Years ago I was in asleep and “woke” to see someone standing over me. I vaguely had the feeling that he was going to do me harm. I could not move.
Eventually I did wake up - but here is the part that made it more scary: The hall light was on. I never leave lights on, I like to sleep in total darkness. I get up to turn it off AND the living room light was on. I never leave that on. I go to turn that off AND the front door is unlocked. I never leave (left) that door unlocked. It was freaky.
(I actually leave my front door unlocked where I live now.)
I think age has something to do with this. When I was a young soldier I got terrible sleep paralysis where I would see a 7-foot sihouette of a guy in a cloak and hood standing at the foot of my bed laughing at me. Once a scary little animal came crawling out of the toilet snapping it’s teeth at me. Another time it was a friend of mine waving his hand above my face and laughing at me for being paralyzed.
Until I was 30 years old I thought I was seeing demons in the astral plane.
I don’t get any menacing dudes, surprisingly. I get visions, and most of the time I can’t remember what they are. Simple things become frightening. The colors are all whacked-out and colors appear for which I don’t have a name for.
But I’m also at the point where I can mentally shake myself out of it and go back to sleep.
Most people experience mild hypnagogic hallucinations, usually experienced as a sensation of falling from a great height which makes you kick out, just before you fall asleep. This is on the same lines, just more severe and happening when you’re waking up, not when you’re falling asleep.
I’ve had that twice in my life. I can clearly remember the last time it happened- I dreamt that there was someone sitting on the bed right next to me, looking down at me… with a huge, evil grin. shudder I still get chills thinking about it.
I don’t remember the paralysis, though- I clearly levitated straight up about four feet, so nope, no paralysis.
Oh holy fucking fuck!! I can’t believe that people are openly talking about this! That I finally have a rational explanation for the two “Ghosts” I have seen in my life! Wow, whatever else is said on this thread, one thing is for sure… It calms a man to know he is not alone. I too was “Visited”, I woke to see a woman standing over the bed, visible from the neck down, not moving. I buried my self under the covers like a child and stayed there till morning. I never spoke of it to anyone. This happened about six months ago. And once, when I was about six, a similar thing happened, I woke to see afigure beside the bed… He looked like, let me see… Remember in the Xfiles, when Mulder found those bodies in a burnt out train carriage buried in the desert, and he notice that they had vacination scars, which meant they were human? Remember those guys? My visitor looked like that. In later years, watching that episode, I nearly shite in my pants. Wow, I’m sorry for the discomfort that it caused you, Rigmarole, but I am so glad that I have read this thread.
As a slight hijack, what is it called when you dream that you are falling, and just as you hit the ground, you violently waken, sometimes jerking your body so hard that you “levetate” off the bed? You guys get that one too, right?
I’ve had it more times than I can remember… but usually only when I nap during the daytime and when it’s light out.
I’m quite lucid most of the times, and usually there’s no hallucinating. I can actually recall what’s going on around me. But I can’t move and my eyes are heavy … I’m claustrophobic to a point as well, so it becomes a very alarming experience.
Interestingly, I can wiggle my toes in this state. I used this several times to signal to my SO to wake me up, and she’s done it maybe twice. I felt absolutely terrible when she woke me, though - as if I hadn’t slept in days. I say thanks and go right back to sleep. :smack:
So strange that this seems always to be accompanied by frightening hallucinations–usually of a menacing figure–or at least the distinct feeling of a menacing presence.
I sometimes have sleep paralysis. It’s odd–it will go on for virtually every night for weeks, then suddenly stop and not happen again for six months or more.
I’ve never seen ghostly figures, though. I’ll “wake” to the same room I went to sleep in, but it will bathed in a bright, even light, and all the details are gone leaving only the major items that I suppose my brain associates with whatever room I’m in. There’ll also be a ringing tone, like you sometimes get in your ears when it’s absolutely silent. That’s very unusual for me, as my dreams never have any sound.
To end it, I’ll start to shake. I won’t move at all in the dream, but in real life, I do shake quite violently (I’m told). After a few seconds of shaking, the dream-room fades into the real one and I’m awake.
I get sleep paralysis almost every morning. I usually wake up through it; from sleeping, through a period of paralysis, to finally jerking myself awake. This sucks; I’m not one of those people who wake up joyfully.
I used to get sleep paralysis all the time, but it’s been years since the last episode. It seems to be related to the state of my bank account - now that I’ve been continuously employed for several years and have built up some savings, I never get sleep paralysis. But when I was just scraping by, it happened every day.
I wouldn’t get visual hallucinations usually, but there was always a strong feeling that there was somebody behind my back, where I couldn’t see him, pressing against me. If I tried to ignore it, it would get stronger, so that sometimes it would feel like I was being punched and kicked in the back.
I can understand that. Mind you, I never experienced sleep paralysis, but was mightily intrigued when I first heard about it. And I just know that if I had experienced it without knowing what it was, I would have made an appointment with a psychiatrist, gotten some holy water from the local church, bought a shotgun and moved to the nearest hotel or something like that.
That’s why I always answer to OPs about sleep paralysis. I can easily imagine how frightening it must be, so I don’t want to let people wondering about it.
I suffered from sleep paralysis for over half my life before anyone could tell me what was happening to me. No psychologists, psychiatrists and even teachers could tell me what was going on. Two said night terrors. Most just said I was having bad nightmares and casually shrugged off my concerns.
Typically when the SP happens to me I find I’m on my back. If it hits me and I can be lucid enough when I can wake myself out of it, I try to turn on my side when I fall back asleep as it seems less common if I wake into it that way. I have to wake myself by moving my legs or arms or crying out until I can make an audible sound. If I can’t fully wake up and I fall back into it, I get the worst full body tingling sensations. Sometimes I’ve had an SP episode happen three times in one night.
I’ve experienced dogs biting my hands, clowns, traditional visions of death personified, things floating above me (quite often), whispering into my ears and childrens’ choirs behind my head.
I believe, and as many have suggested, a number of people’s “memories” of alien abduction have stemmed from SP, typically the experiences where people wake to find aliens crowded around their bed and the person can’t move or cry out for help.
Which, interestingly, was one of the things sleep paralysis was traditionally blamed on. Does anyone know if sexual dreams following this sort of thing is common (which might more clearly explain the connection)?
It’s known in Cantonese as “being squished by ghosts”. Sounds scary, I know, but not quite as scary as that picture in the Old Hag syndrome link above.
I’ve suffered two, maybe three episodes of sleep paralysis, all when I was on a rather high dose of clenbuterol and without having supplemented for the depletion of taurine or potassium. I had all the classic symptoms, but without the extra characters, i.e., there was just me and panic and the paralysis. Couldn’t breathe either. First time scared the living shit out of me. I ended up staying up all night on a huge pot of java, which probably was’t a good idea in addition to the clen. Second and third time it happened (a couple months later) I simply gave up and fell back to sleep. Very zen of me, I think.
Count me in the group. I used to experience sleep paralysis frequently in my twenties (i’m in my early thirties now) It feels like I’m halfway between sleep and awakeness–I’m awake, but can’t move and feel like I can’t breathe. I have to force myself to breathe in and out. It feels like it lasts forever.
Also I used to experience auditory hallucinations during it-- incredibly loud, horrible screaming. Not by me, but by something else. In my religious days I thought it was demons. Those hallucinations, weirdly enough, went away when I started wearing earplugs to bed.
I hardly have the sleep paralysis experiences anymore, though I had one the other night. I woke up and thought, “Damn. Can’t move, can’t breathe. Force breath in and out in and out…Oh well, it’ll pass” Next thing I knew it was morning and I was alive. Whew!
