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So glad I never had the visions. “Just” the paralysis.
I’ve seen some wild shit during sleep paralysis. One of the tamer fits I had was seeing a really tall human-shaped apparition that was made of the shadow in the corner of my room. It felt like he cursed me to not be able to move. I was scared of that corner for a few nights.
One of the crazier ones: One night I was going to sleep with my curtains open, but the blinds were down so lines of orange light were spilling in from the street light onto the ceiling. I had the window open, so the occasional breeze pushed and pulled the lines like waves on a beach. It was hypnotizing. I was watching them half asleep, and eventually they slowly started morphing into what looked like pretty glowing runes dancing around my ceiling.
Then I start hearing voices outside my apartment. In reality, I’m sure it was a few teenagers walking home while having an unreasonably loud conversation for the time of night, but what I heard was 3 of them, multiplying into maybe 6, then tens of them, hundreds, thousands… Eventually it felt like an ocean of people was outside my apartment. Playful voices that were utterly unconcerned with me, not even aware I existed, but I was terrified they might spill into my room and kill me. The juxtaposition between the threat of being overrun by whoever those voices were coming from and the complete lack of visual evidence that there was anyone there at all was surreal.
At this point I know it’s sleep paralysis because I can’t move, but I try my best to drag myself off the bed with what little motor functions I still have to hopefully wake me up on impact. Eventually I succeed, and I wake up in my bed. The orange lines are spilling onto my ceiling just like before. Everything is quiet again, with just the soft sound of my fan whirring, slowly turning left and right.
And then I think about what just happened… If I woke up by falling onto the floor, how am I still in my bed?
Now the fan has morphed into a monster with a head of violently spinning blades, twisting and looming over me while making intimidating metallic sounds.
I once had paralysis but seems I was half asleep, because I felt like I fell asleep sitting and felt my roommate watching me, when in fact I was laying in the bed and the roommate was sound asleep 😅
Other symptoms matched but maybe it was something else ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
On the rare occasions this happens. I usually hear distorted voices or conversations.
reading this thread right before sleep, awesome.
I’ve had this since my late teens. It’s more common when you have irregular sleep patterns. Nowadays it’s more rare.
It’s scary shit, specially if you panic. In time I’ve learned to control it when I have an episode and mostly succeed. But occasionally I still panic, but not like before.
Wiggling a toe will make the movement come back slowly and if you recognize what’s happening and keep calm you’ll avoid the most disturbing hallucinations. You can even succeed in controlled lucid dreaming during an episode.
I never saw the demon but I have felt its presence. It’s actually not as scary as it sounds. The scariest hallucinations were actually feeling people had entered my room and were intending to hurt me and I couldn’t budge. Once it happened with my old landlord when I was in college. He lived upstairs and I had an episode after falling asleep in my living room. I heard him enter my unit and saw him stand over me talking gibberish. It was so unsettling. I finally moved in a panic and I was by myself. He was actually a very chill guy, best landlord ever.
A few times I was unable to move, alone in the dark, and suddenly moved unexpectedly only to see my girlfriend or room mate towering over me and tell me I was moaning heavily in my sleep and thought I was having a bad nightmare. I’ve wondered how many of the sleep paralysis are actually nightmares and we ARE asleep.
I get that feeling of “someone’s in the house” every single time… Horrid even though I know that it’s not true.
Dude once I had this particular episode living in a first floor apartment. I was facing the opposite direction, but I heard my bedroom window slowly open and an intruder step inside my bedroom. I was absolutely fucking terrified thinking I was about to be murdered. Nope! Just sleep paralysis!
Man…
For me it happens when I’m under extreme stress, like my 3 year long “come back, I love you. I don’t love you anymore. I’m not cheating, he’s just a guy I snuck out with for no reason while I thought you were gonna be at work” divorce.
You said wiggling a toe got you out of it. For me it was tapping my pinky and trying to scream.
I even learned to control it and it was like an acid trip. Well, more like I learned to ride it and not be afraid.
One of the wildest ones I experienced though, I had recently purchased a hamster for my daughter that turned out to be a pregnant female. I tried to give the babies away, no one would take them. They slaughtered each other. I didn’t know they did that.
I was laying in bed watching my comfort food, Star Trek TOS. Suddenly the hamster cage appeared on my stomach with the gate opened. 40-50 hamsters crawled out and started eating my fingers and burrowing into my chest and stomach. I couldn’t move. My ex appeared at the foot of the bed as a shadowy creature with wild hair rocking back and forth laughing at me and hissing. I tapped my pinky and tried to scream once I was aware it was sleep paralysis. A hamster crawled up on my face and started eating my nose. I finally managed to mumble scream enough to get my exes attention and she reached out and touched me. As soon as she did I snapped back to reality.
The last time it happened I wasn’t expecting it. I was in a decent place in my personal life, work was chaotic though. I thought my house was full of distant relatives and they were killing people from outside of the family in my living room.
I hate that shit when it takes me by surprise. When it happens regularly I take control and I don’t mind it.
I got shaken by the demon until it got shoved over by a white light in my teens. I wonder what kind of wires snapped in my head, probably knocked a few screws loose.
I haven’t had an episode in a long time but I would try to tell myself to just breathe through it. The moving an extremity would help too. The worse part was that I’d get them in bunches. If one happened I’d have to stay awake for a bit or I’d get them over and over. Thankfully never saw any demons; just a vision of my surroundings but I couldn’t move.
Wiggling a toe will make the movement come back slowly
I have crazy “Greek Toe” and can make sounds like clicking your fingers. It wakes my wife and she wakes me most of the time.
A lot of times before I’m falling asleep I think about “you know, I usually don’t remember anything from when I fall asleep so what if it’s actually some horrific experience you have daily and just forget about?”
Have you watched Severance?
I’m best buds with my sleep paralysis demon now. It’s not comfortable but I no longer panic when I enter sleep paralysis.
I hate sleep paralysis. Rather than taking the form of a demon, it takes the form of my friends/family/anyone I know walking in, seeing me with sleep paralysis, then leaving. I’d rather it be a demon.
How can I get sleep paralysis? It’s been years since my last experience with it :(
Sometimes when I get sick I can sense that it might happen when I go to sleep. I think it’s mainly about being the right amount of tired, though.
The other key element is having enough brain activity to keep your eyes open or to reopen them while your body tries to start REM sleep. People say stress will do that, and that tracks with my experience.
Also, try sleeping on your back. I’ve never had it while sleeping in any other position. It could vary from person to person, so maybe try sleeping in different positions.
For me it’s having a large sleep debt and smoking weed.
Sleep paralysis is just the summoning ritual for the Hat Man.
Wonder what it’d be like if dph kicked in while in sleep paralysis
this was me about six hours ago! thanks, brain.
I wish I had that at least once, to know how it is like. Also why do people open their eyes instead of keep trying to sleep?
I’ve had this. No you don’t. It isn’t fun. Experiencing full body paralysis for a minute was a deeply unsettling and terrifying experience. I hated every second. Unless you’re prepared in some way, having the presence of mind to try to sleep again seems difficult.
I didn’t have a hallucination with that one though. I have that with a different parasomnia. I’ve had a hypnopompic (upon walking up) hallucination one time. That was freaky but only lasted a few seconds.
Interesting, for me it doesn’t sound scary. I can imagin it’s scary if you do not know what it is. But if you know, isn’t it mostly annoying, like you want to move but can’t? Sorry if this is uncomfortable to you. To me it sounds relaxing, I often want to sleep, but my body still constantly wants to move and only when I notice my body got really heavy, almost unmovable, I know I’ll fall asleep any second now.
Waking up could be a bit more annoying, like if it takes longer than a few minutes. But I usually need 15 minutes or more before I move out of the bed anyways. I can however only imagin it.
Edit: sorry if my language offended people, English is my second language and I didn’t intended to sound condescending.
When it hasn’t happened in a while (or it’s one of the first times) you can forget in the moment.
It’s like swimming under water and realizing you are running out of air so you start to surface, but something wraps around your foot and you can’t go up anymore.
Almost everyone feels panic at this. Your brain and body try to fight, your heart is racing. It’s the terror of being trapped in the dark, not knowing what caught you.
With that type of terror most people don’t think to just go to sleep and the problem will go away. We panic and struggle.
Imagine that feeling, except you can breathe (usually) but you are trying to scream, to move any part of you and fall out of bed, or to get someone’s attention so they’ll help you. But no one hears you, they stand near but don’t help, and you realize you are paralyzed. Bonus points if you can see and hear them (while in reality no one is there and your eyes are closed, but you don’t know this yet)
You don’t know if what is happening is real. It seems real.
Are you really paralyzed or is it a dream? If you go to sleep, will you wake up back to normal, will you die, will you wake up later still paralyzed? You want to cry because you can’t remember enough of yourself to be sure what will happen.
Time is distorted. This could be mere seconds, minutes, or hours. How long has it been?
If pink elephants in silver tutus start smoking pipes and debating the best cheeses, you feel relief. For me, the sleep demon showing up is a relief, because the brain starts to calm down and think wtf, this is a crazy dream.
At this thought you finally snap awake.
Hopefully next time you can realize sooner and control it.
It’s not a feeling that you can rationalize by looking at It from the outside.
It’s a primal and visceral feeling, a fight or flight situation. Sometimes you even think “hey this is a sleep paralysis, I can just ignore and go back to sleep”, but you usually can’t, and your body screams “danger, danger, danger, run away, fight back”, but you can’t move, or scream, or “wake up”. It bites of our instincts, and It’s hard to describe afterwards, but you wake up scared and bit relieved that you’re alive.
It gets worse If you hallucinate, all sorts of distorted figures and creatures appear, all fabrication of your brain of course, but since you’re half awake, they are half real as well, you can feel their presence like a sixth sense, when you look at a dark corner or a dark hallway and you know something is lurking there, sometimes you can even “touch” them if they come near enough.
I had and episode one time that I had to keep pushing a floating demonic mask away from me, I could only move my right wrist, and yes I could somewhat touch the thing, and I had this primal fear that If that thing approached my head, I would die.
It’s a really hard concept to describe, but once you experience It, you never forget the feeling.
Woah, thanks for sharing. Doesn’t sound pleasing at all.
I knew what it was, but I was panicked and unable to calm down before it passed. I was deeply affected by not being able to move anything. I imagine other personality/neuro types would handle it differently, but I did not care for it.
That said, I get being curious about experiencing something benign but possibly scary.
I’ve had it before and it was actually more annoying than scary. I even had a hallucination with it, I saw a shadowy figure standing in the doorway to my room. rather than being scared I was just annoyed and frustrated that they weren’t closing the door and I couldnt get up to do it myself. It was like reality and dream logic were weirdly combined for a while.
My brain always interprets the crushing as being smothered by friendly dogs and stuff like that.
But if you know, isn’t it mostly annoying, like you want to move but can’t?
Not really. Not being able to move while you feel threatened is a very primal kind of fear, so it’s hard to rationalize your way out of it even after you realize what’s going on.
But knowing what the cause of it is does help a little bit. It doesn’t get rid of the intense fear, but there is a relief you feel knowing that there’s a way out (assuming you know your body well enough to know how to reliably wake yourself up).
it can be interesting if you learn not to panic.
i had a couple of scary ones but mostly interesting ones.
I wish I had that at least once, to know how it is like.
It’s really fascinating in retrospect. The intense fear can be upsetting, but if you’re used to nightmares then you’ll be fine. I’ve always loved terrifying/surrealist art/media, so after I wake up it’s like my brain gave me a gift. (Here’s my favorite experience if you’re interested)
Also why do people open their eyes instead of keep trying to sleep?
For me, it’s poor mental health and a terrible sleep schedule lol. I can’t do it as often anymore because I have a job now, but I used to resist sleeping for some mental health reasons. So after I was too tired to want to be on my phone or anything, I’d end up staring at my ceiling thinking about whatever I was stressed out about at the time. I think that prolonged daydream-like state is what does it.
I can fall asleep physically while remaining awake mentally with relative ease, I’ve never had the entry paralysis ever associated with the typical exit paralysis sleep demons.
The worst that happens is my brain is just incredibly disoriented when I open my eyes after it thinks Im asleep. The paralysis is pretty fun actually, sometimes it can be a real challenge to break.
