Sleep Paralysis

[Jeff Coleman]

I have suffered from sleep paralysis for years now, and I am interested in the thoughts of others regarding this phenomenon.

The Wikipedia entry for sleep paralysis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

A Vice Magazine article containing several accounts of sleep paralysis episodes: http://www.viceland.com/int/v14n10/htdocs/nightmare_on_me.php

A couple of my sleep paralysis episodes:

1: I am lying on my bed in near-total darkness. I start slipping into sleep paralysis. My body seems to drift slowly towards my closet while a noise builds around me, and I feel a sense of foreboding. I wake myself up, and then drift back into sleep paralysis. This happens about a dozen times. During the last one, I am pinned to my bed and staring towards my closet. When my eyes adjust to the darkness, I see ritual paraphernalia (chalices, etc.) scattered throughout my room. There is a pendant that looks like an eye with rays coming from it hanging from my closet door handle, and the chain is slowly braiding itself. I hear a sound like wind chimes, and I become a priest who has been cut off from the kingdom of god and given over to the forces of hell. I hear a sound like recorded voices that have been slowed down, and I am about to understand what they are saying when I wake myself up.

2: I am lying on a couch in my living room, slipping into sleep paralysis. I hear the sound of footsteps walking down the stairs, walking through the kitchen, stopping for a moment in the kitchen, walking into the living room, stopping right behind my head for a moment, and then walking back upstairs. I wake myself up, and then quickly slip back into sleep paralysis, and experience the same auditory hallucination. This happens a few more times, and I start feeling very exposed. I think "It would be so easy for someone to slit my throat now". I hear the footsteps walking into the kitchen again, and when they stop, I think I can almost make out the sound of a knife sliding out of the knife holder...

I woke myself up pretty quickly after that.

[Jeff Coleman]

On a tangential note, I searched the words 'knife holder' in Google Images after writing about my sleep paralysis episodes, and found many images of a 'voodoo knife holder', which is now my avatar.

[Cyril Tourneur]

thank you for the 'Knife Holder' Image...I should get one of these for my kitchen...

THE EX VOODOO KNIFE HOLDER (http://www.perpetualkid.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=251)

[Jeff Coleman]

thank you for the 'Knife Holder' Image...I should get one of these for my kitchen...

THE EX VOODOO KNIFE HOLDER (http://www.perpetualkid.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=251)

It took me a while to figure out why it is called the ex voodoo knife holder. I think it is marketed towards people who have been in bad relationships, and the holder is supposed to represent their ex-lover. I initially thought 'ex voodoo knife holder' meant the knife holder had changed from being a voodoo doll in the image of a person, into the person the doll represents.

[TheForgotton]

I haven't had any attacks in a while, but there was a time when I had episodes fairly often. I could usually tell that it was coming when a feeling of dread started to intrude on the dream. I would enter a room or turn around in the one I was in and see a black hooded figure that was exuding the feeling of blackness. As the figure started walking closer, I found myself unable to move. When it finally touched me, I would wake, often after feeing an electric shock-like sensation over my whole body, but still not being able to move for some time. Trying to talk or scream seemed to help break the spell though I don't think I've ever gotten a sound out.

[matt cardin]

Thank you for sharing about your sleep paralysis. I suffered from savage and frequent episodes of this disorder for a period of years. Rather than go into my personal odyssey here, I'll reference a post at my blog where I talk about it in detail:

Fun with Nocturnal Assault (http://theteemingbrain.wordpress.com/2006/10/25/fun-with-nocturnal-assault/)

[Aetherwing]

Incredible. I was of course aware of sleep paralysis, and have suffered it on 3 occasions. I never bothered really looking into it, as I had a general idea of what it was, after the "soul-searing" (thanks, Matt) dread abated and I regained proper control of my faculties.

I was astounded to read the huge commonalities reported between cases, particularly the sense of a malign presence nearby. The most notable 2 experiences involved precisely that, whereas the other was simple physical paralysis upon waking, and the ensuing panic caused by my inability to move.

The most awful of the three could certainly be seen as an "Alien Abduction" scenario, as I woke up, lying supine, couldn't move, and became aware of what is best described as close kin to that awful Black Thing in the Tool Video "Prison Sex" standing in shadow by the bed. I made Herculean efforts to thrash away from this unwelcome revenant, to no success. And then, poof, It was gone, and I lunged screaming straight out of bed, scaring my wife half to death in the process...

I'm damned glad I am not prone to these episodes. Three were more than I would ever wish upon anyone.

_Jimmy

[The New Nonsense]

This is fascinating. I had an eerily similar episode about 5 years ago. I experienced a combination of sleep paralysis and oneiric hallucination. I awoke in the early dawn hours only to find that I could not move (I was lying on my back). It felt like I had a heavy weight on my chest (like the classic "hag attack"). To my horror, I saw a small person standing on the very edge of my bed watching me. He was about the size of a 3-4 year old, but with adult features and expression. I remember he had short, curly, brown hair and sported a blue vest of some sort. He leered down at me with a smug kind of menace. I can't tell you how frightening his expression was. I'm positive he was aware that I couldn't move. I live alone, so seeing someone else in my place was terrifying, especially since he was standing on the edge of my bed! It felt like he was communicating with me telepathically, giving me some kind of warning or threat, or perhaps conveying a lot with his expression as his lips never moved. I tried to yell or scream but I could barely even get air to come out of my throat -- just a dry rasp. I had the same exact thought as Jeff Coleman, that is, if he had a knife, he could stab me or slit my throat, and I couldn't do a thing to stop him. Finally, I managed to flop onto my side and turn away from this thing. I must have fallen back to sleep, for I woke some hours later. I jumped out of bed shaking and looked about the room to see if he was hiding somewhere. I realized it was a hallucination, but it felt 100% real at the time.

[G. S. Carnivals]

Although not an example of sleep paralysis (as such), the following excerpt is as perplexing and horrific as the episodes experienced by TLO members.


"McGrath awoke suddenly, just in time to see a huge mouth filled with small, sharp teeth closing in his side. In an instant it was gone, even as he shook himself awake.

Had he not been staring at the flesh, at the moment his eyes opened from sleep, he would have missed the faintest pink line of closure that remained only another heartbeat, then faded and was gone, leaving no indication the mouth had ever existed; a second - secret - mouth hiding in his skin.

At first he was sure he had wakened from a particularly nasty dream. But the memory of the thing that had escaped from within him, through the mouth, was a real memory - not a wisp of fading nightmare. He had felt the chilly passage of something rushing out of him. Like cold air from a leaking balloon. Like a chill down a hallway from a window left open in a distant room. And he had seen the mouth. It lay across the ribs vertically, just below his left nipple, running down to the bulge of fat parallel to his navel. Down his left side there had been a lipless mouth filled with teeth; and it had been open to permit a breeze of something to leave his body.

McGrath sat up on the bed. He was shaking. The Tensor lamp was still on, the paperback novel tented open on the sheet beside him, his body naked and perspiring in the August heat. The Tensor had been aimed directly at his side, bathing his flesh with light, when he had unexpectedly opened his eyes; and in that waking moment he had surprised his body in the act of opening its secret mouth."
Harlan Ellison - "The Function of Dream Sleep"

[G. S. Carnivals]

"Blecher moved swiftly to the door of the office. Without pausing for a moment, not even to knock or in any way announce his entrance, he stormed inside the cube-shaped room and slammed the door behind him. All eyes in the factory were now fixed on the office in the corner. While we had suffered so many confusions and conflicts over the physical definition of the temporary supervisor, we had no trouble at all seeing the dark outline of Blecher behind the heavily frosted glass and could easily follow his movements. Afterward, everything happened very rapidly, and the rest of us stood as if stricken with the kind of paralysis one sometimes experiences in a dream.

At first Blecher stood rigid before the desk inside the office, but this posture lasted only for a moment. Soon he was rushing about the room as if in flight from some pursuing agency, crashing into the filing cabinets and finally falling to the floor. When he stood up again he appeared to be fending off a swarm of insects, waving his arms wildly to forestall the onslaught of a cloudy and shifting mass that hovered about him like a trembling aura. Then his body slammed hard against the frosted glass of the door, and I thought he was going to break through. But he scrambled full about and came stumbling out of the office, pausing a second to stare at the rest of us, who were staring back at him. There was a look of derangement and incomprehension in his eyes, while his hands were shaking."
Thomas Ligotti - "Our Temporary Supervisor"

[Waterdweller]

Hi TNN ,
do you know the paintng "Hands Resist Him" , it reminded me very much of your experiernce.
The Hands Resist Him - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hands_Resist_Him)

[G. S. Carnivals]

"The house would soon be crawling with babysitters. You can’t take too much of a chance with a child left alone in a house. Some sitters were probably already in the garden, wandering about in desultory conversation and rooting out the coming night; others in the bathroom to welcome her if she should be cut short; yet others on the landing and in the hall, sucking the daylight into their ballooning cheeks, with the long drawn-out sighs of those as good as dead; and even more in the kitchen, in the broom cupboard, in the coal shed, all footloose and fancy-free.

But she felt that the child minders would be in her dreams too!

The birds had given up their respective ghosts. The peck peck of guns died away with the last dress rehearsal for war - it would no doubt be all right on the night.

And in the night, the little girl’s face of infolded petals only half showed above a neat lip of sheet. She was, she thought, terribly fearful of the eventual silent encroachment of the mindless minders.

An arm curled like a worm with smaller worms as a head from beneath the bed.

She could not take it all in.

And the minders may soon have what they need - another fresh, blooming soul scared out of its skin for their thirsting empty skulls…"
D. F. Lewis - "Night Out"

[The New Nonsense]

Hi TNN ,
do you know the paintng "Hands Resist Him" , it reminded me very much of your experiernce.
The Hands Resist Him - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hands_Resist_Him)

Yes! I love that painting! So subtly creepy...

[G. S. Carnivals]

"A paralysis had seized them, that state of soul known to those who dwell on the highest plane of madness, aristocrats of insanity whose nightmares confront them on either side of sleep. Soon enough the wrenching effect of this psychic immobility became far less tolerable than the prospect of simply giving up and staying in the town. Such was the case with at least one of these cataleptic puppets, a sticklike woman who said, 'We have no choice. He has stayed in his house.' Then another voice among them shouted, 'He has stayed too long.'"
Thomas Ligotti - "The Tsalal"

[G. S. Carnivals]

"I suddenly dreamt that I picked up the revolver and aimed it straight at my heart - my heart, and not my head; and I had determined beforehand to fire at my head, at my right temple. After aiming at my chest I waited a second or two, and suddenly my candle, my table, and the wall in front of me began moving and heaving. I made haste to pull the trigger.

In dreams you sometimes fall from a height, or are stabbed, or beaten, but you never feel pain unless, perhaps, you really bruise yourself against the bedstead, then you feel pain and almost always wake up from it. It was the same in my dream. I did not feel any pain, but it seemed as though with my shot everything within me was shaken and everything was suddenly dimmed, and it grew horribly black around me. I seemed to be blinded and benumbed, and I was lying on something hard, stretched on my back; I saw nothing, and could not make the slightest movement."
Fyodor Dostoevsky - "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man"

[gveranon]

Here is an interesting article about sleep paralysis:

Freaky Sleep Paralysis: Being Awake in Your Nightmares | Wired Science | Wired.com (http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/sleep_paralysis/)