The BIG sleep paralysis and old hag topic Part II

the Stuff Dreams are made of...
101

I’ve had SP a number of times. I usually get it when I’m stressed. Up until 3 years ago I used to sleep walk when I was stressed but now I just about always experience SP. It happens as I’m just drifting off to sleep. I start to feel vibrations throughout my body (especially my head) and I can’t move. I also hear a buzzing sound in my ears that gets louder and louder. I’ve never tried to scream or speak. I always have my eyes closed and can’t open them which is probably why I’ve never had hullicinations. I did have audio hullicinations once though. A woman was trying to tell me to wake up and a man kept telling her to shut up. :confused: The first time it happened I was terrified and didn’t know what was happening, even after I woke up. I thought for sure I was dying. (You hear all these stories of people dyin in their sleep) I’ve never felt anything pushing down on my chest, but I usually get SP while sleeping on my left side.

I read somewhere that if you try rolling out of your body during SP you can experience OBE, so I tried it and it worked. I ended up on my hands and knees on the “floor” only it felt like there was something pushing up on my hands and knees and I was floating. I then proceeded to fall through the floor and ended up in a lucid dream. I didn’t really know what to do, so I just kept walking around until I ended up back in my room and suddenly woke up back in my bed. It’s a bizzare feeling cause you think you’re already awake but then you wake up.

The second time I tried it it worked again only this time I got scared and panicked and started flailing around and ended up falling through the floor and waking up. I went right back to sleep and had SP again. This time I didn’t panic and when I “came out of my body” I managed to stay there for a few minutes before falling through the floor and waking up.

I can’t really control when it happens and I don’t know why it happens to me, but I sleep walk, I talk in my sleep, I’ve had night terrors twice, you name it, I’ve had it. I also remember my dreams really clearly. I’d rather have SP though than sleep walking cause at least I can’t hurt myself.

I find though, if I concentrate on moving my toes while having SP I’ll wake up. If I don’t do anything and let it pass, it’ll keep happening over and over again.

102

:wave: Robin, but being aware of what sleep paralysis is … is the key to overcoming this fear
anything is more frightening if you don’t know what it is and why it is happening.

103

I always had SP at the end of dreams.

104

Hey ppl. Havn’t been around here for a looong time. And had to register a new password and nick cause I couldn’t remember my old ones.

I’ve had sleep paralysis a couple of times. The first time was really not scary at all. I just saw i diamond or some kind of crystal forming in front of my eyes. It was really a nice hallucination. When i woke up for real, I noticed that I was lying on my back (I never sleep on my back) and the tv was on. So it was actually just my eyes trying to open and the light from the tv that made the diamond form up. I still couldnt move or make a sound though. I remember I was trying to touch the diamond but wasn’t able to do that.

The second time was the scary one. I have never in my life been so scared of ANYTHING.

It was a pretty classic dream paralysis situation. I was sleeping too early and I was lying on my back. I remember my girlfirend coming and doing something in the room. That was when I woke up. NExt thing I remember her leaving the room not waking me up and closing the door (she went to the livingroom). When she closes the door I close my eyes again, but I open them one second later. The room looked exactly like before, but there was this really disturbing shadow at the wall or door at the end of my bed. It scared the crap out me, and when I tried to scream or move nothing happened. The shadow was kinda like an alien or a human. But it was twitching around as if it didn’t have any elbows or knees at all.

I still heard my girlfirend talking to her friend in the livingroom and I could see the light coming from “keyhole”. I then closed my eyes cause it was way too scary to look at. And btw, the place was at the 12th floor. I then struggled really hard to get to the door, and when I finally got there and managed to pull the doorhandle i immadietily woke up. It all looked the same in the room, but I was back in the bed and scared like shit.

I still remember running away from the room to my gf and her friend. And when I tould them how sared I was and about the dream they just started laughing. :smile: I was really pale and shaky.

Here is a couple of really crappy artpad paintings of those SP experiences.

the “diamond”: artpad.art.com/?isfy1heaq64

the shadow: artpad.art.com/?isfxo2w4zmc

105

Before hearing about Lucid Dreaming, I had never experienced SP(perhaps because I always slept on my side, instead of with my back on the bed) altough I had read a lot of literature about it. So I became curious with reaching it…The first time I did with WILD, I have to say that I was more excited and fascinated than scared, and I did feel a “presence”,but after some time I had the feeling like somebody was going to sneak on me and stab me, so I started to move a bit and ruined it all…I have to admit, though, that the "unearthly presence"feeling is quite…well…unearthly.

106

Here is a (really bad :content: ) painting of this experience. Note: It is MUCH scarier in reality :unsure: !

artpad.art.com/?isqldwiqpl0

107

I’ve been having SP’s (in FAs) all week so far. Since sunday I think i’ve had 4 maybe 5.

Today’s was the strangest though.

It’s started the same as normal, I am laying on my stomach and I wake up (usually FA) and I feel the sheets move and a weight slowly cover my legs upto my back.

For the past couple of years I have been able to get out of this by putting all my “energy” into moving my left arm and waving it behind my back as it to knock off whatever is there. Normally I then wake up or enter a new dreamscape.

Last night however I turned enough to “see” what was weighing me down. There was nothing solid on me, it was like a cube of shadow just sat on the lower part of my body, one of these days I will get an LD and ask it what it wants.

108

It all statred a couple years ago in the summer. I would experience all the symptoms of sleep paralysis (except for the malevolent presence) and I would have no idea what happened. When I experience sleep paralysis, it’s usually earlier than the time that I regularly wake up (around 11). So I would wake up around 8 or so, I found discover that I cannot move and I have difficulty breathing. I also have the fear that if I let myself back to sleep I will never wake up. So, using all the willpower I can muster, I try to move my leg or I try breathing hard in hopes that the rest of my body will gain conciousness. Usually I am able to move my leg enough that I do completely wake up. The first ten or so times this has happened to me I was really scared and I thought that I was the only one who experiences this phenomemon, but I got used to it eventually and I usually let myself back to sleep. Now tell me, who else regularly experiences sleep paralysis?

109

Yeah, I only get it if I sleep on my back or side. Sometimes it feels like my chest is being crushed and sometimes I feel pain in a certain part of my body like someone is shoving a needle inside of me. It’s a good way to leave your body, sometimes I like to roll on my side and I find myself out. When I’m out my experience’s are not always pleasant. I don’t like sleep paralysis that much, because it’s scary.

110

Never had it yet… but the Old Hags sound like kind of a turn-off for the whole LDing thing. Speaking of which, I used to have weird things when I was (I think) still mostly awake. I remember 3 in particular.

  1. I was just gripped by some weird terror and very distinctly heard an unpleasant voice say, “Where is your family now?” I got so nervous I actually checked on my parents instead of vice-verca… :happy:

  2. I was walking down the stairs of our house, and my vision went behind me. I looked like a simple silhouette, and then “I” tripped and when I landed, a green light flashed and then faded in my head.

  3. I think I was actually not even in bed on this one. It’s in my old house, although at the time of having it, I lived in that house. I was just sitting there with my sister and my old babysitter watching TV when a big hairy white monster chased us out of the room coming from a door that doesn’t exist in that house. It all happened in fast motion, and I had an aerial veiw, like I was a camera in the corner of the ceiling… but it was higher up than the ceiling was.

Haven’t had anything like it since though…

111

All this sounds interesting. Getting and Old Hag was my worst fear about LDing when I started but after reading this it sounds like it’s pretty… unfixed. I’ve heard it described everywhere from “The scariest experience of my life” to “Kinda cool.” And it sounds like a great shortcut into LD. So I’m not gonna hope for one, but if I get one… one kiss coming up. Then maybe I’ll demand a gift. What are some of the gifts people here have gotten? I haven’t heard any examples. All I’ve heard is that they’re really cool… :cool_laugh:

112

I would like to share some thoughts about SP. I have a forum about Sleep Praralysis, and one of the members told me some very interestings things about it. I hope it havent’ been said before. If so, sorry… :shy:

Basically, it seems like light may have an impact on how much melatonine the body generates during sleep.

For example, if you take a nap in the afternoon, there will be some sunlight coming in your room, therefore, the body will generate less melatonine than the usual, which will make your sleep lighter and may increase the chance to have SP.

Also, it could increase the chance to LD.

When i look back, i realized that during the summer i had a lot of LD and SP during naps, precisely because there is a lot of sunlight.

If you have any thoughts about that, any comment willl be welcome…

113

The first time I had SP, I didn’t know anything about it. I was afraid as hell and worried that the room I was staying in might be haunted (silly me). But then, when I moved into another place, I once again had SP. This time, I started to think that it was not the room, it was I that might go crazy and would need a help from a psychiatrist. It was just recently when I started reading about Lucid Dreaming that I became aware that SP was actually common. With this knowledge, I tried to induce LD when experiencing SP a couple of days ago and it worked! Too bad the dream faded away as soon as I became lucid and tried to change things (and failed). Ah well…

Anyway, in my most recent SP (the one I was able to induce LD, if not just momentarily), I actually managed, for the first time after a countless number of SP experiences before, to see a dementor-like figure at the end of my bed. IT WAS DAMN SCARY! I quickly realized it was all just happening in my head and tried to close my eyes and calm down, after which I felt my body sinked into the bed, and suddenly… I was in a dream. I then shared this experience to my friend. He told me that what I saw might not be a hallucination. It could be the real thing. I then told him about the sleep paralysis phenomenon and whatnot. He then argued that instead of giving one hallucination, sleep paralysis actually enabled one to see supernatural things. Yeah right…

114

:wave: hello asbereth, welcome to the LD4all forum.
SP must be terrifying if you don’t know what it is or the reason for it. I’m really glad that more people are now hearing about it in the commonly used media.

115

The other night I had an “old Hag” experience, here it is.

Im lying in bed almost dozzed off, when I hear a noise. It sounded like a thud. I couldn’t figure out what the noise was because everything was so dark. Probably because my eyes were closed.

As I’m trying to figure out what the noise was, I get this feeling that something was in the room with me. It was very dark, but it felt like it was all around me. A heavy sort of feeling. Then for a split second I see what looks like 2 glowing, green eyes.

The eyes were gone, but I could still feel the presence. Out of curiosity and fear I tried to find whatever the thing was.

Noises errupted from downstairs, noisy family woke me up!

The strange thing is I remember lieing in my bed the whole time.

116

My experience (Ill try to tell aparently related things):
I allways had some afraid of dark as long as I remember. And I remember at least after my 8 years old (21 now) to been having frequent SP experiences (I mean frequent it’s serious) not with hags. I never knew what it was, anyway till now…
There was some experience at that age when me and my sister used to sleep in the same bedroom, I “woke up” aparently, (I think the panic we feel is not any hag, it’s the feeling of being paralysed awaken and not controlling the thing or alucinations, of course it can be cheated). As I will say later it’s usual to have alucinations during that state because we are half dreaming but I never had one before. So I started the panic: couldn’t move, started trying to scream but nothing came out. So I screamed louder (some muscles have some control during the state) and started hearing my voice very low, and I got an answer like “shut up!” I couldn’t really recognize the voice so I suposed it was my sister. When I asked her that day, she didn’t remember anything and she wasn’t in bedroom that time. It came recorded in my head the moment but I misplaced the timings and thought it was a dream (as many people think).
I continued to have experiences and feeling very bad with it, very scary, and started to naturally “develop defenses against”, like never sleep in in supine position (when I do I allways get SP), and got a way to get out of it during the state, by trying to roll my body, reaching the lamp with the hand, allways works (muscle stimulation).
Casually I started telling about it to friends and they allways looked at me strange, they never had it. Recently (3 years ago) started to get more frequent. It was my bad sleeping habits, leaved my parents home and started sleeping irregularly (this is not good for SPs). Some day I had another sound alucination and started getting alarmed, and one day I had one falling asleep, never had it asleep but it’s documented also to happen, I was very tired.
I don’t know why it came to me “Sleep paralysis” keywords, “that’s something I’ve never searched about let’s try it”. I found this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis . “Wow!” I allways knew that painting but it never looked so familiar to me! “That’s it!” As I continued reading the article I first time knew the monster.
I recomend this search google.com/search?q=sleep+pa … S:official .
I think it’s not something to play about it’s not a desease but it seems to be a symthom for a lot of deseases, like narcolepsy or head tumors, so if you have it like me, search medical help imediately! seriously.

Ok, the last but not the least, the “common” experience:
-Waking up.
-Trying to get out of bed and the body completely shut down.
-The eyes move and some basic muscles.
-(never saw anything because I allways close the eyes afraid of seeing something :smile:
-Sometimes I have the tactile feelings, grabing my arm or something
-Weight in chest
-I think I can remember looking at bedroom and seeing strange things
-Then sometimes goes naturaly but sometimes it doesn’t stop.
-So I started to try to move if you keep trying that works.

From wikipedia:
Sleep paralysis: During REM sleep the body is paralyzed by a mechanism in the brain, because otherwise the movements which occur in the dream would actually cause the body to move. However, it is possible for this mechanism to be triggered before, during, or after normal sleep while the brain awakens. This can lead to a state where a person is lying in his or her bed and he or she feels frozen. Hallucinations may occur in this state, especially auditory ones. People also generally report feeling a crushing sensation on their chest (possibly because they try to consciously control their breathing). People trying to lucid dream sometimes try to trigger this state, or accidentally trigger this state, while using a waking induction of lucid dreaming (WILD) technique to enter a lucid dream directly when falling asleep.

I think it’s the best explanation. I think alucination come from mixing the dream with reality (humm alien abductions…). Anyway after that came clear to me not afraid anymore. Now go get some sleep! :wink:

117

Have you seen a doctor yet, Dubaiss? What did they say? Do you have narcolepsy or a head tumour? I have met a lot of people who experience sleep paralysis, and in my case, it runs in the family. None of those serious diseases do.

Sleep paralysis is uncomfortable, it can be very frightening when we don’t know what it is, but it is harmless. I have had my share of it, it used to be scary, but now it is only annoying.

Welcome to LD4all, Dubaiss! :wave: I hope you will find the information in this forum very useful, there is a lot to read, both about sleep paralysis and other interesting topics. There are just so many nice people here, and I look forward to seeing you here in the future. There is also a “Hi, I’m new here” topic in the gathering subforum, where you can post an introduction if you’d like to. Sweet dreams!

:cool:

118

I’m not trying to frighten you all, sorry, I really admire how you can describe such things, dreaming is a really richfull experience and can teach a lot, I’ll try to read all the site has my spare time let me do that. I only said that because I read that in the internet in “narcolepsy networks”.
I made my “personal discovery” about a month ago, and I will try to tell to every interested person. It seems to be a scientific fact not well explained :smile:. My sister worked on psychiatry and is studing psicology so I will try to tell her. Has these “networks” describe it sometimes happens frequently in a family. My other sister had sonambolism problems. Problematic? I don’t think so but it causes problems to persons who doesn’t know about it (it’s not well discussed). Ok, my problem: afraid of darkness (as something allready happened), and a problem in my back :smile:, I used to sleep allways to the same side. Sure that where no big problems if everyone knew about it :smile:. So now I’m not really worried about it but I think we should help science :smile:.

PS: I’m used to “forum misintepretations” I don’t speak english very well, so try to take smoth everything I say.

119

Well, Asbereth, if it makes you feel better to identify it as all in your head, be comfortable. These sort of experiences (both lucidity and Old Hag) tend to make many people reevaluate just what their understanding of reality is, but to each their own.

I will remark that I find Moogle’s comment that “more people are hearing about it in the commonly used media” interesting. It is a comment upon the loss of connection that modern urban society has with the continuity of human experience. For centuries, such phenomenon were commonly known by the majority worldwide. After all, where do you think our word “nightmare” comes from?

Eoghan

120

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mara_%28folklore%29
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare
Found this some days ago.