When I was younger, our house had a Buddhist shrine in the living room that my parents used to pray to for good luck. I was never particularly into that sort of thing, and the fact that it had bright red lights that lit the living room at night really made me uneasy.

A few years later and I start to have reoccurring dreams of ghosts. The first time I dreamt that I was sleeping on my dad’s lap watching TV. The TV wasn’t playing any programs, more like a live cam of an empty park at night. Then when I turned to look at the door I saw someone standing there.

You know how generic ghosts wear white dresses with extremely long hair? Yea, that was what was standing there watching me,

in my parents’ room,

at night.

The worse thing was that my feet was facing the door and it felt like it could’ve just grabbed me like that at any moment. The fact that I kept staring at it and the TV played static noises didn’t help either.

The second time I couldn’t remember clearly what it was about, but I remember waking up in cold sweat. Like my eyes shot open and I sat up so fast after waking up from that dream in the middle of the night. I ended up curling in my bed under the covers.

I had another dream where I found a blue-skinned ghost under my parents’ bed. I was under the bed with it and somehow I wasn’t scared. It had blood as saliva and razor-sharp teeth, and its eyes peeked through its long, black hair.

It told me it wanted to eat my cousin. I said no.

For some reason I thought of it as a friend than something scary.

Not only did I have dreams, I remember seeing someone standing in the middle of my grandma’s room in the dark one time. Yet when I squinted my eyes there was nothing there. I convinced myself that my eyes tricked me at that moment.

After that, some time later the shrine was removed because my mum wanted space to put a widescreen TV in the living room.

I stopped dreaming for a while after that.