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Report on self-observed night terrors

WayneDV

New Blood
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Joined
Jan 25, 2012
Messages
2
This happened to me just on an hour ago. Though I'd write up some quick notes to share with the community. While I find it fascinating and feel "blessed" (sorry) that I was able to maintain perspective - I don't look forward to a repeat performance.

Observed phenomenon : Night Terrors
Occurrence: First and hopefully last.
Subject: 39 year old male.
Subject history: As normal as is possible to be in this screwed up world.
Environmental note: Window open at back with cool breeze blowing in.
Dietary note: Big-ass steak for dinner - anomalous protein portion over norm.
Alcohol intake: None in past 48 hours.
Pharmaceutical intake: No prescription drugs in months, no history of illicit substance use.

It started when I became aware of being in a state of lucid dreaming. I've experienced this before but neither frequently nor regularly.

At the moment which I recognised as the waking point, things took a decided turn for the worse.

My eyes started to flutter open and closed - I imagine that they would have looked much like those of someone suffering a seizure. I was awake at this point as I was able to see broken images of the room which is moderately lit by street lamps.

I was aware of the fact that I was laying on my right side - just as I had been when falling asleep some 1.75 hours earlier. My instinct was to roll left, onto by back but I felt as though I encountered overwhelming resistance to this effort. The feeling presented itself as icy-cold and uniform pressure directly against my upper back but confined to a narrow strip directly along my spine.

At this point I felt near-overwhelming panic that should perhaps be labelled as terror but even as I was thinking the words "night terror, how interesting", my primal brain took hold and I let out what can only be described as a keening wail.

About 5 seconds after my vocalisation I regained control of my body and rolled onto my back and was fully awake - if somewhat shaken. The sense of dire threat was still with my although I could sense the logical parts of my brain chuckling wryly at the rest of the squishy grey matter. As soon as I was able I reached over to check my phone for a time stamp - even as I found myself looking all around the room to ensure that there was no imminent, threatening presence.

From the first moment of the experience (or as close as I can tell) I was aware of the nature of the experience. That did not protect me from the sense of terror that arose - although it might have ameliorated the severity of the emotions evoked.

I was acutely aware of a duality within my experience. My logical brain was observing and feeling honoured for the opportunity while my amygdala was shoveling out emotional response as fast as its little arms could work.


 
You should look up sleep paralysis. I've experienced this for 20 years now. Unpleasant.
 
It does suck. I never had the feeling of impending evil, just the overwhelming feeling of suffocation/not being able to move or breathe. I usually just focus on trying to get my toe to move, and that breaks it. Hasn't happened in a few years, and that is fine by me!
 
threejr said:
It does suck. I never had the feeling of impending evil, just the overwhelming feeling of suffocation/not being able to move or breathe. I usually just focus on trying to get my toe to move, and that breaks it. Hasn't happened in a few years, and that is fine by me!
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Exactly the same for me.

Haven't had it in a while, but interestingly, I seem to get the paralysis when I sleep too much, i.e. when I've sleeped through the night, and decide to take another nap in the afternoon.
 
The last time I had this, I kept thinking to myself "Just don't open your eyes" over and over again. I didn't really want to know what my still hallucinating brain would show me.

Not even sure I would be able to open them anyways.

Greedo said:
Haven't had it in a while, but interestingly, I seem to get the paralysis when I sleep too much, i.e. when I've sleeped through the night, and decide to take another nap in the afternoon.
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Same thing for me.
 
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Does Sleep Paralysis/Night Terrors come on after a certain age? And when it comes on, does it stay with you for life? I had a friend in his late 30s who came to work one day and told me that he'd had an episode. He'd never had it before and for the next several years that we worked together he never mentioned having them again. Is that normal?

Do children have them?
 
Howie Felterbush said:
Sounds dreadful. Does anyone know why on earth a human body would even have the need or ability to do this to itself? Does it serve some purpose from way in our past, or what?
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I remember hearing that events like these are caused when someone whose body had already been "disconnected" for the night (it is very useful not to be kicking and moving around while sleeping) but became conscious. You would be semi-conscience and often your eyes would open, but you wouldn't be able to move. Just Google it, this is the first thing I found:

Link
 
KateHL said:
You should look up sleep paralysis. I've experienced this for 20 years now. Unpleasant.
Click to expand...

Well, in your defense, the Marquis is around. So the terrifying, ominous, bone-chilling presence in the room . . . .

I should be writing this to him, shouldn't I?
 
They are not fun. Your description is slightly different than my experiences.
I used to have them from time to time. As early as 17 and as late as early 30s (43 now). Usually when consuming small amounts of alcohol several hours before sleep.
The paralysis was accompanied by the feeling of something "bad" in the room. But its not that I was paralyzed...it was that I had the strong urge NOT to move for fear of the "bad" thing in the room noticing me. I could usually reason my way out of it at some point.
I have had that happen only about 15 times or so. It seems you can learn to realize whats going on quicker and quicker each time. At least thats how it was for me. Especially after I researched it a bit.

A funny story semi related was some lucid dreaming/sleep walking I did when I first went in to the Marine Corps.
I had just arrived at my primary school and was assigned to a 4 man room. The other 3 guys took me out for some drinks that night. We hit the rack around 11 pm. I immediately started lucid dreaming..sat up in bed and saw an airplane on fire heading right for the 4 of us. I jumped out of bed and started screaming at the other three that we needed to get out of here...air planes gonna crash! I then opened the door and started running down the hall of the barracks in my underwear and T shirt! After about 15 steps I started realizing what the hell was going on...turned around and slowly walked back to the room. I went back through the door and saw the other three guys I had just met sitting up in bed groggy eyed wondering WTF was going on. I just mumbled..."sorry" and crawled back in bed and slept good.

We all got a laugh the next day.
 
My wife used to have these experiences. She blamed a supernatural explanation from folklore tradition. When she learned about sleep paralysis, the experiences haven´t come back any more, or at least she no longer mentions and I never notice it happening.
 
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Follow up ....

Glad to see so many responses - I had no sense of how common this is - so it's interesting to see the reports coming in.

Nothing about my experience worries me - but I'm specifically interested if I'm alone in being aware of what the event was as it happened. Has anyone else gone through an episode and been cognisant of it?
 
I've had many of these. What you describe is sleep paralysis, not a night terror. Mine started in my 30s and I was always fully aware of what was happening. Occasionally my mind will provide me with terrifying imagery to go along with the feeling of paralysis.

Sleep paralysis is not all that uncommon. It seems to be related to the paralysis that usually accompanies REM (dreaming) sleep. Consciousness returns before the paralysis mechanism that prevents one from acting out their dreams has completely turned off, and so you experience being awake while still being unable to move. I wonder if it's the panic we feel on finding ourselves in this situation that sometimes generates fearful imagery to go along with the emotion.

I think it comes and goes and I don't think anyone fully understands what triggers it, though I think there is a link with being over-tired.

In contrast, a night terror generally refers to an experience of terror as you are coming awake but without any recognizable reason. This is common with children. They awaken screaming. looking panicked, clearly terrified. It takes them a few minutes to fully awaken and settle down and they will have no idea what it was that scared them. So it's different than a nightmare. This happened to me only once. I felt I was slowly awakening from absolute darkness with a feeling of overwhelming terror but I had no idea what had brought it on. It's a different phenomenon than sleep paralysis and this tends to be more common in children than adults.
 
As I understand it, Sleep paralysis is so common that the vast majority of people will experience it at some point in their lives. As a newbie, I am unable to post links, but a quick google search on "sleep paralysis" should bring up the Stanford page which is very concise while still managing to cover the major points. The wikipedia page is more in depth and also covers the folklore elements. It also repeats the claim that "some scientists have proposed sleep paralysis has an explanation for 'Alien abductions'. Anyone who hadn't figured that one out is probably on the wrong forum.
 
joesixpack said:
Does Sleep Paralysis/Night Terrors come on after a certain age? And when it comes on, does it stay with you for life? I had a friend in his late 30s who came to work one day and told me that he'd had an episode. He'd never had it before and for the next several years that we worked together he never mentioned having them again. Is that normal?

Do children have them?
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I've had them peroidically since I was quite a small child. I get them more if I'm stressed. When I thought I was going to lose my job a couple of years ago I was having them up to 4 times a week.

Mine are slightly different to the ones described here so far as I don't have any paralysis at all.

Ususally for me I "wake up" and see often a bomb about to go off at which point I shout loudly jump out of bed and try and get to it.

Or something like millions of spiders pouring out of all of the light fixtures and again I'll try and run away or hide.

This will last about 30 seconds to a minute and then I'll realise where I am and be able to go back to bed.

Not very pleasant at all but you do almost get used to it after a while. The only reason I went to the doctor at all was because the Mrs wasn't getting any sleep due to me running around shouting at night.
 
Primus said:
I've had them peroidically since I was quite a small child. I get them more if I'm stressed. When I thought I was going to lose my job a couple of years ago I was having them up to 4 times a week.

Mine are slightly different to the ones described here so far as I don't have any paralysis at all.

Ususally for me I "wake up" and see often a bomb about to go off at which point I shout loudly jump out of bed and try and get to it.

Or something like millions of spiders pouring out of all of the light fixtures and again I'll try and run away or hide.

This will last about 30 seconds to a minute and then I'll realise where I am and be able to go back to bed.

Not very pleasant at all but you do almost get used to it after a while. The only reason I went to the doctor at all was because the Mrs wasn't getting any sleep due to me running around shouting at night.
Click to expand...

The term for this is hypnagogic hallucination. It's actually not all that uncommon either. I have these a lot but I usually get demons. Demon faces hovering over my bed. Demons standing next to the bed. Etc.
 
I had a single episode that I recall, which occurred after a period of disrupted sleep: I'd stayed up for almost three days straight, and afterwards slept for close to 24 hours straight (with a couple wakenings for bathroom trips).

I had hallucination with mine...in my case a grim reaper figure standing at the foot of the bed. But I recall the paralysis, and the overwhelming feeling of absolute terror (far out of proportion to any actual events...the terror doesn't come from paralysis or what you see, it's just there). The terror weas felt first, and I didn't notice the paralysis until I tried to yell...which came out as a loud breathing sound. It only lasted a few seconds before I snapped to full wakefulness.

I wonder if the terror feeling may be some sort of corrective mechanism? Maybe a side-effect of the brain getting adrenaline to dump into your system and "jolt" you awake...out of the paralysis? Just a thought, but it does seem the adrenaline flood does snap you out of it quickly, and a fear response would probably be better than a fight response. Just musing, though :)
 
WayneDV said:
This happened to me just on an hour ago. Though I'd write up some quick notes to share with the community. While I find it fascinating and feel "blessed" (sorry) that I was able to maintain perspective - I don't look forward to a repeat performance.

Observed phenomenon : Night Terrors
Occurrence: First and hopefully last.
Subject: 39 year old male.
Subject history: As normal as is possible to be in this screwed up world.
Environmental note: Window open at back with cool breeze blowing in.
Dietary note: Big-ass steak for dinner - anomalous protein portion over norm.
Alcohol intake: None in past 48 hours.
Pharmaceutical intake: No prescription drugs in months, no history of illicit substance use.

It started when I became aware of being in a state of lucid dreaming. I've experienced this before but neither frequently nor regularly.

At the moment which I recognised as the waking point, things took a decided turn for the worse.

My eyes started to flutter open and closed - I imagine that they would have looked much like those of someone suffering a seizure. I was awake at this point as I was able to see broken images of the room which is moderately lit by street lamps.

I was aware of the fact that I was laying on my right side - just as I had been when falling asleep some 1.75 hours earlier. My instinct was to roll left, onto by back but I felt as though I encountered overwhelming resistance to this effort. The feeling presented itself as icy-cold and uniform pressure directly against my upper back but confined to a narrow strip directly along my spine.

At this point I felt near-overwhelming panic that should perhaps be labelled as terror but even as I was thinking the words "night terror, how interesting", my primal brain took hold and I let out what can only be described as a keening wail.

About 5 seconds after my vocalisation I regained control of my body and rolled onto my back and was fully awake - if somewhat shaken. The sense of dire threat was still with my although I could sense the logical parts of my brain chuckling wryly at the rest of the squishy grey matter. As soon as I was able I reached over to check my phone for a time stamp - even as I found myself looking all around the room to ensure that there was no imminent, threatening presence.

From the first moment of the experience (or as close as I can tell) I was aware of the nature of the experience. That did not protect me from the sense of terror that arose - although it might have ameliorated the severity of the emotions evoked.

I was acutely aware of a duality within my experience. My logical brain was observing and feeling honoured for the opportunity while my amygdala was shoveling out emotional response as fast as its little arms could work.
Click to expand...


This is an interesting account. Thanks for sharing it in detail.

I've read about sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations and find them interesting, though I have not experienced them myself (so far--knock on wood to keep it that way).

What I find particularly interesting in your account is that your "logical" brain was aware of what was happening, while being unable to prevent your more primal brain from creating that feeling of terror. I wonder, as you do, whether others experience it like this.

Oh, and welcome to the forum!
 
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