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The original was posted on /r/paranormal by /u/EmTheGrey on 2025-07-04 01:54:11+00:00.
My childhood dog was a cockapoo named Nellie. She lived to be 13 before being peacefully put to sleep in early 2023. One of the saddest days of my life.
She was affectionately known as “Trash Rat” due to her willingness to eat absolutely anything - even learned how to step on unopened bags of chips to open them.
By her last few years, Nellie had gone blind, and was much more mellow and friendly after that, spending a great deal of her day simply napping in the sun on the couch (which she had to be lifted onto, unless nobody was looking, in which case she had no trouble jumping up herself.)
One of her favorite places to nap was in my room, on my clean laundry basket, while I myself was napping as well. I’d leave my bedroom door cracked slightly in case she wanted to come in; sometimes I’d wake up to her having “thrown” the door wide open by shoving it with her nose. If I forgot and closed it all the way, she’d sniff loudly under the door and scratch until I got up to let her in. At the time, it was annoying. Now I miss it like crazy.
A few weeks after she passed, I was trying to take a nap with my door fully shut. As happens at times, while I was half asleep, I started to experience sleep paralysis and hallucinations that were absolutely terrifying. My eyes were shut, but I could hear and feel things that shouldn’t have been possible - snickering laughter, my hair being pulled, a feeling of being strangled even. This is fairly common for me unfortunately, and usually it goes away if I manage to pray out loud.
This time, I didn’t need to. I heard a very familiar snuff sound at the door, then the sound of the doorknob hitting the wall. At the sound of her paws clicking on the floor, and the rumpling of fabric as she snuggled into the laundry, suddenly I woke up and was able to move again.
Of course, as soon as I did so, I remembered that she was gone; the door was completely closed, the lights off, everything.
I’m not claiming beyond doubt that my dead dog chased off the sleep paralysis demons. It could very well have just been my mind’s way of sort of “defending itself” from the fear.
But I can’t say beyond a shadow of a doubt that it WASN’T Nellie’s ghost helping me out - personally, I’d like to think the souls of our dogs would hang around for a while before going ahead to wait for us, wherever we go after.
Either way - I’m hopeful that one day, I’ll see Nellie again. Thanks for reading if you got this far!