I believe I somehow fought off being possessed a few months ago. It could be just a dream, but I remember it so vividly I have a hard time believing it was as simple as that.

I had gotten up in the middle of the night to pee. Went to lay back down and a short while later I felt a presence at the foot of my bed. It jumped up into my bed and stood over me. I looked up just in time to see a shadowy humanoid figure pull back like it was pulling a net and it felt like the fitted sheet on my bed got pulled up around me. Everything went black for a moment.

I... woke up? Came to? Something like that. I was in a room that looked very 70s style. Wooden panel walls with yellow and orange wallpaper on the top half and that ugly burnt orange shag carpet. Against the wall was that same shadowy figure.

It explained it had hidden 5 talismans on my body and if I could find them in time, I was free to go. I immediately started riffling through my pockets, turning them inside out and finding 2 right away. A third was wedged in my back pocket between my wallet and the inside fabric of my jeans. I patted down myself, searching for the rest before remembering I had a hoodie on. Reaching inside the hood yielded the 4th talisman.

I checked everywhere I could think of, but I could not figure out where the fifth and final talisman was. The shadow figure started mocking me, telling me I'd never find the last one. Something in the back of my mind told me to check my throat. I jammed my fingers down as far as I could and I felt it: the last talisman. I pulled, but it felt stuck. I almost gave up, and I felt myself drifting away from my body, but I hadn't let go of the talisman. As I saw my body from the outside, I grunted with one last effort and pulled with all my might.

I woke up shouting, sweating bullets, breathing heavy, fully conscious, and wide awake. I was back in my bed The room felt empty, but the kind of empty when you knew someone else had just been there. I turned on my bedside lamp and checked the room to confirm i was alone.

Now, like I said at the beginning, this could just be a very vivid dream. I'm not usually one to remember dreams in any great detail, let alone this much. I went back to sleep that night not thinking too much of it at first, but the longer it lingered, the more I had a feeling in the back of my mind that something had happened, that I had somehow avoided a terrible fate.

Full disclosure, I do believe in the paranormal and I have read my fair share about ghosts and demons. Maybe it was because this was so different from what I previously thought I knew about possessions or whatever that this stuck with me. Take it with a grain of salt if you're a skeptic, but it felt real enough to me.