Has any one ever had sleep paralysis, I recently experienced this and it was horrible! I ususaly have lucid dreams where I know im dreaming but never something like this?

Holy shit. Ive had the same thing. Its pretty wierd and my friends have had it too. Its like your mind is a awake but your body isnt. Sometimes people have told me they even feel as if there is something evil beside them.

Yeah, that IS scary. Especially when you don’t know that it’s SP.

I experience this too from time to time. It’s scary, but it usually doesn’t last very long. It happens when you wake up before your motor functions ‘wake up’ (your body paralyzes itself when you sleep so you don’t act out your dreams).

I had something similar happen not too long ago. I awoke, but couldn’t open my eyes, and I felt (I swear) what I imagined was a child tracing along my hand with a single fingertip. I finally opened my eyes, and of course there was no one there, but I could still distinctly feel the touch “memory” on my hand. It was weird and I thought about the entire next day.

Usually you have out of body experiences when asleep. McBean you probably saw another spirit.

I actually blogged about this once. Here’s the entry, dated 28 September 2007:

A little while ago someone on thequestionclub asked if anyone had ever experienced sleep paralysis. I clicked on the wiki link they provided and was very pleased to find that there was actually a name for this phenomenon and I wasn’t a lone weirdo for it happening to me!

Because I find sleep patterns fascinating, I poked around and found articles about other things I frequently experience during sleep or attempts to sleep. Some of these things I know happen to pretty much everyone but they seem to happen more often to me, or perhaps they just seem more problematic to me because I have such a hard time falling and staying asleep:

- Nightmares, which I think you’re all aware I have a lot. I once read that the average person has two or three really serious nightmares a year. Sometimes I have that many in a night.

- Night terrors. As it turns out, I have “nightmares” slightly less often than I thought. At least once or twice a week, this is actually what’s happening to me.

- Exploding head syndrome. Here’s another one that made me go, “Oh my God! It has a name! And it happens to other people!”

- Somniloquy. The fancy word for sleep talking. Mine often comes in the form of word salad as I’m waking. Sometimes as I’m waking up, I hear myself rapidly babbling words that don’t make sense together. If I don’t get freaked out and I try really hard, I can slow myself down and really hear the words. It’s so weird because I don’t know where they’re coming from and they usually make sense grammatically, just not… any other way. Other times I wake up to myself telling stories, or continuing the dialogue in which I was engaged in my dream. I really hate that I do this… I’d probably volunteer to suffer with even worse insomnia if it meant I stopped talking in my sleep.

- False awakening. I’m pretty sure this happens to everyone sometimes.

- Hypnic jerk/myoclonic twitch. Another one that happens to everyone and their mother. It happens to me every single night, though, and is part of what keeps me from being able to fall asleep. And related to that is hypnogogia.

My gosh, MacBean! You must dread bedtime. So sorry! I wish you sweet dreams (or maybe even no dreams) tonight.

woah I didnt know there were a lot of people who experienced this! it is so creepy. I never lay on my back any more because I heard that this only occurs when you sleep on your back…

I almost never have nightmares. I used to have allot of sleepwalks though.

@McBean—haha, yeah, I’m just about the worst sleeper ever, I think. I get all excited about it when I get five hours without anything waking me up.

That’s an awesome answer @MacBean – very interesting…I have both nightmares and night terrors, and never knew the difference. I talk up a storm in my sleep, and what’s worse, I yell and call out repeatedly, names or entire sentences. It’s really embarassing, because I am quite clear, and everyone in the vicinity knows exactly what I was dreaming about. Last night it was screaming for my daughter, and, “HAVE YOU SEEN MY DAUGHTER?? SHE’S JUST A LITTLE GIRL!!!” before I woke up. Of course, I know what I said in my dream, but am only told later that I actually shouted it at the top of my lungs… I do that jerk/twitch thing, and wake my husband up constantly. I never knew about false awakenings, but I certainly have them when I am feeling high stress about something I have to do…so I dream it and then it SUCKS that’s it’s not over with, and I wake up for real and have to do the whole freaking things over again….
Sleep paralysis, luckily, I am not aware of having experienced….thank G-d.

This happens to me more when I am stressed about something. Always there is the devil, snorting fire etc at me, and I am trying to scream but can’t!..I fight and fight until I wake up properly. It always feels like something is holding me down.

What’s really wierd is doing it in another language. Sometimes I mix Polish and Albanian and talk in my sleep, and my husband gets pissed because he can’t figure out what the hell was going on….. :)

I’ve had this multiple times, but it never lasts more than a minute or two. I basically feel as if I’m suffocating :-( Wikipedia has a good entry on it.

i have had the same thing hapen a few times b4 , i dream constantly thrue the night and am usualuy a lite sleaper but its always scary when it hapens , but i kinda got usto it LOL i hav even had it happen wher i could hear muself snoring :( but couldent move or any thing , my dr said it was most likely just caused by pure exaustion ??? who knows if that is true

I was on heavy doses of pain killer when I returned from the hospital after a shoulder operation. I couldn’t sleep in the bed because I needed to prop myself up to avoid pressure on my shoulder.

I still remember the dream after these many years. I was being chased by the devil. No matter where I turned it was there and I just couldn’t get away. Finally I got tired of running and reached out and grabbed it. I pulled it to the ground and woke up in terrible pain. It turns out that I grabbed my shoulder and threw myself onto the floor.

I would have really appreciated a little sleep paralysis.