Report on self-observed night terrors

[dlorde]

I don't recall any sleep paralysis experiences (if I had them, they weren't memorable), but I have had a couple of experiences of an indescribably terrifying sense of intense and impending evil/malevolence/doom, one as a small child, and one in my 20s. As others have said, it was out of all proportion to the dream content - the one in my 20s occurred in a totally mundane dream about everyday stuff. Fortunately I don't really get nightmares anymore - although if I get too hot, dreams get a bit gnarly - I see this as a subconscious way to get me to wake up and cool myself down.

 

[pakeha]

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?

Yes.
It hasn't happened in the last 15 years, though.
And welcome to the forum.

 

[Mercurial Artism]

This happens to me all the time. It's pretty common for it to happen occasionally. I've grown accustomed to sleep paralysis, since I've experienced it from a young age, but it can still be scary every so often. For instance, the other day I awoke, my head facing the wall, as I hallucinated a male voice and footsteps (I live alone). I was unable to move, so I was hoping I was experiencing a medical emergency which my dad checked up on me for, even as I realized how unlikely this scenario was.

It's generally more severe when stressed out (like prior to a major event, like moving). I have acid reflux too, so my sleep is more disturbed if I've eaten within four hours of lying down to sleep, or if I ate a very large meal or one with lots of fat or citric acid (this is part of why I have given up pineapple).

 

[ExMinister]

Speaking of self observation, I wonder if anyone else has had this (?):

Once on a particularly bad night where I'd awakened in the middle of the night with a really terrifying experience, I went downstairs to read. I was propped up on the arm, the dogs in my lap, with a blanket over me. Eventually I was exhausted enough that I decided to sleep in the chair. As I started to drift off, I could hear the sound of children laughing and talking in the room. I knew my brain was hallucinating this as there was no one else in the room, so I pulled myself fully awake to try to shake it off. Then I let myself drift back asleep and again I heard the talking and laughter. The sensation of being aware of myself falling asleep was so unpleasant that I sat up and picked up a book instead. This was the oddest thing, feeling my brain descending into a sleep state, hearing the voices.

 

[Drewbot]

Your eyes were not open. Your brain incorporated its last sensory inputs onto the dream. I had one of these, i was on the couch, drank a can of Coke, set it on the floor and fell asleep, I remember looking around the room trying to focus on a sinister being in the room. The coke can was evident in the dream, sitting on the floor. When I woke up, the coke can was gone, i asked the wife where it went, she said she picked it up right after i set it down.
my brains last conscious image of the room had the can in it. So it incorporated it into the landscape, my eyes were never open.

 

[KateHL]

My first experience with sleep paralysis was when I was around 11. I woke up to blinking lights and weird noises and I couldn't move. I thought, "aliens!" even though I never saw one in my sleep paralysis state. It was really scary and I didn't tell anyone in case they would think I was crazy. I had more in my teens, but not alien-related. I usually saw shadows or creepy misty shapes or just felt a really nefarious presence. After being attacked on campus and, for some reason, I saw Buffalo Bill (Silence of the Lambs). He had a big pair of scissors dripping with blood and walking toward me. That was the scariest one. I had lots of sleep paralysis episodes with him in them. *shudders* Then I had the one where I heard a Native American telling about how all the native people's horses were slaughtered and then I heard an ear-splitting sound of horses screaming. Nowadays I just have ominous presences in the room ones. Now you know my entire history of sleep paralysis.

ETA: I forgot the episode in which I saw my birth mother. I've never met her and never seen a picture of her, but I was sure it was my birth mother. Brains are funny sometimes.

 

[patchbunny]

I've experienced them, but rarely. From a post of mine in 2007:

Yepyep, happened twice as described by others. Lying in bed, can't move, and some presence climbs into bed with me and crawls atop me, its weight pressing down. Trying like anything to scream, but can't move. Part of my brain finally went, "this is sleep paralysis", and *poof* it vanished and I could move again.

Nothing has ever scared me as much as that event did last year.

 

[Stupefied]

Does anyone else have hallucinations that are not scary? I wake up sometimes and see landscapes outside my window or an animal in my room among other things. Only once have I had one that was scary.

 

[pakeha]

From patchbunny's post:

Part of my brain finally went, "this is sleep paralysis", and *poof* it vanished and I could move again.

This more or less mirrors my own experience.

 

[Learjet]

Speaking of self observation, I wonder if anyone else has had this (?):

...The sensation of being aware of myself falling asleep...

Yes. I've had a few of these but I find them great fun rather than unpleasant.

Does anyone else have hallucinations that are not scary? I wake up sometimes and see landscapes outside my window or an animal in my room among other things. Only once have I had one that was scary.

Most of my hypnagogic hallucinations are not scary either. Generally I don't HH people or faces, rather objects, patterns or landscapes. Also some fascinating complex machines.

As for sleep paralysis, I've had a few. These are about the only altered states I don't like as mine are usually associated with an irrational evil presence. It's quite intense at the time.

 

[baron]

It's refereshing to see this being reported for what it is - a neurological experience - rather than the woo-based hysteria we so often read about concerning dark figures and evil entities. I used to have sleep paralysis and hypnogogic hallucinations quite a lot although not night terrors. I guess they could have been but I enjoyed them too much, beats Paranormal Activity hands down.

 

[ToddH]

Used to have sleep paralysis all the time in my teens to twenties. My favorite episodes were the ones that involved aliens. I would open my eyes and your standard gray aliens would be standing beside my bed. I would try to move or scream but couldn't do a thing. Truly frightening, especially when you're young. Also had various monsters show up every now and then.

Haven't had an episode in a long time, thankfully.

 

[Ixion]

But I think I should win for weird-sleep-things for having had this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome

I think it might even have been scarier than the floating evil demon face.

I have had it happen once. I was awake, but utterly exhausted. I had not sleep more than 10 hours that whole week. I was also under a lot of stress. I had a sound like a gunshot emanate from directly inside my head. Scared the **** out of me. I was at work, where the sound could not have been explained by environmental factors. I work for a doctor. He said that it sounded like a simple hallucination to him, but he asked his collegue, who is a psychiatrist, who said it was Exploding Head Syndrome. He told me to get some proper sleep and that I might expect it to happen from time to time, especially when I am very tired.

On the original topic, my son had night terrors frequently (2-3 times a week) when he was about 6 months to a year old. He still gets them occassionally (he is 17 months old), but our pediatrician says it is not uncommon, and many children grow out of it. Night terrors and sleep paralysis are also more common when one or both parents have parasomnial conditions. I have a few sleep related conditions (sleep walking, teeth grinding, sometimes sleep sex, night terrors, and sleep talking), so it is not unexpected that my son would have one condition. Fortunately for me, my disorders are all very mild and seldom do I experience them more than a few times a year.

 

[tjlance1]

Does this apply to the thread as well? For several years I had the same nightmare on a frequent basis. I would be riding a bike (seen through the first person point of view) downhill, out of nowhere a car is directly in my path. I collide with the car and just as I am going through the windshield of the car, I would wake up, but I would wake up on the floor. I could never figure out how I ended up on the floor because I would have no recollection of falling out of the bed or "jumping" out of the bed. I just remember the feeling of shear terror and the image burned into my mind of going through the windshield of this car that was in my dream.

 

[Checkmite]

I agree with the consensus that the OP certainly sounds like sleep paralysis. However, it does not sound like a night terror - which it's important to note is a completely different thing although the two are often conflated.

Night terrors happen in the deepest stage of non-REM sleep; they cannot be remembered and usually the only indication that you've had one is the reports of others who observed it.

 

[Burning Beard]

But I think I should win for weird-sleep-things for having had this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploding_head_syndrome

I think it might even have been scarier than the floating evil demon face.

I've ad adult night terrors on and off for years, and they were particularly frequent in my early 20s. That "exploding head" feeling was almost always a feature of my terrors. A high-pitched ringing nose, like tinitus, but much, much louder. It's usually accompanied by a feeling of pressure around my head, along with a feeling that my body is out of proportion.

Then came the demons and goblins, the figure of fire, and out of body experiences.

At least I know what they are and I haven't had one for several months now. When I didn't know what they were it was terrifying beyond words.

 

[quarky]

In one of the Bill and Ted movies, they fell into a bottomless pit. They screamed for a long time, but the plummet continued. Hours later, still in free fall, it started to lose its punch.
I forget the actial movie, but it seems the fall eventually got boring, and they played cards to pass the time.

I'm sleep walking from my last sleep paralysis event; 30 years ago.
Its surprising what we can adjust to in time.

As per the monster that lived under my bed, rationality didn't kill him for me...he simply got boring after so many years of not managing to grab my leg.

 

[Halfcentaur]

I've had several in my life. Starting at 14, the last time was when I was 27 or so, it's been about 4-5 years.

It's caused by the body paralyzing itself while sleeping so you don't act out your dreams physically. Cat's have had this paralyzing process "shut offf" in lab tests, and when they fall asleep they fully act out the actions they seem to be dreaming while sound asleep.

I thought I was being attacked by a demonic entity the first time.

After learning about hypnagogic dreams, the last time it happened I recognized it and almost instantly was launched into a strange dream scenario and free from it without waking back up.

 

[Halfcentaur]

I wonder why the malevolent presence is such a universal aspect of this experience.

 

[Hellbound]

*Ahem*

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

I was wondering the same thing above