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Sleep paralysis can lead to ghost sightings


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On 1/24/2015 at 3:09 PM, ChaosRose said:

There is an in-between state where one can be essentially awake, but still dreaming...so they say. The mechanism which keeps us from acting out our dreams can glitch, and we can also be completely awake, and still unable to move.

I have to say that as someone who has had many paranormal experiences, imo what happened was real. My partner has also been able to vouch for the physical appearance of most of the entities that I have encountered, because he has seen them, too. It seems unlikely to me that we're having the same dreams. Something is here. What it is...well, that's another discussion. I'm open to the idea that these are thoughtforms, and they may be emanating from me. I'm also open to the idea that they are something else. What I don't believe is that it is just sleep paralysis or hypnogagic hallucination. People don't hallucinate the same things.

Well there is a really simple way to test this.  Set up a camera and record - if it appears to be visible to someone else then it will also appear on a camera.  If it does not then you are likely experiencing a shared illusion brought on by suggestion and if it does some serious money awaits you! 

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2 hours ago, Spotted Pony said:

That’s it I’m sleeping on couch!

Welcome to UM,

Ever thought of setting up a cheap USB camera to catch your ‘somebody’? It would definitely help with the anxiety you’ve got going on.

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11 minutes ago, I'mConvinced said:

Well there is a really simple way to test this.  Set up a camera and record - if it appears to be visible to someone else then it will also appear on a camera.  If it does not then you are likely experiencing a shared illusion brought on by suggestion and if it does some serious money awaits you! 

They have plenty of lame arguments against ‘money’/‘fame’ things. 

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2 hours ago, I'mConvinced said:

Well there is a really simple way to test this.  Set up a camera and record - if it appears to be visible to someone else then it will also appear on a camera.  If it does not then you are likely experiencing a shared illusion brought on by suggestion and if it does some serious money awaits you! 

Except there was no suggestion because I didn't tell him anything about my experiences so I could see if he would verify them on his own. 

After we started getting sick and having unusually bad luck, I decided to find a way to kick all phenomena to the curb, and so I did. 

I believe it all stems from the psyche, but that sometimes people undergoing extreme trauma or grief can manifest woo. It's a sign things are out of balance.  

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Just now, ChaosRose said:

Except there was no suggestion because I didn't tell him anything about my experiences so I could see if he would verify them on his own. 

After we started getting sick and having unusually bad luck, I decided to find a way to kick all phenomena to the curb, and so I did. 

I believe it all stems from the psyche, but that sometimes people undergoing extreme trauma or grief can manifest woo. It's a sign things are out of balance.  

Well then it is either a direct mind to mind transfer of some sort or these things really do manifest themselves in the physical world - get recording! 

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1 minute ago, I'mConvinced said:

Well then it is either a direct mind to mind transfer of some sort or these things really do manifest themselves in the physical world - get recording! 

I don't think "they" are spirits or entities. I think it's just some kind of mechanism that sort of blows off emotional steam. It's unpredictable, so you'd have to catch someone who was still going through it.

The thing that's interesting is that even sleep paralysis type experiences stopped for both of us. So if it is sleep paralysis, it's brought on by stress and trauma. 

The best weapon is to forgive yourself for things you can't control, and to not get caught up in the phenomena. It's not "real" in the same sense as we are. It doesn't mean a person is "special." It means there's a problem. 

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  • 5 years later...

I woke up to a dark shadow figure standing next to my bed as i slept few yrs ago.

I was so scared, my husband thought someone broke in.The figure was disturbing.Apparently i was sitting up pointing at it in shock.Looked like  a male shadow wearing a  suit.

Early next morning i got a phone call, a family member past away.

I think the dark shadow was trying to tell me.

 

 

 

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On 11/26/2022 at 11:34 AM, Natty73 said:

I woke up to a dark shadow figure standing next to my bed as i slept few yrs ago.

I was so scared, my husband thought someone broke in.The figure was disturbing.Apparently i was sitting up pointing at it in shock.Looked like  a male shadow wearing a  suit.

Early next morning i got a phone call, a family member past away.

I think the dark shadow was trying to tell me.

 

 

 

You dreamed it, dead is dead spookies sadly do not some scare us out of sleep.

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I don’t think shadow folks are dead people. Nor do I think Natty was saying that. 
 

To many people have described the same exact things when it comes to certain shadow figures. You could literally make categories of the types. I don’t claim to know what or who they are. Or where they come from, but I suspect on some level they actually exist. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
8 hours ago, Natty73 said:

It wasn't a dream because i had a phone call saying that my cousin had died.He was too young to go.

Let me try again,

Here is what you said,

On 11/26/2022 at 11:34 AM, Natty73 said:

I woke up to a dark shadow figure standing next to my bed as i slept few yrs ago.

I was so scared, my husband thought someone broke in.The figure was disturbing.Apparently i was sitting up pointing at it in shock.Looked like  a male shadow wearing a  suit.

Early next morning i got a phone call, a family member past away.

I think the dark shadow was trying to tell me.

 

 

 

So as not to assume allow me to ask a few questions,

Why did your husband think someone broke in?

And this..

On 11/26/2022 at 11:34 AM, Natty73 said:

Apparently i was sitting up pointing at it in shock.Looked like  a male shadow wearing a  suit.

You say "apparently" which to me makes you sound unsure how did you come to a conclusion you were sitting up pointing at a male shadow wearing a suit?

Why would you connect a phone call the next morning of a family member dying to what was likely....

On 11/26/2022 at 11:45 AM, XenoFish said:

Hypnopompic hallucination. Nothing more and nothing less than that.

 

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On 11/26/2022 at 10:34 AM, Natty73 said:

I woke up to a dark shadow figure standing next to my bed as i slept few yrs ago.

I was so scared, my husband thought someone broke in.The figure was disturbing.Apparently i was sitting up pointing at it in shock.Looked like  a male shadow wearing a  suit.

Early next morning i got a phone call, a family member past away.

I think the dark shadow was trying to tell me.

 

 

 

Dreams are weird Natty...yours, mine, everyone's...just plain weird...but there are things that cause us to encounter strangeness with our weird dreams...I will only repeat this one phrase from a previous post...these are things that happen in the instant between our sleeping and our awakened state.  

And I will say this...anything within our dream realm...has absolutely nothing to do with anything except what's going on in our own heads.  

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19 minutes ago, joc said:

Dreams are weird Natty...yours, mine, everyone's...just plain weird...but there are things that cause us to encounter strangeness with our weird dreams...I will only repeat this one phrase from a previous post...these are things that happen in the instant between our sleeping and our awakened state.  

And I will say this...anything within our dream realm...has absolutely nothing to do with anything except what's going on in our own heads.  

Things can and do get so weird the mind is a terrible thing to taste.

Last night ( for me we sleep odd hours due to work ) I had a massive horribly painful cramp in my thigh, i was deeply dreaming of some make believe tool or weapon stabbing into my thigh, i sat up screaming of the pain tina knows i get a few cramps like this a year, it took a while to relax the muscle and it still hurts, but i find that pretty cool that as the cramp started coming on it incorporated into the dream and as tina pointed out what felt like minutes to me was just a few seconds.

I havent woke to any shadow people yet but i wouldnt be too surprised if one day i do, they seem to be a fairly common hallucination ill call it that since i see nothing to support they are "entities". Seems to me the human form would be a go to for the mind.

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To many sightings of very specific types of these shadow folks to be a coincidence. 
 

If it’s the dreaming mind, the experiences should be all over the place. But even with different types of, well, for lack of a better word, entities, it’s nearly always a common theme. I doubt science would even recognize it if not for the overwhelming cases. 
 

Then they put a name on the phenomenon, describe it, and that then settles what it is, smh. When you read the fine print though, they are nothing more than guesses. Guesses with very little supporting evidence. 

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45 minutes ago, preacherman76 said:

To many sightings of very specific types of these shadow folks to be a coincidence. 

Not really. With the volume of shared information it doesn't take much for similar sighting to take place. 

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4 hours ago, preacherman76 said:

To many sightings of very specific types of these shadow folks to be a coincidence. 

My understanding is that at least as far as sleep paralysis the 'shadow folks' have changed over time.  A long time ago they were little demons or gargoyles that would sit on your chest, and in the 20th century we started hearing that these shadow folks were actually aliens sneaking around.  Funny how these shadow beings are changing in a way that is consistent with what is culturally popular.

4 hours ago, preacherman76 said:

If it’s the dreaming mind, the experiences should be all over the place.

I don't know what basis there is for this, the dreaming mind across people have remarkable consistencies.  There are many lists of common dreams on the web:

  • Falling
  • Teeth falling out
  • At work or class naked
  • Test taking 
  • Dying
  • Being chased
  • Partner cheating
  • Showing up late
  • Flying
  • Driving an out of control vehicle

I've had probably half of those myself. 

4 hours ago, preacherman76 said:

Then they put a name on the phenomenon, describe it, and that then settles what it is, smh. When you read the fine print though, they are nothing more than guesses. Guesses with very little supporting evidence. 

Depends on which part you are talking about, it's not a guess that there are brain functions that disable your motor functions while you are dreaming so you don't thrash around in response to dream activities.  Why there is the sense of some other being present I'm not as sure about, but for many sleep paralysis can be a scary experience and when it occurs the brain has not fully awoken so hallucinations don't seem to be that surprising.

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On 12/26/2022 at 10:28 AM, Natty73 said:

It wasn't a dream because i had a phone call saying that my cousin had died.He was too young to go.

Sadly people died unexpectedly all the time, even if they’re young. 
Sorry for your loss.

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To call something a sleep paralysis hypnopompic hallucination does not tell us the source of the imagery. It could well be entities on the etheric/astral planes triggering these images. How would we know? I do believe that state between sleep and awake is a time that allows for us to be sensitive to the non-physical as it is believed in some wisdom traditions that the astral body separates from the physical during sleep.

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15 minutes ago, papageorge1 said:

To call something a sleep paralysis hypnopompic hallucination does not tell us the source of the imagery.

It does though, it's the mind, the source of the imagery is contained within the word 'hallucination'.

16 minutes ago, papageorge1 said:

It could well be entities on the etheric/astral planes triggering these images. How would we know?

It could 'well be' the dark lord Sauron too - "how would we know?".  That's the problem with that kind of question, 'how would we know', it doesn't help us filter out any possibilities really.  I think the better question is, 'what basis is there for supposing something astral as an explanation?'.  Nothing, same as with the Sauron theory, but unlike the dream-state/hallucination hypothesis which does have evidence for it.

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10 minutes ago, Liquid Gardens said:

 

It could 'well be' the dark lord Sauron too - "how would we know?".  That's the problem with that kind of question, 'how would we know', it doesn't help us filter out any possibilities really.  I think the better question is, 'what basis is there for supposing something astral as an explanation?'.  Nothing, same as with the Sauron theory, but unlike the dream-state/hallucination hypothesis which does have evidence for it.

There is a large body of claims of people from all cultures, and teachings of wisdom traditions and those claiming insight into the 'beyond the physical' that argues for these types of things being part of a greater reality. Certainly, that is not proof to the hard science types but allows for speculation. To me. the materialist view is broken beyond reasonable doubt and what I stated is fair speculation and actually makes the most sense for me all things considered.

It's not like I'm talking about Lord Daffy Duck here. lol.

BTW: I never heard of Sauron

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9 hours ago, papageorge1 said:

There is a large body of claims of people from all cultures, and teachings of wisdom traditions and those claiming insight into the 'beyond the physical' that argues for these types of things being part of a greater reality. Certainly, that is not proof to the hard science types but allows for speculation. To me. the materialist view is broken beyond reasonable doubt and what I stated is fair speculation and actually makes the most sense for me all things considered.

It's not like I'm talking about Lord Daffy Duck here. lol.

BTW: I never heard of Sauron

Claims are just a version of "story" it means "i have zero proof" and that doesnt mean proof to hard science types it means there is zero evidence to support the claim so you might aswell claim daffy duck caused it there is just as much proof it was daffy as there is proof its beyond physical. And remember daffy is fictinal.

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On 1/20/2015 at 2:27 AM, UM-Bot said:

The terrifying phenomenon may account for numerous sightings of ghosts, monsters, demons and more.

Read More: http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/277101/sleep-paralysis-can-lead-to-ghost-sightings

Sleep paralysis is also associated with UFO abductions.  Neurotheology studies linked a lot of such encounters to a particular brand of old digital alarm clocks made in the early 1980s with a faux wood finish.  If placed on a bedside table, these clocks emit faraday radiation (just electrons) to within the range of the sleeper's brain, and caused many people to have sleep paralysis episodes involving ghosts, shadow people and alien encounters.

This all has to do with how the brain works when we sleep.  For the most part, our brains set about gathering up the neurochemistry (like neurotransmitters etc) that our brains have used during the day (when we deplete too much of these chemicals, we feel sleepy btw).  Now dreams form an interesting part of the sleep cycle, and as we all know, they can seem very real indeed.  They are part of our visual cortex, and the visual cortex is not only responsible for our waking vision, but also for our dream vision, and our ability to visualize and imagine things, such as the way an engineer can visualize a bridge design in their head before committing it to paper.  Now when we dream, that is often towards the end of our sleep cycle, and is a form of pre-conscious mental activity.  Of course the body's systems are trying to get us to wake up, and so they send in adrenaline to trigger fight or flight, but our dreaming brain receives this stimulation as a distressing turn in the dream.  Sometimes we can become effectively awake, but with our bodies still in sleep mode, leaving us apparently unable to move, and this often involves the tail end of dreaming, which can then impinge on our consciousness, in much the same way that it does when schizophrenics interact with people and things that aren't there.  being unable to move, we become distressed, which adds to the adrenaline, and should help to wake us up, but in the case of the LED alarm clocks, they seemed to interfere with this process.  It is pretty much guaranteed that this accounts for a lot of scary paranormal encounters, but certainly not all of them.  

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1 hour ago, the13bats said:

Claims are just a version of "story" it means "i have zero proof" and that doesnt mean proof to hard science types it means there is zero evidence to support the claim so you might aswell claim daffy duck caused it there is just as much proof it was daffy as there is proof its beyond physical. And remember daffy is fictinal.

But bats, I am not claiming proof but interest in 'what's most reasonable to believe'. Things that can't be proved should be reasonably considered.

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