I went through a period of time in grad school where this feeling was so strong that it was absolutely affecting my ability to sleep. My bed was in the middle of the room. The headboard was facing the wall. One side of the bed had a view of a window and the other side a view of the door. The bed didn’t really fit in a different orientation because the room was an incredibly strange shape.

No matter what, I could not figure out which side to face to stop the very strong sensation of something being there. I kept having to open my eyes to “check” that nothing was there. I would toss and turn and struggle to make the feeling of being watched go away. I would sometimes swear I heard something breathing. Sometimes I would sleep on the floor…dunno why that felt like it would sometimes do something. Maybe I was able to orient my back to a wall or something idk.

Glad that finally went away. I think I was under extreme stress or something. I also had relatively frequent bouts of sleep paralysis. But I cannot tell you how terrifyingly strong that feeling of demons coming to get me was, even though my rational mind knew there was nothing there.

I had a fear of the dark as a child though, even as an older child. Some nights I would go sleep on my younger brother’s floor because I would get scared. So I had always had some issues with this. But this was dialed up to like 11. One time I couldn’t sleep for multiple days during this grad school period.

Been fine since tho lol.