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Dubai residents recount their scariest moments

Rohit Nair speaks to Dubai residents about their spookiest moments, and their accounts are sure to give you the chills this Halloween

I love a good horror movie as much as anyone else, but there's a bit of comfort - relative, of course - knowing that what's happening on screen is a figment of someone's creative imagination. Again, relatively. And for the most part - unless they're based on true stories, in which case, it just makes the flick that much more haunting - knowing that fact helps you sleep better at night. But what about true stories that happen to real people? True accounts always tend to leave a more lingering sense of creepiness, and these stories from people in Dubai will give you plenty of non-filmy scares for Halloween!

This happened when I was 15 years old, almost five years back. It had been a regular day - school, meeting with friends and all that - and I was getting ready for bed. After I lay down, I could feel like someone was walking over me. It was a very creepy feeling. At first, I thought it was just my legs going numb, like that weird thing that happens when your legs are tired. But it started to hurt and I could feel something really heavy was walking up towards me, on my body. I could hear strange noises, almost like screams, right next to my ears.

I turned to see if there was anything around, but there was nothing. I was really scared, but also, in my head, I kept thinking it was just a nightmare. I actually thought I was dreaming and that I'd wake up and all this would be a figment of my imagination. Just then, my mother came into the room and said, "It's OK dear, you're just having a nightmare. I'll pray for you and everything will be fine." Suddenly, all the creepy feelings went away and, after a while, I went back to sleep.

The next day, in the morning, I asked my mom how she knew I was having a nightmare the night before and why she came to my room. She just looked at me as though I was still dreaming. "What do you mean?" she asked me. So I told her about what happened the previous night and how she'd come to my bed and told me that she'd pray for me. She said, "I don't know what you're talking about, because I never came to your room. I was fast asleep." I still don't know if I was dreaming or whether I really did see my mother that night, but it was much more vivid than a dream and definitely felt real. It hasn't happened before and since, but it still makes me wonder to this day if I was alone that night.