sleep paralysis

If brain very cool, big problems have

I've seen some wild shit during sleep paralysis. One of the tamer fits I had was seeing a really tall human-shaped apparition that was made of the shadow in the corner of my room. It felt like he cursed me to not be able to move. I was scared of that corner for a few nights.

One of the crazier ones: One night I was going to sleep with my curtains open, but the blinds were down so lines of orange light were spilling in from the street light onto the ceiling. I had the window open, so the occasional breeze pushed and pulled the lines like waves on a beach. It was hypnotizing. I was watching them half asleep, and eventually they slowly started morphing into what looked like pretty glowing runes dancing around my ceiling.

Then I start hearing voices outside my apartment. In reality, I'm sure it was a few teenagers walking home while having an unreasonably loud conversation for the time of night, but what I heard was 3 of them, multiplying into maybe 6, then tens of them, hundreds, thousands... Eventually it felt like an ocean of people was outside my apartment. Playful voices that were utterly unconcerned with me, not even aware I existed, but I was terrified they might spill into my room and kill me. The juxtaposition between the threat of being overrun by whoever those voices were coming from and the complete lack of visual evidence that there was anyone there at all was surreal.

At this point I know it's sleep paralysis because I can't move, but I try my best to drag myself off the bed with what little motor functions I still have to hopefully wake me up on impact. Eventually I succeed, and I wake up in my bed. The orange lines are spilling onto my ceiling just like before. Everything is quiet again, with just the soft sound of my fan whirring, slowly turning left and right.

And then I think about what just happened... If I woke up by falling onto the floor, how am I still in my bed?

Now the fan has morphed into a monster with a head of violently spinning blades, twisting and looming over me while making intimidating metallic sounds.

I once had paralysis but seems I was half asleep, because I felt like I fell asleep sitting and felt my roommate watching me, when in fact I was laying in the bed and the roommate was sound asleep 😅

Other symptoms matched but maybe it was something else ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

On the rare occasions this happens. I usually hear distorted voices or conversations.

Man…

For me it happens when I’m under extreme stress, like my 3 year long “come back, I love you. I don’t love you anymore. I’m not cheating, he’s just a guy I snuck out with for no reason while I thought you were gonna be at work” divorce.

You said wiggling a toe got you out of it. For me it was tapping my pinky and trying to scream.

I even learned to control it and it was like an acid trip. Well, more like I learned to ride it and not be afraid.

One of the wildest ones I experienced though, I had recently purchased a hamster for my daughter that turned out to be a pregnant female. I tried to give the babies away, no one would take them. They slaughtered each other. I didn’t know they did that.

I was laying in bed watching my comfort food, Star Trek TOS. Suddenly the hamster cage appeared on my stomach with the gate opened. 40-50 hamsters crawled out and started eating my fingers and burrowing into my chest and stomach. I couldn’t move. My ex appeared at the foot of the bed as a shadowy creature with wild hair rocking back and forth laughing at me and hissing. I tapped my pinky and tried to scream once I was aware it was sleep paralysis. A hamster crawled up on my face and started eating my nose. I finally managed to mumble scream enough to get my exes attention and she reached out and touched me. As soon as she did I snapped back to reality.

The last time it happened I wasn’t expecting it. I was in a decent place in my personal life, work was chaotic though. I thought my house was full of distant relatives and they were killing people from outside of the family in my living room.

I hate that shit when it takes me by surprise. When it happens regularly I take control and I don’t mind it.

I get that feeling of "someone's in the house" every single time... Horrid even though I know that it's not true.

I haven't had an episode in a long time but I would try to tell myself to just breathe through it. The moving an extremity would help too. The worse part was that I'd get them in bunches. If one happened I'd have to stay awake for a bit or I'd get them over and over. Thankfully never saw any demons; just a vision of my surroundings but I couldn't move.

I got shaken by the demon until it got shoved over by a white light in my teens. I wonder what kind of wires snapped in my head, probably knocked a few screws loose.

I have extremely irregular sleep patterns and I’ve never had this happen… weird

I've had a few episodes a few years ago while i was heavily depressed and my sleep pattern was messed up. i didn't see much, just shadows in the corner of my eyes, but i knew something evil was in the room and i heard deep, demonic voices from behind. the first few times i was in a full blown panic, but i read about sleep paralysis before, so i at least connected the dots quickly... wiggling my pinky finger was my mode of escape.

fixing my sleep pattern with sleep meds (by force) made it go away

Same, except it was toy of Petrie from land before time. It had multiplied and i was surrounded by Petries.

I experienced it once during college. Mine was literally the hair ghost from grudge movie starting inside my window. Wasn't that scared even when i had been in an accident. Can't believe there are some people who experience this shit on a regular basis.

Yo when I was little I had that and it was a pig faced man.

Have you watched Severance?

This is consistent with my experience. I didn't have a paralysis demon, but I was convinced my ceiling fan was plotting to kill me. Not that it was going to fall and hurt but that it was scheming to have me assassinated and would take matters into its own hands if necessary.

"oh fuck off bob, let me sleep!"

Move your big toe

For me it's my voice. As long as I can utter some kind of shout out, it breaks the spell. Usually something on the lines of "mmmmmroow!"

Allegedly, making an active effort towards lucid dreaming increases the rate of incidence of sleep paralysis by some ridiculous amount. Which makes sense, because in lucid dreaming you're essentially trying to trick your brain into retaining conscious processing during a dream.

Never tried myself, but if you're not afraid of the paralysis demons, it's a win win. You either succeed and get to lucid dream on the regular which kicks ass, or you don't succeed and start having nightly visits from Slim Jimmy.

Sometimes when I get sick I can sense that it might happen when I go to sleep. I think it's mainly about being the right amount of tired, though.

The other key element is having enough brain activity to keep your eyes open or to reopen them while your body tries to start REM sleep. People say stress will do that, and that tracks with my experience.

Also, try sleeping on your back. I've never had it while sleeping in any other position. It could vary from person to person, so maybe try sleeping in different positions.

Wonder what it'd be like if dph kicked in while in sleep paralysis

I've had this. No you don't. It isn't fun. Experiencing full body paralysis for a minute was a deeply unsettling and terrifying experience. I hated every second. Unless you're prepared in some way, having the presence of mind to try to sleep again seems difficult.

I didn't have a hallucination with that one though. I have that with a different parasomnia. I've had a hypnopompic (upon walking up) hallucination one time. That was freaky but only lasted a few seconds.

I wish I had that at least once, to know how it is like.

It's really fascinating in retrospect. The intense fear can be upsetting, but if you're used to nightmares then you'll be fine. I've always loved terrifying/surrealist art/media, so after I wake up it's like my brain gave me a gift. (Here's my favorite experience if you're interested)

Also why do people open their eyes instead of keep trying to sleep?

For me, it's poor mental health and a terrible sleep schedule lol. I can't do it as often anymore because I have a job now, but I used to resist sleeping for some mental health reasons. So after I was too tired to want to be on my phone or anything, I'd end up staring at my ceiling thinking about whatever I was stressed out about at the time. I think that prolonged daydream-like state is what does it.