Sleep Paralysis

My description of what sleep paralysis is like.

Sleep paralysis is a form of terror that cannot be understood properly until one actually experiences it. I have had a few experiences with sleep paralysis. It’s an exposed and helpless feeling, like walking by a dark, empty doorway in a near-dark hallway, yawning fear like the mouth of a demon. It’s usually never anything starkly visual for me, only an aura that my mind creates. Some were more straightforward, while some were more abstract, but all were extremely unsettling. It happens almost every time I fall asleep on my back, which is why I sleep on my stomach or my sides.

I’m not sure exactly what state of sleep it happens in, but it seems to be in the undefinable territory between wakefulness and full sleep. That weird limbo-like state of mind when your thoughts are fully random. It’s almost like a transition between half-consciousness and complete unconsciousness. I will be approaching the ethereal gate of the dream world, but rather than entering it, I’m pulled another way; a wrong way. It’s never the same subject matter for me, but it always has a very similar onsetting. It’s like slowly descending into a full bath of adrenaline. My body tingles with an eerie warmth, and I find that I can’t move, physically or mentally. I just have to let go and hope that it isn’t too bad this time. Some people say that they feel awake when it happens to them, but for me I’m not so sure. For me it’s more like I don’t have the time to decide whether or not it is a dream, but instead I get that momentary panic that an animal must feel when it realizes it has been caught in a trap.

My most recent experience happened a few nights ago, which is what prompted me to write about it, because this experience was one of the more vivid ones. I was sleeping on my stomach when it happened, which is strange because it almost never happens unless I’m on my back. I started to get that oncoming tingling and fear. If anyone reading this has ever tried salvia, it’s very similar to that. That helplessness that one feels the moment they exhale, like all of a sudden you have a bunch of implacable limits to what you can and can’t do. Like being held down by countless fuzzy, vibrating hands.

Anyway, I was stuck, and there was nothing to do but endure. This is when it got very, very creepy. It felt like I was being restrained from above by some floating being, but I couldn’t specifically feel any forms of restraint. I was stuck to my bed by the ghostly hands of fear itself. I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear. Their was a ragged, bestial sniffing by my left ear (my right ear was pressed against the pillow). It started from around my neck and crept upwards towards the top of my head. It was like being sniffed by a large animal but with a more demonic and perverse feel to it. That was basically the only event that happened during it, and it ended quickly, but while it was happening I felt that indescribable helplessness, and it immediately reminded me of a more terrifying experience I had with sleep paralysis a year or so back. So, in my less-than-lucid state I had to cope with this new fear while reliving an old one.

This previous time I was on my back. I was in the mysterious state before sleep, like I’ve already described, and I remember that I was talking with a friend in a confession booth like they have in catholic churches. Everything else was either black or irrelevant to me, as it was not yet filled in with the completeness of a real dream. He was on one side of the screen and I was on the other. I don’t analyze this much, I simply dismiss it as the strangeness of dreams. This is when the feeling came on like chilling deja vu. My perspective changed for a moment, no longer seeing my friend in a confession booth, and I remember thinking that I should get off of my back. Apparently in this state of half-sleep I still had the sense to try to avoid this familiar terror. It didn’t work. Like getting sucked into a black hole, I was pulled in that wrong direction.

I was able to roll onto my side, and as I did so my perspective rolled back to that confession booth like a slide being placed in a projector. This time my friend was grinning at me with a smile that I can only describe as evil. It was the type of evil smile that one would expect to see in a horror movie, only with a level of conviction that no movie can ever convey. I can’t explain how I knew it, but I came to the conclusion that this was the devil. The moment our eyes locked I was stuck. I couldn’t move, and again, I just had to wait it out. Thinking back, it reminds me of a “game over” screen from some early video game as the screen fades to black. There was a sort of subtle Bwonggg sound, and the aforementioned adrenaline bath. It was like falling through a gaseous doorway from our world to the nightmare realm. And as I locked gazes with him, he spoke to me with a deep and terrible voice that filled my head. I can’t remember what he said, but surely it wasn’t happy tidings, and the fact that it was still my friend’s contorted face saying it made it even worse. When it finally subsided, I was completely shaken. I had to spend some brain-dead time watching television before I could sleep again.

For you pious folk out there who will most likely take this as a sign from God to stop sinning and to dedicate my life to a bible, I don’t see it as that. I simply see it as my mind looking for the most horrifying thing and settling on a conjuration of the devil. I mean, centuries of people claiming that Satan is the pinnacle of evil and terror can’t just be ignored by my unconscious mind, regardless of my lack of religion. If God wants to send me a sign, I would ask that he does so when I am at full lucidity, thank-you very much.

I watched a television special on alien abductions once, and they claimed that sleep paralysis was a likely explanation for the victim’s stories. As someone who has had sleep paralysis, I can say that I fully agree. If people were unaware that such a thing existed, especially prior to science, I can absolutely see how one may believe that they had experienced something other-worldly. Who knows, maybe they had.

Author's Note

Please don’t tell me this is a sign from whatever it is you worship. I’m quite comfortable with my beliefs.

Reviews

[Astrid]

This was quite the intriguing read. I've always thought I would just go back to sleep and be happy for the excuse. After reading this I'm not too sure that would be the case. Fantastic depictions.

[Vanesa Markovic]

I've read up a fair bit on sleep paralysis, although I've never had the pleasure/terror myself.
It's been a culprit in waking supernatural beliefs for the longest time, people do genuinely like to abandon
all logic when faced with new life experiences.
Haha.
Great write, second story of yours I've read today, you keep great momentum.
Not an easy feat to accomplish.
-VM