[IbnMardhiyah]

The one and only time its ever happened to me ... I think this was the original one on the previous Islamica too?

anyways

The only time in my life I've ever had a freaky pseudo-jinn event was like this:

I came home late at night once from work, like around 2:00 am. The house was dark with the exception of one hallway light on in a corridor. My mom met me at the door and said "son your dinner is on the table. Don't forget." and then she went upstairs to sleep. So I ate dinner made wudu' for Ishaa' and then turned off the lights on the first floor. I went up the stairs to our family room which was off to the right-side of the stairs. The light there was off too, with just some light spilling in from the hallway.

I was kinda tired but prayed Ishaa' anyways. Four raka'at, then two, and then I'm reading my witr salaah when, in the last rak'ah after reading al-Fatiha my mouth went all dry and it also became eerily still in the house.

I couldnt hear anyone snoring, no coughing, couldnt hear the wind ... everything was dead quiet. Like, nothing.

I had this eerie feeling that someone or something was at the bottom of the stairs, on the landing and I was telling myself to get on with it and finish prayer and go to sleep - because jinns don't bother me, never have, they always stay away from me - but I just couldn't bring myself to start surah al-Naas.

So I waited and waited. Just standing there in the dark, with my arms folded across my chest, staring at the prayer rug in the dark, wondering what the heck was going on. The eerie silence just kept getting deeper and my tongue felt like leather. Finally I shook myself out of it and I started reciting suwaar al-Falaq and al-Naas over and over again while standing there, hoping to get rid of whatever evil was lurking at the bottom of the stairs.

While I was reading those, in my mind's eye I was thinking about an incident my mom told me of long ago:

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"Once a long time ago there was a man who set out for a journey on horseback. he traveled far and through unknown, deserted lands until night came. He found an abandoned dwelling on the side of the path and decided to lay down there for the night. the house was dark inside and the man could see nothing, so he picked the closest inside corner and lay down. Before he could fall asleep, he heard some shifting, dragging noises coming from the pitch black interior of the house. He called out, but no one answered. He grew concerned, but not having any source of flame nearby, he started reciting al-Falaq and an-Naas loudly, until he went to sleep.

In the morning when he woke up, the sunlight was streaming through the windows. He was astonished to see piles of blackened, charred, still-smoldering meat lying here and there in the house, as if some living beings had been burned to death although he could not make out the features to tell whether they were human or animal.

Relieved to know that al-Falaq and an-Naas had taken care of these dangers of the night for him, he left the house and got back on his horse and left with all speed."
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So, here I am standing in my last rak'aah of witr, reading al-Falaq and an-Naas furiously and thinking "ahahahaha sucker, if you're down there you're now just a charred pile of smoking meat! loser!" and then my paralysis left me and I finished salaah as usual.

...

And then the smoke alarm rang.

Once.

...

It freaked me out. I was like "oh bloody $%#!ng hell, there IS a burned body down there! why that sneaky sunuva... ... I caught him just in time eh."

I sat on the prayer rug doing some tasbeeh, unable to figure out whether there was a real body or not. I couldnt understand why the fire alarm rang, and I began to tell myself that i had probably just imagined it, although even that was difficult - it was a loud piercing sound and I was surprised the others hadn't woken up and come out into the upper hallway yet.

So I stayed in the room and kept thinking ...

... what if there really is a burned and blackened body at the foot of the stairs? I imagined a charred body, all black and sooty, crumpled up in a fetal position, with the burnt lips having fallen away to reveal the grisly yellow teeth, the face controrted in pain, burned body fat splattered all over the carpet, with smoke still rising from the corpse ...

... I shook my head and told myself to get going. I walked past the upper landing and looked down the flight of stairs and of course, saw no body, no nothing.

Told myself I was probably hallucinating. Told myself it was all my imagination and that was it, I almost forgot about it, put it out of my mind.

I continued up the stairs into the dark hallway. I passed my sisters' bedrooms, and I was just passing my parents' bedroom and about to enter my room ... when my mom's voice called out from the darkness of her room:




"Son? Why did the fire alarm ring ... ??!"

...

I froze on the spot, unable to look behind me.

Needless to say, Surah al-Naas and Al-Falaq deep-sixed the mofo, he's never bothered me since.