I was ten years old and visiting my grandparents at their farmhouse in rural South Carolina. Their house was over a hundred years old already and people related to me had lived and been born and died in that house. My mother and sister and I all slept in the back bedroom together - lots of windows and a door to the outside. I never wondered why we all slept in the same room other than we could put all the fans in there.

I had a nightmare. I was trapped in something, a sled or a wheelchair and racing through ghostly figures that grasped at me. I steered over to a hill and was in the process of sliding helplessly, brakelessly down the hill into a dark late when I woke up abruptly, screaming, but not a sound came out of my mouth. I had to go to the bathroom terribly - needed to pee - and through the screen door separating us from the backyard, I thought I could see a figure reaching out for me.

I was also aware that there was someone in the room with us, but I couldn't move my head - couldn't move anything. I used all my strength to call my mother - to reach out to her lying in the bed beside me. It came out in a horrible low moan.

The next thing I knew I was on the ceiling in the corner, looking down at the room. My mother was holding me in her arms and I was having some sort of seizure. I was embarrassed to have wet my pants and the bed.

My sister was dressing, though she was clearly terrified, and my mom was telling her to run across the chicken yard to my uncle's house.

Another woman was standing at the head of the bed, looking down at me. I thought it was my grandmother at first, until I realized I could see the floorboards on the other side of her right through her body. I whispered, "What's happening?" And she looked at me sharply and put her hand to her lips. She pointed out the door. Outside were the pale people from my dream. They looked at my body longingly and were pressing close to the sides of the house.

The lady gave me a "hang on" look and put one hand on my head (I didn't think about the fact that she stretched all the way up to the ceiling to do so) and the other on the me in the bed. My mother didn't notice. The kind-faced lady smiled at me and closed her eyes.

The next thing I knew the back door right next to the bed slammed closed and I woke up, feeling disoriented and demanding why the bed had been moved to the other side of the room. It wasn't, I was in the same place I'd been when I fell asleep, but I was awake and fine and whole, if in need of a bath and clothes and bedding.

Later, after many tests, they told me I'd had a petite mal seizure, cause unknown. My mom said it was a poison ivy medication I'd taken. My sister said it was because my grandparent's house was possessed. I didn't say a word. Because I just. don't. know.