1998-2003 "Rude Awakenings"

When I was about 10 or 11 years old, I experienced sleep paralysis-- no meditation, no general anaesthetics reacting badly, it just happened. The biological explanation as I understood it, is that when you sleep there should be mechanisms that stop your body from moving around too much. In sleepwalkers and people who experience sleep paralysis, there's a sort of glitch. Sleepwalkers act out their dreams: they're asleep but moving, and needless to say it can be dangerous to move around a place while one’s attention is totally elsewhere. In sleep paralysis, a person is awake but can't move, which I guess is less physically dangerous… but it can in some cases be very unpleasant. This is because sometimes, in the latter, the brain will invent something to make the experience make sense: hallucinations may come of a nightmarish entity in the room, who, somehow, must be causing this.

Back to my 10-year-old self, who hadn't a clue about any of this yet, curled up on the rusty extra cot in the stopover mountain cabin during a family trip— paralyzed, hearing a rasping voice of what I could only presume then was an evil demonic entity. My memory’s a bit vague as to whether the voice imitated hearing through my ears— I don’t remember feeling breath as it spoke, but I remember clear, close and loud syllables.
My whole body felt as if it had turned to lead. I mean, I could breath, but I just couldn't get my breathing rhythm out of its placid regularity—and I was terrified, I should have been panting. As it was, I couldn't power up my lungs to scream, or anything... I couldn't wake my mother in the next bunk, so she couldn't come save me.
I tried again, harder, but only got my jaw to creak open effortfully inside my slackened lips and cheeks, trying and failing to form words. I tried again to move my limbs but they just wouldn’t get the signal.
The voice continued harshly, words malicious and teasing, then it said it would release me and then I'd cry out for my parents. The voice counted down, and then the paralysis lifted. Before I could stop myself, I was crying for my parents in the same way that the voice mocked.
I did have imaginary monsters under my bed at home and in the closet, but they never went as far as that— being able to control me.

During my teen years I'd frequently get the awful feeling of paralysis. The "demon" never appeared again, but I felt under attack almost every time that trapped-in-a-lead-body feeling came around. It didn't help that I could somehow see the room around me, even though I was sure my eyes were closed every time this happened. I'd see, and feel as if, the coats on the rack in my line of vision wanted to jump out at me. They never did, but it was just a terrible experience that I could only break by forcing myself, with all my might, to move. If I asked around, if people ever had one of those dreams where you can't move your body but you can see past your closed eyelids... none of them ever had.

I say that this sparked my interest in the paranormal, but there were other influences that let me take for granted that it was paranormal at all. My family was incredibly superstitious, and I do admit to seeking compensation for a sense of powerlessness and insignificance in life. Mostly, though, I wanted to learn to deal with these episodes. Only very few times had I been able to quell the panic by remembering that it was just a malfunction in my body.

I also thought that “hypnic hallucination” explanation, sort of glossed over the regularity and detail of seeing the room around me. I've seen things in sleep paralysis like curves of light on the ceiling, that I later found to be from someone spilling CD's under a lamp without bothering to put them back. How could I have reconstructed the accuracy of that detail in my sleep, if I didn't know the CD's had been misplaced like that? If it was that my eyelids must have fluttered slightly open, like sleeping eyelids do, then how could I have seen these very lights on the ceiling during sleep paralysis? At that angle, I would need my eyes to be fully open, and when my roommate comes up to shake me awake (which I can see her coming up to do,) and is afterwards asked, says my eyes were closed of course... Then I suspect that some smart and important people are looking into this less deeply than they could.

To be fair, what neuroscientists have figured out so far about the sleep paralysis process, is still pretty darn amazing and helpful all its own. And, my personal, paranormally-angled exploration of sleep paralysis hasn't actually turned up enough for me to conclude that the mundane aspects of sleep paralysis (all the way up to mystically interpreted hallucinations) are more than coincidentally accompanied by paranormal aspects that can be verified by other clairvoyants.

I'll continue to stand firmly with communicating assertions that I can't prove to anyone but myself and similar psychotics, and to explore and practice this subject how I will. At the same time, I hope to maintain vigilance over my own potential for corrupting facts, but for any readers who would judge that I've already fallen short on this... I wouldn't encourage reading on.



Recommended Links
Science of Sleep Paralysis Part 1: Don't Move!
Science of Sleep Paralysis Part 2: Listen Up!
Science of Sleep Paralysis Part 3: Let's Roll!