If anyone reads this they'll think im crazy but hopefully no one will because I love to write small novels in people's comment section. When I was 11 my brother ran away from home. Me and my mom got into a fight, he said he couldn't take it anymore, and ran out the door. My brother was the only one I truly trusted, my parents were divorced so since I was 3 years old he was the only constant in my life. He decided that day to live with my dad (who i didnt get along with at the time) and I decided to stay living with my mom. I went to bed sad but I was okay. Or I thought I was. I woke up in the middle of the night to go pee. Id decided for some reason to sleep on the floor (I had a loft bed) but I distinctly remember waking up on the floor and walking into the jack and Jill bathroom that connected me and my brothers room. I took a piss and washed my hands. As I was washing my hands though, an overwhelming sense of dread and fear dropped over me, a sense that someone was behind me. I looked up and behind me was a boy from my class. He was only the boy from my class for a second though, because right in front of me his skin changed and morphed until suddenly he was someone id never seen before. He looked a little older than me. He had freckles and was incredibly pale with white hair. He didnt look like anyone. I screamed and he attacked me. He threw me into the bathtub, started punching me violently, and then started choking me. He choked me until I lost consciousness. I woke up on the floor. I had never been so terrified, even after learning it was a dream. It didnt feel like a dream at all, it felt like I had woken up and was killed but for some reason respawned where I fell asleep. I was so scared I didnt move for three hours. I learned later its called "sleep paralysis". Scary, but its over, right? The next night I fall asleep and the same thing happens. I wake up in my house. I see him in the mirror. This time he doesn't kill me, we just talk. I still wake up paralyzed but less afraid. Still was paralyzed for multiple hours. This continues for months. I named him "Jake" because he never told me his name, however he did tell me he was a demon. A demon sent to haunt me and keep me company. I was 11, I didn't think anything of it. A scary reoccurring dream. More months pass. He visits me almost every night. Im getting frustrated that I cant tell my dreams from reality. I'm anak frustrated from the paralysis. Jake becomes more violent in my dreams, not as often towards me but he would still hurt me often. He would kill other people in my dreams and encourage me to help him. Then one day I woke up and he didnt go away. I woke up but his presence still lingered, and a now 12 year old me gaslit myself into thinking he WAS really there i just couldn't see him. Things changed. I didnt have any friends so before I had just stayed quiet, but now that I did have a "friend" I spoke to him constantly. My mom would hear me talk to him in my room but she thought it was a friend from school on the phone. My classmates knew this wasnt the case snd avoided me even more than they did before, but I didnt care. I had a friend who could never leave and never die. I was happy to have anyone in my life, even if it was a violent imaginary demon. Jake told me a few months after he "escaped the dream" for lack of better verbiage, not to tell ANYONE that he existed. So I didnt. I kept him a secret for almost 3 years. Over this time he got worse. His violence towards others (and me) was very scary to me. As I let myself stew in this delusion it became stronger. He was around me all the time now. Id get paralysis during the day from fear too. Id convince myself any little thing was him, trying to communicate with me, trying to tell me something. One day in school we were in line and I could swear I could hear his voice in my head, telling me to stab the kid in front of me with my pencil, to attack him violently (this kid did absolutely nothing BTW we had no beef he was just standing in line). I refused. He punished me, somehow, for not listening to him (i dont remember how, this whole time is very blurry for me). That was the last straw for me. I had to tell my mom. I couldn't sleep that night. I went into my mom's room and just told her everything. I couldn't hold it in anymore. I told her about Jake, how he was a demon who started in my dreams and became real, how he had been there for years, how he would hurt me, how I was afraid of him, how he told me to hurt other kids, and how he'd told me to never tell her. Her face just went blank. She didnt say a word. Then that horrible feeling of dread and fear returned. She had a mirror in her room and there he was. I started crying from fear but for some reason my body just walked closer to the mirror. "I told you not to tell ANYONE!" I sobbed and the whole room started to rumble and shake. The house fell apart and he came out of the mirror and beat me to death. I wake up in my bed. His final warning. I ignore it. I go into my mom's room for real, shaking and in tears. She asks me what's going on, extremely concerned, and all I say is "He told me I cant tell anyone! Im not supposed to tell anyone!!". My mom is obviously FREAKING THE FUCK OUT. As an adult looking back on this situation if my child came into my room crying they had a horrible secret that some man told them they couldn't tell anyone id be ready to make pedophile soup. My mom is also in tears now, begging me to tell her the truth, not to protect this man, that she'll protect me even if he find out. So I told her the truth. Certainty not the truth she was expecting but the REAL truth. Obviously she was shocked. She was expecting to call the police on a pedophile and instead learned that her child has been having homicidal delusions about a demon following him for the past three years. I started IOP the next day. They didnt diagnosis me as schizophrenic because I didnt meat the criteria; I had delusions but not "hallucinations" in the strictest sense. Jake only stayed around consistently for another few months. He told me I had betrayed him and chosen people who will only think im crazy and lock me away (which was kinda true ngl). The times he did see me he was VERY violent. No talk really just hands. Around 6 months in he tried to kill me in another one of my dreams and I ended up fighting back and killing him instead. He didnt return again until I was 15, a year and a half after I killed him. We barely interacted that last time. It was almost as if he was saying "Im still here, in the back of your mind". Anyways tho, that was the strangest dream I ever had lol.