Ok so last night as I was laying in bed when suddenly I could see the outline of the people from youth group and I could hear them talking. I could move and everything because I would always get up on my elbow and look around. After a while I had enouf of it so I got up and fell asleep on my couch in another room.
My question is, was this my imagination, old hag or a dream.
From your information, it seems like a hallucination, possible HH. It could also be a dream, but if you could move around and eventually get up out of bed, that’s probably not likely. Were your eyes closed? If you could move around, I would say that it most definitely was not the old hag or anything related to that or SP. Did you feel fear as this was happening?
well actaully I wasn’t afraid at all just really irritated at the hallustinations. I kind of knew I wasn’t dreaming. The only reason I got up was because I was really annoyed at them 
. also the only time that i have these HH’s or whatever they are, are after youth group. also when I stood up it was 1:34 AM and I had first gone to sleep at about 10:00.
Yeah I would say that was just HI, did you do a RC?
Was it dark? I think that our minds use darkness (ex. inside of our eyelids) to project things like these for dreams. I also think that is why some people can sleep with there eyes open, although i have no idea how to explain it during the daytime.
Also do you notice experiencing HI whenever you close your eyes? I know that i do and that has really made WILD a useful tool for me.
Hey all, I’ve been out for a while.
I have had SP occurances my entire life, although for a long time there were no halucinations whatsoever, it was just me very confused trying to move.
After I had been to this site, I had my first “old hag,” and it was scary as shit. I was looking kinda across my room, when this big clawed hand came out of the far wall and started stretching across the room, the arm was like 6 feet long when I woke myself up.
However, since then, I have had 2 pleasant old hag experiences. In one, I was looking down my bed when this weird little man popped his head up alongside my bed and said “skeedle!” I woke up laughing. My next old hag experience was a really hot woman… go figure. I had a happy dream after that. 
In my case, an old hag never appeared until somebody else put the idea into my head. When the SP happened, I remembered the old hag, panicked, and my mind made a creepy ass image. However, after that, I realized that SPs can be “edited” the same way that dreams can. Just take it in stride, you can actually have an enjoyable experience. 
-Stanky
Hi,
I’ve heard quite a lot from various forums about people having sleep paralysis and they seem to talk about it (especially in LD forums) as if it’s quite a common thing. I’ve never personally experienced it but over the weekend I was chatting with a mate about lucid dreaming and this forum and he told me about the sleep paralysis which he’s had. He hasn’t had SP in a while now but doesn’t count out the possibility of getting it again. It sounds pretty scary to me, so he asked me to post what happened to see if anyone could shed any light on why it happens, what it means etc… Here goes:
He says that he normally gets sleep paralysis after nightmares. Normally, following a nightmare, he would wake up screaming, then go through the routine of sitting up slightly, having a look about him, make sure everything’s alright, calm down and then go back to sleep. When he gets SP though he wakes up, can’t look around, can’t scream, can’t move, can’t do ANYTHING… until he’s asleep again, which he can only do when he’s calmed himself down under THOSE conditions!
For me that would be scary enough but to add to that:
One time when he had this sleep paralysis he woke up (says he can’t remember if this was from a nightmare or not) and he could see the outline of a male figure in the doorway. The outline was making the figure look kind of spiritual. It was a thick yellow light which almost looked like someone had just got a really thick yellow marker and drawn the outline. He says the figure looked like it had the stature almost of a superhero. This reminded me of ‘Old Hag’ which I’ve also heard about and never experienced (never want to 
)!
Does anyone know what causes Sleep Paralysis, anything people can do to prevent it, what the figure may have been or meant and also, an interesting one which he asked me:
Does this make him (my friend) ‘more’ or ‘less’ likely to have lucid dreams? He says that he had a few lucid dreams when he was a kid, not knowing what they were at the time, but hasn’t for years and years and now seems quite interested after some of the stories I told him.
Any help would be greatly appreciated,
Thanks
Roy
SP is actually something that we all MUST have during sleep. It prevents us to act out the things we see ourselves doing during sleep. So you cannot stop SP and you should not do that.
If you have SP when you go to sleep and you don’t want to experience it, then try to avoid sleeping on your back. If your body falls asleep before your brain does, then you feel SP. The same goes to your friend who is experiencing SP after waking up. It’s probably because the nightmare will scare him so much, that his brain wakes up, but his body has not waken up yet. So it takes little time until your body also wakes up and you are able to move.
Seeing Old Hag is nothing to be afraid. It’s natural hallucination what people sometimes see while having SP. It’s as much product of your mind as your dreams are.
And yes, SP can greatly used as tools for OBE. When you learn not to fear SP, you can start to enjoy the feeling of SP, because you know - you are very near to OBE/LD if you can make your dream body “come out” from your physical body can if you can create some visuals what will take you into AP/LD 
Is it possible to have SP only in certain parts of your body?
'Cos I remember one time when I woke up and I couldn’t move my arm, it was as if it was made of lead… Really scary stuff!
It stopped after a few seconds though!
If it’s just one bodypart you can’t move, then it’s most likely because you’ve been sleeping on it and the blood has stopped circulating. I’ve had the same thing happening to me alot of time becuase it tends to be somewhat cold in my bedroom and that also increases the chance of it happening. It’s a strange feeling when it happens, because besides not being able to move your arm, you don’t have ANY feeling in it for a few seconds. Not until the blood starts flowing again. So if you pinch your arm you can’t feel anything until the after you can move it again So don’t go hurting your arm because you can’t feel anything because it will start hurting after a while
Yes, that’s exacly what happened!
I remember that I tried to move my arm and touch it but I couldn’t feel a thing…
No SP for me then! 
Man, I am really scared now…I used to feel presences in room a lot when I was a bit younger, just because I was scared. I am practicing WILD and although I haven’t actually achieved the SP yet–should I worry at all? Will going through a WILD increase the likeliness of me waking up during SP? Will having an alarm set to go off during the REM period increase the likeliness of SP?
Oh well…
I’ve started attempting WILD the past couple of nights. Haven’t had much success. Friday night I actually started seeing quick, fleeting images–then sleep paralysis. I’ve experience SP before. At the time, I thought it was alien abduction, but the skeptic in me always kept me doubtful.
I’m far less fearful than I used to be, knowing what it actually is. Friday night in my WILD attempt, I saw a tall shadow figure in the southwest corner of my room. If I had been paying attention, though, I would have noticed that the perspective was entirely wrong…I was dreaming.
The feeling of weirdness is uncanny. I know it’s all in my head, but it keeps me from realising that I’m actually in a dreaming state. Hence, no lucid dream that time.
Oh well, try again. No shadow man can stop me from dreaming! I’ll just grab him next time and enter the dream world…
I actually had one of these SPs this morning after doing WBTB and I was actually levitating about 5 feet above my bed with my headphones on listening to techno! My body was doing these odd wave movements to the beat and I knew I was in SP, but I lost conciousness before I reached the REM period. It would have been my first remembered WILD induced lucid dream. MILD is much more effective in my case. I like the idea of imagining the girl for SP 
I’ve heard about sleep paralysis. I’ve read about it. Studied about it. I would have been completely ready for it and not scared at all…except…
Enter a small midwestern town, 6:05. A teenager is waking up in his bedroom. (Bit dramatic, but whatever.)
When I woke up, there was a strange hallucination above me. I was just waking up from a dream where I was looking at a door. I stared above my bed to find…a door, sliced in half diagonally, floating above my bed. Yet I knew it was reality.
My suspicons were confirmed when I tried to sit up but could only move about an inch. This was sleep paralysis.
Groggy confusion immediately gave way to inate fear. I had no feeling that anyone besides me was in the room, nor did I feel impending death, but I had thought of something horribly frightening. Illusions of threatening figures were disturbingly common during this state. Even if I knew it wasn’t real, it could still give me a terrible scare. Thus, I would have to try to free myself.
To my relief, I could fully move my arm. I waved it above my head, the door disappeared, and I sat up. Everything was normal. I sighed, used the bathroom, and went slept another 45 minutes without a second thought.
Overall, the ordeal lasted only two seconds. Besides being scared of seeing a threatening figure which there was one, I was not afraid at all. I felt completely alone and my only hallucination was the bizarre door. I’m convinced that if I had heard of sleep paralysis but never of the whole scary figure thing, I would have not been afraid at all. My guess as to why it was over so quickly is this: During sleep, your brain emits a chemical that paralyzes your body. Sleep paralysis occurs when the brain puts out too much of the chemical. That’s what I know for a fact. I think that my brain had put out just a very small amount too much, and that it had already been purged from my limbs. That’s just my theory.
Thoughts? Comments?
Perhaps, but to me it’s more logical to assume that SP just appears when you become aware of your paralysed body, while I dont think there is need for an overdose like you suggest for this to happen.
I’ve seen nothing but a black shadow 
But my mom saw a ghost type guy taking his shoes off at the foot of her bed.
I’ve never had it but I remember during my sleep paralysis my body was vibrating after a bunch of dizzy spells uncontrollably. Than when my eyes were forced closed There was a completely white background and the outline of an alien or something came into view. If anyone knows what this is please tell me. And is this a type of old hag?
kropa: sounds to me like you had some strong hypnagogic imagery during the sleep paralysis. How did you feel when you saw that entity? I’m not sure if it has anything to do with the Old Hag, because you saw it when you had your eyes closed. Mostly, the Old Hag appears if you wake up during SP and feel completely nailed to your bed. Often the Old Hag then appears to come out of a shadow in your bedroom.
IvanTheCat: Lol that’s a very weird experience your mom had. Was she terrified at seeing this ghost guy?
PS. I’ve merged your topic with the “BIG sleep paralysis and Old Hag topic” 
When you really have SP you will know that’s it.
You can’t move at all, fear and entity presence is so strong and there is a lot of good sites where you can read about that.
It is well researched sleep “disorder”.
I read this is opposite to sleepwalking, where your body wakes up but not your mind. In sleep paralysis your mind has woke up but your body still sleeps, interesting, yes you would be following your dream moves and potentialy get hurt if your body wouldn’t be turned off all movement. It is normal to be still in sleep, but not in waking state.
You sure know those times when you wake up and last dream move is your first waking move, like grabing something in your hand or trying to kick or punch or run, etc. There are plenty of times, and all of this is between this on/off body motorics on the edge of sleeping and waking.