I was sure it was a dream, even though I felt my fingernails digging into the white cotton sheet of my bed.   "This isn't real" I kept murmering over and over as the grotesque, transparent image floated above me.  Yet, try as I might, I couldn't wake up.   There was no end to it.  The visage, the terrifying form hovering over me   looked  into my very soul, and I felt powerless against it.  Throat dry, choked, the scream wouldn't come, nor would there have been anyone to hear me.

  "Wha...what do you want?" I finally stammered, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears, high pitched and terror filled. The face before me seemed to tilt, an almost questioning expression, nearing me, coming closer. I felt the beads of cold perspiration line my brow as I shrunk back, coldness gripping my body as if I were suddenly enshrouded by ice.  The apparition's mouth gaped open, looking to be a black tunnel, and suddenly my ears were filled with the most hideous, horrific sound. A scream, a moan...whatever it was, it was filled with agony, anger. Clutching my hair in my fingers, I huddled on the bed, rocking, lips quivering in silent sobs. Upon opening my eyes, I saw that the transparent, image was.....me. Its belly was swollen as if ripe with child.  My body jarred, I felt the back of my head knock into the headboard as I felt life kick inside of my belly. "No..." I cried desperately, hands moving to my stomach, the flesh growing painfully tight as my abdomen swelled.

The next moment, I was doubled over in pain, feeling as though flesh were ripping in my body, crimson staining the sheets under me. My heart feeling as if it were stopped, aching dully, sheer panic filling me as I pulled at my hair, clawed at my ears, begging for it to be over. But it wasn't over. I saw the spirit hold the baby in its arms...the spirit that looked like me. Then flames slowly began to eat at its feet, the baby crying louder as they licked towards it.....the newborn with umbilical cord still attached. The expression of the apparition could only be described as purely evil, a smile of sorts, as it gazed at me, satisfied with my horror.

Wrestling with bedcovers that tried to restrain me, I dove off the bed, scrambling to the window, as the vision blocked my way to the door. I felt my fist smash through a pane of glass, unaware of the lacerations to my hand as I desperately fought to escape. Then, the feeling of cold left me, the cries of the baby ceased, and the entity was gone as noiselessly as it came. I looked to the bed, the bloodstains no more, acutely aware of the sharp pain in my hand, and the warm sensation of blood spilling over my wrist.

Was this the reason for the strange sounds I had been hearing at night?  Were the whispers I'd been imagining real after all?  Spine tingling, I was left to wonder, curled up on my bed, body wracked with tremors, bleeding on my white cotton sheets. Left to wonder if it had happened at all, or if I was perhaps, simply losing my sanity.

--Taken from the Diary of  Sister Mary Josephine

Anger Cathedral, Circa 1890