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Sleep paralysis and shadow people

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Sleep paralysis, simply described, is when messages sent from the brain as you wake up from sleep, get “stuck” somewhere down your neuro path. It is thought that it’s a temporary disconnection from the brain and spinal cord. The key word, being temporary. It usually only lasts seconds or moments when it happens but can feel like hours. Time is greatly distorted during episodes.

Symptoms include hallucinations, body jerks (hypnojerks), being frozen in fear, weird smells and strong auditory hallucinations, and even if that wasn’t terrifying enough… continue reading for what it was really like for me.

Commonly associated with sleep disorders like insomnia, sleep paralysis is quite has been reported around the globe. Other related conditions include: migraines, seizures, Parkinsons Disease, and dementia.

Beliefs around the globe

Many people around the globe who live with chronic sleep paralysis report seeing shadow people either in their bed or in the room with them. Yep. You read that correctly. Most commonly, people see the Hat Man.

There have been different types of sleep paralysis reported and connected to spiritual beliefs. These include intruder hallucinations, incubus hallucinations, vestibular and motor hallucinations.

I have now experienced all three of these sleep paralysis types and each one was truly horrific in its own way.

Some cultures believe that sleep paralysis is a spiritual experience and caused by visitations from shadow beings or demons.

The Old Hag being one of the more famous of the sleep demons as depicted in the image below (credit Google search). Other names for these creatures are Jinn (Demons), Pisadeira (Brazil), Night-mare (Europe) and Lilitu (Mesopotamia).

One of the early depictions of sleep paralysis was found from 1684 in the Incubus or the Night-mare written by a Dutch physician. Though there are cases that have been documented for centuries around the globe including South East Asian communities.

Most notably, there was a documented case in the Philippines, in a village called (that I cannot find for the life of me) – where many villagers died from what was believed to be sleep paralysis.

Science would explain the death of these healthy people to be sudden arrhythmic death syndrome.

But when it happens to an entire village, it makes you stop and ponder. IS there really something to this, that science cannot explain?

The Hooded Figure / Hat Man

For me, my first time, I saw a hooded figure hover over my bed that had no face. And I was wide awake when it happened. I just couldn’t move.

First time it happened, it was over as quickly as it began. I was going through a bad period in life and had been sick for a long time. Doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Everyone knows by now here I suffer from really bad insomnia. This past summer was up to 200 hours. That fall, I was around the 100 mark of no sleep. Grabbing only quick power naps during the day. It got so bad, that I wanted to die. Until after my sleep paralysis experience, I had five weeks of iron infusions that turned things around.

In that first episode, I fell asleep with the light on for only moments on my back. The smell of something burning jolted me awake. Then I heard all the bones and joints in my body BREAK. And it felt like it too. Like I sunk back into the bed from the air. Everything hurt. I flew out of bed not understanding what had just happened.

The next time it happened was a couple of nights later. This was almost 10 years ago in the fall of 2013. Weird.

I was in a lot of pain, and had just about given up. It felt like something was in the room with me all night. I’m sensitive in that sense too to strange energies. It felt like something was lurking. And later that night, around 2 in the morning, I finally passed out. And woke up suddenly. Frozen in bed. Unable to move. Unable to scream. Unable to do anything.

But I was WIDE awake and coherent and knew what was happening around me. It was the single most horrifying experience of my adult life. And I’ve had weird experiences over the years.

The hooded figure came out of the corner of the room near my bed. It moved with grace and stood over me. Reached out its hand, and then that’s when the episode broke. I flew out of bed, landing on the floor, tripping over the comforter. Ran over to the light switch and turned it on.

Sure enough, I was on my own.

That’s the night I learned about sleep paralysis and it would be a subject I would become obsessed with. Then it didn’t happen again for years until last night. My insomnia is back and sleep is shit.

The fear I felt in that moment when I woke up from a dead of sleep. It was the sound of knocking in the walls that did it. The heater has been going crazy. I know it’s the heater and not a demon in the walls at least. But still. I woke up. Couldn’t move.

I can’t begin to describe the amount of fear that took over my body in that moment. I had no idea what day it was. What time it was. Where I was.

I’m writing to this to hear other people’s experiences with sleep paralysis. What was your worst experience like? How often do you get it? And what do you do to make it go away?

Want to learn more about sleep paralysis? Here are some noteworthy documentaries. Also, if you’re looking for some spooky movies that cover the topic – Doctor Sleep and Shadow People are entertaining.

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Dream Speak: Stress Dreams

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Last night, I crawled into bed at exactly midnight. I tried staying up late but I was so tired that I gave up and caved in at 11:56. I put in a good effort. But sometimes my sinus issues makes me more tired than I actually am. Or this is life from now on. Who knows.

I woke up from a stress dream that left me a bit perplexed. I’ve had a lot of those lately. Random dreams about random stresses in my life.

Most of you who read my blog know that I play the organ for a small church in town. This is something I’ve done for 15 years. And love it. But when stress creeps into my life, it usually manifests itself in all it’s ugly glory and appears as stress dreams. Or even more fun, night terrors And even better than that – sleep paralysis. I’ve had fully blown hallucinations from sleep paralysis. Not fun at all, I tell you.

Last night’s dream threw me off a bit. I was sitting in a pew in a crowded church. It looked very much like the Catholic church my mother used to drag us to every Sunday. That’s where I learn to read sheet music. I was bored to tears and would sing along to the hymns.

I was surrounded by strangers who were chanting and singing along to “Now we thank our god” when all of a sudden, I found myself sitting at the organ. I had already missed playing a verse because I couldn’t find the hymn in their hymnal book.

I panicked as the crowd started singing the second verse. No one seemed to notice that I wasn’t playing. I played the first chord. And started having flash backs to the first wedding I played the organ for. It was a scary experience.

Everything I played on the organ, came out wrong. Then they moved onto the next hymn and I was still trying to find the hymn – the number 345 appeared on the wooden board where they displayed hymn numbers. But that didn’t make sense. To me, number 345 was Morning Has Broken – a favorite of mine (and my mother’s).

Finally, the singing stopped and I found myself back in my seat. Next to me, sat friends from the church were I play the organ. I couldn’t figure out how I got there so fast. That’s how my dreams are. They seemingly flip from one scene to the next.

And then I moved to another dream. A handsome and dashing man from the crowd honed in on me to tell me how amazing my performance was (huh? what performance?) and asked if he could take me home. I said yes. And the dream turned into… um. Let’s just go with, something else.

All I know is I woke up from that dream and scratched my head. I have no idea what it means. But … is it a bad sign that I started off a new decade with a stress dream about doing something I’ve loved for fifteen years?

Ponder that scenario for a moment if you will.

I hopped out of bed at 8:15 am and by 9:00 am, I had cleaned up my kitchen and had coffee and breakfast ready. Plans for a semi-productive day are now on hold as I’m considering crawling back into bed. I don’t even know why I got up so early on new year’s day.

Eh, fuck it. I’m going back to bed. Maybe I can slip back into the dream and find out what it all really means.

How does stress manifest itself in your life?

Asking for a friend.

Happy new year!