“A Bat, a Dream, and a Warning”

There are some moments in life that you remember because they were beautiful.

There are others you remember because they were painful.

And then there are the moments you remember because you still cannot completely explain them.

This is one of those moments for me.

It happened on what should have been an ordinary day.

I was sitting at my kitchen table talking to my daughter while she was washing dishes. We were having a normal conversation, and everything around us was peaceful. Nothing seemed unusual. It was just one of those everyday moments that you don't expect to remember years later.

Then, all of a sudden, a bat came flying out of my living room.

It flew right past my head.

I was startled, and my daughter was startled. Even my cat, Smokey, jumped because he was not expecting to see a bat flying through the house either.

For a moment, none of us knew what to do.

Then we started screaming.

The bat flew back into the living room, and before we could settle down, it came flying down the hallway toward us.

Now the screaming got even louder.

We were trying to figure out where it was going and what it was going to do next. We thought it was going to turn around and fly back up the hallway again.

But instead, something very strange happened.

My grandson tried to catch it.

And the bat stopped flying.

That alone was strange.

After flying through my apartment, it suddenly seemed to stop and change what it was doing. Instead of continuing through the air, it landed and started walking.

I watched as it moved across the floor toward my front door.

There was only about a one-and-a-half-inch gap between the bottom of my door and the floor.

The bat walked underneath the door.

Yes.

Walked.

It didn't fly underneath it. It walked underneath it.

My grandson followed the bat into the hallway outside my apartment.

And then it disappeared.

When I say disappeared, I mean it.

It was there one moment, and the next moment it was gone.

There were no open doors.

There were no windows that we could see.

There was nowhere obvious for it to go.

It simply disappeared.

I remember being stunned by what I had just witnessed.

I kept thinking, Where did that bat go?

How did it get into my apartment in the first place?

How did it get underneath that door?

And how did it disappear so quickly when there were no open doors?

Those questions alone would have made the experience strange enough.

But there was something else.

Something I had experienced before the bat ever entered my home.

I had a dream.

And that dream was about a bat.

I remember the dream clearly because it was not an ordinary dream to me.

In the dream, a bat had gotten into my house.

But then the bat changed.

It turned into a woman.

She was dressed completely in black.

I remember looking at her and immediately sensing something was wrong. I didn't have to stop and think about it. In the dream, I felt that she was evil.

So I started praying.

I didn't try to fight her.

I prayed.

As I prayed, something happened that I will never forget.

The woman began to melt into the floor.

Slowly, she disappeared.

When it was over, there was nothing left except the garment she had been wearing.

Then I woke up.

I remember thinking about that dream and wondering what it meant.

And one of the thoughts that crossed my mind was:

Did someone astral project into my house?

That was genuinely one of the things I wondered about.

I am a very spiritual person, and my relationship with GOD is very important to me. I am on GOD's side, and throughout my life I have experienced more than one unusual encounter that has made me stop and think about things I could not easily explain.

I don't believe that every strange thing automatically has a spiritual meaning. At the same time, I also don't believe we should automatically ignore things simply because we don't understand them.

I believe in praying.

I believe in paying attention.

I believe in asking GOD for discernment.

And when something doesn't feel right, I believe it is important to take notice.

That's why the dream stayed with me.

I couldn't shake it.

There was something about that woman dressed in black.

There was something about the bat.

And there was something about the feeling I had in the dream when I began to pray.

Still, I had no idea that I would soon encounter a real bat inside my home.

Then one day, I was sitting at my kitchen table with my daughter.

And a bat flew past my head.

I cannot explain the feeling I had in that moment when I realized what I was seeing.

It was more than just fear.

It was recognition.

I immediately remembered the dream.

The bat.

The dream came rushing back to my mind.

I remembered the woman.

I remembered the black garment.

I remembered the way I had prayed.

And now there was an actual bat inside my home.

I kept thinking about the timing.

Why had I dreamed about a bat before this happened?

Why did the bat in my dream turn into a woman?

Why was she dressed in black?

And why, in the dream, did my response immediately become prayer?

Then I thought about what had just happened in real life.

The bat flew through my living room.

It flew past my head.

It startled my daughter and my cat.

It came down the hallway.

My grandson tried to catch it.

Then, instead of flying, it stopped and walked.

It walked under my front door through a gap that was only about an inch and a half.

My grandson followed it outside.

And then it disappeared.

I have replayed that scene in my mind more than once.

I have wondered whether there was something we missed.

Maybe there was an explanation.

Maybe the bat had found a place to hide.

Maybe there was some small opening we did not see.

Maybe there was a perfectly ordinary reason for everything that happened.

I can't rule that out.

But I also cannot ignore the fact that I had dreamed about a bat getting into my house before it actually happened.

That is the part that stayed with me.

I have learned that when you are a spiritual person, you sometimes experience things that cause you to pause.

You don't always have an immediate answer.

Sometimes you pray.

Sometimes you search for understanding.

Sometimes you simply remember the experience and carry the question with you.

That's what I have done.

I don't claim to know exactly what that dream meant.

I don't claim to know whether someone astral projected into my home.

I don't claim to know whether the dream was a warning, a spiritual encounter, or simply a dream.

What I do know is what I experienced.

I know what I saw in my dream.

I know how I felt.

I know I prayed.

I know that later, a real bat entered my apartment.

And I know the moment it happened, I remembered that dream.

That connection has never left me.

There is another part of the experience that I think about too.

The bat did not simply fly out of my apartment.

It somehow walked beneath the front door and disappeared into the hallway.

When my grandson followed it, there were no open doors.

So where did it go?

That is still a mystery to me.

Sometimes life gives you an experience that doesn't fit neatly into an explanation.

You can try to make sense of it.

You can talk about it.

You can replay it.

You can ask other people what they think.

But at the end of the day, there are still some things you simply don't know.

And I have become comfortable with not knowing everything.

My faith has taught me that I don't have to understand every detail to know where I stand.

I stand with GOD.

When I am afraid, I pray.

When I am uncertain, I pray.

When something feels strange, I pray for wisdom.

When I don't understand something, I ask GOD for discernment.

That is what I did in my dream.

And that is what I would do again.

Looking back on the entire experience, the part that fascinates me most isn't just that a bat got inside my apartment.

It is the sequence of events.

First came the dream.

Then came the bat.

And somewhere in between those two experiences was my response:

Prayer.

In the dream, I saw something I believed was evil, and I prayed.

In real life, something unexpected and frightening entered my home, and I remembered the dream.

I have often wondered whether there was a connection between the two experiences.

Maybe there was.

Maybe there wasn't.

I don't know.

But I do know that sometimes the things that happen in our lives cause us to look more closely at what we believe.

They make us ask questions.

They make us pay attention.

They make us remember things we might otherwise have forgotten.

For me, that strange encounter did exactly that.

It reminded me that I don't have to have an explanation for everything.

I just have to remain grounded in my faith.

I also learned something about myself.

When the unexpected happened, my first instinct in the dream had been to pray.

That matters to me.

Because fear can cause us to panic, but faith can cause us to pause.

And sometimes pausing is exactly what we need.

I still remember sitting at that kitchen table.

I remember my daughter washing dishes.

I remember the bat flying past my head.

I remember Smokey being startled.

I remember all of us screaming.

I remember my grandson trying to catch the bat.

I remember watching it stop flying and walk toward the front door.

I remember the tiny gap beneath the door.

And I remember my grandson following it into the hallway.

Most of all, I remember watching it disappear.

No open doors.

No obvious explanation.

Just gone.

And then I remember the dream.

The bat.

The woman dressed in black.

The prayer.

The floor.

The garment.

All of it.

Was GOD trying to tell me something?

Was the dream connected to what happened?

Was it a spiritual encounter?

Was it simply an unusual coincidence?

I don't have the answer.

But I have learned that not every mystery has to be solved immediately.

Sometimes you can simply acknowledge what happened and ask GOD to give you wisdom about it.

That is where I am with this story.

I know what I experienced.

And I know it changed the way I look at unusual moments.

Now, when something happens that I cannot immediately explain, I don't just dismiss it.

I pay attention.

I pray.

I ask questions.

And I leave room for GOD to show me what I need to understand.

Because sometimes we are so quick to explain everything that we forget to stop and notice.

And sometimes the things we can't explain are the very things that make us look a little closer at our faith.

Maybe that is what this experience was for me.

Maybe it was nothing more than a bat that found its way into my apartment.

Or maybe it was something I was supposed to remember.

I can't tell you which one it was.

But I can tell you this:

It happened.

And I will never forget the day a bat flew past my head, walked underneath my front door, disappeared into thin air—and reminded me of a dream I had before it ever happened.

This is a true story.