Unseen Force

I was reading though several stories today on your website and one in particular sparked a memory of an experience I had when I was 8 months pregnant with my daughter. I may have shared this story with you once before, but I don’t remember. I remember that night just like it was yesterday. On evening in early 1994, my husband and I were watching TV on the couch when I decided to go to bed. I blew out a candle I had burning on the kitchen table and then headed to the bedroom. It wasn’t too long after I crawled into bed that I was abruptly taken over by this unseen force sitting on my belly. My daughter began to move very violently and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I looked out my bedroom door and could see this flickering light coming from the living room.

I figured my husband fell asleep on the couch and forgot to turn out the halogen floor lamp we had sitting behind it. I began to scream as loud as I could for him, but nothing came out my mouth. The harder I tried to scream for help, the harder the unseen force seemed to push down on me. I began to pray, I prayed like crazy, asking Jesus to protect me and to protect my unborn child. I kept looking out the bedroom door, seeing that flickering light and hoping to see my husband come running in, but he never came. The whole incident lasted for what seemed like forever, but when it was over, it was over just like that. There was no more pain, I could breathe and my daughter was at peace.

That’s not the end of the story though. I got up from the bed and headed to the living room to tell my husband what had happened. No sooner then I left the bedroom, of course, I found him sleeping soundly on the couch, but the halogen light behind it wasn’t on. The flickering light I kept seeing throughout the ordeal was the candle on the kitchen table. As explained in the beginning, I blew this candle out before I went to bed and I know I did because I have always been very cautious about burning candles. The candle had somehow rekindled itself and burned all the way down to the wick. Apparently the glass votive had gotten so hot that it broke and sent flames from the wick onto the table and place mats. The entire top of the table was on fire, placemats and all. I started screaming at my husband to wake up. He jumped off the couch to find me trying to smother the flames out with a kitchen towel. The apartment started to quickly fill up with black smoke. He grabbed the fire extinguisher and put the fire out.

After it was all said and done, we talked about what had just happened, trying to make some sense of it all. I was certain the unseen force was trying to kill me and my baby. I thought it was holding me down so that when the fire spread through the apartment, I would die from smoke inhalation, or worse, burn to death. My husband thought that whatever it was, it was trying to warn me, that it was trying to wake me up so that I would discover the fire. But I swear I was not asleep. At some point, I thought maybe it was all just a bad dream, but then it dawned on me, if it was just a dream, how was I able to see the flickering lights coming from the living room, which turned to be flames? What I do know is had I not gotten up when I did, it wouldn’t have been long before the whole apartment would have been filled with smoke and fire and we all would have all perished. Guardian Angel or evil spirit? I guess I will never know.

By: tmassingill@hydro-tex.com