I'm A Little Bit Panicked That I May Find Myself In Sleep Paralysis Again Source Sleep paralysis is a curious thing. As you might know, during an episode of sle
These 2.5 x 3.5 stickers are based on a Sleep Paralysis Demon I had as a kid. They're completely weatherproof so hang them EVERYWHERE!
SLEEP PARALYSIS: Sleep paralysis is something I've suffered with over the past couple of years and so I've decided to write a piece for this blog. I can honestly say it is one of the most frightening things I have experienced, and unfortunately I'm one of the unlucky few that it seems to happen to on quite a regular basis. Most people will only experience it once or twice in their lifetime, but to be fair, even that is one or two times too many. Scientist have a few different reasons as to what sleep paralysis is, but to me not all of it makes sense. Scientist say, it's simply that you have woken from a dream. Your mind is awake but your body is still asleep (paralysed). I just wonder why it's always bad dreams that we awake from and how is it that most of us from all corners of the world share the same experiences IE, shadow people, the evil old lady, screaming in only one ear (I've spoken to other sufferers and read many testimonials and these seem to be the most common of experiences). How is it we all feel that malevolent presence in the room, that feeling is so strong that it stays for hours even when the episode has stopped. I'm not trying to say that sleep paralysis is demons, ghosts etc.,(many people around the world do however). What I am saying is sleep paralysis seems to be something that is not fully understood and needs to be researched a lot more than it has. Many people are told that the cure is to get more sleep, as sleep deprivation is said to be one of the causes. The problem is that, that's usually easier said than done because an episode of sleep paralysis usually leaves you in fear of going to sleep in case it happens again. A catch 22 situation! MY STORY: The first time I had sleep paralysis was soon after the birth of my son. I guess maybe it was brought on from lack of sleep, which of course all new mums experience. I had gone to sleep lying on my back as I usually do, and I was awoken by the feeling somebody was pushing me down into the bed. I didn't only feel as if I was paralysed but I felt a heavy wieght on top of my chest that was pushing my shoulders down. Soon after that I felt something brush my leg and then I felt and saw a man trying to pull me from my bed, this probably only lasted a few seconds but it felt like forever. The man then disappeared but I had a sense he was near and then the next minute I heard a really loud scream in my right ear. When the episode had stopped I began to call friends but I was also having a panic attack as a result of being so frightened. One of my friends called an ambulance and when a paramedic arrived at my house I told him I had just been haunted, I was very upset and knew he wouldn't believe me but I stressed to him it was not a dream, it was actually happening in my room. After calming me down, he began to tell me about sleep paralysis.... I spent the following days researching sleep paralysis and in most cases you're only likely to experience it once or twice in your life, so that was a great relief to me.... 2 weeks later, it happened again. This time much worse. I can't even bring myself to describe what I had hallucinated that night but it involved a man, a knife and my new born son. I have suffered sleep paralysis many times since them nights with most times being really bad hallucinations involving mostly my children. As at the time I can actually see and hear what is happening, I go through the same fear and emotions as you would in real life if you had seen your children being hurt, or seeing your child dead! I know.. It sounds dramatic, and unless you've suffered sleep paralysis, you probably think I'm over-reacting, but I can assure you, if anything, I'm playing it down. The best way for anyone reading this that has not suffered sleep paralysis, to relate, is to imagine being in bed at night and you wake up to hear an intruder in your house. You're alone in your house and you can hear footsteps coming up the stairs. The fear and the adrenaline is building, you try to move to grab an object, or to hide, call the police, but your body is paralysed. At this point loads of thoughts must be running through your head.. who's there? what will they do to me? how can I stop them if I can't move? ...frightening right? Well take that a step further and imagine it goes all the way... Someone IS in your room, someone IS doing things to you and there's nothing you can do to stop it. You try and convince yourself its not real but how can it not be when you're awake and can see them and feel the things they are doing. Even when the episode is over, the fear and the confusion is still there. The extremely strong feeling you're in danger and the feeling someone is in your room, does not go away until you fall asleep. I'm sure most of us have had that feeling that something is stood behind you, well that's what it's like. You lay there in complete fear that at any second, something will jump out at you. I usually retreat under the covers and play on my mobile to try and distract myself. Mostly I will type 'sleep paralysis' into Twitter search and read what others that have tweeted about their experiences that night. Here are some of a few I read last night... the fact that I'm so stressed is making me go through sleep paralysis every night, and it's the scariest thing I've EVER experienced. Sleep paralysis hurts me. Well the "Dark Hooded Figure" is a spirit that causes sleep paralysis and it grabs you and you can't move, it's like a demon in your room! I fear sleep because of sleep paralysis and Hypnopompic Hallucinations . Its honestly the reason I don't sleep much . I can't stand it . I swear to god sleep paralysis is going to be how I die. Anyone ever had sleep paralysis, its NASTY and a bit crazy also. sooo back to feeling like crap. Sleep paralysis is probably one of the creepiest things that can happen to you while you sleep My sleep paralysis has been bothering me a lot more lately. Makes me not even wanna go to sleep anymore. I hate it:/ had the worst sleep paralysis last night. i can normally wake myself up but i could actually feel someone holding me down by the shoulders:( Predormital sleep paralysis feels like dying. I had sleep paralysis last night. I thought I was haunted by a ghost lol. SYMPTOMS: The inability to move or speak (you may try to scream, or to move to stop whats happening around you but it is physically impossible). The feeling of pressure on your chest (it often feels like someone is sitting on you, pushing you hard into the bed). The feeling of suffocation (you often feel like you're being suffocated and in some cases this can often lead to a panic attack). Hallucinations (you may see or feel things in your room. You may see/feel people doing things to you or other people that share a room with you). A strong sense of danger (in almost every case of sleep paralysis you're a left with a great sense of danger. An evil presence in your room, and this feeling is often very hard to shake). Visual and audio fears (sometimes your greatest fears will be played out in front of you, and often you may hear things, usually screaming). In my personal experience with sleep paralysis, I have experienced all of the above symptoms, usually at the same time. CAUSES: Sleeping on your back Increased stress Sudden environmental or lifestyle changes A lucid dream that immediately precedes the episode Lack of sleep AN EXPLANATION... sleep paralysis can sometimes be accompanied by terrifying hallucinations and a very strong sense of danger. Sleep paralysis is extremely frightening because of the vividness of such hallucinations. In some cases dream-like objects may appear in the room alongside the persons normal vision, or even realistic objects/people. Some scientists have used this condition to explain reports of alien abductions and ghostly encounters. WHAT SCIENTIST SAY: Physiologically, sleep paralysis is closely related to REM atonia, the paralysis that occurs as a natural part of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Sleep paralysis occurs either when falling asleep, or when awakening. When it occurs upon falling asleep, the person remains aware while the body shuts down for REM sleep, and it is called hypnagogic or predormital sleep paralysis. When it occurs upon awakening, the person becomes aware before the REM cycle is complete, and it is called hypnopompic or postdormital. The paralysis can last from several seconds to several minutes, with some rare cases being hours, "by which the individual may experience panic symptoms". As the correlation with REM sleep suggests, the paralysis is not entirely complete; use of EOG traces shows that eye movement is still possible during such episodes. When there is an absence of narcolepsy, sleep paralysis is referred to as isolated sleep paralysis (ISP). In addition, the paralysis may be accompanied by terrifying hallucinations (hypnopompic or hypnagogic) and an acute sense of danger. Sleep paralysis is particularly frightening to the individual because of the vividness of such hallucinations. Via Wikipedia WHAT FOLKLORE SAYS: The original definition of sleep paralysis was codified by Samuel Johnson in his A Dictionary of the English Language as "nightmare", a term that evolved into our modern definition. Such sleep paralysis was widely considered to be the work of demons and more specifically incubi, which were thought to sit on the chests of sleepers. In Old English the name for these beings was mare or mære (from a proto-Germanic *marōn, cf. Old Norse mara), hence comes the mare part in nightmare. In Finnish and Swedish folklore, sleep paralysis is caused by a mare, a supernatural creature related to incubi and succubi. Folk belief in Newfoundland, South Carolina and Georgia describe the negative figure of the hag who leaves her physical body at night, and sits on the chest of her victim. In Nigeria, "ISP appears to be far more common and recurrent among people of African descent than among whites or Nigerian Africans",[6] and is often referred to within African communities as "the Devil on your back. In Turkey, and in many Islamic beliefs, sleep paralysis is called karabasan, and is similar to other stories of demonic visitation during sleep. Via Wikipedia ARTIST IMPRESSIONS OF SLEEP PARALYSIS:
Discover the murky past of sleep paralysis, the terrifying disorder once associated with demonic possession
Science writer Sam Kean discusses some of the brain’s most ghoulish glitches and what they can teach us about how healthy brains operate.
The causes of sleep paralysis are usually spiritual in nature and can include demonic attacks. Spiritual healing treatment permanently cures this problem
These sleep paralysis horror photography images depict a small glimpse of what it's like to have sleep paralysis and see demons in your sleep.
Sleep paralysis is a curious thing. As you might know, during an episode of sleep paralysis a person is unable to move or speak, all the while being totally aware of that. If that wasn't enough, there's also an eerie twist - while being paralyzed, one might also see hallucinations, which, when seen for the first couple of times might be intensely scary. And to make it just a little bit more fun, visual hallucinations are never pleasant, merely the level of terror felt might vary. Of course, there are a couple of theories why these things happen to usually otherwise healthy people, but nobody knows for sure.
Sleep paralysis is a feeling of being unable to move, either at the onset of sleep or upon awakening. Although it is a temporary experience.
Sleep paralysis is a curious thing. As you might know, during an episode of sleep paralysis a person is unable to move or speak, all the while being totally aware of that. If that wasn't enough, there's also an eerie twist - while being paralyzed, one might also see hallucinations, which, when seen for the first couple of times might be intensely scary. And to make it just a little bit more fun, visual hallucinations are never pleasant, merely the level of terror felt might vary. Of course, there are a couple of theories why these things happen to usually otherwise healthy people, but nobody knows for sure.
Sleep paralysis is the inability to move even if you feel wide awake. Learn what triggers sleep paralysis how you can help treat and get rid of it.
Let's talk about what really happens when you wake up and can't move. Spoiler alert: It's scary AF.
Unveiling the Mystery: Sleep Paralysis - The Shadow of Giants or a Disease? During sleep, some people feel that something heavy (jinn, witch, animal or other creature) is pressing on their chest, strangling them. Wants to kill, tries hard to free himself from this creature and then after some resistance finally succeeds, and the creature
Sleep paralysis is a phenomenon known by all cultures throughout the world, in which people, either when falling asleep or wakening, temporarily experience an inability to move in the middle of the…
Dreams about demons can be unsettling and leave you feeling uneasy upon waking up. However, these dreams can hold significant meaning and symbolism that can
Unveiling the Mystery: Sleep Paralysis - The Shadow of Giants or a Disease? During sleep, some people feel that something heavy (jinn, witch, animal or other creature) is pressing on their chest, strangling them. Wants to kill, tries hard to free himself from this creature and then after some resistance finally succeeds, and the creature
You awake suddenly in the middle of the night, unable to move and terrified to open your eyes. The sound of wretched breathing slowly approaches, and a force begins to push down upon your chest.
Sleep paralysis. What is it? When we can't move, lying in bed, can't lift our head or move or arms or speak to scream, and we sense some malevolent presence in the room, just out of sight, looming over us, that's sleep paralysis. Doctors say it's a naturally occurring symptom of deep REM sleep, our body is temporarily paralyzed to stop us from acting out in our dreams, or whatever. Sometimes that paralysis hits when we're not quite entirely asleep or awake yet. We're conscious, 'awake' but our nervous system is already paralyzed to prepare for dreaming. The reverse of this of course being sleep walking, where the nervous system is active, motor-functions enacting dream signals, but mind fully unconscious. BUT that doesn't explain the creepy monster/s looming over us in sleep paralysis. It doesn't seem to make 100% sense either; and when two people dream the same sight in the same room (one waking up to see the monster looming over their partner who is having the dream at that exact same moment) or receiving wounds from the creature (demonic scratches, alien punctures, or other), then the psychological underpinnings of the phenomenon fall short. Doctors can make a convincing guess how/why it occurs but never an explanation of why this apparition in the room? Is it 'the very painting of our fear'? Or something truly external? Are these dream witches always with us? Are they the parasites of our sleeping chi? My own SP experiences are rare but each one seems profound. As I've written in earlier posts, I've seen a demonic creature in the room even after I had awaken from my nightmare, and was shouting at it to go away before it faded, laughing silently at me all the while, into a moonlight reflection. And I've been lifted out of my bed, ass first, up along the ceiling and out the window, accelerating up and up faster and faster into the sky until shooting up back into my body in the bed, as if a second, identical bed was way up in the sky. In each of these instances I wound up awaking and leaping out of bed as if from an electrical jolt. You can dismiss these as hallucinations, waking nightmares. I won't argue with that. But you know what else are hallucinations and waking nightmares? EVERYTHING ELSE!!! All that we see, hear, and touch is a nervous system illusion, a translation: matter is perceived erroneously as solid (it's just vibrating energy) and permanent (like everything in the universe, it's always in the process of disintegrating); faces are perceived as unchanging from breath to breath (they're constantly shedding skin cells and absorbing passing dirt); linear time and 3-D space are perceived as a constant (a necessary illusion for the functioning within it - i.e. you can't be on the look-out for food and bears when you're overwhelmed by the totality of the cosmos). This is all 'shared hallucination' or collective consciousness, distinctive to humans of our current era, the way our senses process stimuli (vs. say, a dog's enhanced smell or insect's pheromone telepathy) and the way we've been trained to process, identify, and order the information we decode from these stimuli. If we look at all these pictures of sleep paralysis demons, from different artists, different centuries, how can we dismiss them as less real than normal waking perceptions? Are these hags a kind of fourth dimensional species of kundalini energy parasite or vampire? Or is it that our fear of not being able to raise our head conjures them, 'the very painting of our fear' to quote Shakespeare. Say a man looks at a picture of the ocean. It's just pixels of color on a flat surface, and from those pixels he sees the ocean. If he's really really tired or possessed of vivid imagination (this happens to me a lot) he might actually smell salt air or hear a distant rush of waves, he might even see the waves move in the picture - even knowing they're not and he's just tired doesn't help - he literally sees the waves move. A dog looking at the same photo wouldn't see anything of interest: he would sniff it and judge it as inedible and inactive and then move on. BUT if we fold that photo into a paper airplane and throw it for him to fetch, he sees it as prey, a quarry to chase). By the same token, we walk our dog past a tree on the sidewalk and our mind says "tree - yeah yeah, keep walking" - we just perceive the tree and maybe stale dog urine if there's no wind that day. Our dog 'sees' the dogs who have been there from their urine scents, the way we see the ocean in that picture. Dogs' urine is like a bulletin board message: who is in heat? who ix marking territory? who's new in town? Are these dogs hallucinating just because we can't discern these things? Scientists tend to forget the way our sensorially-decoded paradigm is limited to human perception of self and their myopia makes them paranoid, like fundamentalist Christians seeing blasphemers in the cobwebs of their attics. If a Christian has sleep paralysis, the being looming above him would be perceived as Satan; if he had being reading David Icke, the being would be a reptilian alien; a gnostic scholar would see an archon; a UFO scholar would see a flock of greys come for an abduction. Maybe. The thing is, though, most humans, even non-scientists or philosophers, agree the stimuli we all perceive differently (according to our nature in this world) are 'the same' in each case. We might see the book as a novel, a dog might see it as wood pulp and a child might see it as having no pictures, but it's still the same object. Dismissing the bedroom invader as 'mere hallucination' conjured from the semi-asleep state by our panic over being unable to move (i.e. in dreams your fear of monsters creates them) is the easy way to get around the uncanny fear it generates. Whether it's real or not, it's still the same object. Personally, I believe that there IS a rational psychological interpretation as valid as any esoteric one for nearly any paranormal phenomena but that neither is invalidated by that. We must instead look at our need for myth, for a zone between the psychological and the paranormal, a Schrodinger's Cat approach to these things being both real and an illusion at the same time, and yet neither. BUT it doesn't explain anything, neither from a mythic / collective unconscious standpoint, or a physical, mental, or supernatural one, which in this case I mean as a reinterpretation of the supernatural as human experience that involves a sudden surge of DMT or third eye awakening. In other words, science can describe how DNA might unpack a seed so that it becomes a tree through photosynthesis, soil and water, but it can't explain why, or where it all comes from to begin with. They have no idea which came first, the chicken or the egg, or why it bothered to come at all and from where, except to theorize the egg came first from something other than a chicken, say, an archaeopteryx and before that, a pterodactyl, a slow evolution over millions of years - MAYBE. They don't know why sleep paralysis occurs in the way it does, only how it occurs, the mind waking up before the body does. Why do we sense this evil presence in the room? We usually sense the presence before we realize we can't move, so which came first? Does the demon wait for the right situation to pounce? Do they milk our psychic fear like a farmer slapping the cow's udder? It's inadequate to dismiss these apparitions as half-awake nightmares. We still don't quite know how third eye dreams / imaginings work. We can analyze the cones and rods of the eye, the pupil, the optical fluids, but what we sense in nightmares has no correlation to anything we can measure. How we 'see' dreams with our eyes closed is open to interpretation. One of the common names for the being who comes for you in sleep paralysis is called--in old legends--the 'old hag' and sleep paralysis is then 'old hag syndrome' So is this creature always female? I've felt in the past that these beings are aliens from alternate dimensions testing our individual frequencies to see if we're suitable harvesting candidates for abduction and psychic harvesting, i.e. when we sleep our psychic energy might be up for grabs, the psychic equivalent of stealing your neighbor's WiFi. If you're an easy mark they may abduct you wholesale, either physically or psionically. No UFO over your house is needed, just a good strong wireless router. they steal your astral brain and return it by dawn, usually. But there is no clear line between the astral and physical body according to my theory, therefore the physical being might be moved as well, particularly if, say, the astral body is wedged into the physical form (i.e. you don't have WiFi so they steal your whole modem). I think if you can fight them off successfully, wake up from the sleep paralysis through sheer act of will, then they move on -- you're not worth it. You're the one that got away. More power to ya. Plenty of fish in the sea. Another theory is that there are always demons, ever-present just outside our worldly perceptions. I got the feeling from that demon that stayed in my room (see link in 3rd paragraph) that he wasn't from some other place on our planet, but was always around, waiting for a chance to do harm in the tangible world, visible only occasionally to psychics, schizophrenics, and people burning up from fever. Another theory is that they are homunculus time travelers from a Possible Earth's future wherein increased gravity has made us squat and a little transparent. What are time travelers if not ghosts? From the past or future they loom up, still dealing from the bottom of the old wounds deck, still clanging their spurs in Jacob Marleyian vengeance, their ætheric tendrils reaching deep into the future to spook later generations, the "living" equivalent of historical memoirs, or old time cinematic images and photos. I also like the idea that demons can be called into this world either accidentally via Ouija boards, or intentionally via snot-nosed punks trying to anger their parents and impress their bad influence peers. If these summoning amateurs don't know they have to dismiss the demons when they're done, send them back to Hell, then the demons get to stay forever or until some angel, exorcist or psychic kicks them out. The spirit world conjured by the Rosicrucian mystics, for example, was left masterless when the Jesuits slaughtered them; the dark shadow demons conjured and then never sent back have been surly and hacking their way through underbrush of Protestantism to find the worthy Catholics and reincarnations of Catholics to torture in kind, for they are not grateful to be without the only humans who understood them, and modern society still sneers and ostracizes--the civilized man's version of burning at the stake--anyone who admits to seeing or hearing these beings. Even the peasants and uneducated who wouldn't be unseated by a radical new paradigm dutifully throw their rocks of scorn in an unconscious effort to please their conservative masters! The uneducated shun the educated man who won't talk down to them. They mistrust the man who won't take advantage of their ignorance to rob them in clouds of sanctified incense or finger-pointing. Throwing rocks at a problem is easier than 'hearing' it out like open-minded beings insist. This means that so much of the God's work has to be hidden from 'the faithful' for whom no miracle not centuries old can occur, lest its vessel be burnt at the stake. I'm off topic. POSTSCRIPT: I received this from my friend Sean Kelly (author of various books on saints and strange humors), they are snippets about sleep monsters from his "unfinish-able fairy dictionary": Alps: They are rarely described, since they work in the dark and can shape-shift, but they are invariably said to wear a hat. An Alp is typically male, its prey usually a sleeping female. Alp attacks are called Alpdrücke, or Alpdrücken. The creature sits astride the sleeper’s chest and becomes increasingly heavy, until the crushing weight awakens the terrified victim. An Alp will drink blood from the nipples of men and children, but prefers the milk of women. If you say to an Alp that is pressing upon you, "Come tomorrow, and I will lend you something!" he will immediately vanish and come the next day in the form of a human wishing to borrow something. They can also be repelled with horse heads. The word, in High German, is etymologically related to Elf. The entity itself is known by many names: Crusher, Drude, Hag, Mara, Mare, Mart, Mallt y Nos, Night-Fiend, Night-Elve, Night Hag, Night-Mare, Polunocnica, Trud, Waalridder, etc. Mare, Mahrt, Märt, Martes: The female Alp, who rides on sleeping men at night, pressing against them until they can no longer breath. The mare in the English word ‘nightmare’ is mara, the Anglo-Saxon term for that female preternatural entity that sits on sleepers' chests. (A bad dream is called a martröð in Icelandic, mareridt in Danish and mareritt in Norwegian.) In Poland, the sleep-disturbing märt is a girl with a misshapen foot. Martes is a type of French fee, dark complexioned and hairy, with pendulous breasts. The approaching being sounds like the gnawing of a mouse or the quiet creeping of a cat. The mårt can be captured by grasping it with an inherited glove or by closing up all of the room's openings as soon as the sleeping person begins to groan. A mårt-ride can be prevented by crossing one's arms and legs before falling asleep. See Murraue. Murraue: Similar to the Alp or Mare, but she creeps up a sleeping person's body from below. First you feel her weight on your feet, next on your stomach, and finally on your chest, until you cannot move a muscle. However, if you think that you know who she is, call her by name and she will vanish. In certain parts of Germany, a person born on Sunday, whose eyebrows grow together, is called a murraue. Polunocnica: The Russian “Lady of Midnight” is a fierce Hag who lives in a swamp and torments sleeping children with nightmares. (She is the sister of the Poludnitsa.) Trud: Another name for Alp. The female form is trude. There are witches who can send one to those they hate merely by their thoughts. He comes out of their eyebrows, looks like a small white butterfly, and sits on the breast of a sleeping person. If you say to one that is pressing upon you, "Trud, come tomorrow, and I will lend you something!" then he will immediately retreat and come the next day in the form of a human, in order to borrow something. Waalridder: A name by which the nightmare-causing Alp is known in the Netherlands. -- So keep your horseheads and inherited glove handy, and remember to tell the demons "come tomorrow and I will lend you something" - apparently it always works.
You were awake, you wanted to shout, but felt as if something was holding you back? Well, chances are that spooky feeling you experienced might be sleep paralysis.
Hallucinatory sleep paralysis demons: where do they come from and how can you stop them? It's easy to do and does not require medication or therapy...
What is Sleep Paralysis? Who are these creatures who haunt our nights? Is Sleep Paralysis safe? Are we under psychic attack? All your questions answered from a Witch's view
Sleep Paralysis is a real-life horror story for some. Many still believe it to be a supernatural phenomenon and linked with entities from another Realm.
Sleep paralysis is a curious thing. As you might know, during an episode of sleep paralysis a person is unable to move or speak, all the while being totally aware of that. If that wasn't enough, there's also an eerie twist - while being paralyzed, one might also see hallucinations, which, when seen for the first couple of times might be intensely scary. And to make it just a little bit more fun, visual hallucinations are never pleasant, merely the level of terror felt might vary. Of course, there are a couple of theories why these things happen to usually otherwise healthy people, but nobody knows for sure.
I am so terrified.
Sleep paralysis is a phenomenon in which a person is conscious but unable to move while they are asleep. This state can last anywhere from a few seconds to minutes or even hours. It is most common during the onset of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is the stage of sleep when people experience dreams. In most people, this is the last stage of sleep before waking up. People who experience sleep paralysis are unable to progress from one stage of sleep to the next. They are fully aware of their surroundings but are unable to move. Stay with us to know the risk factors, causes, symptoms, treatment and preventive measures of Sleep Paralysis syndrome.
The demons of sleep paralysis live in our heads.
However, if you're not sure what are causes of sleep paralysis, it is important to first know that this can affect adults as well as children.
A recent review in the journal Frontiers in Psychology details how cultures around the world describe the phenomenon of sleep paralysis.
The causes of sleep paralysis are usually spiritual in nature and can include demonic attacks. Spiritual healing treatment permanently cures this problem
