It's often said that children are able to sense and see things that adults cannot, so it comes as no surprise that a lot of the paranormal incidents many people experience occur in their childhood.

Of course, there are many exceptions to this, but I myself was not one of them.

When I was a child, I used to hear voices calling to me. I would be playing on my own, lost in my own world, when a distant voice would call my name. Often, I mistook this voice as that of my mother or my babysitter since the voice sounded distinctly female, but each time I asked them, they would always say that they hadn't called for me.

On rare occasions, I would also hear a male voice calling my name; coincidentally, this seemed to occur after the death of a close male relative and, as a child, I used to wonder if they were trying to contact me from beyond the grave (although I dismissed the idea just as quickly). But just like before, the voice seemed to belong to no one, especially since around the time of these incidents, the household consisted of only females.

While most of the time I paid no mind to these voices, something that I always noted was that they always sounded very enticing, for the lack of a better word. To me as a child, it sounded like the sort of voice my mother would use to call me when she had something good for me, whether it be a present or my favourite food. And whenever I heard the voices, I was always somewhere on my own.

The first few times I heard the voice, I always searched for the source, especially since it sounded so inviting. But after discovering time after time that no one had called for me, even if I heard the voice again, I used to ignore it, coming to the conclusion that if whoever had called me really wanted me, they would come looking for me themselves.

And as time passed, the voices seemed to diminish.

Now, what I'm not entirely sure of is whether the voices came before or after the incident I'm about to recount since this happened so long ago, but thinking back on it now, I can't help but wonder if they were somehow connected.

Around the time of this incident, the only people in the house were my mother and me. I was quite a heavy sleeper - still am - and I very rarely woke up in the middle of the night if ever. So it came as a surprise to me when, one night, for whatever reason, I found myself awake.

My first reaction was to look to my side to see whether I had awoken because my mother had gotten out of bed - she was an early bird and used to wake up even before the sun was up. To my dismay, I found her side of the bed empty and the house still plunged in darkness. I wondered if perhaps she had gone to the bathroom, but there was no sign of life in the room or outside of it, save for my own.

As the panic soon escalated and I was on the verge of tears, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a shadow pass through the doorway of the bedroom. The strange thing about this was that the shadow moved out of the bedroom, but at the time I was the only one in there.

Nevertheless, I didn't hang around to debate all this back then - I just got out of bed and called out to the figure, following them out of the room, because I believed that the shadowy figure was that of my mother. It certainly looked like her, at least in the dark; the figure was definitely female and wore a long skirt or dress, similar to the ones my mother used to wear, and even their long hair was tied up in a ponytail, just like my mother's was during the day.

To a four or five-year old me, there was no doubt that it was my mother. So, without question, I followed the figure through the house.

I called to the figure a few times because they never showed any sign of acknowledging my presence - they just kept walking slowly and calmly through the house - but at a pace where I could never quite reach them which made me frustrated because I didn't want them to leave and I wanted them to know that I was there.

But a new wave of panic ran through me when I realised where the figure was heading: to the front door. I had obliviously followed them all the way from the bedroom and through our living room without once questioning the situation, and even at that moment, the only reason I panicked was because I had assumed that my mother was going somewhere and leaving me behind.

Once this thought entered my mind, I broke out into a bit of a jog, hoping to catch up to the figure before they reached the door, and just as they were reaching for the door handle and I was a few feet away from them, I felt someone grab me around the waist and lift me off the ground.

I, of course, started panicking even more, crying and thrashing around to try and escape the arms of whoever was keeping me from getting to whom I thought was my mother when the sound of my actual mother's voice reached me from behind. When I looked back, I saw my mother's worried face looking back at me, asking me what I was doing.

For a moment, I forgot about the mysterious shadowy figure I had followed and just lay in my mother's comforting arms. When I finally remembered them again and looked towards the door, I saw them standing still and, for the first time since seeing them, they had turned to face me. The figure was just a dark shadow, I could make out nothing but their silhouette, and they stared my way for a few seconds.

Then, as my mother led me back into the bedroom, I saw the figure disappear through the door.

For years since then, I've wondered if maybe I had been sleepwalking, that maybe I had dreamt about the mysterious woman; I have never mentioned this story to anyone (as far as I can remember), not even to my mother and even if I did, I'm not sure whether she will remember it, and quite frankly, I'm afraid of what her answer may be.

But what made me wonder even more was that, years later, my classmates were sharing ghost stories and local urban legends and a certain story came up - the story of a mysterious woman who appeared to children in the middle of the night and lured them away from their homes. Some versions of the story say that they were never heard from again while others say they were later found in cemeteries, scared and lost, miles away from their homes.

A few years later, a classmate from an entirely different school claimed to have followed this mysterious woman herself, but at the time, even I found her story quite hard to believe as my memory of this incident was buried for a very long time until it resurfaced a few years ago.To this day, I'm still a little skeptical of what actually happened back then, but I'm definitely glad my mother was there to stop me from leaving the house that day.