Index
Chapter 1: The first nights
Chapter 2: The silence
Chapter 3: The years of becoming
Chapter 4: Watching and waiting
Chapter 1: The First Nights
I was born into a family rooted in faith, an Otjiherero family that believed in God, in prayer, and in the quiet strength that comes from trusting something greater than yourself. Christianity was not just something we practiced on Sundays—it was woven into the rhythm of our lives, in the way we spoke, the way we greeted elders, the way we understood right and wrong. But even within that foundation, there were whispers—stories that lingered at the edges of conversation. I grew up hearing about distant relatives, people whose names I could never quite remember, spoken of in lowered voices. They were said to practice witchcraft, things not spoken about openly. As a child, I didn't fully understand what it meant. But even if I forgot the names, something about those conversations stayed with me, like a shadow that had no clear shape.
What I did understand, even before I had the language for it, was fear. A deep, unexplainable fear that came with the night.
It started when I was very young—so young that I don't think I had learned how to read yet, so young that I should have been untouched by the kind of sexual awareness that would later define my childhood. Bedtime was not something I looked forward to. It was something I dreaded with a quiet, growing panic that I didn't know how to explain to anyone. There were nights I would cry, not always loudly, but with a kind of desperation that came from knowing what waited for me once I layed down to sleep, it would start before I even fell asleep at times. I didn't have the words for it then. I couldn't explain what I was experiencing, couldn't tell anyone in a way that would make sense. But I knew, with the certainty only a child can have, that something was wrong.
Sleep, for me, was not rest. It was an encounter.
There was a presence—unseen, but deeply felt. It brought with it a heaviness, a sense of being overwhelmed, of being trapped in something I could not escape. I later came to understand that some people call these experiences night terrors, others call them spiritual attacks, and some refer to them as incubus encounters (for men it's secubus). At the time, I only knew that it felt like something was happening to me that I did not choose, could not control, and did not understand. It was my first exposure to something that resembled intimacy, but stripped of all innocence, all safety, all understanding. It came before knowledge, before maturity, before I even knew what such things meant. That is what made it so terrifying—it arrived before I had the tools to process it.
What made it even harder, even more isolating, was that I was not alone in the room—but I was alone in the experience.
My sister would be right there beside me, sleeping peacefully. Her breathing steady, her face calm, untouched by whatever storm I was facing just inches away from her. I would sometimes look at her, wondering how it was possible that we could exist in the same space, under the same roof and yet live completely different realities in the same moment. She rested. I endured. She dreamed. I feared closing my eyes.
That contrast stayed with me. It planted questions in my heart that I could not answer as a child. Why me? Why was I the one going through this while everything around me seemed normal? Why did the night feel like a place of safety for others, but a place of dread for me?
Those nights shaped my childhood in ways I am still uncovering. They took something that should have been simple—sleep, rest, peace—and turned it into something I resisted with everything in me. And yet, every night came. Every night, I had to face it again.
This is where my story begins—not in understanding, not in strength, but in confusion, fear, and a child's silent endurance of something far too heavy for her to carry.
Chapter 2: The Silence
There is a kind of silence that does not come from peace. It comes from fear. From confusion. From not having the words for what is happening to you, and even if you did, not knowing if anyone would believe you.
As a child, I carried that silence every day.
I did not tell anyone what was happening to me at night. Not because I chose to hide it in a calculated way, but because something inside me resisted speaking it out loud. There was a deep sense of shame attached to it—though I did not yet understand why. I only knew that what I was experiencing felt wrong, deeply wrong, and yet impossible to explain. How do you describe something you don't understand yourself? How do you speak about something that feels both real and unreal at the same time?
So I stayed quiet.
It wasn't until adulthood that I began to understand this silence in a broader context. I started to learn that many survivors of sexual assault—especially those who experienced it at a young age—often struggle to speak about it. Not because it didn't happen, but because the mind protects itself. Because fear takes root. Because shame, even when it does not belong to you, settles into your identity like it was always meant to be there. I realized that what I had lived through, even if others described it using spiritual or cultural language—terms like "incubus" or "night husband"—still had a real impact on me. It was unwanted. It was invasive. It left emotional and psychological marks that I carried into adulthood.
Coming to terms with that was not easy.
There was a moment in my life when I had to confront a truth that felt both heavy and clarifying: regardless of how it was described, regardless of the language people used to explain it, what I experienced felt like a violation. And acknowledging that meant accepting that I had been affected in a way that would stay with me. Not define me—but remain a part of my story.
That realization did not break me, but it forced me to look at my past differently.
As I grew older and began searching for understanding, I discovered that I was not the only one who had gone through experiences like this. Across different cultures, different countries, and different belief systems, there are documented accounts of people describing similar night-time encounters—often framed in spiritual or supernatural terms.
Some women have written about what they call "spirit husbands" or "night visitations," describing sensations of presence, pressure, and experiences that felt deeply personal and intrusive. In certain African and Caribbean traditions, these are sometimes referred to as "spirit spouses," and individuals have shared testimonies of feeling bound to something they could not see but deeply felt. In online forums and personal blogs, others have described episodes of sleep paralysis accompanied by vivid sensations and fear,
knowing that they were violated in very real ways.
Reading these accounts was both comforting and unsettling.
Comforting, because I realized I was not alone.
Unsettling, because it showed me how many people carry experiences they cannot fully explain.
But even with that awareness, my childhood remained what it was—a life divided into two worlds.
During the day, I was a child like any other. I laughed. I played. I lived in the sunlight, where everything felt normal, where I could forget, even if only for a few hours, what the night brought. Daytime was my escape, my moment of relief. It was where I could exist without fear pressing down on me.
But even then, I carried a secret.
A quiet, unspoken truth that followed me everywhere: when night came, something would happen that I did not understand, could not stop, and could not share. I lived in anticipation of both the light and the darkness—the joy of the day and the dread of the night. That duality shaped me in ways I am still learning to understand.
One memory that stands out clearly is from 1997.
I remember coming home and hearing about the death of Princess Diana. Even as a child, I could feel the weight of it. The sadness was everywhere—in the voices of adults, in the atmosphere, in the way people spoke about her. It was like the world itself had paused to mourn. I didn't fully understand the global impact, but I understood loss. I understood sadness.
And somehow, that external grief blended with what I was already carrying inside.
There was already a heaviness in me, a quiet sorrow that had been building over time. The nights had taken something from my childhood—something I could not name then, but could feel deeply. Hearing about that loss of Princess Diana added another layer to it, as if sadness had found a way to echo both outside and inside my life at the same time.
That period stayed with me. Not just because of what happened in the world, but because of what was happening to me every night.
I carried that weight for years.
And through it all, I prayed.
I turned to Jesus Christ with the simple, desperate faith of a child. I prayed for protection. I prayed for peace. I prayed for the assaults and molestations by unseen entities to stop. I believed, because I had been raised to believe, that God hears, that He sees, that He protects.
But there were moments—honest, painful moments—when I felt like my prayers were not reaching Him.
Because the experiences continued.
Sometimes it felt like they came right after I prayed, as if my words had changed nothing. Other times, there would be a gap—hours of quiet before the fear returned. But it returned. And in my child's mind, that created confusion. I wondered if I was doing something wrong. I wondered if I was not being heard. I wondered why something I feared so deeply was still allowed to happen.
That confusion stayed with me for a long time.
Not as a loss of faith, but as a struggle within it.
Because even in the silence, even in the fear, a part of me kept reaching out to Jesus Christ. A part of me refused to stop believing that there was something greater than what I was experiencing. Even when I did not understand, even when I felt alone, I kept praying.
This chapter of my life was not just about fear—it was about silence, confusion, and the beginning of questions that would take years to answer.
Chapter 3: The Years of Becoming
High school is often described as a time of discovery—a transition between childhood and adulthood, where identity begins to take shape and the world starts to open. For me, it was something very different. It was a continuation of what had already begun, a life that did not divide neatly into stages, but instead carried the same shadow forward into a new environment.
By the time I entered high school, the night experiences had not stopped. If anything, they had become something I had learned to live alongside. Not accept in a healthy way, but endure in a way that felt like survival. There is something deeply unsettling about reaching a point where what once terrified you begins to feel almost expected. I had not been given the space to process what was happening to me, and so my mind adapted in the only way it could. It normalized what should never have been normal. By then I wasn't ready to date anyone, but the sexual molestation by unseen forces was constant. Being in my teen years and getting sexually molested by spirits every night still felt wrong but I think I was still scared to tell people. I think I told someone once and they didn't believe me or something, and that was probably the only time that I dared to ask for help,
During the day, I tried to be present. I went to school. I existed among other students who were discovering friendships, relationships, and their sense of self. But there was always a separation inside me, a quiet distance between who I appeared to be and what I was carrying. I often felt like I was watching life happen rather than fully living it. My experiences had shaped me early, and by this stage, I was already carrying a weight that most people my age could not see. In my teens I had matured sexually far too soon. But then I still had inhibitions, before my injury. so I was not promiscous.
As I grew older, I began searching—quietly, privately—for explanations. I came across discussions in both spiritual and academic spaces that attempted to describe experiences like mine. Some traditions speak of "incubus" or "spirit spouse" encounters, framing them as supernatural interactions. At the same time, psychological literature explores conditions such as sleep paralysis and trauma-related responses, where individuals report intense sensations, fear, and perceived presence during sleep. Books like Sleep Paralysis: Nightmares, Nocebos, and the Mind-Body Connection by Shelley R. Adler examine how culture and belief systems shape these experiences. Neurologist Oliver Sacks, in his writings on hallucinations and perception, also explored how vividly real such encounters can feel to those experiencing them. I am still convinced that it was really happening, too many people have had these encounters and no theory can explain them away. Then I learned about astral projection and spying on people while a person was astral projecting, as well as doing other stuff. I knew I wasn't halucinating, and I knew that it was really happening.
Reading these perspectives did not erase what I had gone through, but it gave me language—different frameworks through which people attempt to understand the unknown. Still, none of those explanations fully captured what it felt like to live through it.
Before I could even complete high school, my life took another turn.
I suffered a brain injury.
That moment marked a shift—not only physically, but mentally and emotionally. Something in me changed. My sense of boundaries, my ability to process situations clearly, and my inhibition were all affected. I was no longer operating with the same clarity or protection I once had. And in that vulnerable state, I found myself in situations that I did not fully understand at the time.
There were men who came into my life during that period—men who should have known better. Men who saw my condition, who could see the visible effects of my injury, and yet chose to act in ways that were deeply wrong. At the time, I did not have the capacity to fully grasp what was happening or to protect myself in the way I needed to. Looking back, I can see clearly that those situations were not my fault. But at the time, I blamed myself.
I told myself I should not have been there.
I told myself I should have known better.
I told myself I was responsible.
But the truth is more complex—and more painful.
I did not have the full intellectual or emotional capacity to consent in the way the law and morality require. And yet, I carried the weight of those experiences alone, without reporting them, without seeking justice, because I did not fully understand what had been done to me. That realization came much later, and with it came a mixture of grief and clarity.
As if that was not enough, there were also moments of physical danger—instances where I was directly threatened or harmed by others. Those experiences deepened the sense of isolation I already felt. The world did not feel safe during the day, and the night had never been safe to begin with.
There was nowhere to rest.
Even home, which should have been a place of protection, did not feel like a refuge because the night experiences continued. No matter where I went, no matter what changed around me, they remained. Time passed. People in my family passed on. Life moved forward in ways that should have marked change—but this part of my experience did not stop.
And so I was left with questions I could not answer.
If it was spiritual, why did it continue unchanged?
If it was physical, why did it feel beyond physical explanation?
If it was something else entirely, why did no one around me seem to understand?
Years of living through both unseen experiences at night and real-world harm during the day began to shape something in me at a deeper level.
I began to disconnect from the idea of physical intimacy altogether.
It was not a decision I made lightly, nor was it something I fully understood at first. It was something that grew out of everything I had experienced—the fear, the confusion, the violation of boundaries, both seen and unseen. Over time, I came to recognize that I no longer associated physical relationships with safety or desire. Instead, I felt a complete absence of interest, a distance that felt protective.
I came to understand myself as asexual.
And in that realization, there was both loss and clarity. Loss, because it reflected what had been taken from me in my formative years. Clarity, because it gave me a way to understand my own boundaries and identity without forcing myself into expectations that did not fit my experience.
Through all of this, one thing remained constant: my faith.
I turned more deeply toward Jesus Christ—not because everything was resolved, but because it was the only place I found even a measure of peace. Faith became less about immediate answers and more about endurance. It became a quiet anchor in the middle of everything I could not control.
Even then, the night experiences did not fully disappear.
That was one of the hardest truths to live with—the idea that something could continue despite prayer, despite faith, despite everything I was trying to do to find peace. I did not know if it would ever stop. I did not know if I would ever fully understand it.
But I kept holding on.
Because even in the uncertainty, even in the fear, I believed there had to be something greater than what I was experiencing. Something beyond it. Something that could carry me through, even if I did not yet see the end of it.
Chapter 4: Watching and Waiting
There comes a point in life where everything that has happened to you begins to shape not just your past, but your purpose. For me, that realization did not come all at once. It came slowly, through years of endurance, reflection, and searching for something that could hold the weight of everything I had lived through.
I never married. I never had children. For a long time, I wondered what that meant about my life—whether something had been taken from me, or whether I had simply taken a different path. But over time, I began to understand it differently. My life, in its own way, had been set apart. Not in ease, not in comfort, but in focus. Without the responsibilities of a family of my own, I found that I could devote myself more fully to something that had become central to my survival: my faith and my anticipation of the return of Jesus Christ.
What began as a child's desperate prayer had grown into something deeper—a constant turning of my heart toward Him, not just in moments of fear, but in daily life. I began to see my life not only through the lens of what I had suffered, but through the lens of what I was still holding onto. Faith became more than a response to pain; it became my direction.
But the nights did not simply disappear.
Over time, I developed ways of responding—strategies not born from comfort, but from necessity. I realized that I could not passively endure what I had been experiencing. I needed to interrupt it, to reclaim some sense of control, even in small ways. And so I began to wake myself.
Sometimes it was at midnight.
Sometimes at two in the morning.
Often at three.
Whenever I sensed the beginning of that familiar disturbance, I would force myself awake. I would sit up, sometimes trembling, sometimes exhausted, and I would pray. Not long, complicated prayers, but direct, urgent ones. I would call on Jesus Christ. I would focus my thoughts, trying to clear my mind of fear, grounding myself in something stronger than what I was experiencing.
It was not easy. Sleep became fragmented, unpredictable. Nights were no longer a place of rest, but a cycle of interruption and vigilance. To cope, I learned to rest whenever I could—during the day, in quiet moments, whenever my body allowed it. It was not a perfect solution, but it was a way of surviving.
And survival, at that point, was everything.
The accumulation of what I had lived through—years of fear, confusion, and both unseen and real-world harm—had left a deep imprint on me. It shaped how I saw myself, how I saw others, and how I understood closeness. The idea of physical intimacy had become something I instinctively avoided. Not out of bitterness, but out of self-preservation. My experiences had drawn a clear line within me, one that I could not ignore.
I knew, with a certainty that came from everything I had endured, that I wanted nothing to do with anything that resembled those experiences. That boundary was not weakness. It was survival. It was clarity.
And in that clarity, I drew closer to Christ.
Not because everything had been resolved, but because He remained constant when everything else had been uncertain. My faith became quieter, deeper—less about asking "why" and more about saying 'Your will be done'. There were still questions I could not answer. There were still moments of exhaustion, moments where I wondered how long I would have to endure. But even in that, I found something steady.
Scripture became a place of refuge for me.
In Matthew 11:28, the words spoke directly into my life:
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
Rest was something I had struggled to find in the physical sense, but these words reminded me that there was another kind of rest—one that existed beyond circumstances.
In Psalm 34 18, I found reassurance:
"The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit."
That closeness mattered. Even when I felt alone in my experiences, I held onto the belief that I was not unseen.
And in John 16:33, there was a promise that reframed everything:
"In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."
That verse did not deny suffering—it acknowledged it. But it also pointed beyond it.
Over time, I began to live with a different perspective. Not one that erased what I had gone through, but one that placed it within something larger. My life was not only about what had happened to me—it was also about what I chose to hold onto in spite of it.
I began to wait.
Not passively, but with intention. Waiting for the return of Jesus Christ became more than a distant idea—it became a source of hope. A belief that what is broken will be restored, that what is heavy will be lifted, that what has been endured will not be meaningless.
This hope did not remove the difficulty of my nights. It did not erase the past. But it gave me something that pain could not take away: a future that was not defined by what I had suffered.
And so I continue.
I pray.
I endure.
I hold on.
Because even after everything, I believe this truth with all my heart:
This too shall pass.