I was alone at home on a Saturday afternoon. After working on the garden most of the day, I decided to take a short nap as it became too hot outside.

I slept in the living room couch for about an hour. When I woke up I realized I had slept too much, and hurried to get up as I wanted to finish the garden before sunset. Then the strangest thing happened: I couldn't move a single muscle in my body. It's not that I felt weak or something, it was like my body had disconnected from my mind. At the time I didn't know what was happening. A few days later I realized I must have had what people call an out-of-body experience. A couple of times I felt I got up and walked, only to find myself lying in the couch in the same state as before.

But this is only half the story. All the time I was lying in the sofa I was sure that my grandmother, who had died ten years ago, was in the room, close to the dining table. I didn't see her, I just knew she was there, and there was nothing that could convince me she wasn't there. I know this is hard for most people to believe, because I couldn't believe it myself even as it was happening. No matter how much I reasoned that my grandmother couldn't be there, the feeling of her presence just wouldn't go away. I couldn't understand why I could have knowledge without sensory input. The feeling of her presence was as strong as, for instance, my vision of the keyboard I'm typing now. There's no way to convince me that this keyboard is not here, no matter what others say, no matter what I think. So it was with Grandma's presence, it was an absolute certainty.

The whole thing lasted a couple minutes. When I regained control of my body everything was over.

I must tell you that even though I believe in God and in some kind of afterlife, I was, and still am, very skeptical about stories of spirits acting in the physical world. Specifically regarding these "presences", I was sure that it was some sort of intangible feeling, like when we say "I feel lucky today", and therefore more likely the product of a person's imagination.