It started with me when I was around 21. One night I was lying on my back just waiting to drift off to sleep and I suddenly realized that I couldn’t move a muscle. I’d never experiencd anything like it before and I was terrified. My wife was sleeping next to me in the bed and I desperately tried to alert her to my plight but there was absolutely nothing I could do.
I was on my back with both hands on my chest and eventually I realized that if I could only tilt my body a fraction gravity would drop one of my arms to the bed. I put all my will into it and finally that’s just what happened and as soon as the arm began to drop I instantly recovered muscle control. I don’t know how long it lasted, probably only a matter of minutes, but it seemed like an eternity.
I had no idea back then about the condition known as night terrors or the night hag. (This was pre internet so I couldn’t check it out.) I just prayed that whatever it was it wouldn’t happen again. It did of course and for the next five or six years I was subject to periodic bouts, sometimes months apart. The paralysis was often accompanied by audio-visual effects, in my case flashing geometrical shapes on the ceiling and odd noises in my ears, sometimes like distant wailing, other times disjointed chattering just beyond the verge of intelligibility. (I’ve read since that there seem to be a multitude of different types of hallucination experienced by sufferers.) I worked out that the attacks were far more likely to occur when sleeping on my back, and the danger period was always on the threshold of sleep or just after waking, before one was fully awake.
I would have consulted my doctor but in those days I was a registered heroin addict (this is in the UK) and I knew if I told him about it he would instantly blame it on the heroin and reduce my dosage. It turned out to be totally unrelated to the heroin and other drugs I was taking since the terrors after 5/6 years stopped as suddenly as they had begun even though I was still a heavy drug user.
I haven’t had an incident of this for around 40 years and they are thankfully now but a distant though vivid memory. Has anyone else here suffered from these terrifying attacks?
What you described is not night terrors, but sleep paralysis. During sleep the brain kind of disables the body so that you don’t do anything dumb like act out a dream (oversimplification). Sometimes the timing gets messed up and you are paralyzed when in a conscious state, either just before going to sleep or just after waking up. If it lasts for an extended period it can induce panic.
I experienced this once that I can remember, for less than a minute.
I was proud of myself. I live alone, so if I can’t get out of bed, I will die before anyone comes looking.
Realizing this, I did the obvious: go back to sleep. That’s how I go into this condition, and it is likely the only way to either get out of it or die while asleep.
Yep, sleep paralysis, not a night terror. Can happen either when falling asleep, or when waking up.
I had it happen to me a couple of times when waking up, in my early teens. The first time, I’d been up early, then went back to bed for a couple of hours, and it happened when waking after that (I seem to recall reading that this is a common pattern for triggering an episode). I woke up, was aware, but COULD NOT MOVE. I finally managed to moan or something, and that snapped me out of it.
I stumbled out of my room, sat down at the kitchen table where my mother was working on something, and for the one and only time in my life, I burst into tears of utter terrified hysteria.
Both my kids had actual night terrors as toddlers - my son (who is mildly autistic) much more so than my daughter. He’d “wake” screaming during the night and be utterly unreachable - couldn’t be calmed or comforted in any way nor could we get him to fully wake up. We learned to just leave him in his crib to scream it out, which was pretty rough but I think resolved things faster.
Once when travelling, we were in a hotel with a king-sized bed. Our daughter was 3 months old and was in her bassinet by the bed. Our son was sleeping in the middle of the bed between us. He a night terror - screaming, flailing; we tried dumping him in the middle of the bed and getting away from the bed and he scrambled to the edges to try to hit us some more. So our usual pattern of leaving him alone to shriek and fall back asleep was not working. We finally threw some clothes on and dragged both kids out to the car to drive them around, as we thought the hotel was going to get complaints and throw us out. As we headed through the lobby, toddler still shrieking and hitting, I told the desk clerk “if you’ve been getting reports of a murder on the 4th floor, this is what’s happening”.
The child fell back asleep within 2 minutes of the car starting.
Yup - as already stated, there are two phenomena here: night terrors and sleep paralysis.
I’ve experienced both, fortunately very rarely.
I had sleep paralysis a few times between high school and grad school. At least once it was combined with lucid dream/UFO type experience, where I “saw” a bright light come to my window. I’m a no-nonsense type who realizes my brain was playing interesting tricks on me, nothing more. The experience did give me some insight into how others might spin such an experience into a UFO abduction.
I had exactly one night terror, when I was 24, and damn it was horrible. It really felt like a malignant force had come to me in my sleep. I screamed in terror and woke myself up. My poor husband, who was in the next room reading, just about wet his pants. Of course, once I awakened I knew it was just some brain misfire, not an actual evil force. But wow…it felt impressively real.
It spooked me the first time, and certainly didn’t help that my crazy family spread rumors about it being due to demons, or whatever, but after I read about what was actually taking place, I calmed down. It’s still annoying when it happens, but I just kind of roll with it.
I get tremors, well not really tremors, worse than tremors, there are these terrors, it feels as if somebody was gripping my throat and squeezing…
Wait, nvm with the mcr references. Never had sleep paralysis unless you count “waking up and thinking you are really awake only to discover you just dreamt you had woken up”. Never had night terrors unless you count the couple of times when I had had more than 3 drinks before bed more than 3 nights in a row and woke up in the middle of the night in a fright for no reason at all except that my sleep had been disrupted by the alcohol.
Happened to me once about 18-20 years ago. I dreamed of this big spider demon attacking me and woke up. Sitting up, mid-scream, drenched in sweat. Bed soaked as well. I’d never felt that kind of overwhelming Evil and Fear before or since. Thankfully, I’ve never had a repeat.