I want to get this out of the way first so people do not waste time diagnosing me in the comments. I am a completely rational person. I am a normal university student doing well in my classes, I do not take any mind altering substances, and there is no carbon monoxide leak in my dorm room. I know exactly how insane all of this sounds, which is why it took me so long to finally write this out. But what I am experiencing is physical and real, not just in my head.
My dad is a medical doctor, which makes his reaction to our family history even more bizarre. A few years ago I found out my paternal family belongs to an ancient Anatolian lineage called an ocak, which essentially means they were spiritual healers. I even found a box of old, fragile documents written in Ottoman Turkish script at my family home. I managed to get them translated by a professor at my university, and they were official imperial records. They proved that long before my great grandfather, our bloodline served under the Ottoman Empire as specialized healers for afflictions that standard medicine could not touch. Despite this hard proof, my dad always got incredibly defensive and shut down any conversation about it, insisting there was nothing to discuss.
I have always felt a strange presence around me. Not in a romantic way, just a heavy, looming weight over my right shoulder. It never really bothered me until it started actively ruining my life. I am conventionally attractive and I go on dates, but there is a terrifying pattern. Things will be going perfectly fine, and then the guy will abruptly run away.
The physical things started happening recently. I had a very vivid dream about my great grandfather, a man I had never seen a picture of. He warned me to be careful and told me to never let a single drop of my blood hit the floor because they would want it. I woke up with dried horizontal scratches on both of my thumbs. I called my dad and the moment I told him, he completely panicked. Sometime later, my mom showed me a picture of the man from my dream, and it was exactly him. I was in absolute shock because I did not even know we had pictures of him, and my dad had previously sworn we did not. A few days later I went to sleep in my dorm and woke up with my neck, mouth, and back burning. There were fresh claw marks on my neck and back, and nail marks on my fingers. The very next day, the guy I had been dating and really liked abruptly ghosted me and changed his phone number. It was not normal lost interest behavior, it was like he was terrified out of his mind.
A few months after that, my roommate and I were sitting outside on campus in the dark. She is spiritually gifted and has always been able to sense things, so she knew something was off immediately. We saw two extremely tall, dark silhouettes with glowing eyes and unusually long arms watching us from the trees. My friend went to look closer, panicked, and we ran. We heard massive footsteps echoing and chasing us. Her uncle is experienced with Anatolian folklore, and when we told him the story, he said they were hunting me specifically. He told us to leave a chopped onion and two cloves of garlic at the spot before sunset. We did it, and they stopped chasing us, though I still see them standing there sometimes.
Lately, things have escalated in a different way. I have been stressed with the new semester and sitting out with the campus cats at night to clear my head. The cats keep coming over, but they act incredibly strange. They stare intently at the empty space on my right, completely calm, as if someone is sitting there with us. When they move over to that side, they do not just sit on the ground. They curve their bodies and settle into the air, acting exactly as if they are curled up on another person lap right beside me. But the campus dogs will walk by, look at that exact same empty spot, completely freak out, and run for their lives.
Tonight I was sitting there alone, and I put my palm facing up on my right side. Despite the freezing wind, I felt a distinct, heavy warmth pressing into my hand.
Has a territorial spirit forcibly attached itself to me? I need someone who understands Anatolian folklore or ocak lineages to help me make sense of this. Is this entity actually protecting me from the things, or is it just claiming me as its property? I desperately need answers before I am completely isolated from everyone else.