Context: The following story was told on April 28th, 2026, in my dorm room to me by the informant, who is one of my close friends.

NB: “Okay, so basically, my mom has explained to us over and over again that each time she’s had one of us, she’s been visited by, like, an evil, dark presence in the middle of the night when she’s, like, half asleep, trying to take us from her. And every time that the evil spirit like comes, she like senses it. She’s like half asleep. I personally think it’s just sleep paralysis. But it’s just weird and too much of a coincidence that this has only happened to her each time she’s brought us home from the hospital. It happened to my oldest sister, I believe, and then my other sister, me, and then my brother. She recalls it every single time, where this evil spirit will basically visit her in the middle of the night of our first time, like, coming to the house, and she just has to say no, like, not yet. Like… Not yet. Basically, like..”

Me: “Is it, like, the devil or like?”

NB: “I think it’s like trying to take us while we’re young. Like, kind of trying to take us from her or something. Like, kind of maybe trying to, like, kill us, maybe. I don’t know? It’s really weird. And, um, yeah, she kind of explains that it’s a really weird energy. She gets the same feeling every time that it happened, and she doesn’t know how to explain it. And she just, yeah, she kind of just, like, says that its an evil, dark spirit or whatever. She said that she sees like kind of like a cloud of black like mist. So it’s not like a… And, like, it’s not like a figure. No, like a cloud of black in the shape of like a… Like, kind of like, um, I don’t even know how to describe it, like, just, like, it’s not smoky, maybe not. Yeah, like, it’s, like, really weird, and it’s just, like, moving close to us and, like, trying to approach us.

Me: “So it doesn’t like talk and say like, I’m going to take your baby…

NB: “No, she just kind of has like an energy and like feels it. And then she’ll wake up the next morning and she’ll just like go back to normal.

Me: “So do you know, like, what does she think it is? Like, does she think it’s, like, a demon or, like, just like what?”

NB: “Well, my mom is like a really spiritual person because she has a lot of like dreams that she believes are kind of like almost premonitions. She, like… one of her dreams predicted my grandfather’s death. So, um, I think that she kind of, like, had, like, she can, like, sense that energy, and I think she thinks of it more like, yeah, maybe a demon. But my mom isn’t, like, religious or anything. So I think she just senses, like, maybe it’s, like, I think one time she said maybe it’s, like, the angel of death or something. Like, trying to take us too soon, or maybe it is a demon, like, trying to latch onto our innocence or something. Yeah, very, very strange…”

Personal thoughts and analysis: I thought this story was very interesting, not only because of the story itself, but also the informant’s reaction. The informant is a supernatural believer, but their first thought was to dismiss their mother’s belief and write it off as sleep paralysis, almost like they were too scared to consider it truly being a supernatural entity that attempted to abduct the informant at their most vulnerable state. Initially, as the informant described the entity, I thought of a kind of demon Papa Legba esc figure, so it was interesting to hear the informant’s mom’s perspective that it might have been some sort of grim reaper figure. However, overall, I think I would tend to agree with the informant that this was some kind of postpartum sleep paralysis, but it is an interesting coincidence nonetheless.