• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Sleep Paralysis

Tacita said:
Steph, in those cases you're still technically dreaming. It's a hypnagogic hallucination. It can occur with sleep paralysis: you "awaken" but feel paralyzed, and are still in something of a dream state, and see images that aren't there. It is because you are still technically asleep and are dreaming the images but your body hasn't woken up enough to be de-paralyzed and the images appear in your real life (though you're dreaming).

Yeah it's that weird. But explainable. It's happened to me countless times; enough for me to just literally say "eff it" and ignore it. It rarely happens to me now.
Click to expand...

Once again I am not refering to when you are asleep
 
steph said:
I was referring to have a nightmare then waking to a disoriented/demonic face and the feeling of someone holding you down. I have heard of such stories and believe that they could be possible, but it had nothing to do with the sleep paralysis subject. Like i said before, I simply misread what she wrote.
Click to expand...

It may interest you to know that it was many, many years before I understood that this was sleep paralysis. At the time, I felt that I was fully awake.

This is a common theme through the experiences I've had. In most of them, I feel as if I am fully awake and being restrained in some way. If I didn't know the details about lucid dreaming or sleep paralysis, I would think that there was an actual presence. Before I understood the mechanics, I described this experiences as having a presence there that was paranormal or even demonic. The people who heard the story were convinced that what I had gone through was some inexplicable, unnatural event.

Now that I know better, I am suspicious of stories that mirror mine but include ghosts, demons or aliens.
 
I have had MANY episodes of sleep paralysis, but in my case, it was never associated with the feeling of a presence in my "awake" world or to any hallucinations. Yes, always associated with a nightmare or a very evil presence in a dream, but it was always clear to me that it was in the dream. Still... extremely disagreable experience. The worst is when I become aware that I'm in a nightmare and try to wake up. It takes what seems like forever to get a squeek out although I feel like I'm screeming my lungs out! Of course, when I'm in a great dream and realize I'm dreaming, it's the opposite... I suddenly wake up! :(

I really have to work on that!
 
I've mentioned this before, but it bears repeating. I used to get sleep paralysis on occasion. Maybe once or twice a year, if that. For me, there were not actual hallucinations. I tend to sleep on my side though and I would have a sense of something malevolent behind me. And of course, since I was paralyzed that just made it worse!

Then I got a Tempur-pedic mattres (hurray for employee discounts!) and havn't had an episode since.
 
Right, I get you. I wonder if sometimes we somehow "Graft the presence onto" some realworld event like that and sometimes don't. The sensation of "a presence" seems extremely common in these experiences, even where there is no ongoing dream at the time and the person is convinced he is awake. Assuming we reject any spirit type explanation, it seems to me the only presence I can be sure was there , is my own.
Yet it felt like someone (thing) else had just gone...It seems to me that presence is most likely my own dreaming mind, experienced by my waking mind as separate rather than integrated . I don't know if this makes sense neurologically, but it sure avoids all obviously nonsensical explanations.
 
It happened to me once. I didn't find the experience frightening- it was just weird. I also didn't have a sense of another presence in the room. By the time I was awake enough that I would have been truly frightened not to be able to move my limbs, the effect had worn off.
 
bookitty said:
It may interest you to know that it was many, many years before I understood that this was sleep paralysis. At the time, I felt that I was fully awake.

This is a common theme through the experiences I've had. In most of them, I feel as if I am fully awake and being restrained in some way. If I didn't know the details about lucid dreaming or sleep paralysis, I would think that there was an actual presence. Before I understood the mechanics, I described this experiences as having a presence there that was paranormal or even demonic. The people who heard the story were convinced that what I had gone through was some inexplicable, unnatural event.

Now that I know better, I am suspicious of stories that mirror mine but include ghosts, demons or aliens.
Click to expand...

I am not meaning this to sound rude if it does, but I wasn't talking about your expierience just then, just things of that sort in general. I was only trying to state that people should keep an open mind of some things when someone else was disagreeing.
 
steph said:
I am not meaning this to sound rude if it does, but I wasn't talking about your expierience just then, just things of that sort in general. I was only trying to state that people should keep an open mind of some things when someone else was disagreeing.
Click to expand...

Not rude at all. I obviously misread something. Thanks for clarifying.
 
It happened to me just once. I was in bed, sleeping on my side. I was in a dream looking at a large black cat. then i realised that i was looking at my bedroom with the large black cat sitting on the bed in front of me, with what seemed like an evil intelligence in its eyes. The cat started to walk to the bottom of the bed and shape shifted into a talll hooded figure. I couldnt move, was trying to bite my arm that i was lying on, just to wake myself up. I was absoutely terrified when the figure walked behind me and i felt it touch my back. Then i seemed to wake up later. It freaked me out completely until i did some research into sleep paralysis.
 
Haven't had any myself, but I do (did - it's complicated) have a ladyfriend who once had what had to have been one (can't move, can't talk, and something horrible is in the room with her). She swears up and down that it was Satan (not a demon, but the devil himself) tempting her to sin (she never was clear on what that meant, but based on other conversations I had with her, it probably meant "have sex out of wedlock".)

Her worldview is typical IMHO of an ignorant Christian (I'm using the correct form of the adjective, not the vernacular insult, in that her faith was based solely on what others had told her, not from reading and thinking for herself), so seeing Satan rather than a Gray or an old hag makes sense to me. It's frustrating though, knowing that someone has had one of these and they refuse to believe it was anything but an alien or a demon.
 
I seen a documentary on this once, and experimenters were able to induce the experience with a piece of equipment, i think that sent radio waves into a particular part of the brain.

They were able to flick a switch and the subject would feel an evil presence in the room, then they would flick the switch off and the feeling would dissapear.

So along with the evidence regarding rem state etc, it seems to be a pretty clear sign that this is a part of the brain misfiring, and not a supernatural visitation. But from my experience of it, if one wasn't scientifically literate i can see how one might assume it was a real experience of a demon, or alien, or Satan or whatever.
 
Part of the missing instruction manual

I've had the classic abduction experience. I awoke and couldn't move. I had a feeling of pins and needles running down my spine, and the vague impression of something inhuman in the room moving toward me. I eventually snapped out of it. Fortunately, since I'd recently turned my bed around, I could do a little reality testing and convince myself that I hadn't actually been abducted by little grey men. Never fall asleep reading Jacques Vallee!

In my experience, sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations seem to be at the start of many reports of haunted houses. People often tell me ghost stories which start with a dramatic hypnagogic experience. This is often enough to turn minor, explainable events (light bulbs burning out repeatedly, corner-of-the-eye misperceptions, muscle spasms that feel like grabbing, etc.) into something that seems paranormal.

I just wish it were a standard part of our education to explain that this sort of thing is a normal part of being human. But where's the fun in that?
 
Iconoclast08 said:
I wonder why sleeping on your back is strongly associated with these experiences (at least according to sleep research). I get weird lucid dream sequences whenever I am on my back, but never in any other sleeping position.

I've never had any of these "demonic" or alien hypnopompic hallucinations, thank goodness, but have seen things like animals in my room for a fraction of a second coming out of sleep.
Click to expand...

I can't help but think that there is a connection between sleeping on your back, which could cause your airway to constrict/narrow enough to cause a situation similar to obstructive sleep apnea.

The soft tissue in the neck seems to naturally "collapse" when one lays on one's back, and goes to sleep. For example, it appears people with obstructive sleep apnea have more episodes when laying on their back, versus when sleeping on their side, or, face down. Airway collapse can be caused by a bunch of factors, some of which are: position of the head/neck relative to the body, obesity, the natural shape of an individuals airway incorporated with degree of muscle tone/fat, medications taken.

During an obstructive sleep apnea episode, a person's blood oxygen level can go down, and carbon dioxide increases. And if you combine the fact that you can suddenly awake from an obstructive sleep apnea episode totally unaware that you just experienced an episode, while in a particular stage of sleep (perhaps REM) where your body normally tells your muscles not to move because you are asleep and don't want to injure yourself by inappropriate/untimely movements– you can wake up startled and paralyzed.
 
Ernie M said:
I can't help but think that there is a connection between sleeping on your back, which could cause your airway to constrict/narrow enough to cause a situation similar to obstructive sleep apnea.

The soft tissue in the neck seems to naturally "collapse" when one lays on one's back, and goes to sleep. For example, it appears people with obstructive sleep apnea have more episodes when laying on their back, versus when sleeping on their side, or, face down. Airway collapse can be caused by a bunch of factors, some of which are: position of the head/neck relative to the body, obesity, the natural shape of an individuals airway incorporated with degree of muscle tone/fat, medications taken.

During an obstructive sleep apnea episode, a person's blood oxygen level can go down, and carbon dioxide increases. And if you combine the fact that you can suddenly awake from an obstructive sleep apnea episode totally unaware that you just experienced an episode, while in a particular stage of sleep (perhaps REM) where your body normally tells your muscles not to move because you are asleep and don't want to injure yourself by inappropriate/untimely movements– you can wake up startled and paralyzed.
Click to expand...

Drat, looks like I've got a competing explanation for what that psychic told me years ago...

"... You dream like that 'cause your chakras are all lined up when you lie on your back!"

:)
 
TBH, the news to me is that some people _don't_ get hypnagogia all the time. Or I guess they wouldn't start associating all sorts of meaningful meanings and supernatural explanations to them.

For me it happens almost every time I go to sleep. Though I can't remember it ever happening while waking up.

It's usually nothing particularly meaningful or choreographed, though. Mostly patterns, images, often morphing from one image to another, a drive-by view of some simple landscape, things like that. Though occasionally the image can be something deeply disturbing. They're rather faint though, nothing particularly vivid.

In the meantime I can even somewhat control it. If it starts taking a nasty turn, I just start thinking of some lovely landscape or whatnot, and the brain usually obliges with the visuals for it. Occasionally it may take more than one try though.

I wonder if that makes me crazy or something :p (No, really, now I'm curious. If you're a doctor, please do comment.)

At any rate, it's quite difficult for me to take them as some meaningful message from beyond, or view into spirit world or other dimensions, when I know essentially I can get any other image _I_ wish there. If I can morph hell into a lush tropical scenery, or some ancestral ghost into, say, my last Dragon Age character or into a tropical island or a house -- and then it occasionally falls back to doing its own thing and morphs into something different from both -- it's quite hard to start imagining that I've actually seen hell or that an actual ancestor was trying to give me messages from beyond. It's just images that my brain seems to like to play with, and there's no major difference between the ones happening spontaneously and the ones I can basically order myself.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom