It is perhaps worth noting that there are other common symptoms that affect people experiencing these ‘attacks’:
People (perhaps I should say ‘victims’) experiencing these nightly ‘attacks’ (I use the word ‘attacks’ without commitment to whether these are ‘internal’ or ‘external’) often begin to have vivid dreams (often nightmares), become prone to bouts of sleep-walking and, in their waking hours, lose their appetites and develop an aversion to sunlight or bright light. They can also become lethargic and weak – although I suppose you could put this down to the strain of the experiences themselves and a genuine fear to go to sleep.
Well David, I think this is the crucial point in which perhaps fact may become myth and lead to vampire histories. If people start to suffer regularly from sleep paralysis it may imply that person is suffering from mental stress, or some difficulty to get asleep or any other known reasons why people should start to experience sleep paralysis. Most of them are related to tiredness or mental stress. It is no wonder if these people are found to be weak and turn to avoid sunlight while feeling weak by this constant lack of sleep or sleep inadequacies . I myself become weak to sunlight in the next morning if I do not sleep or sleep for a few hours. Sunlight surely irritates my sight when I´m on sleep deficit.
I think if some paranormal phenomenon would exist in this specific case of attacks, it would be the alleged subtle body of energy, which was studied and believed to exist by for example Wolfgang Pauli , a renowned and important physicist alongside with his friend and former co-worker and also famous, psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung who studied the unconscious for his entire life. The idea of the subtle body could be a fuel to start the fire of the ancient soul myth. This energy body is also present in the chinese medicine, called on western world "alternative medicine", which includes chakras (hindu terminology) or points of high energy concentrations and flows in the exact middle of the body. This energy would also perhaps equal to the "chi" claims of channeling energies in some body parts by moving your meditating mind´s awareness to that points. By being on a meditative state which favors visualization, you actually feel the physical tinglings and real energy sensations moving from part to part. I myself was skeptical about the existence of these strange things until I became curious enough in order to start practicing the alleged methods of inducing trance in order to have OBE or "astral projections". I can say that these things are very real and are mostly alike to all people who experience it. The most common effects are felt by almost everyone who describes the experience.
Right before you feel like leaving the body , you may be stuck in a state in which you seem to experience a lot of entities around you, often of threatening nature. This is the mental state in which people often says about being attacked, sexually abused, drained or being pressured on the chest. The difference is that people have it by accident, spontaneously or by a physical problem like those science in general speculates to be associated with repeated sleep paralysis episodes. When I´m about to induce these experiences, exactly before it triggers, I feel my body strangely energized from the chest and head flowing to the other parts. It is often so overwhelming that you may be in panic and wake temporarily paralyzed or with heavy tingling and energy sensations throughout the body.
Note carefully that i´m not saying that there is in fact a suble body, but all the sensations listed above are real and everyone who tries the method with some patience is able to induce these strange experiences. And as there is no scientific explanation as for why all this unknown energy do flow throughout the body while tranced, I found this model of a subtle body or subtle energy an interesting starting approach, for reasons I could talk later if someone would be interested.
Ohh I could go on all night long about the possible causes of these sensations of being abducted, but as it relates to this discussion I think I´ve explained my opinions about that matter. The crucial point is not the existence of the phenomena but HOW people do interpret them. Let me know what you think.
regards