[dayglohylite]

I suffer from Sleep Paralysis. It tends to run in a week long session every few months for me. No trigger. I always dream of a presence in my room and I can't call out or move to get away from it. I see nothing but my room. No figure or "ghost" if you like. I found a way to get out of it though. I have to revert to crying and I begin to wake. Feeling relly stupid for crying. But It works. I have had them since I was a kid and They still happen. Truly scarey when they happen.

[HmnTrch]

IMO the op's experience was partial lucid dreaming, not a hallucination. That was a conscious decision to reach out and touch the paramedic in your room.

Sleep paralysis seems to manifest in a variety of different ways. The main way I have read about others experiencing it is by not being able to move and having a heavy weight sit on their chest. I have never experienced it this way, nor the way the OP experienced it.

How it has been for me all times except the most recent was lucid dreaming and then getting bored of the repetition (my lucid dreams sort of 'get stuck' and repeat the same bit over and over and over) and wanting to wake up but I guess still partial asleep so I can't move. And by 'can't move' I mean can't open eyes, can't move eyes, and cannot breathe. The not being able to breathe is scary, and even though it feels like sooo long before I can move again, it is most likely only about 15-20 seconds.

The most recent experience I have had was about a month ago. This was the only time I was lying on my back (all other times I was on my side) and it felt like my sister (who lives out of state and was visiting) was smothering me with a pillow, so I couldn't move plus the feeling of not being able to breath with the thought that someone was intentionally doing it. Upsetting that was!

[Chittery]

So many interesting experiences. I sleep paralysis is just I wake up and csnt move for a couple of minutes. Mybheartbeat roars in my ears and I have to talk myself down until I can move. I have never had any experiences during SP like the one described here.

[Ninjavandal]

Originally Posted by FuckYourAccount ↗

I never would be able to understand that if I hadn't experienced it. It's incredibly exciting, but fucking scary!

Yeah, fucking scary as hell!

[gmasi08]

I had a dream in which I was floating up off the bed, it felt so peaceful and fun. I knew it was a dream, so I shaked my self off to wake up. I woke up by opening one eye, and i was still floating looking at the sunlight creeping into my window shade. I think it could of been some sort of spirit playing games with me.

[Jaktasticles]

I had a period of constant sleep paralysis while going into sleep.

In the beginning it was scary and my mind played tricks on me.
I was also reading a lot of books on out of body experiences (OBEs) ...I think in relation to all the sleep paralysis research I was doing.
At first there was what seemed like some kind of presence in the room during the paralysis and it was always going that horror movie demon way.
After awhile of constantly entering this paralysis, I started becoming more aware. And less frightened.
A lot of research, reading, graveyard shift during this period.
One author comes to mind and it's Robert A. Monroe and his "Journeys out of the Body" book.
That's when everything changed.
I started working with the paralysis (attempting to go back into it instead of trying to avoid it).

That's when things started getting interesting.

I basically started initiating an OBE. Was making progress little by little. Working on it every morning as I lay in bed to "sleep" from my night shift job.
Felt like I was beginning to exit using this method of picturing a "wormhole" of sorts coming from my chest as I lay with an arm propped at a 90 degree (hand in air, elbow on bed). Think of the wormhole that comes out of Jake Gyllenhaal in the movie Donnie Darko and the hand raised is a method for keeping you awake/falling asleep to help induce paralysis.
Once I felt that I successfully "separated" for the first time, I was so excited and motivated to dig in deeper. Travel farther.

However, it was at this point in the journey that life around me started changing. I had a growing family as a father and initiated a move out into the country with acreage to start a little hobby farm.

I stopped going into sleep paralysis except for here and there and was occupied on other things around me. I also left graveyard shift.

Years have gone by now.

I don't remember the last time the paralysis has struck me.

I want to dive back into this, but that was over a year of work on the subject just to enter into that "breakout state" of the beginning adventures of self-induced out of body experiences.

It honestly takes a lot of time, focus, commitment.

My favorite takeaway from that whole time in my life was the overcoming fear aspect with sleep paralysis.
When you are experiencing it on a regular basis, you can recognize it and learn to control it.
Or harness it.

[johnnysixcakes]

I had dreams and in my dream I said to my self: " Hey I been to this hilltop, building, store, beach front, before" from another dream. Weird. Was I in a different dimension? Instead of dreaming?

[Rcuca909]

Originally Posted by FuckYourAccount ↗

The last week I've been under an immense amount of stress for various reasons I won't bother going into, but it's been so intense that my health has also been effected. Last night, I experienced a phenomena called sleep paralysis and it was probably one of the scariest but most exciting experiences of my life. And this is coming from someone who has been run over by a truck and went sky diving.

For those of you who don't allready know much about SP here's a wiki link to some info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis. SP is also the explanation given to many people who claim to be haunted by a ghostly or demonic presence and alien abduction. After experiencing this for myself, I am completely empathetic as to why some people would swear up and down and on their own mothers grave that what they experienced was of supernatural or paranormal nature. So here's my story...

I hadn't been sleeping well the past few nights but this evening I had fallen asleep watching family guy. I probably fell asleep around 1230AM because when I woke up shortly after 2AM I remeber I was still paying attention to the TV because I was following a conversation from a talk show host and one of his guests, but thinking it was part of the family guy episode. (I forget the name of the talk show, but it is hosted by Steve, the guy who used to be a body guard fella on the Jerry Springer show). I got up, went upstaires and got a drink and turned the TV off once I got back in my room and tried to fall asleep. I'm only including this part in my story because I think being half asleep and half listening to my TV somewhat contributed to the mental state needed for SP to occur. (There would be various opinions arguing this, there is still a lot not known about SP).

So I remember being disapointed that I could not fall asleep right away and i would estimate that I tossed and turned for at least 45 minutes before sleep again.

Once I did sleep though, I had one of those extremely vivid dreams that I think everyone has from time to time. The ones unlike the vast majority that you forget, this was one of those ones where you can remember it in incredible detail long after you wake up. I can still remember most of the details, but I'll shorten it up a bit since a lot of the dream would be pointless to explain.

The dream started out with me and my friends just hanging out and drinking in a large underground dimly lit structure. After a while of walking around and chilling we eventually made our way into an underground casino and a friend of mine who was with us knew the owner and had promised us he would hook us up with a lot of casino credits that we could gamble and party with. As it turns out, the night was very busy at the casino and the owner was unable to hook us up, resulting in me getting rather pissed off since we had wasted a bunch of time. Plenty of really messed up things happened in the dream, but in the end I wound up getting into some trouble with security. they took me into a room that seemed to have 5 uneven walls that I enterpreted as having another dimension. People kept on appearing in the room out of nowhere and in the middle of a sentence they would fly up, smack the ceiling with a lot of force and then disappear. Eventually I myself began flying up and hitting the ceiling and this sent the dream into a really big chaotic blur. My memory of this part of the dream is also fragmented, but this is the part in the dream where I remember thinking at one point "oh this is just a dream".

I figure I started to slightly float back into consciousness at this point because in my dream I was laying flat on a table with very blurred vision. This was where I first felt the feeling of being paralized. In my dream I was on a table and felt like I was strapped down. My arms were free but even in the dream movement was limited. Breathing was hard to do, but still possible. In my dream I began to struggle to move but it felt as if people around me were fighting me trying to restrain me. I reached up to touch my neck to see why i could not move (still in dream) and felt a neck brace there. Suddenly, I became relieved since in this dream I had come to the realization that I had been injured the the weird room in the casino and now I was on an emergency stretcher from being thrown up and down by something. I experienced a ton of relief and (still in the dream) I raised my hand in triumph very calmly. I opened my hand and the hand of a paramedic took it in attempt to calm me down further. The vividness of this memory is something that will never leave me for the rest of my life. Every detail such as noticing the hand was bigger than mine and rather rough...even the warmth of the hand, it was all so incredibly vivid. The relief of this must have brought me further into consciousness because this was the point where I first opened my eyes and was able to observe certain things in my room.

Now this is where shit just got so intense, I'm going to have a a hard time finding the words to explain it best. I became more aware of my inability to move and also became able to open my eyes and consciously became able to move my eyes around my room. My vision was very hazy and it was quite dark but I was able to make out the shape of my TV, book case and closet door as it was partially open. All this I was observing but I could also notice that I was still experiencing my dream as well. I could vaguely hear voices of paramedics talking to each other and see movement from my dream in my peripheral vision above me, but was consciously looking around my room at objects. Here a period of time passed where I went back to sleep and then partially came out to look around my room. I remember that certain things happened in my dream but I can't remember exactly what they were. I do remember thinking several times that I had fully woken up but then realizing I was still dreaming. I suspect that this state continued for a few minutes at least and that I must have had my eyes open for a while because they started getting adjusted to the dark. I was able to not only point out large fixtures in my room, but much more detail in them. My eyes caught a stick of deodorant on the second shelf of my book case, that the previous morning I could not find in the bathroom. This observation brought me almost fully into a conscious state of mind. This also brought on the scariest and most exciting few minutes (I estimate) of my life. I was conscious enough to realize I had spotted a lost stick of deodorant, but I still couldn't move!! I tried to look to the left at my clock, but all I could do was move my eyes and my clock was in a spot that I could not see. That's when I saw the coolest thing I had ever seen in my life!

Right there, between my TV and my bed, in front of the clock I could not read was a tall dark figure that in my dream would have been a paramedic. I was conscious enough not only to spot a lost stick of deodorant but at this time I also became aware that I had been drooling a massive amount and could feel it on my chin, shoulder and part of my pillow that the tip of my shoulder was touching. And there, only a foot or so away from me was a figure that was in my dream, but yet just as real as my book case, the closet or my newly found deodorant stick. The onset of this reality made me think "HOLLY FUCK, I'M IN SLEEP PARALYSIS AND THIS IS A REAL FUCKING HOLUCINATION!".

I'll pause the story right here because any reasonable mind may start posing questions here such as "how the hell would THAT pop into your mind at such a time and why were you thinking so logicaly"? The reason is that I've spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours researching paranormal and supernatural events over the past 12 or so years as it's a profound interest of mine. I had read into sleep paralysis in great detail as it explains many paranormal/supernatural experiences. I've also studied sleep paralysis in my university days, I took psychology as a minor.

The realization of what was going on sent a whole slew of emotions running through my body. There was panic, excitement, fright, anxiousness. My heart rate sped up to a point where I could literaly hear it in my head. Next I remembered how in my dream I was able to move my arms. I focused my attention on the dark figure at my side again. It was such an amazing experience, by eyes were able to focus on such fine detail of my TV and book case, but yet this figure was blurry and hazy but yet so real. I tried to extend my arm. My actual arm did not move, but yet I could still see my arm in a dream like state moving in my mind towards it. This is where I'm concerned that I won't be able to explain how it was in such a manner that allows people reading this to correctly picture what it was like. I could still see my arm in my bed staying still but also I was observing my arm in a dream I was having while awake moving, but I knew the difference between them. It was like I was somehow observing two things at once, knowing one was real and the other was a holucination. When my "dream arm" reached the figure, I poked it with a full fist. The detail I felt was mind altering. I could feel something like a heavy velvet like material squishing in a tiny bit before I could feel the heat from the leg of the paramedic man in my dream. I remember the warmth of the leg could be felt more on the back of my fingers where the skin is more sensitive than on my knuckles, but yet at the same time, I knew my whole arm lay paralyzed beside me.

This was when the excitement and interest I had been feeling was overwhelmed my thoughts of panic, dread and freight. I still knew what was going on, but I no longer wanted it to be happening. I knew exactly what was causing the life like image beside me but became absolutely horrified by the fact that I still could not move. I shifted my focus above me to the ceiling, but could still see the dark figure of the paramedic in my peripheral vision. I began to panic, sweat, breathing became even more difficult. I closed my eyes and opened them a bunch of times trying to snap out of it, but each time I sort of reverted back into a dream-like state and back into a more conscious state. Finally I opened my eyed as wide as I could and focused at the ceiling where there was something to focus on, but I wasn't sure what it was. It wasn't long when I realized it was a mirror on my ceiling that I had forgoten was there. (I've only been in this house a month, and I 've got nine small mirror glass tiles on my ceiling as a decoration and a useful tool for sex...hahaha).

This realization snapped me out of it. My head and neck sprung off my pillow and I sat right up in bed. I checked to my left and the figure was gone. I looked around for a minute, cating my breath and still wondering if I could be sure I was actually awake this time. I uncovered myself and sat on the side of my bed and grabbed my cell phone to check to see what time it was. It was 4AM. I then looked at the clock, confirming the time was indeed 4AM. I momentarily considered how weird it was that this whole ordeal could only have lasted an hour or so, since the last I remembered before falling asleep that it had to be around 3AM. The whole ordeal seemed to have lasted much much longer.

It didn't take long for the excitement to return in having realized what I had just experienced. I looked at my book case and confirmed that my lost stick of deodorant was on the second shelf. I felt my chin and shoulder and checked my pillow confirming I had drooled an incredible amount as they were still wet. These were all observations I had made while half dreaming while awake and confirmed that there was no way I simply could have dreamed the whole thing while I was asleep.

I was so excited to be able to recount the whole experience in such detail, I wanted to ensure that I would not forget it. So I went upstaires and had a smoke outside on the deck, while taking my time with a glass of water.

I returned to bed about a half hour later, and slept like a tired child until my phone woke me up at 1PM in the afternoon. It was my room mate (who was in my dream, the guy who knew the underground casino owner) who needed me to come pick him up somewhere. I went to get him and told him the whole story. He told me he had experienced something similar while under stress, but not in near as much detail as my experience.

Now reflecting upon how real it all seemed, even while I knew very well what was going on, I have to be empathetic with those who have experienced it before and thought it was of paranormal or supernatural nature. Had I not spend countless hours researching this type of thing AND studies SP in a university setting I would be on here swearing to you all that I had a paranormal experience and not an experience with a documented phenomena. This was easily the coolest thing that has EVER happened to me and I can't explain how happy and excited I am that I had a chance to have such an experience while at the same time understanding on some level what was happening.

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed the story. A lot of it mat be quite dry, but I tried to cut out anything that wasn't overly important.

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