RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Deep Topics Sleep Paralysis

I was wondering if anyone else here was familiar with sleep paralysis or if anyone else has had it happen to them.

For those unfamiliar, sleep paralysis basically consists of your brain waking up without your body waking up. You'll wake up able to move nothing but your eyes. It's often accompanied by a feeling of being watched, impending doom or approaching evil. More often than not, people feel terror beyond that which a temporary inability to move would cause. Sometimes it includes full-blown hallucinations (actually seeing some "evil" being standing over you). Some researchers believe that sleep paralysis is the "rational" explanation for alien abduction since elements of the two are so similar. People can commonly be brought out of a sleep paralysis state by a noise or touch.

I've averaged about one sleep paralysis experience a year for close to 20 years. The earliest ones were the worst since I was a kid and I had no idea what was going on. My earliest experiences were accompanied by visions of a malevolent being (the one I "saw" I've learned is fairly common for SP experiencers; a black human-shaped silhouette with glowing eyes as the only feature that could be made out). I thought of it as a ghost and during the experiences I was convinced it wanted to take control of my body so it could harm my family in disguise. In the morning, I didn't actually think I'd experienced anything supernatural, but I didn't understand what had happened. I'd say that my early sleep paralysis episodes were scarier than anything else I've ever experienced. I eventually learned about Sleep Paralysis while watching a documentary about supernatural phenomena and knew immediately that it was what had been happening to me. Now when it happens, I usually know what's going on, even during the actual experience.

I've had two experiences of it in the past month (I've never had two experiences so close together before). In one of these these two (as well as one last year) I've had hallucinations of people in the room with me who see and understand what I'm going through, but they chose not to help me (in case you're wondering about the other one, I knew one of our cats was just out of view, but it wouldn't touch me so I couldn't be snapped out of the state I was in.)

Sleep paralysis is said to be fairly common, with about 1/3 of people having it happen to them at one time or another. I know that there are people that have it happen a lot more often than me (some people experience it multiple times each week). My experiences aren't nearly as bad as they were when I was younger, but they still suck. A lot.

Actually, yeah. I have had that happen to me a lot.

It was most frequent in my pre-teens.

yep still happens to me today occasionally. Usually it feels like some kinda men in black or something are standing over me. It's fucking weird

I wonder if Sleep Paralysis is really an out of body experience, or perhaps some kind of close call with another reality, one inhabited by spirits of the dead...?

I feel that I, too, have had this happen to me as well... at least a few times that I can recall.. and one of those times occured since Labor Day of this year.

It was very surreal. I was just lying there in bed, like an unwilling statue.... and I was very much aware of a nebulous figure nearby.... I felt fear as it drew closer.

Then I came out of it.

I also remember seeing or rather, sensing shadows dancing furtively across the walls of my bedroom walls.

In waking moments, BOTH my cats will go up to a wall and stare rather intently at it. I have watched this several times over the past 8 years. There is nothing that I can see on the wall; no insects or marks that I can see there... but, I can feel a presence ... and have seen a dark shadowy "something" moving slowly across the wall.

The fact that my cats can see this directly makes me feel that something really is there.. just outside of our perception. They can see things we humans are either totally unaware of, or that we are just barely aware of.

No. It's a neurological condition. Do you really need more than that?

See my now edited post, Phil. I just don't feel it can be explained away that easily.

I quote Obi-Wan Kenobi: "Your eyes can deceive you; don't trust them."

It's been established that whatever alteration in brain function that induces sleep paralysis is also dicking with your perceptual abilities. I'd post an article but I really can't be arsed.

Scientists love to explain away psychic phenomena, because it is not something they can measure, gauge, or dissect.

I believe the experience was much more than an alteration in perceptual abilities.

When it happens to me, it sometimes seems like my senses work but I'm still dreaming. I can actually "feel" my arms move as I try to move them, but I can see that they really aren't moving. I have no doubt that any "visions" I have are just my brain playing tricks on me, but they are very realistic when they happen. I've actually "felt" the weight shift on my bed as a "being" pressed down on it. The human mind is strange enough without supernatural stuff being brought into the equation.

I don't get it but I know it's possible and natural.

It's an interesting explaination for alien-abduction stories.

This just sounds too fucked up. Why cant interesting shit like this happen to me? Best I've got is the little girl who used to sit on my bed and chat with me when I was really small. Nothing sinister about her.

I've had it happen, and it freaks me out each time.

It's never happened to me, I don't think.

As for the scientific explanation, researchers have found that the "sense of self" part of the brain has a corresponding portion in the opposite hemisphere, which can best be described as a "sense of other"; when stimulated, a person has a distinct feeling of someone watching them.

I used to get it quite often when I was a teenager. However, I never experienced the feeling of anyone or anything over me, or with me. I was awake, and aware that I could not move. No other feeling that. The first few times, it was scary due to the feeling of helplessness. However, I got used to it pretty quickly, and found that when I wake up like that, all it takes is sheer force of will and I can startle my body out of it. I know I can move, I tell my brain I can move, therefore my body must follow. It's all logic and will.

However, I haven't had any of these episodes for...I don't know...about ten to fifteen years...

I remember having sleep paralysis as a young child, definitely in my pre-teens, but like Pro I had none of the other weird stuff associated with it. I just couldn't move, couldn't speak or scream.

My cousin gets it every once in a while since we were kids, and by the way he tells 'em, they're always getting creepier. He says he can see his body from the outside when this happens, so that and the shadow people make him sure he's on another plane of existance or something.

I had severe case of this last night. Three consecutive attempts to go into a deep sleep, and I just ended up being wide awake.

....At least I THOUGHT I was lying there wide awake until I realized I couldn't move. I thought I was just refusing to move, but it just turns out I was physic ally incapable. I struggled for a full ten minutes until I finally made my arm twitch and my eyes open. As sooon as that happened, I realized I was dreaming about trying to fall asleep. It's the most fucked up feeling in the world. Especially since all the while this was going on, I felt like there was something else in the room that stayed just outside of my sight.

Each time I tried to fall asleep it was the same exact shit with me being asleep but somehow aware of my surroundings. On the third time I got especially unsettled because I heard a grinding noise from my top bunk--WHICH I COULDN'T FUCKING MOVE TO INVESTIGATE!!

I thought I was just too paralyzed by fear to will myself to move, but it turns out that I was simply unable.

FUCK!

You're being abducted by aliens, man.

I was reading an article the other day that said that the sure fire cure for this is a bullet in the brain.

Come to think of it, it might not have been an article as much as a note.

Next to a dead body.

And a shotgun.

and Courtney Love

When shit like this happens, I don't think about aliens.

I wonder if you could get sleep paralysis, combined with an erection. You'd be laying there with an erection and not be able to do anything about it.

Well, maybe with a cooperative girlfriend, she could do all the work.