The Levitating Mat

In 2019, I was house-sitting for my aunt while she was in the hospital recovering from a bad fall. She lived in an old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by cornfields that had gone fallow. The house was musty and creaked with age, and I was there to keep an eye on things while she was away. I had never liked that place, even as a kid, but I agreed to stay for a few nights to help out.

One night, after a long day of packing boxes, I retired to the guest room at the end of the hall. It was a small, sparsely furnished room with a single bed, a dresser, and a window that overlooked the overgrown garden. The mattress was thin and worn, but I was exhausted, so I fell asleep almost immediately.

Sometime around 3 AM, I woke up with a strange, heavy feeling in my limbs. It wasn’t quite sleep paralysis, because I could move my fingers and toes, but it was like my body was made of lead. I was lying on my back, staring at the water-stained ceiling, when I felt a strange sensation—as if the mattress beneath me was lifting off the floor. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel the space between my back and the bed, and the air was cool against my skin.

I tried to move my arm to push myself up, but it was too heavy. Panic started to set in as I realized I was floating. The mattress, and me on it, were hovering about three inches above the wooden floor. The room was silent except for the faint hum of the fridge down the hall, but then I heard it—a soft, rhythmic sound, like someone breathing close to my ear.

I turned my head, or rather, my head turned on its own, and I saw a shape in the corner of the room. It was tall and thin, almost human, but its proportions were wrong. Its arms were too long, and its head was tilted at an unnatural angle. It was watching me, and when it realized I could see it, it slowly raised a finger to its lips, as if to shush me.

I wanted to scream, but my voice was stuck. The breathing grew louder, and the mattress began to sway gently, like a boat on water. I squeezed my eyes shut, praying that it would go away, but when I opened them again, the figure was closer, right at the foot of the bed. It had no face—just a smooth, dark void where eyes and a mouth should be—but I could feel it smiling.

The mattress suddenly dropped, hitting the floor with a thud that rattled my bones. The figure was gone, but I could still hear that breathing, now coming from right above my face. I forced myself to move, to roll off the bed, and I tumbled onto the cold floor, gasping for air. The breathing stopped.

I scrambled to my feet and flicked on the light, but the room was empty. There was no sign of the figure, but on the ceiling, directly above the bed, there was a faint stain in the shape of a handprint, as if something had pressed against the wood from the other side. I didn’t sleep again that night. In the morning, I called my aunt and told her I had an emergency, but I never mentioned what I saw.

To this day, I still don’t know if it was a dream or something real. But I do know that whenever I close my eyes, I can still feel that sensation of floating, and I hear that rhythmic breathing, waiting for me to look up again.