Have you ever had freaky, unexplainable experiences? Me too! Let me tell you about the latest entry in my personal laundry list of WTF.

I’ve always had trouble falling asleep at night, ever since I was a child. On some nights I can fall asleep without any issue, but on other nights I lie awake in bed until four in the morning or later. Those times when I’m lying awake are such a pain.

Recently, it was yet another night of no sleep. I finally managed to doze off around four-thirty, but I was only asleep for two hours for a reason I will explain.

On a side note, my dreams have become so disappointing as I’ve gotten older. In my younger days, they were so vibrant and wonderful. Now, they’re just foggy messes I typically forget as soon as I wake up. Once in a while I will still have an amazing dream but that is the slim exception to the new rule.

So, anyway, I fall asleep at four-thirty and have another blurry disaster of a dream. The auditory side of my dreams is a bit strange. It’s as if I know what the sound of the dream is without actually hearing anything. The sound is implied. This particular dream, however, had quite a shock in store for me.

The dream is unfolding on its boring schedule, then out of nowhere—crystal clear, clear as a bell—I hear this loud, awful, antagonistic laughter. It sounded like a man’s voice, I’m guessing thirty-ish in age. It was as if this jackass was right in front of my face, laughing at me! I only had to hear about half a second of this before my brain hit the “wake the fuck up now” switch, and I quickly awoke to find myself back in bed again, alone.

I have experienced auditory jump scares like this in dreams at least twice before, though not recently (I remember another was a similar-sounding voice saying, “Oh, no!”). But seriously…WTF? “*ahem* Well, you see, the brain sends out chemicals to the neurons of the occipital lobe of the frontal cortex, which in turn—.” No, sorry, that doesn’t explain a goddamn thing.