NOTE: This story contains disturbing content. Please read at your own discretion.
A Texas woman will have enough nightmare fuel to last a lifetime after she was jolted out of bed by drops of blood that fell on her face while she slept.
Ana Cardenas initially thought the drops were water, but horror slowly dawned on her after she flicked on the lights in her bedroom.
“My apartment is covered in blood!” she said in a video recorded at the time, which she later shared with local broadcaster KTSM.
Cardenas’ nightmare unfolded at the Cielo Vista Apartments, a two-storey complex in El Paso, Texas. Cardenas’ apartment was on the ground floor and blood had seeped through the ceiling from above.
The blood dripped onto her bed and into her hair. The ceiling fan also flicked droplets around the room, she told the broadcaster.
“It grossed me out. I was in shock,” Cardenas told the broadcaster in Spanish. “I thought: ‘This isn’t real. This is a dream. Wake up!'”
Cardenas reported the incident to her landlords and the police showed up to investigate.
Authorities told Cardenas that the blood came from a resident who lived directly above her.
“The firefighters knocked down his door and the body was laying exactly where my fan is underneath. He had carpet but the blood seeped through to my ceiling,” she said.
“They took my fan down and a pool of blood came pouring down.”
First responders told her that the man died of natural causes.
Cardenas says she ended her lease and is now looking for a new place to stay. She is also demanding that her landlords pay for her ruined mattress and furniture.
The apartment had been partially gutted but flies and a foul smell still lingered in the air earlier this week, KTSM reports.
Management at the apartment building did not respond to requests for comment, and Cardenas is still waiting for them to compensate her.
She’s also set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for the cost of replacing her belongings and finding a temporary home until she can secure a new apartment.
It’s not the first time such an incident has happened. A Minneapolis man discovered last year that a dark stain on his apartment wall was blood from a dead neighbour who lived upstairs.
Cardenas says she plans to get checked out in case of disease. She says she’s still rattled by the incident.
“It was awful,” she said.