My name is Erik Shryock and I’m from Norwalk, California. My family grew up not attending church. From what I knew I was baptized Catholic as a baby, but that was about it when it came to practicing Catholicism. Around the age of 9 we had many deaths in our family in a very short amount of time. It was during this time my father was seeking answers and ended up attending church with my uncle who is a Christian. After that I attended church with my family for years; not really wanted to be there until around freshman year, where I was open to learning about and trying to understand what being a Christian was all about. After my freshman year it was revealed to me that my family and I would move to Quail Valley, a city in between lake Elsinore and Temecula. I was upset that I had to leave the friends I had made in high school and basically restart somewhere new. Before leaving, my dad wanted us to get baptized Christian. By this time my relationship with Christ had started and I understood that baptism was a declaration to the world, but I would be following Christ in everything I do. So I made the decision to get baptized before we moved away. In the Bible after Jesus is baptized, he was approached by the devil who attempted to tempt Jesus. There is something about being baptized which opens the door to being tempted by the devil and I also believe it could cause trials or in my case a demonic encounter.
We moved into our new house which was beautiful and big. We had lived there for a year when I started to experience sleep paralysis. At this point my family and I had not been going to church like we used to, and we didn’t have a home church yet. At first, they would only happen occasionally, me waking up in the middle of the night feeling as though someone or something had me pinned down. I would be completely awake unable to breathe, unable to speak and unable to move. It is honestly one of the scariest things that have happened to me. I became too scared to sleep for a while and would find myself staying up as late as I possibly could until I couldn’t hold my eyes open any longer. One night my dad was working late, and my older brother and I were out with friends, so it was just my mom and my younger brother, who was about 4 at the time, at the house alone. My mom was in the living room watching TV and my brother was upstairs in his room. To this day my brother remembers this night to a tee. My brother heard my mom clearly in my parents’ room; he heard her make her way to the stairs. My little brother not wanting to be alone upstairs, went out to follow her. As he stepped out into the hallway and turn towards the stairs going down, he sees the face of a man, only the face of a man, floating with no body. My little brother remembers being frozen with fear. As he stared at the face, trying to understand what he was seeing, the face of the man dashed towards him and all he could do was scream. My mom, hearing his scream, ran to the bottom of the stairs and turned on the light for the staircase, yelling up what’s wrong. My little brother told my mom exactly what happened, and this scared my mom quite a bit because he was so young and would really have no reason to make this up. When I got home, I remember my mom telling me the story, creeping me out and still to this day my brother, being 14 now, still tells the story the same way.
CODE:T
A few weeks after my brother’s experience, I remember having a dream. In this dream I remember seeing a road in the middle of a desert. The dream had a sepia tone filter. You couldn’t see anything but the road reaching down from one horizon to another. As I approach the road, I saw a goblin like thing standing at the road facing away from me. As I approach the goblin creature it turned towards me and gave me chills, how frightening it looked. The creature then pointed down the road. As I begin to look down the road, I couldn’t see anything, so I looked back at the creature. The creature jumped and took flight down the road like a bullet. As soon as the creature took off and left my sight, my vision became what the creature was seeing. As if I was the creature seeing the road fly by under me and two little goblin like hands in front of my eyes reaching out. As the creature kept flying, it approached the back of a mini-van that was driving away from it at full speed. As the creature got closer, I realized that the mini-van was my mom’s mini-van. Eventually, the creature caught up to the mini-van. Flying at full speed; it transparently went through the back of the van, along what would be the left side of the driver. As soon as it got close enough to see the driver, it was my mom. She turned to the creature, who I was seeing through the eyes of, and at that moment she screamed bloody murder like I’ve never heard or seen my mom scream before. As soon as she screamed, I woke up and could not move. There was something holding me down. I could not breathe I could not talk I could not turn over. This was not like the sleep paralysis I had experienced before. Because I could feel distinct hands or claws holding me down. At this moment, honestly feeling like I was going to die, I remembered something I had read from the Bible; the Lord’s name carried power and that the disciples used to cast out demons using the Lord’s name. Now knowing, I probably shouldn’t have done it this way, as soon as I was able to get words out the first thing I said was “In the name of Jesus Christ, get the FUCK off me.” As soon as I did that, I felt the pressure release off my back and I gasp for air. Being able to breathe and move again, somethings still didn’t feel right. I looked around my room and I saw a dark shadow. It was cased in the top left corner of my bedroom. The shadow was darker than the other shadows that would normally caste in the room. Once again, I said “In the name of Jesus Christ get the F out of my room” closing my eyes in fear of whatever that thing was. As soon as I said that, I open my eyes and the dark shadow was gone. The room was still dark due to the lights being off but there wasn’t an abnormal darkness in that corner anymore. My parents ran in my room wondering what all the commotion was about at 3 in the morning. I explain to them what happened, and they prayed for me. After that I was able to fall asleep. I didn’t have any more experiences like that, well living at that house. I wasn’t even sure if it was the house to blame for those experiences. I honestly believe it had something to do with not necessarily following God as strongly as I had been and that maybe the devil saw me as an easy target.