and my habit of trying to postpone the moment I would fall asleep.

Attempt to gather hard proof

At a certain point, I received a cellphone with an integrated camera as a gift. The phone was the one I mentioned before, the LG U8110 3G. I have had other phones before that one, but that was the first one I had with an integrated camera.I decided to bring it with me in bed, in order to take a picture of the lights and show it to my parents. Although I wanted to take a picture, I was terrified by the idea of upsetting the strange lights: I was convinced that if they somehow knew that I was going to take a picture of them, they would get angry, and who knows what they could have done to me. So, I made sure that the flash was off, and went to bed with my phone every night. When the strange lights showed up, however, I was filled with terror, both because of the lights themselves, and because of the thought that taking a picture of them may have angered them. Because of these reasons, I was paralyzed in fear, and I was never able to take a picture of them. I would soon abandon the idea of doing so, and would stop bringing my phone with me into bed.

Now, these sightings kept going on for months, more or less in the way that I already described. There are some other details I could share about some specific episodes, but I am not quite sure about my memories about them, and I may have imagined some things about the details I omitted. These things I omitted may have been product of my suggestion, fear and imagination, so I'd rather not bother you with them. But the things that I have state so far, I am 100% sure they happened: the lights were really there, I wasn't imagining them. I had a pretty strong proof (at least, to myself) that convinced me that they were real and not just my imagination. Please be aware that, as I said, the strange lights felt real to me and I never doubted about their actual existence until my own parents started suggesting that maybe they were dreams that I mistakenly thought were real, or daydreams. But as I said, an episode, in particular, proved to me that I wasn't just imagining things.

An episode different from the others

One night, I woke up because I heard some noises in the house, like there was some commotion. As soon as I was fully awake, I came to understand that my sister (that had some flu at the time) had woken up during the night, feeling nausea and upset stomach. She must have woken my mother up, because when I got up to check, they were both were in the toilet: my sister was throwing up, and my mother was beside her, taking care of her. Now, seeing that, I went back in my room in order to go back to sleep. Now, before going to bed, I quickly checked the room (I used to do that in order to make sure that there were no fluorescent lights) and, astonishingly, I saw one of the strange, fluorescent shapes in a upper corner of the room, near the balcony. Now, this time, because of my sister and my mother being awake, and because of the lights being on, I was not so scared like the other times. I took courage and walked towards the balcony, eyes fixated on the strange fluorescent light that was in the corner of the room (if you want to look it up on the sketch , it is the rightmost lower corner of my room, near the balcony). I stopped right under it, and there were a mere couple of meters between me and the strange light. I could take a good look at it. It was a strange blob of fluorescent green light, roughly the size of a soccer ball. Its shape was strange, indefinite. It was a random curve shape. It was not on the wall, it was pretty near it, though. What i'm saying is, as I stated before, that these strange lights weren't just reflections on objects, they were suspended in midair.

The strange fluorescent light was there, and I was there too, fully awake for sure, having also talked to my mother in the toilet, and standing on my two legs. And thus the strange light was there, before my eyes, and I could take a really good look at it. This convinced me I was not crazy or delusional.After seeing it, I thought it was the perfect occasion to make my mother believe I wasn't imagining things. I called her several times, telling her to quickly come to me, but she was busy with my sister and would not answer me. Then, I did something really stupid. Until that moment, my eyes had been fixated on the strange light, because I knew from experience that these fluorescent shapes, somehow, could not move whilst being watched. So, I was staring at it intensely, like I was trying to keep it in that place just by looking at it; like my gaze had the ability to prevent that strange shape of light from disappearing or going away. But as I said, my mother wasn't coming, so I dumbly decided to go to her real quick and bring her along with me to make her see the strange light. I ran into the toilet, took my mom by the waist and started pulling her, in order to convince her to quickly follow me, which she did. Although it was just a matter of seconds, like 30 seconds, maybe less, (the toilet isn't very far) when I was back in my room with my mother the strange shape of light was gone. Like it was never there. Thus, I was not believed, and lost my chance to show my mother that I was not delusional.

Conclusive comment

There's not much more that comes to my mind about this strange phenomenon, which, as a kid, I referred to as "the green lights" or simply "the lights". As I said, it took place for several nights during an extended period of time. Then, it stopped, I can't precisely remember when. I was just glad that I could sleep normally when it stopped happening. Some time later the stop of this phenomenon, like months later, I witnessed another strange appearance in my room, but this time my mom was casually with me and she saw that too. However, this appearance I'm talking about, I believe it is not related to the facts I described here and to the "green lights" phenomenon, hence I chose to omit it for now (I will talk about it, if you want, in a different post). I am mentioning it here because, after this inexplicable episode, my mother started believing me, and thus started believing that maybe also "the green lights" were real, after all.

This is all. I will happily answer to your questions, if you have some, but please note that, as I said, it's been at least 15 years since these events took place, and I was a kid, so my memories about these episodes are not quite fresh. However, I am pretty sure about the events that I described so far and the details that I shared so far. Maybe in the future I may share some additional details that I did omit for the reasons I told before, but being these details very blurry, I am unsure about their reliability. Hence, in this post, I chose to focus on the facts that I'm 100% sure about. In this post, I did not share further, unsure details that may create a bias (some of them are related to what I believed the strange lights were, as a kid) and may get mixed up with the things I'm sure about, which are the plain facts that I described here. That's why I intended to describe the facts without sharing any of my personal thoughts or opinions about them: in order to not create a bias.

If you have some sort of explanation for what I experienced, I will be happy to read it and debate about it. So far, nothing of what I've came up with allows me to explain the phenomenon within the boundaries of reason, except for the hypothesis that I am crazy or delusional -- although I strongly believe I'm not. These episodes are the only extra-ordinary phenomenon that I can remember taking place in my life (aside from that other sighting I mentioned before, for which I have an external witness, which is my mother). Since then, I never saw anything strange or extra-ordinary, although I still live in the same house. Also, I am a very skeptical individual: I do not believe in paranormal things like ghosts or demons. But still, I wasn't able to produce a reasonable explanation for the phenomenon I witnessed.

Furthermore, if you have had similar experiences that you think are related to mine, I'd be happy to read about them if you feel like sharing, and we may try to put the pieces together.

EDIT: I divided the post into paragraphs, as I was suggested to do in one comment, so it may be more easily readable.