What Creeps in the Night

    When I moved here to Charleston SC in 1995, there were many stories of haunts and haints. Some were called ghost stories and others were said to be local legend bore of the various cultures that colonized this area in the late 1600's.  To this day, we still tell these legends, in the early years they were passed down through generations by the family elders, the patriarchs and matriarchs who felt this to be important information. As a ghost tour guide, I tell these legends on ghost tours to those who come to hear. Until last night I believed these to be legend and though I have been off from giving tours due to an injury, a haint found its way to me.
   In the Lowcountry a "haint" is the Gullah word roughly translated as a ghost or a haunting. Some are rather specific like Boo-Hags or Plat Eyes, yet others can be more illusive in how they approach you.
   I laid down early as I felt sleepy quickly as if the sandman had blown slumber dust into my eyes.
For a time I fell into a deep sleep then something unusual, for me, began to happen; I started dreaming, at first it is me laying in bed; but then there a sense something is in my room. A darkened figure of a cloud shaped based churning like a tornado with the appearance of a head and shoulders. Whirling in circles around me as if waiting for me to fall asleep so it could enter my dreams. Soon I'm drifting to sleep, dreaming of this entity entering and removing me from me.
    After waking the first time, a second encounter attempt it made. My consciousness drifted to sleep again and began dreaming. This time it was of my dog getting up on the bed to sleep, with a chain around his neck. In the dream I reach down to pet him and he disappears while this chain wraps around my arm. This dream is in such vivid color and clarity I wake up still experiencing the feelings of a chain around my wrist. So vividly that I looked and while looking at my arm it was still there, circling me.
     With each dreaming, a waking to consciousness came to find that what was happening in the dream is still happening to me. A combat of wills ensued, this entity insisting on feeding on me wasn't prepared for my faith. Each time I came to be aware of it s decent into my consciousness, prayer saved me from an uncertain fate.  Though prayer kept this thing at bay, it only left after a very loud bellowing howl pierced the night just before sunrise. It left, it just left as if something had called it back, like a well trained dog.