Yes.
....
More? Okay, fine.
So. I'm a little new-agey. Not a lot, but enough to believe that there's stuff out there that we don't understand yet, and that things like energy-work and raw human belief can affect things in the real world.
A few years back, a friend of mine complains that she hasn't been able to get a good night's sleep. She's been going through a really bad time, for reasons I won't get into, and the difference in her is notable. I put together a "night-light" talisman, and give it to her.
About a week later, I'm back from a camping trip, and exhausted. I crash into bed...
And have a series of dreams about people trying to get access. That's the best way to describe it. A hitchhiker wanting a ride, and me just driving on. Knocks on the door and me refusing to answer it. Finally it's a dream of me being on the computer and a pop-up ad coming up, and damnit, I said "Yes" to that one before I realized I shouldn't have.
After that, my dreams go WEIRD. Waking dreams, sleep paralysis, the works. And the imagery...
Things like sleeping next to my wife, and feeling her grab my arm, only to look over and see she's rolled away and hasn't got an arm in position to do that. Things like black shadow hands rising up from the covers and groping at the air, before dissolving. Bumps and whumps, and I can't tell if they're real or false.
I wake up multiple times that night. My heart's beating so fast I'm honestly worried I'll stroke out. I'm exhausted but every time I try to sleep, it goes bad.
This has never happened to me before. And goddamit, it feels like an attack. I get the feeling there's agency behind this.
And I get mad.
The next time dreams go weird, I grab control, and bring it to a point where I end up facing this... thing. Dunno. It's a shadow thing, but definitely not a man. Take the worst parts of a crab and a spider, and you've got the general idea.
It squishes nicely when MY shadow-self stomps it. Didn't see that coming, did ya, bunky? Yeah, I can do that too.
I sleep very well for the rest of the night.
Now, nothing like this has ever happened to me before. I run it by my close circle of friends, and the one who I gave that "night-light" to?
She's run into that bastard before. The details she tells me are close enough to what I went through, that it has to be a match.
So.
My best conjecture, is that my friend's strong negative emotions drew the thing in to feed on her. This time, like the others, it saw a good meal, came in, and was annoyed by my talisman. So it came looking for me to register its displeasure and see if it could get another person to feed on.
Didn't work out.
Don't know if I killed it or just set it back a ways, but it hasn't been back, and I don't think it will.