2025-05-02

True Tales : Bound by the Shadow Lover

Narrated By  Noor Al Houda 
I am 18 years old from Egypt.

I don’t really know how to explain what has been happening to me , it has haunted me since I was a child.

When I was little, my family often told me that I would wake up at night pale-faced, screaming and crying endlessly for no clear reason. I was too young to explain what was happening, too small to understand.


But by the time I was around 10 years old, I began to realize that something strange, something unnatural, was going on. I would wake up terrified, desperate for someone to hold me, just so I could feel safe.


And then the nightmares began.

I dreamed that I was running toward the top of a mountain, with three or four giant boulders rolling after me, chasing me.

I dreamed of a black wolf or dog chasing me, tearing at my flesh.
I dreamed of a woman dressed all in black, who hunted me tirelessly until she caught me, tied me up, and forced me to stand in front of a mirror I was too afraid to look into.

I dreamed of a figure calling to me from outside my window, and when I looked, it was a woman with no face, hissing like a cat about to attack  and then she lunged for my throat.

Each time, I would wake up screaming, crying, shaking ,and no one believed me or stayed by my side to help.

Even though I read and memorized verses from the Quran, even though I prayed, nothing changed.

As I grew older, everything grew worse.

I started to see a man dressed in black in my dreams, walking close to the walls of the street — his face was blank, shadowy until he simply vanished.

The sleep paralysis came, sometimes seven times a night.

One day during Ramadan, after dawn prayer, I lay down and was struck by this force over and over, unable to move. I grabbed my Quran and hugged it tight and I swear by God, it felt like something was pulling it from me with incredible strength.

And then the sexual assaults began.

I dreamed of a man, incredibly handsome ,I believe he was a jinn, who said he loved me and wanted me, and in my dreams, we were intimate.

Once, I dreamed the phone rang, and when I answered, it was my own voice speaking to me: “I’m so upset with you… you’ve lost me…” It repeated my name, over and over, and after that, I became afraid to even fall asleep.

When I got engaged to a man I loved, my feelings turned strange. One moment I loved him deeply, and the next I hated him, couldn’t stand him. As the wedding approached, my fear grew and our fights increased, until the engagement was broken off.

Then, even while awake, I began to feel strange things especially in the bathroom.
I felt hands touching me, breath on my skin, overwhelming sexual arousal that never seemed to stop.
I became addicted to sleep, dragging myself into bed every chance I could, consumed by exhaustion.

Eventually, I sought help from a religious healer , a man who performed ruqya, Quranic exorcism.
But those sessions became the most painful time of my life: I would scream and cry daily, feeling as if I were being beaten, sexually assaulted with brutal force.
I stopped the treatments, but things only got worse.

Ten years I’ve lived like this.

Just a few days ago, I was in my room, the light switch wasn’t working. I happened to glance into the mirror, and what I saw, I can’t even describe. I screamed, but it was like something held me there, forcing me to keep looking, until finally, I managed to break away.

Now, the fear is back stronger than ever.
I’m terrified to be in the bathroom; I feel something beside me, hear the sound of breath, feel hands on my body.

In my sleep, I feel myself being violently taken, and I wake up with pain all over my body.

I’ve stopped telling anyone about this, because no one believes me.
But inside, I’m screaming , I’m terrified, even of my own shadow, even of my own thoughts.
I pray, I do my ablutions, I recite the Quran, I do everything I can ,but I need help.
I can’t live like this anymore.

This is my truth.
This is what’s happening to me.

Narrated By Nour Al Houda (18 Years old) - Egypt.


Hypotheses: How Can We Interpret Nour’s Experiences ?
Let’s break this down using two major explanatory frameworks:

1️- Psychological Explanation
From a clinical psychology standpoint, Nour’s experiences may fit into several known conditions:

- Sleep paralysis: A common phenomenon where a person wakes up unable to move, often accompanied by hallucinations, sensed presences, or feelings of being touched or crushed.

- Hypnagogic / hypnopompic hallucinations: Vivid sensory events that happen at the border of sleep and wakefulness, sometimes combining visual, auditory, and tactile sensations.

- Trauma response: If Nour experienced past abuse (even if she has no conscious memory of it), her subconscious could manifest this through vivid, recurring dreams, body sensations, and deep fears.

- Sexual repression and cultural conflict: In cultures where sexuality is heavily policed by religion or social norms, internal conflicts may emerge through fantasies, intrusive thoughts, or dreams, externalizing desire onto imagined figures or “shadow lovers.” This allows the individual to disown the desire and see it as an external attack.

Psychologists would likely explore:
- Past trauma or abuse.
- Underlying anxiety, depression, or PTSD.
- Cultural and religious pressures shaping her experience of sexuality and guilt.
- Whether dissociation or identity fragmentation is at play, especially considering the dream where her own voice confronted her.

2- Paranormal / Cultural Explanation
From a paranormal or folkloric view, Nour’s story fits into patterns reported across many cultures:

- The Jinn Lover (الجن العاشق): In Middle Eastern and North African folklore, jinn are believed to fall in love with humans, sometimes possessing them, causing nightmares, interfering with relationships, and engaging sexually with them.

- Succubus / Incubus: In European legends, these are male or female demons who seduce sleeping humans, draining their life force or causing long-term spiritual and physical harm.

- Spirit attachments: In some spiritual traditions, an attached spirit or entity may latch onto a person, feeding off their emotional or sexual energy and resisting attempts to remove it through spiritual cleansing.

From this angle, Nour’s symptoms, repeated dreams, erotic encounters, waking sensations, mirror-related fear, and even sabotaged romantic relationships , align closely with the idea of an entity attachment. 

Healers in this worldview might recommend advanced exorcism, protective amulets, cleansing rituals, or cutting spiritual ties with the entity.

Professional help , whether psychological, spiritual, or both , should ideally respect both her cultural background and her emotional needs.

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