The Mist That Never Lifted

In the winter of 2019, I was six months pregnant with my first child, a girl we planned to name Mei. My husband, Tom, worked the early shift at the fish cannery, leaving our rented cottage on the edge of the Oregon woods at 5:30 in the morning. I remember that day because the fog was so thick I could barely see the porch light from our bedroom window. It was the kind of fog that swallows sound and makes the world feel like a held breath.

At 6:00, I was still in bed, half-asleep, when something changed. The air grew heavy, like a wet blanket pressing down on me. I opened my eyes, but I couldn’t move. The ceiling, usually plain white, was covered in a swirling gray mist. It wasn’t like condensation or smoke; it moved with a purpose, drifting in slow spirals, as if it were breathing. I felt a pressure on my chest, not painful, but insistent, like a hand trying to push me back into the mattress. My mind screamed at my body to move, but my limbs were lead.

Despite the fear, there was a strange allure. The mist seemed to call to me, and my thoughts got fuzzy. I remember hearing a voice, a woman’s voice, soft and singsong, whispering in a language I didn’t recognize but somehow understood. It told me to sleep, that everything would be fine, that my baby was safe. I felt my eyelids droop, and I slipped into a dreamless void. When I woke two hours later, the mist was gone, and the room was bright with pale winter sun. I told myself it was a pregnancy-induced hallucination, a side effect of sleep paralysis. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had visited me.

Over the next weeks, the visits continued. Always early morning, always the same. The mist would gather, the voice would whisper, and I would be frozen. My doctor said it was just stress, but I knew better. I started to dread the dawn. Tom noticed my exhaustion, but I hid the truth, afraid he’d think I was losing my mind. I kept a journal, writing down every detail, hoping to find a pattern. Then, one night in my 8th month, I woke to find the mist forming a shape—a woman, tall and thin, with long hair that dissolved into wisps. She stood at the foot of my bed, her face shadowed, and she raised a hand as if to point at my belly. I felt a cold jolt, and then she spoke, this time clear and sharp: ‘You carry my child.’

I screamed, and the mist dissipated. Tom burst in, but I couldn’t explain. The next day, I drove to the local library and researched old legends. I found a passage about a Hmong shaman who had died in those woods in the 1970s. She was said to have cursed the land after her baby was stillborn, and locals spoke of a ‘mist spirit’ that stole unborn children. The description matched what I’d seen: a woman in a tattered green dress, her hair like fog. I was terrified. I couldn’t tell Tom, but I also couldn’t stay silent. I decided to confront the spirit.

That night, I left my bed and went into the forest, following a path I’d never seen before. The mist was everywhere, guiding me. After an hour, I reached a clearing with an old oak tree, and there she was, materializing in front of me. Her face was gaunt, and her eyes were hollow. ‘You’ve come,’ she said. ‘I want my child back.’ I told her I was carrying my own baby, but she insisted it was hers. She pointed to my belly, and I felt a kick so strong it took my breath away. ‘She has my spirit,’ the ghost said. ‘She will be mine.’ I woke up in the hospital two days later. The doctors said I had a seizure, and the baby was fine, but I knew the truth. I checked my journal, and the last entry was blank. The mist never lifted, not really. Sometimes, in the mirror, I catch a glimpse of a tall woman behind me, and I know she’s waiting for the day my daughter is born. I’m afraid of that day, but I’m also afraid of what I might become.