This has happened maybe four or five times in my life.
And leaving my quite scared shitless each time, tbh…
I sleep probably 95% of the time on my side, but once in a while I’ll be on my back (drunk?), and as I’m drifting off - this happens when I’m right on the very cusp of sleep - my entire body freezes. I’m laying (lieing?) there, paralyzed, and actually start feeling like there’s some force pushing my whole body down, further into the bed, and I’m like ok wtf and try to summon the nerve to open my eyes, but managing to not really see anything in the dark - meanwhile one’s fertile imagination starts to envision some weird, dark force passing over. I start thinking about Mia Farrow’s “This is really happening!” or thinking about the Fuseli painting “The Nightmare”.
After a brief eternity it passes, but not a moment too soon.
Luckily I’ve been solo each time this has occurred, if that has any relevance.
Feels weird opening up about it like this, but there it is.
Sleep paralysis is very scary, but also pretty common. I’ve read that most people experience it at least once or twice in their life, and some people experience it fairly frequently. It’s frightening, but it can’t hurt you.
Lately, I’ve had several episodes of vertigo in bed that were pretty scarey. I wake up at night, and when I turn my head to the side, suddenly it feels like the whole bed is rotating up 90⁰ on it side and I feel like am going to get pitched onto the floor. Holding on to the side of the bed for dear life is the only thing that keeps me from falling out of bed. Then it passes, and everything is normal. Satan, I tells ya.
Weird, I distinctly remember it (sleep vertigo) happening to me when I was very YOUNG. Like 4. I also swear I remember waking up on the floor at the foot of my bed once, even.
But I did have chronic ear infections as a kid so I guess that explains that.
I had one (and only one thank heavens) about 30 years ago. I partially woke up at 3 am, in my real bedroom, at the time sleeping on a futon on the floor. I couldn’t move but my room was full of men in black hooded robes chanting. The noise volume itself was incredible and kneeling beside me one of the figures was talking into my ear giving me a play-by-play of what was apparently a black mass. I was convinced that Satan was about to appear through my window.
I did manage to completely wake up but holy crap I was terrified. I had no clue as to what happened until a couple of months later when I listened to an interview of the author of a book about hypnogogic and hypnopompic dreams.
I also, IRL, had a wack-job point a loaded 7.62 mm rifle at me. The dream was much scarier.
I’ve woken up a couple times during sleep paralysis but I didn’t have nightmares at the time. It felt like a completely numb arm or leg but over my whole body & I instinctively knew that’s what had happened & I told myself “go back to sleep; it’s not time to wake up yet”.