When I was about 20 years old, I went to the Philippines with my family. We stayed with family friends who are quite wealthy and live in a big mansion, which meant all us guests had our own rooms. Mine was a spacious bedroom downstairs that once belonged to their son before he died in a motorcycle crash.

One night I was struck by sleep paralysis, which was nothing new for me, except for one thing. Normally I don’t see shadowy figures or anything like that, but this time I saw something that I’ve never forgotten.

I was on my back with my head turned toward the staircase that led up to the bedroom door. Along the bottom of the stairs was a short hallway, and from there a barefoot old lady in a white nightgown appeared and started walking slowly toward me. I could tell she was old because she had gray hair and wrinkly skin, but I couldn’t see her face. It wasn’t obscured by her hair or anything, but it was blurry, unlike the rest of her body.

She kept getting closer and closer, and I kept trying to scream, but all I could do was look. When she was a few feet away, I was able to shut my eyes, and eventually I broke the paralysis. After I opened my eyes again, she was gone.

Years later I told this story to my friend who grew up in the Philippines. When I got to the part about the old lady in white, her eyes got big and she said, “Wait, you saw the White Lady?!” Apparently my description matched some spooky folklore she heard about as a kid. I had no idea about that, and until then I always figured I had a vivid hallucination. Now I’m not so sure.