Two weeks ago I had a sleep paralysis episode combined with a scary hallucination. I woke up in the middle of the night and heard the sound of footsteps on the crunchy leaves below my window, and another sound that I intuited as a body being dragged.

I knew I was dreaming, that this wasn’t real, but sleep paralysis hallucinations can seem extremely real while they’re happening. In this case, I could see the window, I could see my room around me, and I could hear movement coming from outside. I tried shaking it off and closing my eyes to go back to sleep, but when I closed my eyes I heard two voices outside my window, arguing about where to hide the body.

At this point I was sure I was having an auditory hallucination, but it was still very scary. I kept my eyes open and listened for more. I heard what sounded like a shovel disturbing the leaves and soil directly below my window. I saw a face looking into my window. I told myself it wasn’t real and eventually went back to a normal sleep, and when I woke up the next day I chalked up the experience to watching Murder Mountain and Unsolved Mysteries right before going to bed.

Fast forward several days later, when I started smelling this awful smell. My neighbors to the back of my house, right across the fence, have a dog who they don’t clean up after. In the summer, I often cannot open my window in the back of the house because the breeze that wafts in stinks like sun-heated dog shit. It’s quite unpleasant, and at first I figured that's what this was, but the smell got worse as days passed and I began to suspect that there might be something wrong with my sewer pump. I told my landlady about the smell and my guess as to the source and she had a plumber come out to check my sewer pump and the plumber found no issue, but said that the smell was similar to that of a dead animal and recommended a pest control specialist to help.

Two days later a pest control team showed up to evaluate the situation. They determined that there was indeed a dead animal somewhere under my house. They went under the house and removed the dead animals, then used a disinfectant soap to clean the crawlspace under my house, then sealed off the entrances to the crawlspace. The smell went away almost immediately.

Afterward, I asked the pest control team if I could see what was under the house. I had spoken to my mom while they were working under the house, and she told me to let her know what the workers found. They were hesitant to show me, and asked me if I really wanted to know. I told them that I am an adult and could handle it. They brought a bucket over to me where I saw the dead body of a medium sized opossum, and a rat that had gotten caught in a trap and went under my house to die. It was a pretty awful sight. I wasn’t grossed out, but I was sad. I was especially sad to see the dead opossum. I texted my mom to report on the findings and she texted back, “ew gross.”

I enjoy the wildlife that roams around in my yard during the day and at night. A small murder of crows has been hanging out in the big pine tree and I like watching them fly around and talk to each other from my window. Up until somewhat recently, I would regularly see skunks, opossums, and raccoons stroll through the yard after sundown. Sitting on my stoop in the evening and smoking a spliff and chancing upon a critter encounter from a distance were times I looked forward to. I even wrote about these somewhat magical experiences for The Fanzine back in 2018.

When I saw the dead opossum, I was a little heartbroken. I hope no one in the area is using poison to “control” the wildlife that they see as pests. There are other ways to keep opossums and skunks and raccoons from disturbing your yard, solutions that don’t subject unsuspecting animals to a cruel and torturous death. Poisons also affects other wildlife, like owls and hawks and other predator birds. I don’t understand why anyone would use it.

Anyway, I started writing this post because I was trying to link my dream of a body being dragged outside my window to the foul smell I noticed several days later. Maybe it was my subconscious predicting something, or making sense of something it already knew. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.