A case study: My first/only episode of sleep paralysis

[TruthSeeker]

This happened last night/early this morning (around 2 am). I was sleeping on my right side. I awoke, sort of. This is a frequent thing for me ~ I semi-awaken several times each night and merely rolling over and turning on talk radio puts me back to sleep.

But last night something was different. As I was about to turn, I felt a "weight" descend and sort of wrap itself around me. Imagine me lying in the fetal position and something coiling itself between my arms, down my chest, so that I was "spooning it". I "knew" what was happening but none the less was alarmed. I tried to move and found I could not. I concentrated very hard and finally was able to jerk myself out of position. Once I did move, but not before, the "presence" immediately disappeared and I had a huge autonomic response ~ heart pounding, shaky, short of breath. This lasted about a minute.

I was reluctant to go back to sleep.

I have a new found compassion for people who have experienced this before. I also understand why someone not familiar with "sleep paralysis" would believe that they had been visited by a paranormal being.

It was very creepy.

I hope it never happens again.

[Rolfe]

I had something similar once. I seemed to be dreaming, almost a nightmare, then I woke up - or so it seemed. The room was dark. I half sat up in bed, relieved to be rid of the bad dream. Then something took hold of the bottom corners of my duvet and tugged!

I freaked, I think I was hanging on to the duvet and "it" was pulling and jerking at the other end. It was incredibly frightening.

Then I woke up. The room was a lot lighter, and I was actually lying face down. The duvet was undisturbed.

I realised that the first "waking" had still been part of the dream. But it wouldn't have taken much to have made me believe that I really had had an encounter with some sort of poltergeist in the middle of the night.

I know what you mean!

Rolfe.

[Ratman_tf]

I've had such an episode too. I've mentioned it here a few times.

What shocked me is how it makes you ifeel. Anyone who says they could tell the difference between a ghost or alien and a waking dream like this, hasn't had one happen to them yet, IMHO.

[zer0vector]

I actually have that feeling rather frequently, say 1-2 times a month. It's actually kind of interesting if you calm down, and realize what is really going on. Sometimes I just drift back into deeper sleep, and other times I concentrate to pull (it definitely feels like pulling for me) myself awake.

If I remember correctly it started around the time I got really good curtains for my room, which made it almost pitch black, even in the morning.

[dingler44]

My experience was aweful. It occurred after several straight days of traveling on little rest. I don't know if that had anything to do with it or not. I've only gone through such a thing once in my life. Also, the room was well lit with sunlight through shoddy curtains. The light level of the room was the same in the dream as it was in reality.

I remember thinking I had awoken from a very disturbing nightmare... and looking around the hostel room to see my travel companions still napping. But when I tried to pull myself up I couldn't move. I could lift my head just enough to look around the room but I couldn't lift it any further. I started to get nervous... and tried to focus on just tightening my abs and pulling myself up. It didn't work and I started to panic. I thought I was gonna get sick... thought I was going to vomit and I wanted desperately to turn to my side so I didn't throw up on myself. Just as I felt like the panic attack would culminate into passing out...

I REALLY woke up. Everything in the room was just as it had been in the dream... my friends still sleeping soundly. I pulled out my journal and wrote about it... cuz there was no way I was getting back to sleep!

I never had a sensation of being wrapped by a presence or being pressed down by some unseen force. I just thought something was terribly wrong with my own body.

[mort]

A couple times when I was in my mid-teens I has sleep paralysis. It was much like you guys describe, as if some sort of "presence" was keeping me from moving. However, I do recall during one of these episodes I was able to briefly break free and make it out of my bed, after which I was stuck to my floor. Of course when I woke up I was still in my bed, but I suspect that was because the aliens wanted me to believe that it was all a dream. :D

[Tricky]

That area between dreaming and awake is very strange. Several times I have realized, in the middle of a dream, that it was in fact a dream, but didn't wake up.

One of the strangest was once when I awoke from a dream and thought, "boy, that was strange", then got up. After I got up, strange things began to happen again, and I realized I hadn't actually gotten up, but just started dreaming again. This happened three or four times before I actually woke up.

[TruthSeeker]

Thanks for sharing these stories.

I can't sleep. It is entirely avoidance.

Oh well....

[Quinn]

It's happened to me about four times, two of which were among the most terrifying experiences of my life. TruthSeeker, at least you already knew what it was before you experienced it. I didn't, and as a result I went through an unfortunate phase of pretty much believing in astral travel and whatnot. When I finally read about sleep paralysis, it was a huge relief to realize that what I had been experiencing was a documented neurological process, and not some uncontrollable instance of my consciousness leaving my body and getting stuck in some other realm where I was vulnerable to malevolent beings (which was exactly what it seemed like). Retroactively examining my responses to the experience before I understood what it was, is what lead me to skepticism.

[athon]

While I've never experienced sleep paralysis, I do suffer from chronic nightmares.

The worst thing about them isn't that they're disturbing (although they are quite nasty). It's the enhanced emotion I wake up with - fear, sadness, depression...and it can last all day. It makes no logical sense - I feel like a woman on PMS! (ducking for cover...).

But the feeling is there. I wake up, sometimes half screaming, half crying, and it takes me a moment to realise that it was a dream. I can control the waking phase now, but it's still rather draining.

Athon

[Glory]

I have experienced this as well. A couple of times I couldn't move and felt as though something was pressing down on me. A couple of times I have been unable to move and was finally awakened when a sensation of falling began. That was scary! The thing is, I never thought in retrospect that it was anything other than a dream. I have had many dreams in which I "woke up" only to realize that I had in fact not woken up at all when I woke up again. I just automatically assumed that I had been dreaming and that sometimes dreams seem very real. I can understand why some people would think that something extraordinary was happening especially when one can remember feeling a presence during the paralysis but I never made that leap.

Perhaps the difference is that I have had many dreams which seemed just as real but were much more mundane like being surprised that I over slept and was late for school or work. I remember I once awoke from such a dream and got up and frantically started to get dressed thinking I was an hour late for school before I realized that it was Saturday morning. I knew it was Saturday and yet I couldn't shake the fear that I needed to get up and get to school because that dream had been so real. If that dream seemed so real than why wouldn't one that was much stranger? The point is I have known since I was a little kid how real dreams can seem so I do not assume that something that seems real must be real. It is a little like seeing the props used for a magic show which I have had the pleasure of doing. I once was permitted to see the back stage area for one of David Copperfield's shows. The tricks looked real and I had seen how some of the tricks worked. I know that I can be fooled and so I am harder to fool.

Glory

[Glory]

Originally posted by athon
While I've never experienced sleep paralysis, I do suffer from chronic nightmares.

The worst thing about them isn't that they're disturbing (although they are quite nasty). It's the enhanced emotion I wake up with - fear, sadness, depression...and it can last all day. It makes no logical sense - I feel like a woman on PMS! (ducking for cover...).

But the feeling is there. I wake up, sometimes half screaming, half crying, and it takes me a moment to realise that it was a dream. I can control the waking phase now, but it's still rather draining.

Athon

The nightmares trigger certain chemical reactions in your brain which result in real emotions which do not simply evaporate with the images of the dream. I am really sorry to hear that you have to deal with that. It sounds terrible.

Your PMS analogy is actually spot on. PMS is caused by hormonal(chemical) changes that result in real emotions as well. Think of women with PMS as having had nightmares all night;) and be kind.

[Zep]

Sleep apnoeia (stopped breathing) can produce the "choking" sensations you feel. You are indeed physically choking, i.e. not breathing, although your lungs are trying to. If you are in a dreaming state at the time, it may produce all the hallmarks of being squeezed (like an anaconda, perhaps), and would obviously be frightening or at least register as fright.

The "recovery" from sleep apnoeia is very much a sharp out-and-intake of breath, like when surfacing from snorkelling. If this is particularly fierce, it may well wake you up, and you come awake suddenly, scared, and breathing heavily.

Of course, the psyche of your dreams is a COMPLETELY different thing!!

[athon]

Originally posted by Glory


The nightmares trigger certain chemical reactions in your brain which result in real emotions which do not simply evaporate with the images of the dream. I am really sorry to hear that you have to deal with that. It sounds terrible.

Your PMS analogy is actually spot on. PMS is caused by hormonal(chemical) changes that result in real emotions as well. Think of women with PMS as having had nightmares all night;) and be kind.

Yeah, I've had it since I was a kid. Very weird - these are very different from most dreams, in that they are typically very distopian - grey, drab, with few people in them and very post-war sort of imagery. They come in cycles every so many months, where I might have several in a week and then nothing for maybe four months.

I've done a heap of research on dreams and sleep since (one of the things that led me into medical science).

Athon

[Underemployed]

When I was a child, in the the middle of a long road trip with my family we stopped at a layby to get some rest. We all fell asleep in the car, and I remember waking up in pitch darkness, aware of my surroundings, being able to look around but completely unable to move. It was like all my limbs were in advanced pins-and-needles mode and refused to budge. Being surrounded by my family I did not feel threatened, but it was uncomfortable. I have had a few other similar experiences since, but not many.

On an unrelated note, one time when I was about 11-12 I came home from school very tired and rested on my bed. I woke up fully refreshed and was amazed to see I had slept through the night, it was 6 o'clock and I went downstairs for breakfast still in my school uniform. My mother asked why I hadn't changed yet and I said I did change. We got into a huge argument about it - it was the first time I remember shouting at her. Why couldn't this woman realise I was ready for school? What did she want me to change into?

Eventually she sent me up to my room in disgust. It was then that I realised I had only slept for two hours. It was six in the evening and she was preparing dinner, not breakfast.

[RonSceptic]

I have suffered from this condition for as long as I can remember. In my case, I am fully consiuos but unable to move. Worst of all is the fact that I can't breathe and feel that I am slowly suffocating. This creatres quite a panic reaction.

It takes an imense effort to force a physical mnovement. The act of doing so seems to snap me out of it. However, sometimes I believe I have moved and left the bed only to find that I am in fact still paralysed. It's really stressful.

I have found that I can make sounds while still paralysed. So if my wife hears me, all she has to do is physically move me by a push or shake, and the condition passes instantly.

Easy to see how a beleiver in alien abduction could interpret such an incident as something more than it is.

All I can say is that I wish that it would stop happening to me. :(

[Luceiia]

Basically the same as others have described, except my instances always involved me being paralyzed with fear while watching helplessly for the intruder to show him/herself. I never felt a weight or tugging, just the knowledge that an intruder (with a *very* nasty disposition) was just around the corner in my home.

After a bit I would calm down and realized it was an episode of sleep paralysis and I'd concentrate all of my being on just wiggling my pinky finger the tiniest bit...perhaps an angstrom. Once it wiggled, I was fine.

I often wondered if I was 'testing' my ability to react in an emergency versus simply freezing up due to stark terror.


Luceiia

[wayrad]

I had the same experience for a while when I was in my teens. Unable to move, weight pushing on me, etc. I recall being terrified to move, as much as being unable to. Maybe it was just coincidence, but it stopped happening after an occasion or two on which I forced myself to move, and then kick and hit out at the imaginary "thing". Given the physiological reasons for sleep paralysis, I'm not sure why this should be so. Perhaps I just slept better once I felt that I could control the situation somewhat?

[The Mighty Thor]

Originally posted by athon


Yeah, I've had it since I was a kid. Very weird - these are very different from most dreams, in that they are typically very distopian - grey, drab, with few people in them and very post-war sort of imagery. They come in cycles every so many months, where I might have several in a week and then nothing for maybe four months.

I've done a heap of research on dreams and sleep since (one of the things that led me into medical science).

Athon

I've often wondered if clinical depression is connected with bad dreams, especially of the distopian, gloomy kind you describe. Could it be that the dreams cause the depression?

There was a study done in Australia, I think, where Holocaust survivers were studied. Those who admitted to dreaming about their experiences in the camps found to be clinically depressed. Those who were not depressed, generally said they did not dream, or could not remember their dreams.

I sympathise with Athon. I take an SSRI to control depression and my bad dreams seem to be more infrequent. It must all be down to hormones and brain chemistry.

malc

[SRW]

I have had this experience many times, at first I am floating in a pitch black space. Then I have the sense of being sucked into a whirlpool, and I can feel daemons pulling on my feet. This is when I "wake up" I can see but cannot move. In order to come out of it I have to summon all my strength to make a noise. And that is what wakes me up. I really hate it when it happens.

[The Mighty Thor]

Dr Persinger did experiments with subjects in a sealed room, deprived of audio and visual stimuli. A weak magnetic field was applied to their brains.

The subjects, including Dr Susan Blackmore, all felt a strange presence, and an unexplainable feeling of extreme anxiety.

I think misunderstood hypnogogic and hypnopompic hallucinations and sleep apnea cover many of the phenomena that some people term 'paranormal.'

I wonder what role these brain phenomena had in evolutionary terms? They appear to be autonomic and to over-ride other autonomic functions like breathing for a time.

Frightening? -- I agree. Supernatural? -- no!

malc

[Disco]

have I had this experience. I can only say that it started when I had something in my life change my environment.

The first time, my SO had taken a new job & was only home on weekends. He had come home on Friday, & the next night I had gone to bed early, only to wake to "people" talking outside our window. He was not in bed yet. I couldn't move - I strained to hear what these "people" were saying, but no words made any sense. I couldn't move. After a period of time trying to move, to get him, to do anything, I fell back asleep. Later, when he came to bed, I finally relaxed & slept soundly.

Much later, when we had finally relocated nearer his job, I had a more intense experience. I had more drinks than normal, so I went to bed early. I woke several times, or so I thought. Sometimes, he was there with me and trying to cuddle. I felt smothered. Sometimes, he was trying to cuddle, but I still had my clothes on. This freaked me out, because I remembered taking them off before I went to bed. So, I would try to get out of bed to take off my clothes, but then I would realize that I was naked. Finally, I woke up just as I should have been, but sitting on the edge of our bed and panicked beyond belief.

So now I know, now, not to drink too much before bed. Hopefully my hubby will be coming to bed on a regular basis, too.

MHB

[RonSceptic]

So many people with these experiences, maybe ther wa something to the Matrix after all!;)

[nick]

Come off it people, admit it:
- you got kidnapped by aliens - after all, you have the classic symptoms
- you got the anal probe treatment
- and you enjoyed it.

"De Nile - it's not just a river"

:D :D :D

[billydkid]

I have had the experience many times in my life. Less frequently as I get older. It used to be that when I am in that mode it came with that lucid dreaming experience. I can't seem to be able to do that anymore, but I used to have fairly involved and intense lucid dream experiences that, on occassion, had an extremely "real" quality - consciousness of textures and evironments and so on. On a couple of occassions there were other "entities" in the dreams. It was all pretty cool when it happened. Alas, it doesn't happen much anymore.

[PinkRabbit]

I've only had this experience once, just a couple of months ago. Oddly enough, since I'd read about it here, it didn't scare me, and I actually found it rather fascinating.

I do understand how someone who didn't know what was happening could be frightened, and could believe something paranormal was happening to them though. I mean, you're coming up out of sleep and suddenly there's a weight on you, and you can't move.

Personally, I was quite glad I realized what was going on, both because it was rather interesting to actually experience it, and also because I do think that had I not known, it would have scared the hell out of me. Not that I would have thought it was paranormal, but I can envision fearing it was the start of a heart attack or stroke or something like that if I hadn't known what was happening. Y'know, pressure on the chest, total paralysis...two things that one doesn't much like to contemplate.

Barb

[TruthSeeker]

Thanks all for these stories.

My sleep has been out of whack ever since it happened. Sleeping little and do not feel refreshed at all.

Has anyone had that happen after one of these experiences?

[SRW]

Originally posted by TruthSeeker
Thanks all for these stories.

My sleep has been out of whack ever since it happened. Sleeping little and do not feel refreshed at all.

Has anyone had that happen after one of these experiences?

Yes I did, I told the doc and got some sleeping pills. That did the trick.

[TruthSeeker]

Originally posted by SRW


Yes I did, I told the doc and got some sleeping pills. That did the trick.

Thanks, I'll try that if it continues tonight.

[SquishyDave]

I love these stories, I don't think I have had sleep paralysis ever, but I do get night terrors.

Oh they're great, one time I was happily sleeping in bed, when an arm attacked me, it was just an arm, sort of cut off just above the elbow, it was fully trying to kill me, so I wake up, screaming at the top of my lungs, "AAAAAAARRGH HELP ME" I have never screamed louder in my life, but I managed to get a hold of the arm, still screaming, because I had the arm held firmly, just below the stump at one end, but the other end I was sort of holding hands with it, and it was squeezing really hard on my hand, then relaxing, then squeezing again. I couldn't let go to turn on my bedside light, because it would get away. My heart was beating a million miles an hour, and I was breathing heavily, and I don't think I have ever been more scared, then finally after what seemed like an age my brother bursts into my room and turns on the light ready to fight off my attacker. And there I am, half sitting up in bed, with a death grip on my own left hand. :o In my defense my arm had gone to sleep, so even though I was squeezing my left hand as hard as I could with my right hand, my left hand couldn't feel anything. I have only woken up screaming a few times, usually I just wake up and I KNOW there is the biggest evil ever in my own room, I can move physically, but I can't move because I am too scared to even breath too loud. After a while the feeling lessens and I can move just enough to turn on the light (slowly and quietly), then after that the fear rapidly drains, until I can try to go back to sleep, sometimes I have to go back to sleep with the light on :rolleyes:

Still, that arm incident also scared the living ***** out of my brother and his girlfriend, and that's pretty funny. :)

I just feel sorry for pre electric light man, I can't imagine waking up like that and being completely unable to quickly turn on a light to chase away the evil. No wonder so many people think there are dark forces at work, can you imagine a pre-history man being woken up by his friend screaming about being attacked, then nothing is there? But the guy swears black and blue he felt the thing with its hands around his throat? (Happened to me also on a different night, I managed to leap out of bed to avoid that one :)) You would think there were evil spirits at work too.