My wife suffers from night-time ‘feelings of a presence’ which frighten her; so much so that she cannot remain in a room, on her own, after dark.
She is not asleep, the presence is non-specific (not necessarily human), malevolent and disappears if someone else enters the room.
She does not know how long this has been a problem as it was never noticed until after she had left university, and, for the first time in her life, found herself expected to sleep in a room on her own.
She coped by leaving all the lights and the television/radio on all night, to make it feel like people were around.
She coped, but about seven years ago things got much worse, after her then husband drove off and left her, abandoned, at night time, in a cemetery in the middle of nowhere, with no means of getting home and back to their 14 day old child.
She is getting a little better and asked me recently if I had noticed how she was now able to stay sitting for as much as 20 minutes in the lounge, after I have gone to bed.
Well, I hadn’t noticed, and the odd times when she has asked me to go to the bathroom with her, I had incorrectly assumed, were one-offs
So, I have recently been reminded of this problem, for which I have, in the past, spent many fruitless hours searching the internet.
I can’t find a forum entitled “Afraid of the Dark”. Please help me find some on-line help from somewhere. We live in China – there’s no help here.