On the night of 24 August 2023.

The night was dark and the lights were off. I found myself jolted awake with every single hair on my body erected. I ran out of my room toward the wooden door of my compact apartment, opened it and shouted “Bhaag Yaha se” which means 'Go away!'  I knew what I was doing but I had no control over it.

In an instant, that sense of autonomy returned, leaving me drenched and shivering. I saw nothing, heard nothing but my body was all wet and cold. I had no clue of what it was or why I just woke up in the middle of the night to shout at someone that even I couldn’t see. I made sure to light up every single room but it made no difference to what I felt, complete Hallowness. Alone in my room with no idea what just happened to me and why, I grabbed my phone to check what time of the day it was. The sight took me off guard, it was 3:33 AM, the supposed devil hour. The day was too hot yet I was feeling spine-chilling cold. I wrapped myself in the bedsheet but again nothing changed as if the frostiness I was feeling was not from the outside but from my inner self.

It took me hours to normalize my body. I don’t remember when the sleep took over me after that incident. This nocturnal episode stood as an anomaly, foreign and terrifying, as sleepwalking had never infiltrated my life before. My attempts at researching the matter yielded no definitive answers – was it a parasomnia disorder, or an eerie dalliance with the paranormal?