Have you ever experienced sleep paralysis?

No, but I hear it’s really frightening.

Only once that I recall, and it was somewhat recently. It was absolutely terrifying. I opened my eyes and I could see dark figures walking all around me – and I was scared to death. I couldn’t move AT ALL. I thought that my husband was nearby (he might have been, neither of us know for sure) and I kept trying to call out to him.. but I couldn’t tell if any sound was coming out.
It felt VERY real, I assumed what I was seeing was real, and it was truly one of the scariest things I have ever experienced. Sheer terror.

Well, I have been in a half-asleep half-awake state where I am paralyzed, but I don’t necessarily experience anything from a dream or a hallucination. I’m just lying in bed with nothing happening and without the ability to move. It usually only lasts a few seconds. I don’t know if that’s the same thing. There have been times where I have maybe experienced an auditory hallucination before I awoke fully. Can’t seem to remember for sure, though.

I experienced something momentarily terrifying in my early teens that I think invovled sleep paralysis.

I was dreaming that I was swimming, but my body was too dense and the water too thick for me to stay afloat and I began to sink so fast that I couldn’t swim back to the surface. I dreamt that I drowned – it was the only time I “died” in a dream.

I immediately woke up but every muscle in my body was in excruciating pain, and I coudn’t move. All I could see was the cartoon cat pattern in my sheets – I don’t recall having any transitional visions or hallucinations.

After a few seconds, I could move, and the pain melted away. I suspect that I had an episode of sleep apnea and wasn’t breathing so I woke up after my muscles were so deprived of oxygen.

I’m happy to report that I’ve NOT had a similar experience since then. :)

Often growing up and still on occasion.

Its frustrating more then anything. Can be creepy at times.

I’m a lucid dreamer, almost always aware that I AM dreaming…but, yes, once..not too long ago.

Woke and was aware after a few seconds of weirdness that I was dreaming, yet, couldn’t pull myslef out of it, wanted to get up but couldn’t move.

It lasted about 2 minutes, IF my awareness of time was taking place in true reality. lol

Finally actually did wake up…not fun, as like I mentioned..I was aware but powerless to snap out of it.

Yes, off and on all my life and so far I haven’t liked any of it. I often experience an energy outline or whatever of something putting pressure on me, not strangling or squeezing but just the presence of what I think I see feels like it pressurizes me and when I wake up then my energy level is just awful. I’ll feel like I took benadryl. Often during the sleep then I’ve tried to call out or move, sometimes I can finally scream out, scare the hell out of anyone in the house and then be afraid to go back to sleep. Never been afraid to talk about it since it’s a common reported sleep experience.

I don’t think so. I hate having covers on me, because I feel like they are tying me down (or up?)

Yes. Sometimes I’ll hear things – almost always just the normal creaks and groans of any home, perhaps a pet or a roommate, but I’ll think my house is being broken into, and I’ll really freak out. But normally it’s just sorta surreal and weird (and really frustrating when I have to pee but can’t get up and go pee).

Only once. I fell asleep in the car one day when I was early to uni, and when I woke I could not move. I was awake enough to contemplate ways I could wake up the rest of my body, such as trying to fall out of my seat, but none of it worked. Eventually my phone rang, and I instinctively reached to answer it, and then I could move freely. It was quite a strange experience, but thanks to a Fluther question on it a few days earlier I wasn’t concerned or frightened.

I’ve been experiencing it for years, ever since about my early adolescent life. It’s really weird because you basically dream with your eyes open, so the surroundings in your dream are where you’re actually at. I’ve seen things and all…an old lady sitting on a rocking chair and looking at me fiercely but doing nothing, while I was pleading to her for help. I saw a ghost pass through me. I heard the walls scream. One time some weird old dude was shoving human flesh down my throat.

But rather than the visual additions to your dream, it’s the sensation I hate, which is a bit hard to explain. Try to scream, try to move, nothing works. All I do is breathe heavily, like I’m having a heart attack or something. The first time my ex boyfriend saw me go through it, he was like WHAT THE FUCK.

You don’t just see things though, you mind is tripping. You imagine things. Like once I was lying in bed, and I thought some men came to rob me. I could hear them talking in my kitchen. I tried to get up to either confront them or escape, but I couldn’t move. A lot of things like that. Since you see the actual surroundings it’s creepy. And the ’‘dreams’’, if I may call them that, overlap. Like you ’‘wake’’ from one just to go into another, and it all seems so real, until you finally DO wake up, and realize you just had a paralysis attack.

Man I remember dreaming that I was struggling to just stand, dragging myself against my bedroom wall like Captain Rhodes in Day of the Dead, only to wake in my bed again.

However, I read that some sleeping phase or something fucks up and your REM goes haywire, and that’s why your body freezes you, so you don’t end up hurting yourself as you freak out, until it settles itself down. But in the years I’ve learned to manage some kind of scream and truly wake myself by the sound of my own voice, or at times I can manage to lift my arm or foot and let it land against the wall, so it wakes me up.
There’s also phases to this process, the first one is very odd…you feel like as if you can feel the blood in your body travel everywhere inside you, and it offers an extremely uncomfortable feeling at every heart beat. But I’ve learned to anticipate it, and can sometimes force myself awake when this happens, and it interrupts the whole process.
Doesn’t always work, if I fail to wake myself, I’m fucked at that point.

Sleep paralysis is quite frightening, and annoying might I add, but some things you dream about, or ’‘see’’ can be very interesting…at least, when you think about them after they happened. It’s like the feeling you get from a nightmare, but it never seems to end.

I also understand that many people who experience this often think that they’re being abducted by aliens and things like that. Years ago it was demon possession, vampire rape and shit like that.

I myself first thought that I was being haunted by the ghost of a young man who committed suicide in real life. Maybe that whole event triggered something in me noggin’ and as trauma, sleep paralysis has appeared? :/ Fucks if I know. Causes of such may also be a brain tumour, so…eep.

A few times. It’s a bizarre feeling, not being able to move while your cognitive functions are all dreamy. It’s scary, but after the first time, I looked it up and every time it’s happened since, I’m able to remember what is going on.

This happens during the REM (rapid eye movement) phase of sleep. Your body is unable to move during your most vivid dreams. This protects the dreamer from getting hurt thrashing around while dreaming.

For those who suddenly awake during this phase may experience “sleep paralysis”
When this happens, try and relax and avoid panic. This is normal and safe and normally does not last long.

I hope this is helpful.

I used to get it as a kid all the time. Now it only happens if I’m under a WHOLE lot of stress, or there are a whole lot of odd factors in my sleep routine. The last time it happened, I’d just started taking a new medication and I was spending the night at a relatives house.

I had a terrible nightmare, and I went through a period where I’d briefly wake up, or I thought I did, but I be actually still in the dream. After five or six times, I woke up a little more and was convinced there were bats or demons flying around the room I was in.

I was convinced I was having a terrible reaction to the medication that was causing psychosis. Once I was lucid enough to think this thought, I actually woke up and moved around. I had to get up and walk around for about an hour to convince myself that I was OK and actually awake and not insane.

The paralysis serves a useful function. I sometimes have violent nightmares coupled with this paralysis. If the dream is sufficiently violent, I sometimes “force” myself out of the paralyzed state and into a defensive posture. On two occasions I accidentally struck my lady. I was so afraid of hurting her that I avoided sleeping in the same bed with her until we got this sorted out.

I would get these episodes usually after returning from a deployment to some nasty place. Meg learned to recognize when I was having one of these and to wake me before things got to the point where I’d “fight” my way out. We found that I would remember the dream in vivid detail if awakened from it. Talking about it in detail with Meg almost guaranteed that it would not recur.

There are two things going on: sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations. They don’t necessarily go together.

My experience of sleep paralysis began in my teens and has continued over the years. There are sometimes long intervals of months or even a year between episodes, and sometimes they occur in close proximity. They are invariably terrifying. I always feel that I am about to die.

What I experience is an awake mind in a sleeping body.

Worse, it is a limp, motionless, powerless body.

Much worse still, it is a body that can’t breathe. Is suffocating. Is struggling to breathe and can’t open its throat. Is desperate to turn to the side to free the lungs, but can’t move.

It seems to last a very long time. But when you cannot breathe, any amount of time is long.

It takes the fiercest concentration to gain any motion at all. Over decades I have learned that I can begin with a small movement, a finger or a toe, and parlay that tiny motion into something more, a hand or a foot. Eventually I can gain enough leverage to turn. It takes the utmost effort. Meanwhile I can’t breathe. My throat is closed and my lungs are paralyzed.

I can hear myself making small whimpers. I can’t get enough air to gasp or cry out. I feel like I’m screaming, but I’m not. My heart is pounding so violently that I think it will burst. The pressure is enormous. I know I am going to asphyxiate or die of a heart attack.

Sometimes I reach a hand out to my husband beside me, pleading for help. I try anything to awaken him, gain his attention, so he can rescue me. I think I am clawing and scratching him like a wildcat. I think I am pounding on his side or his back. I think I am thrashing wildly. In reality I am not moving at all, or moving so slightly that it is like a feather touch.

If he does hear me making a strange whimpering sound, he knows to wake me up—shake me, I don’t care how roughly. I don’t care about bruises or even being shoved out of bed. Movement is the only way to recover. But he is a sound, sound sleeper—doesn’t even hear the phone ring next to his head, or sirens in the neighborhood, or tree cutters right out front. Doesn’t wake up for his own noisy nightmares.

I have trained myself not to lie on my back at all unless I know that something will disturb me in an hour or less. Episodes nearly always occur in that position. I have also trained myself to keep one foot over the edge of the bed so I can eventually pull myself onto my side. It is a frantic race to make it before I run completely out of air. One day I think I won’t.

I have a horror of being an old person stuck in a hospital bed and being left on my back, too weak and helpless to turn. They’ll just call it heart failure. They won’t know I suffocated trapped in conscious immobility.

I have tried to train myself to wake myself up, saying, “If I’m really awake, I can open my eyes. If I’m not able to open my eyes, I’m just asleep, and it’ll be all right.” But the experience of this state is never so calm. On the contrary, it is sheer panic.

When it’s over, I am always gasping, exhausted, sometimes distressed, and sometimes hysterical.

I think this disorder, if disorder it is, must be what gave rise to the lore of incubi and succubi.

Hypnagogic hallucinations are just really vivid states that seem quite distinct from a dream. They are nothing like a dream. I usually know when I’m dreaming. They are like reality. That’s what makes them hallucinations.

I have thought my husband came into the bedroom while I was sleeping, and woke me, and we had entire conversations. I have seen him come in and get something and leave, forgetting to close the door. Later I asked him about it and he said he never came in. I have thought I got up and did things that I didn’t do. A few times I have thought there was a stranger in the room, but it didn’t happen. On numerous occasions I have thought that I woke from a dream and was awake, only to find later that that was still a dream, a dream within a dream. Once in the dream I even described to my husband the dream I had just had; only I didn’t—I was still dreaming.

These are no more frightening than the reality of dreaming and waking is frightening. If you wouldn’t be afraid of waking up and talking to your husband, you wouldn’t fear a hallucination in which you thought you awoke and talked to your husband. I never think I’m going to die in those things. I just think I’m awake.

“If he does hear me making a strange whimpering sound, he knows to wake me up—shake me, I don’t care how roughly.”

That is the same thing I use to tell my ex wife. If someone is with me in bed. I know I can squeeze out some “whimpers”. Hopefully it is enough for them to wake me.

If no one is there. Eventually I can shake myself out of it. The worse part of it is trying to get out of it, as fear and anxiety (with a splash of hallucination) seems to want to take over.

I’m not sure where you get your definition, but as far as I can tell there are many and the medical folks are not all in agreement about what it is and why some people experience it.

Yes, I have experienced it, along with hypnogogic hallucinations. For me it was tied to sleep deprivation. I was raising a family, working full time, and going to law school. I never slept. When I would lie down to sleep, I often experienced this phenomenon. It scared me, but I talked to a neurologist and was happy to find out it wasn’t just me. For me, it didn’t happen during sleep, it was prior to sleep. I would be totally awake. The hallucinations were very frightening but after understanding what was going on I was no longer scared by them. I knew that as soon as I could move a finger or toe, the episode would end.

I have never experienced it again since finishing school and getting more sleep.

@Jeruba Were you ever evaluated for sleep apnea? The being unable to breathe stuff sounds a little bit like what I felt, although I always thought I was holding my breath instead of not breathing. My wife would be freaking out wondering if I’d start. Anyway, the lying on your side business and the not breathing when on your back sounds like there is something physical going on. Perhaps a CPAP machine might help keep your suffocation thing from happening.

@wundayatta, no, I haven’t been, although I’ve thought of it. The thought of wearing some kind of mask or device to bed horrifies me. I do know a couple, both of whom use CPAP devices every night. I just can’t entertain the idea.

To me it always seems more like a hemispheric split—as if the left brain were awake and the right were asleep. The “I” awake and the “it” asleep. But this is probably nothing but an illusion manufactured out of a little bit of knowledge and not a true reflection of the condition.

I got used to CPAP. It really does help me sleep better. Even better, it keeps colds at bay! If I don’t use it, I get a sore throat. I think that’s because it keeps my throat and sinuses and whatnot very humidified.

Anyway, your story sounds very scary to me.