This story I call it 3 AM .
I came down to the kitchen for breakfast on a Friday morning, my mom and my sisters are already up, and they look exhausted. My mom asked me, “Did you sleep alright?” “Yeah,” I said.
“Even after you woke up?”
“…I woke up?” when?
Sometime in the middle of night, I had started screaming. My mom rushed into my room and found me sitting up in bed, screaming my dad name , She did her best to calm me down with prayers while shooing away my sisters who had stormed in to find out what the was going on with me. She asked me what I was dreaming of. I told her that it was the same dream , I saw the army broke into our house and pulled my dad away. She said don’t worry son, nothing will happen, your dad is ok and he is in the camp now.
My sisters laughed and told my mom that I was dreaming and I was screaming for my father at 3 am always. I was shocked as they’re telling me all of this and I didn’t remember any of it.
One Year later, the Nationalist Revolution started in my country, backed by usa and uk . The army started going after people who were working for the ministry of defense and other sensitive department ,killing them on the spot at the doorstep of their house.
The army arrived to our house few days later, kicked the door and went in asking for my father and pulled him down the stairs and hit him. My dad asked them why, What did I do? They screamed at him and told him he was wanted because he was working for the previous president. My dad was doing some artwork for the president family nothing more and nothing less. But those thugs won’t listen and took him in the army car. That happened at 3 am and I was screaming from the balcony to the guards. leave my dad alone, leave him alone, you bastard .They waved the machine gun at me and told me to go inside.
2. This one I call it our Haunting house.
Long before I was born, my parents were renting a house in a different part of the city of Baghdad. My mother never really liked that place. Something just seemed ‘off’ to her. The feeling still hadn’t gone away even after a couple of months of living there. In fact, as time went on she began to feel even more ill at ease. She chalked it up to paranoia. It was haunted, as she told me later.
My father’s army schedule was shifted and he was in different camp. The first night she was due to be alone in the new Turkish style house, she had a terrible anxiety attack. Something bad was around her, she could just feel it, as she told me.
My mother started placing a holy book and a brass rod under her pillow. She said she felt scared and this will keep her mind away. She had considered to put some sage candles , but figured that was too silly and over the top. Still she wanted something, just to focus on it, that could help calm her nerves when she went to bed. I asked her how about us , if there is a jinn in the house he will surely play with us .She used to put special necklaces around our neck with a small holy books with god name on it . She always prayed over our heads . My brothers and sisters used to laugh and didn’t think much of it, but I was alerted and worried.
Who is this jinn ? what he want from us? Why is he bothering my mother? God will never allow it mom , I used to tell her. I will never allow him to hurt you mom. I used to always watch for my mother , when she go to sleep. I wake up and stay guard at her bedside with a broom stick in my arm to protect her. LOL…..the Jinn never show himself.
I always wonder if there is such a thing as bad entities. My mom told me many times that she felt pushed from the stairs. At one time she end up in the hospital with dislocated ankle and the hospital blamed my dad, my dad blamed my mom for not been careful. But my mom used to tell them it wasn’t her fault, she was pushed by unseen arms and that there was something in the house.
My father used to tell her to pray and never think of it. He used to tell her it was all in her imagination ,and her mind play trick on her as she was alone when he go to work. She told him that many time things are displaced from the table and other places. He used to say it is the children who displaced them. and we knew we didn’t. She used to tell him I see a dark figure front of my bed .Whatever she told him he used to find an answer for it.
One summer night, I woke up to have a drink of water , it must be way past 2 am . My parents were sleeping at the patio upstairs, my 2 brothers were sleeping on the side and my other 3 sisters were sleeping beside my mom. The water jar was in a front of the patio balcony that directly overlook our house. The inside of our house like a sunroof, In that old Turkish house .we had a water well in it.
When I started moving the water jar to pour water in the glass ,I saw a figure of a man inside our house. The man was sitting beside the water well and cleaning his leg like preparing to pray. He had a white robe ,green head cover, and black over coat with light beard ,with a beautiful holly face. He looked up to me and I can still remember his eyes and smile until this day. I dropped the water jar and ran toward my mother to wake her up. Mom,mom wake up, there is a thief in the house he look like Jesus, or something. Please mom wake up . go to bed son you are dreaming, she replied .
Then my dad woke up and asked what’s was that all about , so I told him what I saw. My dad went to the patio balcony and looked downstairs and saw nothing of course. Are you sure you weren’t dreaming again son– He said. No , I replied. Honestly I saw him.
Them my dad took his flashlight and went downstairs to get his gun from the room ,and started looking for the person room by room . My mom was upstairs calling him ,are you ok? Are you safe ?is everything clear ?They check the door and the windows but found nothing.
I was so upset because I really saw him. Later my mom told me that person I saw was a good angel, but she didn’t want to scare me when I was a child.
She said there are other entities who were tricksters ,push people around and like to scare people. Next day small snakes started to come out from the small holes on the side of the wall. We all screamed and my mother took us away and managed to get rid of them with water, but never killed them. Why mom? why you don’t kill them? I asked. She said they will go away to the hall and they are harmless. She started putting some hard mud like cement on the holes. My dad finally listened and he saw the snakes and moved from the house.
My mother later told me that she didn’t kill the snakes because she thought they were part of the spirit world, and she knows they are harmless snakes and not poisonous.
Thank you for reading
Steve Ramsey.PhD
Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
