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?