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Sleep paralysis - who else has experienced this?


I've had sleep paralysis on lots of occasions since I was around 18 years old. At first I had no idea what it was and it used to scare the hell out of me. Mine always manifested in terms of 'demons' who would attack me rather than aliens. I was very much into Vertigo comics at the time and my demons always had a look of something from one of Dave McKeans Hellblazer comic covers. The first time I heard of sleep paralysis was in an interview in The Fortean Times with Robert Anton Wilson (around 1994 I think). RAW made a superb quip in that interview about the book Communion; he said something like 'why would aliens travel half way across the universe to probe a horror writers ass. Maybe he has the best ass in the universe, but I doubt it.' As soon as I recognised that Sleep Paralysis was what I had been experiencing my entire attitude to it changed and I discovered I could have the experience and be completely aware of what it was, almost like a lucid dream. It has been a while since I've had sleep paralysis but my partner would tell you that I have disturbed sleep every night and I often wake her up and keep her awake. Before I was with her I regularly found the lights switched on downstairs and sometimes the doors unlocked. It used to freak me out and I used to joke that the aliens had been to visit... my conclusion now is that I was sleep walking, putting the lights on and maybe even even going out for a walk :D
 
My favourite way of thinking about the purpose of dreams is to reinforce learning. This comes from the Tetris Dream Experiment with amnesiacs.

Tetris Dreams: Scientific American

But I do agree that we are the best evaluators of our dreams. Sometimes the random access retreival system is very effective in helping me to learn socially and emotionally & sometimes the dream dj is just ridiculous in attempts for purposeful dream connections. Sometimes, dreams are surreal, malicious, indifferent and horrific but do not mean to be any of those things at all.
 
I've written about mine here before as well. Without question my experiences of sleep paralysis in my teens and early 20's were easily the scariest events of my life. They don't call these Night Terrors for nothing. Mine featured everything from surreal abduction scenarios to serial killers stalking me. They often ended with sesnsations of hurtling through the air in whatever hallway was closest to my room at accelerating speeds about to smash through a door, but never reaching it. I would be screaming in desperation for help from whoever was sleeping in the room next to mine. Then I would hear my paralyzed, moaning body not able to open its mouth and then back to the hallway of obliteration so on until I would wake up in a state of sheer fear. I also can see how Alien Abductions could be manufactured here.

The first time this happened with another person in the bed beside me it was the woman I eventually married. She woke me in the middle of one of these episodes and the sense of being rescued was an experience I would equate with having one's life being saved - it was a major spiritual turning point - seriously. 20 years later I have still not ever had another sleep paralysis episode.

"Night terrors" are the most frightening thing that has ever happened to me. I had them as a child, up until about age 12. They had nothing to do with sleep paralysis in my experience. Whitley Strieber calls this "body terror", and I know what he means. Sleep paralysis - at least in my experience - means your mind wakes up but your body doesn't. You lay there wanting to move your body, but it doesn't respond. It is frightening, but nothing like night terrors. Neither of these is like an out-of-body experience.

Fifty years after I had these night terrors, a friend whom I hadn't seen in many years told me what I looked like as I rose up in my bed, moaning, in a night terror. He thought it was funny....
 
Night Terror=Sleep Paralysis

And yes, no humor involved at all, just total dread. The space between the waking mind trapped in a sleeping body is sheer hell. Your mind often moves towards psychotic, abduction type experiences.
 
Having more or less conquered the aliment after being aggressive against the "intruder" after years (decades?) of torment I can appreciate the folklore/sentiment that goes along the lines if you fight them off they will leave you alone.
 
I have to say the surreal nature and rapidity of imagery in this state, while all horrorshow, really did have a dynamic and exhilarating adrenalin rush that my current, mostly mundane dreams just don't have at all.
 
I used to have sleep paralysis when I was in my late teens to early 20's. Freaked me out the first couple of times but after that I would just concentrate on "waking up" and I would be able to move. Once I hit 25/26 I haven't had them since.
 
I used to get it all the time in HS (Im 44 now). I even had it happen in Navy boot camp (I found one of the letters the other day that I wrote home from boot camp mentioning that it happened). I had it throughout the Navy and here & there as an adult. But when I used to get it all the time, it scared me. I remember being frightened to open my eyes because I swore I was gonna find myself pressed up against the ceiling - I felt like I was floating. Another time I had it I swore someone was standing next to my bed. I had the sensation of something going into my right eardrum. That particular night was the worst ever. I lived in the woods in Maine. The next day I called John Mack's office because I was so panicked (this was approx 1991).

Anyways, as an adult it seems to have almost stopped altogether. It happened a couple months ago except my eyes were open and I couldn't move. I'm not scared the same way I used to be when I was a teenager and in my 20's.
 
I have had sleep paralysis experiences many times when I was young. I'm old now (69), and haven't had one in years. They were very frightening, as you have no control of your body. I never felt as if there were aliens present. Another frightening experience I had as a youth was night terrors. I had them from early childhood through early teen years. They finally stopped as I matured, but I never forgot the "body terror" of those experiences. Many years later someone told me what I looked like during one of these experiences. We were sleeping in the loft bedroom of a summer cottage, and my moaning woke him up. He thought it was funny, but it just reminded me of how terrifying it had been. Someone else's terror is not funny.
 
I have had sleep paralysis experiences many times when I was young. I'm old now (69), and haven't had one in years. They were very frightening, as you have no control of your body. I never felt as if there were aliens present. Another frightening experience I had as a youth was night terrors. I had them from early childhood through early teen years. They finally stopped as I matured, but I never forgot the "body terror" of those experiences. Many years later someone told me what I looked like during one of these experiences. We were sleeping in the loft bedroom of a summer cottage, and my moaning woke him up. He thought it was funny, but it just reminded me of how terrifying it had been. Someone else's terror is not funny.
My father in law (RIP) used to have bad night terrors. They were horrific. I felt really bad for him and his wife.
 
i have had some instances where only if I'm really tired i go to a semi conscious sleep but can't open eyes or move but i feel someone or something is close to my face and sniffing me ! only had this while working in Afghanistan and Iraq and on one occasion i heard what felt like a women telling me (in my head) that everything is all ok and be calm.
 
i have had some instances where only if I'm really tired i go to a semi conscious sleep but can't open eyes or move but i feel someone or something is close to my face and sniffing me ! only had this while working in Afghanistan and Iraq and on one occasion i heard what felt like a women telling me (in my head) that everything is all ok and be calm.
Like I said earlier, I hardly get it anymore. However, about 5 nights ago I got it pretty bad. I was sleeping on my left side and it felt like somebody was laying behind me, kind of like in "spoon position". I could "feel" points on my right arm and back that "they" were pressing on. In my mind I was freaking out but I said to myself "this is is that sleep paralysis crap and there is nobody laying in bed next to you."
 
Like I said earlier, I hardly get it anymore. However, about 5 nights ago I got it pretty bad. I was sleeping on my left side and it felt like somebody was laying behind me, kind of like in "spoon position". I could "feel" points on my right arm and back that "they" were pressing on. In my mind I was freaking out but I said to myself "this is is that sleep paralysis crap and there is nobody laying in bed next to you."
No one you could see. Do you not trust your intuition?
 
Although familiar with the phenomena I had never experienced it myself until I turned 40.Since then had approximately 6 episodes.I have never seen any entities but have felt like I was being touched on one occasion and on another heard a loud metallic sound that I interpreted as being something clamping to the side of my apartment.(I dont think that now, just how I processed it at the time)..I've found like a previous poster getting really pissed off seems to break the spell for me.
I don't believe anything else was present during these incidents and I'm sure as we learn more about our brains a solution will be found.
 
i was approached by a friend last year female 30 ish saying that she awoke one evening with 2 shadow entities on squatting on her and one stroking her face with its hand she was completely incapacitated her young baby girl was sleeping in the room at the foot her bed in her cot she suddenly was able to shout out at these beings eventually both beings sprinted towards the door which was ajar then there was a flash of light outside her window and she felt at ease but obviously distressed at the situation she just had been in it was round about 2 am in the morning, she's a down to earth person and is not into this subject at all.
points to note:
her husband a close friend of mine we were in the Paras together he then left i still serve he was away in Iraq at the time doing Close Protection but he has had experiences since child hood with a black triangle hovering above his mothers car and his home through out childhood.
 
i was approached by a friend last year female 30 ish saying that she awoke one evening with 2 shadow entities on squatting on her and one stroking her face with its hand she was completely incapacitated her young baby girl was sleeping in the room at the foot her bed in her cot she suddenly was able to shout out at these beings eventually both beings sprinted towards the door which was ajar then there was a flash of light outside her window and she felt at ease but obviously distressed at the situation she just had been in it was round about 2 am in the morning, she's a down to earth person and is not into this subject at all.
points to note:
her husband a close friend of mine we were in the Paras together he then left i still serve he was away in Iraq at the time doing Close Protection but he has had experiences since child hood with a black triangle hovering above his mothers car and his home through out childhood.

This still sounds like sleep paralysis to me, to be honest. Having said that though, the light she saw is something that I can relate to. When I was at University in the mid 90's I had a similar occurrence with a light. I awoke in the early hours with a bolt and the entire room was lit up fluorescent pink. My then girlfriend slept through it. It lasted for around 15 seconds at the most and then switched off. My room was at the back of the house and in a row of houses in an English terraced street. Park Grove in Hull, as it happens. There were no neon lights anywhere in the area and all that was out the back of the house was a typical, ramshackle yard in a student rent. Behind this was an alleyway (gannel). I suppose someone could have been shining a neon light into the room from outside, but who or why they would do that is a mystery in itself.
So I woke my girlfriend and told her, but these things didn't interest her much. She had her beliefs and was very staunchly into a Catholic philosophy, so she considered much of these things as devilish. In fact it was my paranormal experiences and research into it, in an attempt to find out why I've always been a magnet for strange phenomenon, that contributed to us breaking up.
We had a number of strange experiences together of a ghostly kind and we had an equal interest in UFO's at one point. I have to admit that we had both used LSD together within the last year. We weren't regular users of drugs, but I did occasionally take magic mushrooms and LSD (Well I was studying art and it was the 90's). Of course this could be a contributing factor. She's an internationally well known artist now and some of her work is still totally trippy.
I know that I experienced paranormal phenomenon long before I ever used psychedelics, but I can't count out that it may have been a flashback. I've experienced a similar thing a few times with my expartner in her house in Loscoe, Derbyshire. We lived at the side of a dam and one night a blue ball of plasma suddenly appeared over the dam and exploded. It made everything seem like daylight. We were in the garden at the time, enjoying the summer night. The fisherman around the dam were all stirred by it and freaked out too. My ex's daughter and her boyfriend also came outside to find out what it was, they'd seen the sky light up from inside. Unfortunately all I witnessed was the sky light up as I was facing the wrong direction. My ex saw it all and claimed it was like a bright white diamond shape, surrounded by blue light. The diamond then exploded into rays. She just sat there open mouthed. So, the same thing happened several more times over the next month or so and would wake us up. On one occasion we both told each other that we had witnessed the light again during the night and had gone to the window to see if it was something outside. This led to real confusion as she was asleep when I investigated it and Vice versa. The only conclusion that we could come too was that it had happened twice in the same night. Not long after my ex and her daughter both watched a light during day light come down in a diagonal movement over the fields behind the dam. They called me but I was too late to see it.
That house was full off odd phenomena. The cats used to vanish and turn up on the other side of locked doors. We'd get fragrances around us all the time, some times perfume and some time very musty fragrances. Things were always vanishing and reappearing too, not just the cats. It was regular to hear voices in the house. Her daughter used to tell us that she would frequently hear us come in from shopping and when she went to the door to help us bring bags in, the house was still empty and the doors locked. This came to our attention when, after the first time, she asked why we'd come in and gone out again so quickly without saying hello to her. I took it with a pinch of salt until the day I was in the house alone and heard the exact same thing. Obviously this time I heard myself come into the house from shopping... I actually heard myself laughing and talking in the kitchen. I went to investigate and again the house was empty. I have no explanation for this at all.
My ex is a medium on one of the Sky TV channels so I was used to odd stuff going on. She was very much into all that Stargate stuff. I'm not wholly convinced by it all, but I did regularly have dreams that I was aboard a mothership, in a plush lounge with a lot of other people just chatting, playing games and socialising. I could easily have just been influenced by her waffling on about Star Gate. The aliens in my dreams would wander about the people and observe them. They were very stoic and aloof. Occasionally they could be engaged in conversation but I don't recall any words of wisdom. They were never scary, weren't grays and were more like large, very tall men (7/8 ft) with bald heads dressed in long gowns. Honestly, it was more like Star Trek: TNG than Communion. I can't say that these were ever anything more than dreams but they were regular enough to be worth mentioning. We never did find out what the blue flash was. I know it wasn't lightening as there was no sound. With it being within 25 metres of us, surely it would be thunderous. It wasn't a flare as nothing dropped into the water from it. It wasn't a firework as the light was too bright. So it was either ball lightening, a giant 'orb', a ball of plasma, a teleporting giant diamond or the kind of plasma consciousness that Andrew Collins has written about (I've seen plenty of those but much smaller).
No, I don't believe I've been abducted by the way or that I am contactee. We suspected there had been missing time but it was an afterthought and we certainly didn't check the time, when it happened. It just seemed very late when we came in from outside. I should add that we didn't watch local news much or get local newspapers, so I have no idea if any of the fisherman reported it. In all there must have been between 10 and 15 witnesses. We didn't know them or chat to the fisherman ever. So many of them used the dam that it would be impossible to know which were present.
Anyway there you go. My second contribution to the thread, sorry I diverted from the topic, but I just felt the need to share my experiences of light flashes too. I'd be interested in hearing if anyone else has experienced anything similar.
 
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