I’m pretty sure many of you are familiar with the term sleep paralysis. Chinese call it ???. I, unfortunately was a victim of it. Moreover, it happened to me on New Year’s Day of 2015.

Me and my girlfriend were in Bangkok for a short new year’s countdown holiday. This trip was actually an impromptu one; having booked air tickets and accommodation on the last week of December 2014. Due to the Christmas and New Year holiday period, most hotels were already fully booked and we had to stay in three different hotels over the 6 days we were there.

This incident happened during our stay on the second hotel; a 4 star service apartment at Thong Lor area and adjacent to Ekkamai road where all the local hip clubs are. The hotel looks decent enough not the sort of place you would expect to be ‘dirty’. Amenities around the vicinity of the hotel were pretty good; many good restaurants and supermarkets. Reviews were good as well, with some complains on the quality of the room and it being a little worn down.

It was supposed to be a 2 night stay at this hotel until we switched again. We checked into the hotel on the 30th of Dec 2014. The receptionist gave us the key to a room on the fifth floor. As I travel quite often and also being a ‘rather be safe than sorry’ kind of person, the first thing I always do before I enter a hotel room, was to always knock on the door three times or ring the door bell ( if there was one ) as a polite gesture to ‘notify the occupants’ that I will be entering and staying, I vividly remembered, immediately after I open the main door, the door to the bedroom opened itself! I’m pretty sure it wasn’t because the chambermaid did not close the bedroom door properly after cleaning the room and the draft and pressure from the opening of the main door had caused the bedroom door to creep open, but because I heard the sound of the bedroom door knob being turned. I could have swore also that I saw a shadow darted quickly into the bedroom instantly.

My girlfriend was standing behind me so she didn’t see the ‘shadow’ but she did witness the bedroom door opening by itself. Both of us looked at each other and both of us had the same thought. Went down to the reception and after explaining the situation, with dismay and disbelief from the hotel staff of cause, politely requested a room change, but due to the peak holiday period, the only available room left was at the corner on the ground floor and we are left to no avail but to accept it. Come to think about it, I suspect that that room might be a room most typical hotel leave vacant for ‘regular occupants’.

The room seemed ok and after we settled our barang barang, we headed out for our activities for the day and came back quite late as we went to a nearby club to party. Nothing happen during the first night. We woke up in the afternoon, showered, changed and went out. We ended our countdown at Asiatique and went back to our hotel around 1 am. Now apart from the first night which was ok, the first thing I noticed immediately after I entered the room was the warmth and stuffiness I felt. I adjusted the air con’s temperature in the bedroom as well as the living room but the funny thing is, moments after that, the room will be very warm and then gradually feels cold again and sporadically feels warm again. Thinking that it might be attributed to the fact that we have been out the whole day and the tiredness is starting to creep in, I shrug it off as being weary.

So cut the long story short, we showered and were getting ready for bed, I started to hear faint tapping noise like finger nails tapping on wooden hollow planks or cheap plywood. The tapping noise sounded random and inconsistent, e.g. 2 taps* pause* then a few short burst of taps* pause* etc etc I cannot pinpoint the location of the tapping as firstly it is faint and distant and secondly, being in a room situated on the ground floor, the outside ambiance noise was drowning it out. I try not to think about it and I also did not wish to further freak my girlfriend out. But I paid close attention to it nonetheless. Within 20 minutes my girlfriend was fast asleep, but I, on the other hand cannot sleep at all.

I felt very uneasy as if there was something or someone watching us. Furthermore, the difference in temperature made me sweat and froze as the same time, it also felt nauseating just to be in the room. I felt heavy and ‘weigh down’. The tapping noises were also beginning to feel or sound louder and this time I can pin point it being on or around the wall dividing the bedroom and the living room. I was beginning to feel really tired and sleepy but every time I closed my eyes, I would feel the uneasiness weighing heavily on me and my inner voice was telling me to stay awake. At around 3+ am, and I can honestly say that I do not know whether I was sleeping or if it was a dream, it felt as if I was sleeping and awake at the same time, it was a very surreal kind of feeling. In the dream, I awake to find the toilet light switched off ( which was actually on with the door slightly ajar ), the room was dark with faint light shining in through the window from the parking lot outside and I can make out the area in the room. I felt petrified and wanted to get out of the bed to check out what was wrong. This was when the ‘thing’ appeared. It appeared on the side the bed on my right, it was dark and shaped like a person. I cannot shout, I wanted to get up but it sat on me ( it felt distinctly as if it was a person’s butt sitting on my stomach, literally feeling the shape and softness of the buttocks and hardness of the hip bone kind of feeling ) With my hands on the blanket, I tried to spring myself up from the bed using my elbows on the bed as support. The ‘thing’ grabbed both my wrists ( I swear I literally felt fingers digging into both my wrist and it’s grip tightened ) and pushed me down on to the bed. I panicked and utter so loudly Buddhist chants that I woke up ( or was I already awake ) to find my girlfriend, eyes wide opened, stunt, paled face staring at me. That ‘thing’ was no where in sight and I can move again. I did not tell her my experience immediately but instead got up, switched on all the lights in the bedroom and living room and starting cursing and swearing ( I read somewhere or was it someone who told me, can’t remember, that if you do that, ‘they’ will be scare off by the anger and the earthly presence ) while pacing up and down the living room and searching through Agoda for hotel rooms.

Booked a new hotel and managed to pacify my girlfriend back to sleep, packed our bags and I stayed awake until 6 am in the morning. Checked out and left the place. The receptionist can still ask me if everything was ok, I didn’t even bother to explain, I just wanted to get out. After we checked into the new place, I told her what happened, guess what, she also felt uneasy but did not want to alarm me as she thought it might be due to her weariness as well. Furthermore, she said while she was asleep, she can feel hand or hands caressing her body in a sexual way, she thought it was me being cheeky. After what she told me, the fear actually turned to anger. Thus, I think I should tell you guys the hotel name now so that there won’t be another victim in the future. The hotel name is Grass Suite Thong Lor.