So Terry,
Are you saying my experiences were not real?
Subjectively, your interpretations of your experiences were as real as real can be (subjectively).
I can identify with what you are saying because I went through similar experiences.
I'll give just one example.
When I was a teenage JW, late at night as I was about to fall asleep; my bedsheet would start to crawl slowly off of me!!
This scared the living shit out of me.
It went on for a long time. (With other incidents as well.)
In my late 20's, after I was married, my wife said to me: "Did you know you have RLS?"
I replied intelligently, "Wuh?"
My wife clarified, "You have restless limb syndrome. Your foot wags like a dog's tail!"
"Oh, sure. I've done that all my life. I just thought it was a nervous habit."
"Ok, but you do it in bed as you are falling asleep and it tends to cause the sheet to pull off of me and I don't appreciate it."
BINGO!
My stupid foot wagging was inching the sheet downward---and not DEMONS!
Bottom line?
If we have an interpretive mechanism in place that INCLUDES demons, spirits, what-have-you.....we will employ those particular interpretations and
superimpose them as EXPLANATIONS for natural events we are unaware of otherwise.
Primitive man considered lightning to be thuderbolts hurled from heaven.
Meteorology has eliminated that as a feasible explanation.