We asked Get Ahead readers to send in firsthand experiences of supernatural phenomena. Twenty-three-year-old Rizwan Ali, a master's student from Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, shares his story:
I was born and raised in Saudi Arabia and a recent Engineering graduate from a university in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. As long as I can remember, I was always fascinated by supernatural phenomena and would watch horror movies and the likes. My first experience with the supernatural was actually my scariest. During the summer vacation, my family left for vacation to India and I stayed back to take some summer courses.
I was relaxing during the weekend and after coming back home late one night after hanging out with friends, I decided to watch some TV lying back on the couch. I turned off all the lights except the light of the gallery that led to the TV room. While watching TV, I nodded off and I don't know after how long I woke up but when I did, there was somebody standing right at the entrance of the room.
I don't know if "somebody" is the right word, "something" is more like it. Why? Well I still remember staring at that thing and it had long thin legs, a fat round body, long curly hair, and a beak for a nose. It was staring right at me with its head bent and laughing at me. I don't know how I managed to sleep then. I woke up the next day thinking maybe it was a very vivid dream and it won't happen again. Lo and behold it did!
This time I was in my room sleeping and for a moment I woke up and when I opened my eyes, a fat man with very red eyes was standing right in front of my face. I jumped out and ran out of my house and went to a friend's place, who lived nearby. I explained what happened to me and he just said I was probably in a dreaming mode or something.
The next few days went without much problem though I always felt a strange presence. One time I was taking a shower and the bathroom door flew open. Lights in the room that I had turned off would turn back on and the same would be with the TV. I told my friend about this and he just didn't believe me so I asked him to come over and stay with me to see for himself. He did and that was probably a mistake.
We read some passages from our religious book and it made that entity in the house just more violent. It started turning the lights in the room on and off sporadically and the bathroom door started banging and a radio that was never connected to the electrical socket started playing. So we just left and I came back after some time.
The summer ended and my family came back from vacationing in India. I told my dad about some things that I had experienced and my dad brushed it off like any sane minded person would do. The reason we changed our house was because of the following. While I was in the university and my dad at work, my mum would be alone in the house during the day while the rest of the kids would be at school. One time my mother felt like someone ran past her when she was walking in the gallery and another time she decided to take an afternoon nap and when she was on her bed, she felt like someone kept a hand over her.
This frightened my mother extensively and so my father decide it would be best to change houses. We did so and haven't encountered anything since. The surprising thing is that I have many friends that live nearby in the same private campus and some of them have the same things going on in their house albeit not so violent. I have a Pakistani friend who lives nearby and his family have adjusted to the fact that they are not alone in the house and are living together peacefully.
I have since had more experiences, since my first encounter just aroused my curiosity about what could be there more in this world than we see. I have been able to photograph entities and have been to very strange places in Saudi Arabia that people normally do not dare to go to.
I think my favourite place would be a barricaded building in the city of Jubail in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. This building is completely closed down by the municipal authorities, which have in fact based a police station near the building so that they can stop people from going towards the building. When I had gone with my friends, we stood from a little afar and heard noises like fighting was going on inside the place and the weirdest fact about the building was that the steel lines were protruding out of the building at weird angles. While taking in all of this, we were approached by the police and asked to leave immediately.
I have since gained more knowledge about all this and with all my experience, I know what my limits are and I know how to deal in these situations safely. It's important to know the rules and how to keep safe.
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