‘My son gets a visit from an invisible girl at night’

Nienke (40), married to Dennis (38), mother of twins Bent and Minke (5).

“Every night, around two o’clock, Bent would wake up upset, crying profusely as he frantically slapped his hands. He was just a year and a half and couldn’t tell what was wrong with him, but you could tell he was scared. He calmed down as soon as I gave him a pat on the head, but this often repeated itself a few more times during the night. Later he started shouting ‘no’ loudly and I only calmed him down by sitting next to him and comforting him with sweet words.

Until then, like his twin sister Minke, with whom he shares a room and a bunk bed, he had been a very good sleeper. As a medical pedagogical counselor in a children’s hospital, I supervise babies and toddlers with sleeping problems. So I know everything about rituals and do’s and don’ts for violent nightmares and applied my knowledge to Bent.

Panic

But to my surprise, my own child did not respond well to my interventions. The funny thing was that he was wide awake when he panicked like that. Actually, I only calmed him down with a bottle of warm water. The twins hadn’t needed a night feed for a long time, but the bottle calmed him down and then he fell back asleep.

But waking up anxiously remained a nocturnal and noisy ritual. Especially when Bent started calling out more and more. Then we heard him scream through the baby monitor: ‘No, no, you gone, you stupid, gone!’ His sister also woke up. Luckily I got Minke back to sleep quickly, but with Bent I was up for hours. He was so nervous. Mom couldn’t leave. I had to lie next to him or sit on the couch in the room adjacent to their bedroom.

a girl

As his vocabulary increased, so did his understanding of why he was so afraid. According to him, there was a girl in his room named Rena who wanted to play with him. I suspected it was an imaginary girlfriend. This could easily be explained from my work as a pedagogue, because this kind of thing happens more often with young children.

I calmly explained to Bent that Mama didn’t see Rena, but I did find it annoying that she came by, because it prevented him from sleeping well. Could he perhaps ask her to come by during the day? No, that couldn’t be, Bent asserted firmly. She always came at night, through the wall or with a lot of light through the window. And the bad thing was that sometimes she took the evil witch with her. An old woman he was terrified of, who wanted to take his stuffed rabbit.

bed ritual

My husband Dennis and I were not sure what to do with this. Dennis is very sober, he had to laugh a bit. I chose to go all the way with Bent’s fantasy, to keep our connection open and see where I could help. His fear seemed real to me. I kept repeating that he should ask Rena and the Wicked Witch if they wanted to leave.

I also called in a fellow sleep coach with whom we devised all kinds of rituals. Discussing the day well before and after, putting a mattress next to our bed on which Bent could sleep, switching places with his sister to leaving lights on by his bed and making a drawing for Rena, asking if she would please let Bent to sleep. Nothing seemed to help. He kept waking up. Meanwhile, I sat on the couch for nights on end, waiting for Bent to finally fall asleep again.

He wasn’t always scared. Sometimes he just had the most fun. Then we heard whole conversations through the baby monitor in the middle of the night. Like Bent was on the phone with someone. When I went to check, he was having a great time. He told me that he played “I see, I see what you don’t see” games with Rena. Good for him, but he and this Rena kept the whole house awake. For almost two years now. Something had to change, also because he was going to school in six months. Bent struggled with sleep deprivation. Now he could sleep in in the afternoon, later that would not be possible.

Read also
9 bizarre things parents do for their child (yes, you probably too) >

Spirit

I also became more and more despondent. I had gone to our GP with the story, but he was completely on my line and supported me in what I had done so far. In addition to my own knowledge, I had already followed everyone’s tips, but without success. In fact, only spirituality remained. Something I was quite skeptical about. I had heard of clairvoyance or children being visited by the ghost of a deceased relative, but was never open to it. Besides, I didn’t know anyone in our area named Rena. My mother, with whom I discussed it, found the paranormal scary, but believed that there is more between heaven and earth. She suggested that I might have been pregnant with triplets. After all, I had had a huge bleed at the beginning of my pregnancy. Would Rena be his never-born sister?

Very coincidentally, not much later on a birthday, I met Rian, the mother of a good friend of my husband. She practices Reiki and strongly believes in the afterlife. I presented Bent’s problems to her and she went along with the possibility of a girl spirit tormenting our child. She suggested that we come and clear our house from ghosts. For my husband this was really a bridge too far, but I wanted to take everything. Everything to allow my children to go to school rested, because Minke’s sleep was also disturbed. Every night she got angry with her chained brother: ‘Bent quiet, I want to sleep!’ Said to me too, “Well mom, I don’t see that Rena!”

Stop the Wicked Witch

The next day Rian came to clean our house with a shell with sage. It smelled awful. She went around all the rooms with it, but all she felt was calm and peace. No ‘dead people’ terrorizing our house. She warned us that the cleansing ritual probably wouldn’t help much. That was right. That night it was once again prom in the twins’ bedroom.

A few days later I discovered that there were black pencil scratches on the wall. Bent is in the lower part of the bunk bed. He had scratched the wallpaper with a pencil next to his pillow. That’s how he tried to stop the evil witch, he explained. He understood that we thought it was a shame about his beautiful wallpaper, but he wanted to prevent her from stepping out of the wall. She was so mean, she never let him leave his room to get us.

A consultation

Rian had one last suggestion. She knew a woman who worked according to the Child Listening Method and who could make contact with our son remotely via soul level to find out exactly what was wrong with him. I registered on the site. The words ‘soul level’ and ‘a consultation of seventy euros’ made me swallow twice. Dennis and my mother thought it all sounded pretty vague, but according to Rian she was very good and I just ran out of options. In the end we decided to give this a try, under the guise: if it doesn’t bathe, it won’t harm him. At least he shouldn’t have to undergo a scan or see a psychologist; this happened without his being aware of it. In the worst case, I was seventy euros poorer.

The method was simple. I had to send a photo of Bent plus ask the questions Dennis and I struggled with. Not wanting to put anything in the therapist’s mouth, I asked two open questions: Who is Rena? And: why does she wake Bent up every night? I did not provide any background information.

from far away

After two weeks I got an email back. My jaw dropped in surprise when I read her statement. According to the therapist, Rena was an alien who wanted to learn from our son and take that knowledge back to her own planet. She appeared in his room every night, but sometimes took her Mamushka, her transparent mother, with her. I really had to process that information. Spirituality was already very vague to me, but visiting aliens was really a far-from-my-bed show. Especially for Dennis, who started laughing out loud: ‘Yeah right, our son is being visited by aliens.’

But it had to be said: the things this woman had written down were very striking. She was able to tell that Bent had scratched the wall because he didn’t like that Mamushka wanted to take his rabbit. Literally her text! She also wrote that on a soul level she and our son Rena requested that he be left alone at night, because then he had to sleep. And finally, she’d informed his subconscious that the “wicked witch”‘s behavior was pure teasing. She didn’t take his rabbit, so he didn’t have to be afraid anymore.

Whether my husband and I wanted to believe it or not, a lot suddenly changed. Not only did Bent sleep well, without fear or nightly games, he also suddenly knew how to name all the planets, while we are not at all into astronomy at home.

To learn

A week after the email, he had hung all his cuddly rabbits on slats in the bunk bed. It looked very grim. When I asked why he had done that, he told me that he had copied the universe. He explained to me exactly what the order was: “Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn,” he began. “And this is Rena’s planet with Renastad.” I was stunned and asked him if he might have seen this on a YouTube video. But no, he had heard from Rena. He also described to me his own visit to Rena’s planet. He’d been with me once: ‘They’re up all night there, Mama. There is always light there. There is one mother with many children and there are playgrounds.’

I couldn’t believe my ears and had him repeat it to film for my husband. Did this information come from a child under four? The Listening Child therapist I emailed this to later didn’t think it was a crazy explanation at all. She advised us to always take our child seriously.

Visit

We have also told Bent’s story to some good friends, but we are always met with incomprehension and disbelief. I understand that. The alien story still remains difficult for us to comprehend. Apparently there is something our son sees and we don’t. Most importantly, we heard him from the beginning and the Child Listening Method helped him. Bent is sleeping again, is no longer afraid of the dark, goes to the toilet himself to pee instead of calling me. As a result, he was finally able to go to school again.

Rena has stopped her nightly visits. She still drops by during the day to say hello or have a quick chat, but she doesn’t bother him anymore. Bent has been calm ever since. The only thing is that he still has an excessive interest in the Milky Way and the Universe. He asks for a telescope for his birthday to look at the stars. Fine. Bent may be interested in planets, but I only lie awake at night because of visits from their inhabitants.”

This article appears in Kek Mama 10-2021.

Want to read more personal stories?
Order the latest Kek Mama issue now without shipping costs >