Head Games

My experience with a ghost is short, but still leaves an impact on me. Even to this day, I'm afraid of that night. The experience itself had to be under 20 seconds long, the explanation took a couple of days to uncover, the memory a lifetime.
Here's the story:

I was just a kid when it happened. I forget the precise age - somewhere around the ages of 8 and 10. I was sharing the room with my siblings, 2 little brothers, one little sister. It was a very average Sunday, starting with going to church, ending with watching TV before going to sleep at 8:00. That night I had an extremely strange dream. I'm not sure whether or not if it's relevant, but I'll tell you it had something about me dying, going to heaven and being reincarnated. I woke up right after that. I guess I thought it was a nightmare at the time; I was sweating and gasping. I then turned onto my side to get back to sleep. That is when I saw it.

What I saw was a head. That was it. Just a head on my sister's dresser, which was right next to my bed. I couldn't really tell what it was at first, actually, as all I saw was the back of it. But as it slowly turned my way, I was able to see the features perfectly.

It seemed to be that of an old woman. The features were wrinkled and feminine. The eyes were shadowed out, I couldn't really see them. The nose was a pug, the mouth was moving, like it was trying to tell me something. I never quite made it out. I was very afraid. After it was completely facing me, I turned away and looked at the wall. After a couple of seconds, I turned back to see if it was still there.

Not only was it still there, but it was facing away from me again. Then the scene repeated itself. I quickly turned away from the head. I slowly counted to five before turning back. It was gone. My sister's dresser was bare once again.

I would have dismissed it as a delusion, except for a couple of things. One would be that the house itself was almost a century old, and actually had people buried in the basement (it was that old!). Another was that the day after I saw it, it turned out that the former owner of the house had a heart attack. Sure, that isn't too much to think about, but the thing is that she later died from it. She'd been living in the house for over 50 years, too. The next was that I learned a month later that 2 of my close friends experienced a similar experience with the head.
One of my friends couldn't get to sleep so he went downstairs to watch TV when he saw the head. The other was in a car at night and saw the head right next to the window. My little brother claimed to have seen the ghost, but I don't really believe him. He also claims to have seen another ghost, but he's known for making up stories.

Well, there you have it. My 100% true story. I know there's something called sleep paralysis in which a person can't move and imagines something sitting, choking, or just pushing him down so he can't move, but I was wide awake and I could move. I did turn away, remember. So, what was it? Was I still dreaming? Or was it a true encounter? I still believe that it was a ghost.