The 3 Men-guardian Angels Or Oppressors?

When I was 12 (i'm 20 now) I was undergoing almost a years worth of consistent night terrors (The kind where you wake up screaming, confused, gasping for air, scratched and bleeding, just terrified). Eventually my mom, being a very devout Christian, requested a prayer team from the church to come and pray over the house. They came in the form of a group of nice old men and women, full of smiles but with a grim countenance as they entered. They prayed over each room, and after the tour they came to a group conclusion that the house was very well protected in spiritual terms, even though they were fully prepared to find something horrific. Before they left, a nice guy (his name was Red), took out a jar of holy water and painted some crosses in specific spots in my room: bedpost, the door, and the window. They left and for a few weeks I thought nothing more of it.

Two weeks later I woke up. Emphasis on woke up. What followed was not a dream. I was facing the wall, and the second I awoke, something felt wrong. I felt sandwhiched between two realities. I immediately called for my brother above me on the top bunk but there was no response. I started shouting his name and yet it was as if he didn't exist. The feeling of being out of place still had not left me. I rolled over to get out of bed and find my parents, and immediately froze. The moon hung high above my backyard, and my old room was always well illuminated. There in my room, stood 3 "men." I use the word lightly, for they had no distinguishable characteristics. No clothes, no hair, no faces, nothing. Pure silhouettes, taller than normal men.

One was kneeling within a foot of my face, I imagined he was staring at me by the nature of his posture. The second stood at the window, staring out into the night and the third stood at the door of the room, staring into the dark hallway. I was literally petrified (coming from the Latin petra, literally meaning like a rock, unmoving). I couldn't move, I dared not even breathe. For a 12 year old, it was like something out of a paranormal activity movie that I watched without my parents knowing. That aside, I layed there for what felt like hours, feeling isolated from my family that apparently had no presence in whatever realm of thought I found myself in. It was then that I became aware of something lying in the bed with me. It was skinless, decrepit, and corpse-like, yet it seemed just as petrified as I was. I felt trapped in the middle of a conflict I did not belong in.

As suddenly as it began, it was over. I blinked, and the illusion shattered like a mirror. Immediately, my terror washed over me and I began screaming, waking up my family (including my brother who somehow now could hear my shouts). My night terrors stopped immediately afterwards. We've since moved out of the house but I remember it clearer than yesterday. That was 8 years ago today. I recently had a talk with a man well versed in both the bible and theological readings. I told him the story and how for years the narrative has been that I witnessed my guardian angels. After all, in case it got lost in translation, each of the men was positioned by where the prayer team had marked out the crosses with holy water. One watching me, two watching the exits. Biblically, angels convey a sense of fear. The man I spoke to asked me an interesting line of questioning that kept me sleepless for nights. Would guardian angels or any sort of angels appear as beings of shadow? Would they leave me terrified? Did I witness the things that had been inducing the terrible nightmares I had been having?

I have kept this encounter very close to me and thought about it often, but I'm finding myself in the middle of some intense spiritual warfare currently, and I wanted to try this and see what others thought. Were they angels or something darker? I simply can't discern.

God bless,

Joshua