The Night a Ghost Warned Me of a Break-In

Discover how a mysterious presence stopped an attempted break-in at 3 AM. A real paranormal encounter that still haunts me.

It was Perth, 2004, sometime in the early hours of the morning. I woke suddenly, heart thumping, with the unshakable sense that something was wrong.

The clock glowed 2:59am.

I even sat up in bed, scanning the greyish gloom. My wife slept on, undisturbed. And then—without warning—a heavy weight pressed me back down. Not like sleep paralysis. Not like a dream. Something unseen forced me down as if saying, stay put.

When I woke properly in the morning, I remembered it vividly. My wife brushed it off, but the feeling stuck with me.

On a hunch, I went to check the back door. It was a big glass sliding door, secured with only a flick lock. And there they were. Scratches. Fresh ones. As if someone had been levering at the lock with a tool.

The dogs had slept inside that night. They hadn’t made a sound.

I rang the police. Asked if anything had happened in the area.

“Yes,” they said. “About 3am-ish.”

That was the time.

I can’t prove what pushed me down that night. But I know what I believe. It wasn’t an intruder—it was someone who didn’t want me confronting an intruder. Someone watching over me. My father had passed, but that night… I think it was him.

It’s an experience that still sticks, and it’s part of why I write stories where the unseen brushes against the everyday. Because sometimes it does.

- If you enjoy stories that play in that liminal space between the ordinary and the supernatural, my collection The Twelve Strokes of Midnight captures exactly that feeling.

Twelve tales. Twelve ways the night reaches out and touches us.

For more Behind The Scenes pieces that never reach this blog, along with first glimpses of my upcoming work, come and subscribe to my weekly (mostly) newsletter at https://chrisjohnson-writesamazingstories.eo.page/subscribe