Sleep Paralysis

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In some cases mine is mild (I have mostly gotten used to it) but then there are the times when I have it something awful. I feel like I'm being attacked and I feel an evil presence. Part of me knows it's only me hallucinating, but it is small comfort. It was 2 months ago that I had a horrible attack and "saw" some black shadowy thing and could feel wind blowing hard on my face and I felt like whatever it was, was attacking me. It was so awful. I woke up absolutely terrified. There are other cases where it just seems to go on and on and I think I feel the evil presence and I am so shaken when I wake up it's all I can think about for the rest of the day. But thankfully oftentimes it's not so bad, just enough that I remember it.

I wasn't given a specific name for it (outside of the general "abnormal sleep architecture"), just a description of the polysomnography results. I was supposed to go back for a follow-up study, but I had a crazy schedule at the time, and so never got around to it. I would probably have been given more information if I had.

The problem with not getting enough slow-wave sleep (stages 3 and 4) is that those are the stages when the body is really resting and recuperating. People who don't get enough slow-wave sleep aren't as rested, and can get sleep-attacks during the day, which are intensely unpleasant. I only get these when I am already somewhat sleep deprived, but mine are characterized by an intense feeling of needing to sleep (followed by dropping off briefly), plus double-vision. Yeah, they stink.

Just a note though, that although you may feel like you are dreaming the whole night, you won't remember the time you didn't spend dreaming, so without a sleep study, you don't actually now how much time you spent in REM sleep. Plus, you can dream a surprisingly long and complex dream in a short amount of time, as I've found when I've gone back to sleep (for five minutes) in between my first and second alarms.

I've had half a dozen episodes. It's actually fairly common,
occurring in 30% of people at least once (If I remember what I
read correctly). It's not AS related. More here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis
Man is it ever a freaky experience. I think it accounts for a lot
of strange reports over the centuries - from attacks by succubi
and incubi and witches to more modern alien abductions. It's
so bizarre that you come up with hallucinatory experiences to
explain it. My first attack was while camping by a lake under
Mt Logan in the Yukon. I thought it was some weird mystical /
shamanic experience, but it left me feeling really small and
powerless.

I experience that, from time to time. I used to experience it a lot more, in the past.

I sometimes get this - mainly when I have stayed up way past bedtime. But i don't get it that particular night but the night after. Sleep deprivation. I remember once (my 30s birthday) we went out "partying" and stayed up all night and well into the next day. First I had an apparition (saw a ghost) while still awake. We have a pool table in the room that we all stood around. All of the sudden this guy stood there with us. I can remember to this day what he looked like - nobody else saw him. Then the night after I had a hell of a night with sleep paralysis every time I tried getting to sleep. It was horrible, there was this person/thing that kept wrestling me down and sat on my chest trying to crush me. At first I was terrified, even though I kind of knew what it was but with seeing the "ghost" beforehand...oh well. Interestingly enough I started to toy with it as it wouldn't go away. Every time I managed to gain more control over my attacker. Eventually I just gave up on going to sleep that night.

So I believe its definitely got to do with the degree to how tired and worn out you are.
But I do wonder why always seems to have a degree of evil with it. But then again being out of control raises fear and when you're stuck between sleep and waking and can't move then you're obviously NOT in control.

Sounds like a hypnapompic or hypnagogic jerk to me. There is an urban myth that if you have a dream that you're falling, and you actually fall to the bottom before waking up, you die.

Anyone wanna test it?

Oh yeah. I had it for years and years. At least as bad as anyone here. We're talking Clive Barker type s**t here.

Nowadays it only happens very rarely, thankfully.

I used to get hallucinations every once in a while but thankfully it hasn't happened in a very long time. They were always extremely freaky.

I still remember one very vividly. I heard this deep voice shout my name and then I felt a rush of air against my face. I was certain that my bedroom door had been swung open by something and that it was at the side of my bed staring at me. The thing was just outside my field of view but I remember seeing these faint shadowy motions out of the corner of my eye. Those terrified me more than anything. Even after I could move again it took me a long time to convince myself that there was nothing hiding in my room. My bedroom door was shut and had never actually been opened but I still thought there was something there. It was pure evil. I refused to go back to bed after that incident that night. It was just too freaky to handle.

Only happened to me once in my life that I remember... recently.

I was going in and out of sleep mode, and when I wasn't asleep, I tried to move my body and get off the bed, and all my body would do was jerk. It was scary.

I didn't see anything.

I've had it a bunch of times growing up. It's not really that frighting because i've had it enough times and I knew what to do. I could always make myself wake up when it's happening.

I had a dream a few months ago, it was probably my first falling dream, and I did hit the bottom without waking up or dying. It hurt a lot, and I took a whole bunch of HP damage, but I survived

hmm...something like it, but I think diabetes is more to blame. One thing; leg cramps will get me moving faster than any alarm clock ever did...

I wonder if that's what really happens to people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. I'm not sure if I've experienced this kind of thing. Sleep paralysis, I mean. Not alien abduction.

It's been suggested that reports of alien abduction are actually related to episodes of sleep paralysis. Same thing with reports of witches and evil spirits back in the day (like the mara).

In one of my episodes I remember an odd being saying very strange things to me.

A common hypnagogic hallucination is that someone is in the room talking to you. Others are feelings of pressure or the sense that an evil presence is in the room.