Sleep paralysis. It only happened once to me... what i saw was a white figure from the feet to the waist, standing upright infront of my bed. I remember my heart beating so fast i thought i was going to have a stroke. I opened my mouth to call my mother but not a sound came out, i couldn't move either. Yea, it was scary... then i just closed my eyes and relaxed all of a sudden, and i fell asleep again. It's incredible what the mind can come up with

I fully understand sleep paralysis and what causes it. The only problem is that I still see a therapist because I can't get rid of it. It happens to me about 3 or 4 times a month. Usually its a dark figure in the background or a nearby hallway. Kind of like in predator, you can see through it but the presence is made visible like an outline of wavy heat. The inside of the presence is filled with thousands of tiny little sparkles. The feeling in the room is of tremendous fear and negative energy. He movies slowly toward me floating as I try to scream, move or anything but cannot do a single thing. I can only move my eyeballs and that's it. I can't even open my mouth let alone make a sound come out of it. I start trying to thrash my head from side to side in order to wake myself up but I am only able to move it about a half a millimeter from one side to the next. It's like my whole body is in some tight vice that is keeping me completely immobile. My body doesn't feel physical... it feels more like energy as light pulses of electricity are felt everywhere from my chest down. I keep trying to thrash my head from side to side and it's usually when the being get about a few feet away that I jolt awake.

I sure would like to find a cure for this. Other than staying awake til the sun starts to come up. that always seems to be the only that helps because the main things that trigger this event for me is the combination of the following

1. Partial darkness (like the night of a full moon or there is a street light giving your room just enough light to see)
2. Complete silence (which is why I always sleep with a fan on now... even in the winter)
3. Warmth (I sleep with sheets so I don't get too warm at night. I figure this might have something to do with the trigger because every time I awake from one, the temperature is around 80 degrees [give or take])

This stuff usually works but hey, it's hard to stay up all night and even harder to control the noise during power outages or when you just plain forget to turn the fan on because you unwillingly fell asleep while reading.

You have to admit though... That was one freaking scary old lady in that video. I hope I never have one like that.

Gosh, bless your heart...It's said that SP occurs at time of high stress. Have you noticed thats when you experience it more?
My sister has one of the worst cases, I've yet seen compare..
anyway here are two things she swears that helps her:

-Try focusing to move something small on your body, rather than something big.. Like pinky finger.. instead of your head..

-- The one thing that has helped a lot DON'T sleep on your side or back but to sleep on your stomach.

Sorry it's not much help...
Good luck.

Oh great... turns out that this whole sleep paralysis thread is just a cheap shot at advertising to sell a book. Watch the video, visit the website and buy a book. When does the madness ever end?

Well, I do have severe anxiety disorder and PTSD. Thats not going to help me much is it?

Also ...cant sleep on my stomach. I'm overweight.

Thirdly... glad to see we are making a real thread of this rather than an advertisement.


EDIT: hard to say if stress triggers it the most when I usually am under stress naturally because of the disorders. I don't see therapy just for the SP. I have a lot of nervous conditions due to my past. Things that happened as a child and even in the Military. I'm 36 now.

Shoot it don't end, it just gets worse.. Leaches!!

anyway... I was gonna say earlier, but hesitated..
the thing my sis sees she calls the "elephant man" and he literally swings her by her feet, spins her around in circles. Sometimes she can see herself pass by the mirror in her room..

HAHA. not funny but She's been dealing with that crap for years now..

That's twice already you've cracked me up!!

I don't mean to get personal, but do you take anything for anxiety right now? anything for stress?


And yea.. I didn't realize that was an advertisement.. bullcrap.

I've heard of that... where the actual contact is made by the presence.... I was told that this is cause by going from SP into REM sleep instantly. After all... that is technically what SP is... it's when the body suddenly awakens while still in a sleep state. You can see with your eye into your room but your mind is still dreaming. If you close your eyes and go back to sleep from that point, you may continue the SP right into the lucid dreaming. Hope this made sense to ya.

I'm still under medication management because I have mild Tourettes Syndrome (oh here we go... another one) and the medication given so far just worsens it. I am waiting for my next appointment in a few days to try something new.

How long have you been experiencing these episodes?

Do you have any trouble breathing at night, or a problem snoring? I ask for specific reasons here. Not just being nosy.. ok

I totally understand. I'm wondering if you being overweight isn't causing problems with your breathing.. resulting in Sleep Apnea which may worsen the SP..
http://health.yahoo.com/sleep-symptoms/sle...e--hw49181.html

many people who suffer with SA tend to have night terrors mixed with SP.. just a thought or a suggestion you may want to ask your DR. about if he'she hasn't already covered that.

btw, I've witnessed something at my bed that looked just like that hag, and I don't have SP... good lord.. I think it took 10 years from my life, too.

First started having them regularly when I cam home from leave in the army in late 1990 around November but did have few occasional episodes as a teenager. And yes... I snore. Or at least that's what my Fiance says as she's nudging me in my side half way during a decent dream. How does snoring fit into this? Guess what.. here comes another one... I also have Athsma. I'm a whole bag of problems, ain't I? No really. Not a hypochondriac or whatever you call it. I've went through alot as a kid and then even more in adulthood and then ended up living on the streets for a few years... the list goes on. I'm screwed up.

EDIT: I'm asking questions at the same time you are answering them I think.

Well I did have one experience with some old hag at the foot of my bed once when I was around ten years old... but just turned out to be my grandmother stopping by in the middle of the night and peeking in on the kids sleeping. OK Just Kidding

I've checked that out. Really doesn't sound like me. I mostly have a problem sleeping rather than sleeping through the day periodically. Well I do sleep through part of the day but usually only because I rarely want to sleep at night because of the SP issue. For example, it's 3:30 am here right now and I'm not planning on going to bed til about 5 when the sun starts to come up. I work from home though so it doesn't effect much financially. Does cause alot of other problems but as far as my family goes, they know about it and understand. I've been like this for years.

I am glad to see that SA doesn't fit me though. One less thing to add to the list.

Bless your heart!!
You don't have to explain anything to me... no matter what you could possibly say, I've probably heard and seen it all.. seriously. Look, your breathing, your airways when they stop up your brain isn't getting oxygen.. the result is panic when in REM or sleep mode.. but your body expresses itself, or it can react in terrors like you're experiencing-- these horrifying nightmares.
Now, important, when you go back to your DR.. you tell him that you *MAY be suffering from Sleep APNEA.. This can be important because he or she may give you oxygen to help that apnea out..I can't say for sure, but it's a very strong possibility.. & this should help you.. It may not take away the SP completely, but I'd be surprised if it didn't cut the episodes tremendously.
Again, my sister suffers from SA and started taking oxygen at night and I don't think she's had an episode in a few months.. I stand by this.

Well Im not the doc so I shouldn't diagnose myself. I'll ask the doc and let her decide. thanks for the advice.

About explaining things.... at this hour you're just happy to find someone to talk to. Besides, I like explaining things.. It's like therapy. Ask away.

Well sometimes we are not aware we have this problem.. Im thinking that this SA is not another problem added, but it may help reduce the one you have now, if that makes sense.. it may be worth mentioning anyway..

She was on medication for stress/anxiety and made hers episodes worse too.

I only mention these things because I've seen her go through hell with it. I know how it got to her.. so, I feel ya.
Throwing things out there that helped her... may could help you too, I guess you never know..

I think the worse part about having SP is the fact that I'm a grown man and to wake up in fear next to a disabled woman and your two small kids is not very reassuring to them. Not that it makes me feel weak or anything but I guess you should see the look on my face when coming out of one of those to know what it is that they get to see. She always tells me that when I wake from one, I look like I am between death and not quite dead yet.


Not that I wake up next to my kids but you get the point. I mean wake up with them seeing the look in my face shortly after.

Sleep paralysis is the cause for most alien abduction stories which are confused. Also it is said to be the last step on your way to the astral world.

Either way I have had it happen to me and it is freaky because you tell you body move , but it just won't listen to you commands. prettty scary stuff.

This happened to me many times in my childhood...not now.
Happened to me in this circunstances:

- Feeling of another presence in the room;

- Looking to something bad (object,figure or shadows) that my mind created;

- Being totally blind in the darkness and not feel confortable with it;

- Listening to sounds that only me can hear;

The figures that my mind created most were werewolfs,aliens and death people,but the way they happened is most likely in this video.

I'd rather stick with the "It's not real" version right now. Keeps me more sane and hasn't hurt anyone yet.

I've been hearing stories of SP for many years now. But I just thought of something...

I wake up with what feels like a dead arm, or dead hand sometimes and it takes a couple of minutes for the feeling to come back. To begin with I won't be able to move my arm or hand at all, and it'll feel like a lump of wood, and then I'll be able to move it more and more and feeling will return to it. But oddly enough, when I wake up I'm never on top of it or have seen any evidence of having crushed it and cut off the blood supply. But for argument's sake, let's just say my body automatically moves me off my arm or hand and then wakes me up because of it. Would this be an example of SP confined to a region of the body? Or would this simply be temporarily cutting off the blood supply and causing loss of feeling and no movement?

I don't know if others get this, but it does scare me sometimes, especially when it's really bad. I don't wanna wake up one day and go to hospital to have my arm amputated lol!

On a side note, I've never experienced SP, but I have woken up as a young child to see an hallucination of something I had just been dreaming about. It was a tall man with horns on his head and whenever I think about it, it gives me the chills. I wouldn't really say it was the devil, and I still remember the dream very clearly...it was almost cartoony and there was a cult of people dancing around this figure that I called at the time 'horny' (lol), and everybody within the dream seemed really happy. I then woke up during this cult dance to see this figure walking up the stairs towards my room. It started on a few stairs from the top, and I hid under the covers and blinked a few times, looked back out and it was still coming up the stairs, and had just reached the top, by which point I was crapping myself. I then went back under the covers for about 5 minutes before looking out again, and it was nowhere to be seen.

One time I also woke up to see an hallucination, again outside my room at the top of the stairs, of a nightime scene of a forest. That's all it was, just a moving image of a forest at night time, strange huh?

I guess that's what the mind can do to you, but they sure as hell are strange experiences. I haven't had anything like that since I was like 10 or so, I'm now 21. Oh, curiously I also believe that I suffer from a mild form of tourette's, I've been thinking it for some time now. I have several movement twitches that I have no control over, it's horrible!

I do that. It's so bad, I have to take the other arm to move that dead arm.. I hate it.. I think it's circulation issue though.

Sleep paralysis sucks!!! I used to experience it alot but I always used to hear a loud rumbling noise with mine not an old hag. Now I avoid sleeping on my back, which seems to have helped.

Ive dealt with sp for years can be kinda scary at times

I also have been diagnosed with sleep paralysis. I usually go to bed between 5-7 am, because I am not comfortable sleeping at night unless I am so tired I just can't stay awake.

I've had a couple of horrifying next-to-the-bed visits, and have tried to convince myself that they were only hallucinations. The small "alien" face by my bed when I was 2 years old could have been a hallucination, but the first time I saw that same face again was in the 1970s on the cover of National Enquirer, so believing it may have been "real" only made people think I was crazy.

A shadowman (with a hat) visited me one night. I awoke in terror to a pitch black room and surrounded by icy cold, like the windows were open in the middle of January. I sensed someone "evil" near me, and my dog jumped off my bed and began making a "death howl" that he only did two other times in his life--at the moment neighbors died. It was like I was in a soundless bubble as the entity moved right next to my head. I had been screaming so hard that I felt that my throat was raw, but no one else woke up. I pulled the covers over my head, and the entity pulled the covers off the bed. I felt a force on the outside of each hand, but it did not feel like hands squeezing the covers, just that a force had a hold of the covers and was extremely strong. I was so scared, and my heart was beating so fast, I just knew I was going to die soon. The thing stayed right there until I was able to think "Jesus, help me!" A few seconds later, I knew it had gone. I was not a churchgoing kid (this all happened when I was 13), but we started going to church within a couple of months of this happening. My feeling is that whatever it was, it was feeding off my fear, since it didn't do any physical harm (only psychological and neurological, which is significant, although most people didn't think so 30 years ago.)

I read recently that people who have these episodes have successfully reduced or eliminated them from happening by spraying pure spring water throughout their house, and especially where they sleep. The purity is the important thing. You can pray over the water to "bless" it, as it is not necessary to go to a priest. Jesus said God has given us such power to cast out evil, to bless and heal. Maybe it's the ability to believe in this procedure that helps people relax enough to get unbothered sleep and release the grip of fear in their minds. I believe this would be helpful, and if I was still being bothered, I'd try this.

My experience with telling psychiaatrists about the shadowman and alien visitations, poltergeist attacks which also happened to another girl who later lived in my bedroom, enormous fear that resulted in Post-Traumatic Stress, and sexual attacks from invisible entities that happened in my teens and late 1990s as an adult, they just want to put me on drugs, which never solve the problems, just make my mind so dull that I feel even more vulnerable. The best therapy I've had was talking with other people online who had experienced similar things and told me how they coped or overcame the situation.