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Sleep paralysis. What's that all about?

I seem to be having episodes sleep paralysis more and more often, so I did a little research and found that I am not alone. While the following may seem a bit far-fetched, anyone who has experienced this will tell you that it's a very real phenomenon.

My personal experiences mainly fall into the 'Common Sleep Paralaysis' category, however I have recently (last night) experienced 'Hallucinatory Sleep Paralysis' and, to be honest, it scared the shit out of me.

The following has been accumulated from various souces:

There are two types of sleep paralysis: common (typical) and hallucinatory (hypnagogic) sleep paralysis.

Common Sleep Paralysis: According to research almost every adult will at have an episode of Common Sleep Paralysis (CSP) in their lifetime. In the 1950's and 60's it was discovered that occasionally sleepers gain consciousness finding their bodies temporarily "frozen".

This temporary paralysation affects the major motor functions and macro muscle groups of the body. This state lasts between 15 seconds to a minute, though subjects report that it lasts much longer.

These episodes of paralysis baffled medical professionals for centuries. It was not until R.E.M. and its co-relation to the dream state was discovered that the mystery of sleep paralysis started to unfold. Researchers discovered that hormones were released during the R.E.M./dream state that paralysed the body and prevented it from physically acting out the dream. During most regular sleep cycles the hormones begin to wear off before the dream is completed and the person will wake with a fully functioning body. In rare occasions the hormones are still actively suppressing the major motor functions of the body and upon waking the individual is aware that their body temporarily paralysed.

Hallucinatory sleep paralysis: A more terrifying kind of sleep paralysis is the hallucinatory sleep paralysis or hypnagogic sleep paralysis, also known as Hag phenomena.
There are three major differences between Hallucinatory Sleep Paralysis (HSP) and CSP.

Characteristics of sleep paralysis:

3. CSP is common and universal; HSP is rare and seems to be geographically episodic.

4. CSP is of relatively short duration; HSP can last as long as seven or eight minutes.

3. CSP may induce a sense of anxiety; HSP is accompanied by a nightmarish hallucination.

There is evidence that HSP seems to affect an area (such as a town) much like an epidemic.

The most striking difference between HSP and CSP are the horrifying hallucinations that accompany the paralysis. The source of the hallucination has often been attributed to the hypnagogic state (the state between wakefulness and sleep). An individual usually awakens either because they hear something or feel something. The thing to remember is that this occurs outside of the dream sequence/plot. The individual is awake yet paralysed like in CSP. Moments after the person awakes they are startled by a terrifying visual hallucination. This hallucination will generally take on a stereotypical form. It is usually a vision of a malevolent creature that straddles the victim. The creature will then either compress the chest or attempt to strangulate the victim.

The visual hallucination has been variously interpreted throughout time and in different cultures as being: indigestion, guilt (Ancient Rome, Egypt), witchcraft (Mexico), demons (Medieval Europe), djinn (Arabia), vampires (Europe), Hag (Ireland, Scotland), spectral foxes (Japan), cats (China), ancestral ghosts (South-East Asia), etc. Despite the various interpretations, the descriptions of the hallucinations are remarkably similar. There are various folk remedies to avoid HSP. But the most common is to not sleep on your back.

Almost all attacks have been reported by people sleeping face up.

I've had a few episodes of sleep paralysis. The first time I had no clue what was going on. I tried to move a few times, then thought "fuck!! on the count of 3 I'm gonna try my best to move or else I'll die here!!!!...1...2...3" and by then it had worn off, so I flew about 6" in the air and fell out of bed.

The other few times it happened I just thought "oh, this crap again. ok, I'll give it a few seconds....there, I can move. problem solved."

HSP seems somewhat different, though. I have never had any hallucinations, even though I had been in the middle of a dream a few times when I woke up and was paralyzed.

When I'm falling alseep, I sometimes experience CSP. I'll suddenly be unable to move unless I focus all of my energy on moving one limb and waking up. As I start to drift off to sleep, I hear a buzzing or static-like hissing sound, and sometimes even the sound of a crowded room full of people talking. As my eyes close, I suddenly have the sensation of being yanked out of my bed and moving forward at a very high speed; this lasts for a few seconds, then I feel like I'm slammed back into my body, sometimes hard enough that I bounce. I assume that the bounce is caused by invoulntary muscle contractions as I wake up.

As for hallucinations, A few weeks ago, I was feeling the same as I usually do when I have sleep paralysis, but as I started to drift off to sleep, my throat would contract and I would have trouble breathing. It continued for about 45 minutes, and each time I would wake myself up fully, and after a while, I just gave up on falling asleep normally and got up.

Very strange. I would like to hear more about how HSP manages to affect a local group of people. Since it has been happening since ancient times it can't be a government conspiracy or some unknown chemical in the environment. Very freaky.

It could have something to do with their altitude and amount of oxygen in the air

You want a fix for that?

Try to cough, coughing is partially an involuntary action and you can start it with out moving, this should wake your body up and break you out of the paralysis

well it works for me

maybe it will work for you

This is very interesting.

I have experienced CSP many many times. It is very frightening when it first occurs. In my experience, it was also accompanied by a sort of "falling" sensation, or a feeling of impending doom. Quite disturbing.

I used to "know" what nights it would most likely occur, as I would be exhausted or find myself dropping in and out of sleep suddenly (sort of like when you nod off for a second). I found that the best way to come out of it was to cough, or moan or groan... It got so bad that I even used to warn my GF to "wake me up" if she heard me groaning. It kind of freaked her out a bit too.

Alternatively, I would concentrate on moving my little finger with my entire being. This took an enormous amount of effort (I could almost imagine beads of sweat appearing on my brow), but after a 30 seconds to a minute I would get some movement. Once that happened, I regained control of my body rapidly.

As mentioned above, these episodes were usually (but not exclusively) associated with times when my body was very tired. During my partying days, when I used to go out clubbing, do far too much E or coke, they got worse.

I rarely experience CSP now.

Once in my life I experienced HSP. I awoke, paralyzed in a hotel room, lying on my side looking out toward the window. I was 12 floors up, in a strange city (Ottawa to be exact, but it was my first time there).

Outside my window a little boy was floating... gently scratching the glass. If you've ever seen the film Salem's Lot, you can visualize the experience. It was probably the most frightening thing I have ever experienced.

As anyone who reads my posts here knows, I believe in NO supernatural or paranormal events or incidents. So this scientific explanation is extremely interesting.

Great post!

Mr Mephisto

I didn't explain my dream innitially, so here it is:

I woke at 4:38am totally aware of my surroundings and staring at the clock. I could hear voices and movement downstairs and as I live alone this freaked me out a bit. I tried to get up but I couldn't move at all, at first. After what seemed like a couple of minutes I managed to get up and stagger towards the light switch (it was just as though I was very, very drunk and completely drained of energy). I got to the light switch and...it didn't work. I tried the bedroom door and it wouldn't open. All the time these voices were getting louder and I could hear people breaking my house up. This continued for a minute or so, then my door burst open knocking me to the floor.

At this point I woke up, covered in sweat. I looked over to the clock. The time was 4:41.

Had my eyes been open the whole time?

Did I really get up and try the light switch, or open the door?

What is the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Fuck knows.

"it was not until r.e.m. and its co-relation to the dream state was discovered that the mystery......................"


rock stars. is there anything they DON'T know? -homer


seriously, though, sometimes i sleep on my arm the wrong way and when i wake up it has no feeling & will not respond to my desire to move it. this seems to be blood flow linked, as if i roll off of the arm, or move it with the other arm, i can feel sensation & mobility slowly flow back into it. takes maybe 20 seconds to regain full use.

does this have anything to do with what you're talking about?

Sleep paralysis is something different entirely.

You are completely aware, but unable to move. It's freaky, very very unpleasant and quite scary.

Not something you want to experience if you can avoid it.

The fact that it also happens when you're half asleep, half awake means it's "worse", if you know what I mean. You can literally be coming out of a dream or be mentally disorientated.

Once I stopped doing drugs though, the episodes almost vanished.

Coincidental, eh? :)

Mr Mephisto

i used to get this when i was a kid, it really scared me. I always seemed to get it when the cover would be just over my face. i ouldn't move and often felt i was suffocating. one time i experienced it my mum was actually in my room and i could hear her pottering about. i was trying with all my might to say something to her, to try and move the cover off my face but couldn't. i always felt it lasted a panicked eternity and that i would suffocate. i have had it as an adult but i no longer feel AS panicked by it.

I had that happen to me. With a great deal of effort I got up and wandered groggily out of the room. Then I realized something wasn't right. I was still in bed. So, once again, I used all my force of will to pry my limbs out of bed. I went out to the garage, got a Coke, and went back inside to caffienate myself. That's when I discovered that, once again, I was lying paralysed on my bed. After a few panicky moments where I thought I was in a coma, I managed to get up and get moving, for real this time. Unless, of course, I'm still there...
sk

The last time i had sleep paralysis i was taking a nap and was trying to get my roommate to help me wake up, but i could hardly talk, i couldn't move, or open my eyes. I could hear my roommate and everything around me. The best i could do was moan her name, but that only freaked her out so she just left me alone and tried to ignore me. I was able to get up and move in about 5-10 min. It seems to only hapen when i'm napping.

happened to me once, i was asleep in the basement of my house. couldn't move, and it felt like someone was leaning over me, just out of sight. scared the hell out of me. I tried screaming, but at first it came out really quiet, then got loud as I sat bolt upright in bed. "aaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAH"

Shit!! I'm glad you brought this up! For the longest time I wondered what happened to me that day I fell asleep in the car not too long ago. A buddy was driving and I just dosed off in the passenger seat. The part were CSP happens mostly to people sleeping face up all makes sense now. I was in a car seat and my head was laying over the headrest face-up.

What happened was that I fell asleep, I can't remember if I had a dream or not, and woke up staring at the cieling and top part of the windshield. I could hear the radio but I couldn't move my body. I completly freaked out. First I attemped to sit up- didnt work, then move my head-didnt work. I devoted what felt like all my strength to trying to move my head off the headrest, but no progress was made. Since I couldn't see my body I felt like I was strapped down to the seat (some elaborate prank pulled by my buddy?) or decapitated (How the hell am I supposed to know what happens after death?)

But I just closed my eyes and woke up after a few seconds (It felt like a 5 minute struggle) as if waking from a dream. I was a little freaked out that day.......

i get this a lot.....and it scares the crap out of me.....i'll never get used to it......but when i drink a whole glass of water before i go to bed seems to help me from getting sleep paralysis..i don't know why...could be my blatter..who knows.........thanks for the info

i've had it...both kinds...

quite love the experience actually, even tho it's def. freaky/scary.

one thing that happens often to me when i have the non-hallucinatory kind is i get these electrical buzzing sounds in my head...just kinda like a shot of electricity thru a wire in my brain.

and also quite often a spinning feeling...either with an axis thru me from head to toe and i spin on that..or an axis thru my middle and i spin around that...

it's been a few months since i've had one..i miss em.

I, too, experience this quite often. Unfortunately, 90% of my occurances are of the hallucinatory type. It used to happen to be about 5 times a week, but it has since slowed down to about 2-3 times a month. With me, I experience the same things many of you mentioned, such as the loud buzzine sound (it's so fuggin' loud, that it feels as though my eardrums will burst). Also, I always have my eyes open rather than closed so it makes it worse.

Anyway, I have seen some of the scraiest shit in my life while experience SP. I can't tell you how many times I have seen spirits and/or demonish like figures. I have even had them attack me on rare instances. I would fo into it further, but I'm not sure how many people would blieve it to be true, some of it's so bad.

I have done a small amount of research on this, and the basics of it are that somehow it opens you up to things you would not normally be open to receive (obviously). They don't know the exact cause of it, but there are supposedly meds that can help. I believe I saw somewhere that there's a prticular drug that completely eliminates it in like 40% of patients (although I cn't remember the name of it). Also, one researcher gave these stats...

80% of people who got SP got it only while laying on their back
30% on their sides
30% on their stomach

Obviously, that's not 100%. It's simply a percentage based upon position of sleep, meaning that some people fell into more than one category. Anyway, hit me up on AIM if you want to talk.

And I would also like to welcome myself to the forums here :p

Chris

AIM: MORPHeusBreakz

yep. exactly.

well...when i experience the hallucinatory ones, my eyes are at least a bit closed...complete hallucination..

when i just have the paralysis (which is *always* accompanied by the sense of a 'presence'...my eyes are glued open.

hmm...i see less, but sense more. definitely feel like a 'force' is holding me down..even an occasional 'mind-fuck'.. (oh, and some very odd/intense sexual hallucinations too at times..)

always on my back...and yeah. receptive. hellyeah.

welcome :)

wow, i didn't know that this was a well-documented phenomenon. Glad to know that it is, though. I always sleep on my back and "wake up" paralyzed maybe four or five times a year. It's frightening as hell, usually because I'm still dreaming and have to fight with my brain to convince myself that it's "just a dream."

Haven't experienced the nightmare as described (creature straddling me) but have been scared shitless because I've dreamt of other reasons I need to get out of bed and yet cannot (no, urination has not been one of them).

Let me give you my run down.. ive had this happen all my life until i married my wife..

I would wake up at different times.. as soon as i came "aware" it was like a mild eletric shock went through me.. best way i can describe it..

but here it differs.. I had this feeling of utter horror.. I mean if i could have wet the bed i would have and this was all the way up to age of 23....

I would just lay in the bed with my eyes closed trying to pretend i was asleep.. .. you can kiss my ass every last scientist that tells me this is not right..

I know something was in the room with me.. I would try to breath and it was hard to do....

one morning i woke up to this and i swear to the almighty.. that i kicked it into my subconscious(spelling) and walked to my parents room and fell on to thier bed stiff.. my dad said my legs were sticking straight out and that i was on my back.. he thought i was dead ..

and this would last for over 5 min.. weird.. still creeps me out..

AMEN BRUTHA

nothing more i despise than someone telling you that you're full of shit when it's something they have never experienced.


hey....i've never been to botswana...does that mean there's no such place?

Sleep paralysis can be incredibly frightening, it happens to me quite often if I disrupt my normal sleep patterns (ie: by taking a nap during the day). I rarely get visual hullucinations, but I always get auditory ones. Because your mind is awake when this happens, the best thing you can do is relax, if you can relax, you'll go back to sleep or may even enter a lucid dream if you're lucky. See it as a gateway to your dreams, after all if your body wasn't paralysed then it would try to 'act out' your dreams - resulting in all sorts of trouble. If you can learn to conquer it, sleep paralysis could be viewed as a weird sort of gift, I'm convinced it is the key to initiating lucid dreams with greater ease.

I've got some similar experiences in the thread I have put up.. I'm sure this stuff is all related.. especially the HSP. I've experienced the CSP before, I think I may have actually put myself into a similar state.. I don't know for sure.

Ah, Sleep Paralysis~
Let me tell ya boy...it is a strange, frightening thing this.
And it is very difficult to describe to someone who has never had it happen to them.

I experienced this in my 20's mostly and a few times in my 30's
it was generally when I was going through periods of great stress in my life.

The first couple of times the paralysis was accompanied by vivid, and I mean VIVID hallucinations. On the verge of sleep it would seem that my brain would plug into something and I would feel like a throbbing,electrical sensation in my head.

The term "Eyes Wide Shut" comes to mind. I was awake but I knew my eyes were closed. Not being able to move....(oooof, I get shivers just thinking about it) Like I said, The first couple of times I would see alllll this CRAZY SHIT....just all kinds of stuff that I will not detail here. I fought very hard to wake up and as soon as I shook it off of me, it would settle in again and begin to sap me. The images were not malignant or frightening in themselves. What WAS frightening was the fact that this was happening to me. And sometimes it would happen all night. leaving me so drained and spaced the next day. I do remember thinking very lucidly that if I didn't get myself out of it...I would Die There.

But like SiN, I began to learn to ride them out to try to enjoy this...psychonautical experience I was having. But the last couple of times have been void of the images and scenarios that would unfold(I don't know why) and the experience was just the awful cycle of buzzing in my brain...not being able to wake.....shaking it off...and repeating. and the terrible next day of walking around like the living dead. It became more of a real pain in the ass than a frightening occurance.
Jwoody I wish you, and everyone else who truly knows what you are talking about Good Luck with this.

Dilbert1234567- I like your advice, That makes sense...if this ever happens to me again I will try it.

sleep paralysis is something i've only experienced a few times, mostly CSP prior--which i didn't pay attention to, and rarely ever HSP...until very recently. i've moved to a new place, and have had HSP episodes at least five times in the past month...perhaps more, but i tend to try to forget about them. i get the auditory buzzing, and once i "saw" a white smoke in the room, but my eyes were not open...i'm not sure it was even my room.

anyhow, i wanted to tell you all about a concept album on sleep paralysis, dredg's "el cielo". it's an amazing record...probably my favorite ever. (and i guess it's not completely about sleep paralysis--it's based on dali's painting, "dream caused by the flight of a bee around a pomegranant, one second before awaking.") on their website people are encouraged to share their experiences of sleep paralysis. (www.dredg.com) here are some lyrics...but the experience and feeling really comes through better with the sounds.

SCISSOR LOCK
I think I’m awake, rolling on my blanket,
I am sinking

Into the bed, light around me,
Beautiful washes of pulsating color,
Buzzing white noise, it sounds like 100 bees…

I, too, once thought the radio played,
Let’s act like children while we sleep paralysed.
I, too, once thought the radio played,
Let’s act like children while we sleep paralysed

Lucid, you control it, you’re body’s asleep,
Your mind is awake…

I, too, once thought the radio played,
Let’s act like children while we sleep paralysed.
I, too, once thought the radio played,
Let’s act like children while we sleep paralysed.

from IT ONLY TOOK A DAY

Restore your needed shelter,
Our flawless endeavor to be alone, to be alone.

Sitting sideways, something deep,
Wading water, pants at my knees,

Sitting sideways, something deep,
Fading with growth…
Lie awake, lie awake, lie awake.

I think i've had CSP.. but i'm more or less curious about the sound... that after about 10-20 seconds, the sound dies, and i get up... heh

As for HSP... I still have no fucking clue. There is so much about it. Sure from Mr. Mephisto's POV I had lots of HSP. :) But its so weird, I mean Sure I was on my back, and sure I saw a demonic being, and i couldn't tell if I was awake. But there are just other things that go beyond this. First of all, it happened daily for over a month... I lost track past a month's time, but I do know it was over a month of hell( yet HSP is supposed to be RARE). No other way to describe it. It never once came close enought to touch me, jump on me, strangle me.. rather it just mocked me, and told me how I couldn't do a damn thing and was helpless. Oh and it would laugh at me. The whole thing also occured in my room, how I was sleeping and all (that would follow HSP, as I'd be awake, head on pillow.. able to see suspended body). The episode was exactly the same every night. the "theme" if you will never changed. So yeah if you don't believe in the supernatural, you might just say it was just a pretty rare experience. But if you do believe in the supernatural, then let me go on. See I also had dreams of demons in my DREAMS... not HSP, or any of that, but actual dreams. I noticed that these too happened when I'd be on my back. But one dream in particular,, Kick ass dream. I was on a beach partying with a good friend and lots of hot women.. :):), but i did roll over onto my back somewhere during the night. Well someway through the dream, The two main chicks me and my friend were dancing with turned into demons. They chased me all through out my dream until I realized I was safe if I merely prayed to God, when I did I woke up. I have posted about my "HSP" dreams as well.. Those ENDED when I professed my faith to the demon, in words so incredibly well, that I don't think I could ever say it like that again. A few more facts. A good friend of mine can see spirits on a day to day basis. He also has studied Demonology extensively. First off, the deamon I saw in my "HSP" dreams I described to him the best I could..... He recognized it to be one he sees lurking around my house. Mind you, I told him of the deamon not the dream.... (as saying the dream first could lead to a biased answer). Also I explained to him what the two deamons looked like that chased me in my dreams. He remembered those deamons, one of them to be an extremely powerful deamon that works right under Satan himself. I had a second set of "HSP" dreams too. See the first set was when I was so stressed out, I didn't know who I even way anymore. But the second set was when I was helping a friend closer to God, and out of grasp from the devil. If you believe in God, you can understand why I think the second time it was easily Satan attacking me, as I was so close to "Stealing" a soul from him. This second set... the HSP was short lived, but when they died.. the dreams turning into deamons chasing me appeared... and THEY in turn died off when I freed my friend from the devil's grasp. A lot to take in, yes... but I find it hard to believe that all of these things are mere coincedences. It just doesn't seem all too logical (and yes Mr. Mephisto, to you everything I just said seem all too illogical ;);))

So... Yeah.

This used to happen to me in high school when I worked fulltime and went to school, and slept three or four hours a night. I would try and knock out on the couch for an hour before after school and would wake to a weird dream state type deal where I couldn't move, never heard about it before now. Dunno, freaked me out and only happened when I would take naps.

i remember being small (5-8 yrs old) and feeling like i was either floating out of my body, or that my body was HUGE - like really inflated or something. no pain - just kind of frightening. back then it happened a lot, and i'll still get it once every few years...

iv heard 2 really hardcore stories about this.

one comes from a friend who one night was sleeping, and woke up paralyzed, with a thirst that as he claims felt as he had been in the dry desert heat for days. and he awoke only to find an arabic nomad/ gypsy looking guy standing over him, the strange man then opend a cantine and poured water inyo my friends mouth... and disappeared, the weird part is his thirst was magically gone.

the second...ironically enough comes from my friends older brother who awoke in the middle of the night and saw a brown figure which he refuses to describe to me ( all he can say is that he was in-human)staring at him and holding him down on the bed wiht one hand... but what makes it so creepy is that he began to scream whihc woke his dad up, and his dad walked in and actually saw the creature and it vanished rihgt after

i just experienced CSP for the first time the other week. I just haven't had time to search thru paranoia to find more about it.

it was definitely different.

when you are in bed, before you are ready to sleep but still sleepy, lie still and dont move your hand. then try no to move it, and then just move it really suddenly. you can actually confuse yourself to not move your hand when you really want to but when u are actually trying not to move it, it does.

i have noticed it but only when messin with my head, havent noticed it sleeping.

I've been known to shoot straight up in bed looking for the clutch on my wheel chair or the little clam that swam under your pillow.

This has happened to me a two or three times recently also. I had no idea what it was until i read this thread. I was taking a nap with my girlfriend when i woke up and found that i couldn't move at all. I wanted to tell me girlfriend to wake me up, she was half asleep beside me, but i couldn't make any sounds. So i tried to scream as loudly as possible but i could only hear it in my head. And the longer i screamed, the faster it felt like it was flying through a roller coaster. It's some scary shit.

Thanks for the post - I'd seen references to sleep paralysis a couple of times and wondered what the hell it was, as I've never experienced it. Probably because I never sleep on my back. (I can't for some reason.)

Having experienced this first hand, I must say this is one of the most terrifying and helpless feelings a young person can ever go through.

Now at age 24, I have these episodes rarely, I'm a 6'3" 200lb male, i have a hard time sleeping on my side or stomach. Almost always do I sleep on my back.

In high school I would have these episodes every single saturday and sunday. Alarm clock being turned off on these days. It's almost as though your natural ability to wake yourself is fubared.

The first feeling I would have is that you feel yourself completely aware that you are lying in bed and are no longer asleep, your eyes are still closed, and that you are unable to open them. You then realize you can hear everything, TV, people in other rooms, stereo etc, and that these things are real, they are not distorted dreams, they are real voices and what not. You make attempts to call out to another person and are completely mute, you may think they did not hear you, but in reality you are mute during this whole thing. Not only are you mute at this point, but you begin to think you are NOT breathing, that you are suffocating.

Then it strikes you to MOVE, to MOVE now. This is where you get terrified as you cannot move under your own willpower. It really feels like your willpower is taken from you. Not a physical paralysis so much as someone or something has robbed you of your own willpower.

The scary part is that the more your struggle, the worse it gets, yet if you refuse to struggle you're met with a feeling of doom as though you will die if you do not fight it. That leaves you in a state of panic as you are furiously struggling to wake.

Two things couple this experience, one you can reproduce easily by closing your eyes as hard as you can, it gives you a pop in your ears, and a sound of pressure. This is the "crackle" and hum people hear.

The other... is the terrible feeling of a "being" sitting on your chest, or holding you down. A presence outside of yourself being part of this whole experience. This is what ultimately freaks me out as I have never met face to face with any spirit or demon or what have you.

I am convinced that it is over when this thing or being is gone. I'm met with a feeling of conquest, or victory as though I bested whatever it is that was doing this to me.

I never had any idea this was so common! hundred-peons you described my experience almost EXACTLY, but I've never had any visual or auditory hallucinations nor have I felt like it was really some outside force/being/presence/whatever influencing me. But at the time it definitely scares the shit out of me!!! And I do have this overwhelming, terrifying thought that I'm in some serious danger, but the feeling is not lucid, detailed, or specific, and I usually fall back to sleep despite this feeling. Although sometimes I'm able to jump up and turn on the light and then I'm freaked out for quite a while. Happens maybe once every few months, it hasn't happened to me in about 6 months tho. Well thanks, at least I know what this is now, and maybe I won't be freaked out as much next time. I'm not sure but It seems to happen more when I'm under a lot of stress.

actaually in have never seen what was there....


its like this..

alseep.. awake.. as i wake up .. and i mean im fully awake in an instant.. there is a lack of sound.. a "void" around me. then it would start.. the eletric wave current flowing through me. still no sound.. a prescence was there.. i could feel it out side my field of vision.. it was there..

after a while i would simply pass out from fright or it would end. most the times i would just pretend i was alseep till i could move and get the fuck outta the room...

A lot of these instances that people have mentioned could be classified as out of body experiences/astral travel/lucid dreaming. There are threads on these subjects:

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...threadid=25686

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...threadid=22817

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...threadid=35906

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthr...threadid=29316

Something like this happened to me only a few days ago. I was having a dream, then I found myself floating on my bed with only one arm resting on the bed, then the next thing I know I was floating upside down with my head resting on the bed. I then woke up and promptly started to fall asleep again. I had some really clear visions, then there was a really intense, rapid buzzing in my ears and my hands were really tingly. It felt like someone had jolted me with electricity. Thats when I sat bolt upright, totally spun out.

When I was ~10 years old, I woke up to the sensation that a woman with an axe was choking me. Scared the shit out of me. Took me 5 minutes to gain the courage to flip on my light on my nightsand. Took me 30 minutes to gain the courage to get up and grab some comic books + read them. Took me like an hour to get the courage to go walk into my parents bedroom and goto sleep.

Happened to me again on Monday. For me, when it occurs it seems to have something to do with stress and/or lack of sleep. I had been up for a very long time and was very tired, so tired that I had trouble falling asleep! I was sleeping in a strange place (on the sofa). I woke up and was terrified, flat on my back and could not move. Fell back asleep after what seemed like an eternity of hell, and again it was non-specific but very frightening at the time. Scared the shit out of me!!! :)

soul travel?
 

I have experienced this several times. I am also a beginning psychic and asked my teacher about this. She told me that it is when the soul leaves the body, to do whatever it is souls do when they travel, and the conscious self wakes up while the soul is gone. She said that the way to deal with it is to just remain calm and "tell" your soul to come on back. After she told me that, I have done it several times and it's always been an almost immediate fix.


somehow i've managed to log in as my sister. what the heck? anyhow, i'm not her.
psychicchick

Nah, it's chemicals that your brain releases to paralyze your body to keep you from acting out your dreams. Sleep paralysis happens when you wake up too soon, and it goes away within 30 seconds or so once those chemicals dissipate. "Calling your spirit back" has nothing to do with it, or else there would be an awful lot of permanently paralyzed people out there who weren't so "enlightened".

I get this whenever I sleep on my back. It even makes me stop breathing. I had surgery for sleep apnea, which corrected my snoring and removed any blockage I had in my sinuses, however, I have been observed that when I sleep on my back that my breathing gets shallower, and shallower, until I stop breathing altogether. No snoring, no blockage. My chest just stops rising.

What's worse is that the lack of oxygen wakes me up, but I'm paralyzed and can't turn over to breathe! It takes at least 10 seconds or more to be able to move and take a breath.

I don't even try to sleep on my back any more.

~~~~~~~~~

This happened to me just 2 nights ago. After reading the thread about lucid dreaming. I was trying to lucid dream, and I fell asleep, but then in my dream, I "woke up" because I heard some noises (which may have been real), and I thought there was a robber/murderer type person in my room, in the dark. I was freakin out, trying real hard to wake up before he'd stab me in my sleep. Waking up from that state was pretty tough, takes immense concentration. Once you get a little bit of control, you wake up pretty quickly. I woke up lookin around my room for anything unusual, then went to sleep again after I felt everything was OK. I know this isn't true sleep paralysis, where your eyes are open and mind is awake, but body is still asleep. I think it's fun :D

Stan: Those noises you heard are normal when entering a dream state while still aware. It's hard to ignore them and go with it, but getting stuck in that state can be extremely scary. It's common to lucid dreamers.

This happens to me alot. In fact it happened only a few hours ago, which is why i am here :). Heres what happened.
Sometimes, just out of the blue, (probably once a month, maybe less) i get this feeling of exhaustion. Its night time, about 7-9pm and i just feel tired. Usually im a night person and stay awake till 3-4am. Well anyway, i go to my bed and either get in or lie on top. I slowly drift myself off to sleep, by breathing slowly and not moving an inch. I sleep on my back probably 90% of the time. Well anyway i get this feeling when im trying to sleep that my eyes are slowly opening, i notice this because light comes in and i start seeing my room. I picture this and then close my eyes again and the same thing happens. My eyes slowly open. At this point i have been lying still for quite a while. I could probably move if i wanted to, but i just stay still.
Now, i get these visions, in my eyes (or brain, i dont know) Now its probably just me moving my eyes around in my head, but i see swirling light, and try to follow it. This is usually accompanied by floods of energy starting in my head and moving through my body (This seems to relax me even more and feels awesome). Im all concious of all this happening, and try to get more of these "floods" happening. Usually moving my eyes around and staring down, up, sideways does it. This can sometime take a while, I'm just laying there motionless in a trance like state fully aware of what i'm doing.
Now sometimes i can enter a lucid dream state from this "trance" where i eventually fall asleep and start to dream. I think of things in my head and they appear in front of me. I can start flying sometimes too.
Or this can happen.
I am fully aware that i'm asleep, and i cant move my body. However this doesnt worry me. I start to fly but i cant see anything, only light (flickers of white lights, sort of like stars everywhere, moving) Ok so here i am floating around minding my own business enjoying myself. This is where it gets freaky. I start to hear voices. No visions (well nothing that looks like anything), just the blackness or space with the little lights everywhere. Most of these voices talk to me, in a normal voice. I know what theyre saying. They tell me where to go, where to float. Other voices however are dark and evil. They yell at me. I cannot picture anything, they just yell really loud, bursting into my head.
One of these dreams i had. I was sleeping at my ex's house and i floated off her bed, and well, after some trick flying about and enjoying myself I landed on the bed perfectly. In a loud, clear voice when i land i hear this.
"In One Year, I Will Come"
I absolutely shit myself, and try to wake myself up. I cannot move of course, so i picture myself getting up in my dream. I stumble out of bed, and walk across the corridor. I fall into the door of the opposite the room. (This is clear as day, well maybe a bit blurry around the edges.) And call out to my girlfriend at the time. Im trying to call her name but she is just sitting there on a chair on the pc. I can see her. I call, and call, and call. Finally i get woken up by her. She tells me she could here me murmering her name from the other room, and came over to see if i was alright.

The dream that just happened before however was slightly different. I got yelled at, to go to a certain place, if i wanted to continue. (This voice just pops in my head, without warning, no visual clues etc) This startles me and i wake myself up panic striken. I realise its a dream and fall asleep again. Almost instantly i feel myself float back to where i was before. I hear another voice, this time even louder, scream at me. He says something like... "You have to go here, so you've decided to huh? well i'm coming with you." This totally freaks me out because the same thing just happened, and BAM! it happened again. I try to wake myself up, and of course i cant move, panic stricken i cannot move, i use all my strength just to move my arm. I have the feeling that if i don't wake up I'll die. I move my arm, and open my eyes. My heart is pounding a million miles per hour, and im a little sweaty.

Other dreams i've had i picture myself looking at an image of my room, and sure enough when i wake myself up after a panic that i cant move, when i open my eyes its the exact same image.

This stuff has got me freaked out, the weirdest part is i know when it will happen, (When i get tired all of a sudden, and a strong urge to nap). I really wanted to continue that dream before, but these people yelling at me and warning me always freak me too much and i wake myself up. I want the courage to follow through for once!

By the way, nothing did come after 1 year, well at least i don't think it did....

I also get those random voices in my head when im trying to sleep. "Nah i think its this way" or "I dont think so" but these are voices of people i know. like my mother, brother, friends etc... The big booming voice in my dreams i dont know who it is... All i know is its evil, and damn scary.

I have had these experiences for the past 10 or so years of my life, the first one I can remember was the worst.

I had a fever and then had a fever dream/halluciantion, all I remember was some unexplanible, I felt as if I was seeing a new color for the first time, my body and every possible fiber in the universe felt huge and miniscule at the same time, I awoke paralyzed watching eyes in the corner of the room, I'm not sure how long it lasted but I managed to stumble out of my bed and down the hall, where my dad walked out of the shadows (adding to the scare factor!) and asked me what had happened, apparently I said "there's a man in my room". He calmed me down, we drank some orange juice and I slept in the living room.

The second and only other major one happened about a year after, I was sleeping woke up and couldn't move for probably near a minute, I lost my ability to breath and my pain gained a huge pressure (I now know I have atsma (sp?) but that's been my only "attack") I ran into my parents room and finnaly normalized again.

I've probably had about 5 more attacks, mostly coupled with the aboved metion of feeling live you moving 1000 miles a hour of the bed, and then it's normal.

In my original post I stated that 'nearly all attacks occur when the person is sleeping face-up'. Since then I have had an experience whilst sleeping on my side.

I was lying in bed, cocooned in my quilt, and it felt as though something crawled in behind me and it felt like... ever have a dog hump your leg? it was a bit like that but it was pounding on my back, butt and legs in equal measures, simultaneously, and for the first time for me, I felt I my chest was being compressed. During the paralysis I could hear a noise like helicopter blades very close to my ears. I would estimate the entire experience lasted for less than 30 seconds.

My eyes were open the whole time and I could clearly see my digital clock. The time was 4:21am.

I've had several HSP experiences, and they are indeed terrifying. If you've never experienced it, there is no way to fully describe the feeling. I usually sleep on my side, but there was at least one time when I "woke up" during a HSP episode and I was on my back. My eyes closed, I could nevertheless hear everything in the room, feel the sheets and blankets on my body, my wife lying next to me, etc. I knew I was "asleep", but I also felt mentally awake and alert. I could not move my body. I had a full-blown hallucination of a very large wolf lying in the bed, between my wife and I. I could smell its fur, feel and hear its breath, its weight on the mattress, etc. My left arm was deep inside its mouth, almost to the elbow, and it was slowly, calmly biting completely through my arm. Every one of my senses experienced this, and, at the same time, I knew I was asleep and hallucinating. I was utterly terrified, the knowledge that it wasn't real made no difference to my emotional response. With every ounce of strength and willpower I could gather, I began slowly moving my little finger against my wife's leg, trying to wake her up, so she could wake ME up and end the hallucination. As someone posted earlier, it took a herculean effort to be able to just move my little finger. Finally, she awakened with a start, which woke up me, and the entire hallucination peeled away, like a movie crossfading from one scene to another. I awakened, and everything in the room was exactly the same, except that the wolf was gone, and I was physically exhausted, and emotionally shaken. I've had several other HSPs, all quite different from this one, and each other. They're simply awful. Living with epilepsy must be very similar - a nightmare forever imminent, like death, a certainty that is sure to come, but without warning.

i've gotten this fealing quite a few times before, but generally just rationalized it as an INTENSE dream. the first few times it had happened it was always under the same circumstances...just getting too much sleep and waking up at 12 in the afternoon. to elaborate a little more i'll generally wake up just a little bit, usually right in the middle of a dream. i'll halfway upen my eyes, and try to move my arms but cant. the whole thing still feels like a dream, and i'll "fall back to sleep", wake up in the same position moments later and be fine.

i was just thinking about another time this happened, but i would call it more of the HSP, because it was VERY STRANGE. i was at school, just lounging around in our campus library and decided take a nap. for some reason i love taking naps in public places....i think it has to do with the noises and talking that i hear around me while i sleep that give me some crazy dreams sometimes. i rememer one instance where i was dreaming and in my dream i woke up at least 10 times. things were all hazy, but thats a different story.

anyways...i was taking a nap in some chairs and woke up and noticed that one of the couches that are used for studying/sleeping was free. so i got up and took it. these couches dont really have anything to support your head on, so ended up napping on my back with my head flat on the seat (not the most comfortable position.) i was in the middle of a weird dream (their were some people talking pretty loud on a balcony above me that was affecting my dream). in this dream i could hear people planning on fucking with me while i slept.

all of the sudden i get startled by what feels like a pillow hitting me square in the face. it truely honestly felt like someone smacked me in the face. i partially woke up, but was still in the dazed dream state, and could not move a muscle. it felt weird as fuck, because i fell asleep with my arms crossed, and it felt like i was in a coffin.

i could open my eyes, but everything was fuzzy. but i swear to god i could see a couple figures standing above me, looking down at me and pointing and laughing. i couldnt do anything, not even open my mouth. i closed my eyes again, and moments later i woke up woke up, laying in the same position that just seconds before i couldnt move. the only thing that was around me was the people on the floor above me talking and laughing about whatever.

i felt VERY weird, my whole body was tired as fuck, like i wasted all my energy trying to move but couldnt. i also had trouble with my balance, kinda walking a little clumsily. it was a feeling that you were dragged out of bed, where your body hasnt quite woken up all the way, and you really dont have complete control yet. i had only been asleep for an hour or so, but it felt like hours. overall it was a strange experience.

yet im still in my body.. i come wide awake.. its like this.. as i wake up there is utter silence.. i cant hear a thing.. my eyes are wide open yet im trying not to look around cuz i know there is something in my room.. its there tangable just outta my eyes site.. i focus on the frist thing that come to me when this happens and i dont shift my eyes.. slowly i gather my will.. focus it .. i mean i compress my will into a tangable ball of force and push with it.. then bam.. sound returns with the ability to move.. after i turned 18 i kept a loaded gun under my pillow.. see my parents drove trucks and was gone for weeks at a time my sister moved out got married at a young age.. i had the big old house to myself. Creeps me out to this day to even just type this much.

yet I know something was there.. it was the same thing everytime.. a prescence a terrible affinity that i could never see but could feel its power.. it would end the moment i could force myself to blink.. funny how the thought of a physical weapon could protect you from something that was metaphysical.

it ended the day i got married.. it started to happen and i dreamt i was in a cirlce filed.. hay grass knee high.. tall old growth trees all around.. it was night .. no moon yet you could see by the stars.. heh even stars..

after 20 or so min sitting there waiting something came outta the woods.. tall.. foreboding.. it never spoke i couldnt describe it except for a feeling of sadness and utter evil.. i told it i was done playing.. im done running.. i stood up.. that feeling griped me but i remember what i did that day with my partents.. and took a step. that step became a walk then a run.. i screamed.. i have never remember ever screaming in my dreams.. yet i did.. and knowing that unlocked a power ive always had.. controlling my dreams to a bit.

in my hands a broad sword appeared with crackling energy coarsing along its length.. i leaped at it and swung.. i woke up then to a sense of freedom ive never felt.. never has they happened since.. what ever it was was destroyed .. forever i hope.. i watch my three children now.. wondering if or when this will happen.. and ill be damn if it does and i sit back and laugh like my parents did.

heh.. well im good with words a bit so i let ya know in detail what it was like for me. I hated it... i dont want anyone to go through it even in a light mild way.. much less the hell i felt.. that was my original feeling

if ever a doc or phsyic tells me different.. *ka pow* just cuz you go to school and get your head full of info on how to deal with the human mind dont make you an athority on the human phsyic and the ability to judge another human being. I find it funny how when the human mind sees or hears something that is "alien" to its thinking it passes it off as scoff and that science can eventaully rule out the metaphysical.. bs i say bs.


which for all of use that feel drained.. emotional and physical are one in the same in my beliefs.. you used all the mental ability ot force your way outta that state of dreaming.. your body i promise locked up to help you somehow.. and when you finally woke up it relaxed and had to wait for the start up. wway i look at it.

Wow, so other people get this too. It only happens to me once in a long while, usually when I'm really stressed out and not sleeping well as I start to drift off if I'm on my back. The coughing trick the Dilbert1234567 mentioned is the only way I've been able to get out of it other than letting it go away on its own. I had a course in neurology (former biomedical engineering major, now in materials science) 2 years ago and its crazy all the wired feedback loops that can happen. We spent an entire chapter on neurological disorders, and some of them get pretty weird.

I was having many episodes of sleep paralysis. In my case, however, when I gave up smoking marijuana, for me at least, they stopped.

The first time this happened to me, I was about 13, and it scared the shit outta me. I remember waking up, not being able to move, but my legs were straight up in the air. I also heard the loud buzzing sounds, and I could feel my eyeballs almost pulsating. At the time, I was convinced that Aliens were abducting me, so I was totally freaked out. I actually never completely knew exactly what it was until about a year ago (though i was pretty sure it wasn't aliens). It still happens every once in a while, always when I sleep on my back.

I think it has only happened once with hallucinations. I was at my Mom's house, sleeping on the couch, and I woke up paralyzed, and saw a ghost standing in the doorway. The house was known to have a ghost living in it (I am not sure what to believe as far as ghosts go. I have my doubts, but I could understand them being real all the same) , so I dunno wether it really was a ghost, or just a hallucination. Anyway, I didn't really care too much about the ghost, I was more concerned with getting back to sleep (Aliens could abduct me nowadays, and I would just tell them to fuck off and let me sleep).

Pretty scary stuff when you can't move, and you don't know what is going on though.

Back when I was about 8, I remember going to bed just like any other night. However once I was asleep things got really messed up. In the dream( I think it was a dream) I was walking in my own house, except things were different (locations of things, colors ect) Then I headed down stairs to investigate a strange sound that I had heard. To my dismay I became paralyzed in the middle of the stair case. Then everything became so silent that it hurt, I try to get up to run.... Nothing, I cant move, nor breath. Then What appeared to be a demon of sorts (in the body of my cousin) materialized in front of me. It glanced at me like it was some kind of bird then pulled out a well decorated daggerish blade. Smirking it walked over then began to cut at my sides. Unable to move still I scream in my own mind. Then poof, he is gone.
I am still paralyzed, and my side burns as it drips. A few moments later I am able to move. The funny thing is, this time I was awake. I literally woke up unable to move, in the stair case. And yes my side had been lacerated.

i think i might have HSP...
about twice a week i wake up after the sensation of falling. it feels like someone is sitting on my chest and holding my arms above my head. i can also hear people talking like im not even there. sometimes i see shadows of people around my bed. the scariest time was when i saw something lift my shower towel that was hung over my door. im terrified to be alone in the dark. i've also formed a mild case of insomnia. im so scared to fall asleep sometimes because it feels like im just going to stop breathing. it physically hurts. i even wake up with bruises on my arms.
another weird thing is that my sister and i both have episodes at the same time, but in different rooms. she told me that she tries to kick and scream, but nothing works. when she finally gains control she's usually crying and comes into my room to wake me up.
this is the worst feeling in the world. any suggestions on how to make this go away? any other info????

I've experienced this a few times. I found the feeling to be similar to just before waking up or falling asleep, when your body is frozen for a second or less, except extended for a very long time. I figured it was simply the brain transferring muscle control back to the conscious mind.

That's pretty much what I feel when it happens. There's usually a high-pitched tone that's very grating, and incoherent voices, or memories of voices (don't worry I'm not crazy). Then it's like my conscious mind is awake, but my body is asleep. And I get very scared, not because of anything in particular, but just the feeling of being scared, as something terrible could happen.

It usually happens when I'm anxious when going to bed.

Wow. It's great to know that many others have experienced the same thing. I am not alone.

I have had this "Sleep paralysis" happen to me about a dozen times. Each time it occurs it is very alluring but also very, very frightening. This first happened to me when I was 18, I am now 28. When it occurs I am always lying down and usually half asleep. I don't experience a loud buzzing noise as some of you do. When it occurs I have my eyes open and my body is completely paralysed from head to toe. I am fully aware of my surroundings. I also experience a sensation of something pulsating around my body, if i have the blanket over me it feels like the blanket wraps tight around my body and releases. This happens the whole time that I am paralysed. It feels very much like some kind of being or presence is wrapping itself around me. Whenever these experiences happen I am curious and want to go further to see what happens but I am too scared. I always end up making an attempt to move and break free from the paralysis.
All of my experiences have been like this except for one. One of them was frightening as hell. The usual paralysis occured with the presence pulsating around my body, but there was also another presence in the room. The other presence in the room may as well have been Satan himself. I could sense that it was an evil force. I could not physically see it but I felt it move towards me. It tried to get inside me, I could feel tremendous pressure on my head. This is the most frightening experience I have ever had in my life.
I myself believe in life after death. I believe that there is a spiritual realm. It is often taught that there are four dimensions, height, width, length and time. Some people claim that there is a fifth dimsension, the spiritual realm. I believe it and I think it contains Good forces and Evil forces. I believe there are spiritual forces that are vying for our souls. The bible actually teaches that there are angels and demons. The angels minister to us while the demons are trying to coerce us to commit evil.

I have had CSP experiances alot since we moved. Although I didn't know that's what it was until I read this thread. I just thought my limbs were alseep. I always try to get one of my arms to move first and then if I can I start rubbing my other arms and legs. LOL Now it sounds silly but I really just thought my limbs were asleep. I would ache afterwards too. It always happens in the middle of the night.

I think I have had a HSP experiance. We still lived in MI at the time and it was four or five years ago. I had gotten up and used the bathroom and crawled back into bed. I thought I was asleep but then I heard the most terrifying moaning and wailing. I couldn't move, at the time I thought I couldn't move because I was so scared but even when I tried to grab Alphaphi I couldn't. I couldn't say anything either except wimper. My eyes were wide open and I was looking at the doorway, I could see my cats sleeping on the bed even. When I paniced really bad I was finally able to move and I woke up Alphaphi. I was in such hysterics he went through the house to see if someone had broke in and then went outside to see if someone was playing a prank. Noone there. So I passed it off as a ghost.

Interesting. More circumstantial evidence of sleep paralysis affecting a gegraphical area.

I haven't had sleep paralysis in ages. Maybe the spook has moved elsewhere???

Look, sleep paralysis is in no way caused or related to the paranormal. It's a completely normal function gone slightly awry. Why don't you walk around or drive your car when you're dreaming of doing it? Because your body is paralyzed, albeit temporarily. Check out <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/paralysis.html">Stanford</a> for proof.

Enough with the paranormal on this one...

I already know what popular science says about sleep paralysis.

This forum is all about the blurred boundary between knowledge and and nonsense. Open up a little and admit that what you know is outweighed 1,000,000:1 by what you don't.

hmm. i have narcolepsy; have had it some thirty years or so [i'm 52]. one of the many symptoms of narcolepsy is hypnogogic paralysis. i'll have to re-read some of my literature about this, but sleep paralysis is a common thing for me. it's never been alarming to me, but has always been an interesting and sometimes amusing thing. i'll get back with morlotse [i've just discovered this thread]. narcolepsy is a very interesting disorder to have. LOTS of funny, bizarre, wierd shit.

more to follow...

I'm glad to see so many other people on this forum that get CSP and HSP. I've been getting them since I was about 10 years old. An episode of CSP or HSP happens to me maybe once every month, but during times of stress it could be about once a week. I've gotten pretty used to CSP, so when it happens I try so hard to move my finger or toe (kind of like the bride in Kill Bill wiggling her big toe haha) which will usually get me out of it. However, HSP still scares the shit out of me nearly every time.

During HSP I see crazy things and also feel immense pain. I once fell asleep on the couch on my stomach and saw this weird dark matter approaching me. I tried to scream but I couldn't. The dark matter demon thingy then attacked me and started to choke me for a good 10 to 15 seconds. I then woke up coughing and darted out of the living room.

Another time I was on a Greyound bus and I guess I started to fall asleep (I wasn't to aware of it because I hadn't willfully closed my eyes) when suddenly everything got dark outside of the bus got dark because we entered a tunnel. I saw each person on the bus turn into a demon and start talking in some unknown tongue. This lasted for about 2-3 minutes, in which I was scared shitless. Some of them were just staring at me which made me even more scared.

I've confronted aliens, vampires, demons, scary midgets, an 8 year old zulu child with a spear, cloaked beings, an 18th century parliament member with a powdered wig, and a kabuki masked person with a dagger. Sometimes they say weird things that don't really make much sense to me, other times they just stay silent. It still scares the living shit out of me when it happens because I'm powerless and everything seems so real. These episodes can last anywhere up to 10-15 minutes.

These occurances happen so often to me that I can sometimes control them. When I feel myself getting powerless, I focus really hard on a place I want to go or thing that I want to see then suddenly I'm there and I have full control of my surroundings, yet I can still feel things. It's sort of like lucid dreaming but I don't think it's exactly that. When I dream I don't feel things in the dream, I only see them, but when this happens I can. It's similar to being in the Matrix I guess, it's surreal and you can do whatever you want if you harness the power and focus your energy.

It's a gift when I can control it, but a terror when the hallucinations control me. By the way, it happens to me no matter which position I sleep in. Maybe someone has had similar experiences.

Not to bring up something from 50 years ago... but how does a person choking you... with an axe... feel different than just a normal choking? And how do you gauge sex from the choking? Just curious.

I can't speak for everyone here but, whenever I have a hallucinatory sleep paralysis experience, I can usually describe the physical appearance of the 'being' down to minute detail.

In my last experience there were two Arabic terrorist types wearing brown/khaki clothes, dogtooth check scarves, one of them had an AK47 and the other was carrying a pistol. Both had black beards, the one carrying the AK had a longer beard than the other.

For me, the scariest part about HSP is the realism of the hallucination.

When it happens to me it is almost always when I decide to take a nap. So the solution for me is dont take naps. I have had it all, noises, seeing a figure stand at the foot of my bed, being suck in some kind of tunnel, to now leaving my body. After doing research I learned I certainly wasnt the only one, and over and over the advice is to stay calm. I also seen the advice of letting go. If you leave your body, enjoy it, you can see some amazing things. I dont freak out anymore. I keep myself calm. When I feel as if I've left my body I still cant allow myself to go any farther than my bedroom door. I get to the door and worry what if I go to far and cant get back to my body so I'll force myself to return. Its odd stuff, but now that I understand it better I find sometimes they can be amusing.

When i was in high school i had a ton of trouble sleeping normal between school and work and going out with friends till 2-3am every night of the week. got to the point where i was only sleeping 3-4 times a week and only a couple hours at a time. so when i was in school i would end up falling asleep with my eyes open frozen couldnt move couldnt really tell what was going on. just a blur of stuff happening couldnt move my eyes or anything. happened so often i got used to it. basicly its nothing to worry about just be happy your getting some sleep even if that sleep sucks.

there is a very logical explanation for why people around the world report simular experiences with hallucinatory sleep paralysis.

One of the theory about dreams (most prominant in the REM sleep cycle) is that they are your mind's interpretation of random nerve stimuli... in other words, you see a redish sillhoutte while your eyes are closed because random stimuli are running from your optic nerve toyour brain and your mind interprets it as something familiar to you like a devil.

with this in mind, if you wake up paralyzed, a likely interpretation is that someone is holding you down (hence being straddled)

I had never heard of this phenomenon until this thread, but now I realize that I've had an episode of it myself. I didn't know what the hell was going, but it didn't really freak me out either. I just laid there for a little bit, and it eventually wore off.

Nice to know what it was though.

I too used to have these experiences and was as most frightened by the idea of someone holding me down as I felt the pressure and could not move my limbs. While surfing the net I found some sites describing OOBE's "Out of Body Experience" much the same as AARCHON links have referred to. After reading those sites I began to have the experience more and I'm not saying the sites influenced me either way but I eventually allowed the experience to just happen without judging either way what it actually WAS that was happening to me. I have since found the experience to be exactly what is normally described of as an Out of Body Experience. And after many years of having them now I find them a wonderful experience to enjoy and learn from.

theres another thread floating round about this topic.





jwoody

arent terrorists everybodies worst nightmare? :D u sure it was HSP and not a dream that ure subconcious has conjured up based on your fears?

those damn ayrabs!

can anybody tell me what my experiences are??
i go to sleep at night. then at around 3 to 5 am time i feel a buzzing in my ear. it doesn't happen all the time. sometimes the buzzing floats into my hear. one time violently came to me.
i felt like i was awake, so i try to move but only to be paralysed.
i will tell you the most longest time and scary experience of this is when i was sleeping then i hears buzzing in ear. i ignore it and it gets louder and louder and louder, till i hear my whole head vibrate. then i feel my head lifting. i got so scared of the lifting and the noise i tried to move , but can't . at last i can move only to realise i was sleeping the whole time. but it seem so real that i thought i had awaken already. but no when i fully was able to break out of paralysis that was the only time i could open my eyes, i was so relieved. one time i was sleeping on my back another on my side. it doesn't matter. how i sleep . i usually start on my side but doesn't matter how i wake up when it happens. just once , i woke up on my side face looking at bottom of bedside when i struggled and fear crept in , when my eyes opened i saw bright flash of light. why i dunno, i search the net but i don't think aliens are the answer.
where can a get help

awkward feeling
 

[QUOTE=babylon067]

my body and every possible fiber in the universe felt huge and miniscule at the same time

i've had this feeling too, it's so weird and very hard to explain. That feeling of largeness and smallness at the same time. I've had that feeling many of times before, while i'm sleeping, but for me, it has never been associated with the phenomena involved in this discussion, although i've also had a few of those experiences also. But my point is, I identify with the description you stated. There's got to be some meaning for it...

My quest for the TRUTH continues...

geezers just had a sleep paralysis experience... just like 15 minutes ago....

i was dozing off and I started dreaming and I was aware of the fact that i was dreaming (wheres that lucid dream thread) so i decided i was gonna fly and started trying to fly... my dream body started to float up and then someone was holding me down saying i couldnt fly... then a girl I like a lot started telling him to leave me alone and i kept trying to float up and the guy kept holding me down pulling me by my arm

then all of a sudden i'm awake and I know someone just came into the room to cause trouble and is holding me down by my arm (which was dangling off the edge of the bed) and i try to call out to my roomate but cant move or call out or anything then finally i'm free again and able to move...

only the third time i remember experiencing the sleep paralysis... and only the second time i've had halucinations and been scared...

first time i can remember having a lucid dream... so its not all bad...

I don't know how I missed this thread before. I've had CSP and HSP on several different occasions each. I found that they are directly related to two things: 1) Stress. Physical or mental stress building over a long period of time can kinda throw me off every once in a while. 2) A fundamental disconnect. Several times I have felt a fundamental disconnect from reality. The first time was when my best friend was shot in the face, and the second was when I discovered that I was beginning to develop dissociative disorder. Both cases led to CSP and HSP respectively.

The first situation was very simple. I awoke early in the morning to find that I was motionless. I was completely unable to move. Unfortunately, I was unable to calm myself initially, so I really freaked. I was unable to move for what I believe was maybe 2-3 minutes. It took me a few hours to calm down and feel comfortable enough to go to sleep. I was disturbed, but simply chalked it up to stress and was able to control it later one

The second situation was a bit more freaky. I found out later that I was developing depersonalization disorder, but was able to head it off at the pass (why couldn't I get dissociative fugue?). Anyway, I was feeling a serious disconnect from reality and it was really starting to negatively effect my life. One evening I had drifted off to sleep in the most comfortable chair in the world, and I woke with a start to a very loud noise. I opened my eyes to see distortions in the room. There were dark spots here and there, and they moved slowly. The source of the noise seemed to be a slammed door, but I had left the door closed before sitting to read. I believed that I was having a religious experience at first (a strange first reaction), but it was only a sense, as I was completely terrified. As I tried to move, I found that I was as if bound. I felt pressure across my abdomen and neck. Since then I've not fallen asleep in the chair.

I just had another stress induced episode of REM paralysis. It was weird because I didn't really see anything but I heard the most annoying ringing coming from my closet. It kept getting louder and louder until it jumped inside my body and I heard it ringing throughout my head. Lasted like 5 minutes, for which I couldn't move.

Could this be a very important thing; if you type in the words "people talking" and "auditory hallucinations" in google, you will find that many voice hearers believe that other people/neighbours etc are talking about/persecuting them (and this often leads to violence) - before they find out that they are hearing voices. We know that voices can be heard both inside and outside of the head; could it be that the truth is more nuanced, and that the voices can also be heard to emanate from people's lips, passing cars, from MULTIPLE locations outside of the head (in external space).

I have been reading some material about delusions of reference in schizophrenia, i.e., the idea that some people have that the t.v. or the radio is talking about them and would like to propose that just as people hear auditory hallucinations internally and externally, for some reason, they may hear auditory hallucinations coming from a t.v or a radio. I suspect that certain areas of the brain that register the spatial location from where a sound emanates is activated when people hear voices from a radio or a t.v. I wonder whether people who think that other people are talking about them also hear voices emanating from the spatial location of the other person/persons.

I would like to quote a passage from one of the articles of Ralph Hoffman (Acta Psychiatr Scand, 2006) "Seeing Voices": fused visual/auditory verbal hallucinations reported by three persons with schizophrenia-spectrum disorder" - "A male patient reported AVHs consisting of male and female voices occuring at a rate of 7-10 times per hour. He also reported visualizing lip and mouth movements superimposed on otherwise veridical perceptions of faces of actual persons that were fused with (i.e., matched the verbal content of and occurred in synchrony with) simultaneous AVHs. These fused visual/auditory hallucinations occurred most frequently when the patient was in the presence of his family or other familiar persons, and tended to reinforce the patient's conviction that others in his immediate environment were the source of the 'voices' he heard."

There is an article from Scientific American that shows how barn owls locate sounds in space (Listening with two ears, Scientific american, 2006) There also seems to be some research on the internet on how the human brain locates the spatial location from where sounds emanate. I wonder whether schizophrenia researchers would be able to use scientific techniques to see which regions of the brain are activated when people think that they are hearing voices from the radio or the t.v.