What’s cool with the hallucinations is that they often connect seamlessly with the real world. The instant you can move usually the first thing you want to do is check that the monster isn’t there. Not that you believe in monsters…but everything looks exactly the same as it just did, and it was right there.
And they have a funny way of catching you out.
The last paralysis dream I can remember, a dog had approached my bed, and was licking my face. I realized I’d left my front door unlocked and who knows who/what else is now in my house…and I can’t get up because I’m also having a paralysis dream!
When I could finally move I glanced around to look for the dog then realized it was a part of my dream. Incidentally I had forgotten to lock my front door.
Wow…I thought I was like the only one! No clue it was happening to so many other people! I have the exact same thing with these “waking dreams, sleep paralysis”. I don’t have RLS, or the other one, and I only experience sleep apnea if I have too much to drink before bed =D.
My own personal sleep paralysis experiences are just like the others here. Amazingly terrifying and completely real. I always thought that what was going on was that my body was falling asleep and systematically shutting down the utilities in preparation and somehow caused me to become paralyzed before it told me to fall asleep, and that I was consciously awake yet unable to move or call out for help in any way.
However after reading the article and everyone else here it seems we are actually asleep.
Which is GREAT news because I was really starting to wonder about that girl from The Ring standing next to my bed and staring at me while breathing slow and quiet, and bugs crawled all over the ceiling.
I’ve also experienced the hallucination with the “dark cloud”. It’s exactly the same, starting out above me at the ceiling, sometimes only looking like a shadow. Eventually it descends onto my chest and although it does nothing else, no noise or movement at this point, it’s extraordinarily terrifying…
I’ve never had a “happy” instance of this, and every time afterwards I usually can’t/don’t want to fall back to sleep and need time to collect myself and calm down.
Also, like others, this only happens when I try to sleep on my back. Very strange.
Oddly, I ran across thisonline. It’s an article in The Atlantic by Alexis Madrigal, titled: “The Dark Side of the Placebo Effect: When Intense Belief Kills.” It describes a theory that sleep paralysis became Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome among men who had immigrated to the US from southeast Asia in the early 1980s.
I’ve had this happen to me since I was about six years old. The only linking factor I’ve ever found was fatigue and/or stress, and sleeping on my back.
I would describe it as waking to find myself paralyzed with a plastic bag tied over my head. Sometimes I have a strong feeling of a presence in the room, sometimes not. In my mind I thrash and scream, but I can feel my body merely twitching, and shouts and screams only coming out as guttural sounds in my throat. There have been times when I’ve been able to calm down and assess the situation rationally, but even then it’s just: “I’m trapped, I feel strong panic as though I’m about to die, and I don’t think my body is breathing.” Then I have to struggle for what seems like an eternity to regain full consciousness.
It is not a dream or a nightmare. When I wake from a dream, it’s always instantly obvious that I was asleep a moment before, this is exactly like being awake. Sometimes I hallucinate, sometimes I can observe (or imagine I observe) my surroundings as though my eyes were open.
I guess it could all easily just be just a combination of sleep paralysis, my brain waking up in the wrong order, and a panic attack though.
There is some consolation in the fact that it happens very rarely, maybe a few times a year. Still, that’s enough.