Right now seems like a good time to answer this question, as I sit here unable to go back to sleep after what was probably my 40th episode of sleep paralysis. I tend to have extreme hallucinations along with the paralysis, making the experience extremely traumatic.

My first experience was when I was 19 or 20, in college, and 3 days after being terrified in the theater watching The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Perfect. I will never forget the experience. I woke up (so I thought) and looked at the clock. It was 3:00 a.m. exactly. I felt a looming, very dark, evil presence in my room and realized I was completely paralyzed, with the exception of my head (this is part of the hallucination; I now know that in all actuality I was hallucinating being able to move my head and look around the room).


Then it started. I had a lovely white, extremely fluffy white down comforter pulled all the way up to my chin. I felt the extreme pressure on my chest, I felt something pushing me into my bed, suffocating me. When I looked down, I saw a huge impression in my comforter where I felt the pressure, and saw it getting deeper, pushing me down further. I tried to scream when I heard the bedsprings squeak under me, as whatever this thing was pushed and pushed. I couldn't speak. The best I could get out was hushed gargling. I then felt like there was pressure on my neck, choking me. I can't express how deeply terrified I was. I couldn't move a single muscle in my body. My arms felt like they were too heavy to lift. I couldn't sit up, despite trying with every bit of strength I had. I, at the time, considered myself agnostic/atheist/whatever college students who think God is for stupid people say that they are, and I actually thought there was a demon on my chest, trying to either kill me or possess me. I thought it would never end, and it seemed to last forever. And then, I felt myself close my eyes, and the thing was gone. I said my roommate's name to see if I could speak again. I could. I looked down at my comforter, and there was no trace of anything unusual. I immediately JUMPED out of my bed, hysterically crying, trembling, and scared the shit out of my roommate when I woke her up this way. I spent the rest of the night, sleepless, in her bed. I was completely traumatized, and so was my roommate. The next day, this happened:

Yep, that's me, and my bed that I moved right next to my roommate's. I'm a big baby. But, so was she, so it was ok. It stayed this way until the end of the year. We moved her desk into my room and made it "the office." I couldn't sleep in my room alone again.

I didn't experience another attack for about a year, but the next time it happened it happened a lot. Each experience was a bit different during that first phase of episodes. I experienced violent shaking of my bed, to wake up to a dark figure standing to the right of my bed, physically shaking it. Another time, I felt my bed turning over, and felt myself sliding off, or being pulled off, along with my covers, and not being able to hold on and keep myself from sliding due to the paralysis. Other times, I felt like I was being held in whatever position I woke up in and was having a seizure. Now, I tend to experience a lot of these at once, along with a "floating" feeling, where I can't move myself, but I'm being lifted, or parts of me are being lifted by something else. I see things moving/shaking often. Tonight I woke up in the position where I was looking at a chandelier above and to the right of my bed, and felt like my head was being pushed that direction by whatever was to the left of my bed, but I couldn't direct my eyes to whatever it was, it was just out of vision. But as I looked at the chandelier, it was swinging back and forth, I had the seizure sensation in my whole face, and my upper body was being "lifted" up and down. Oh, and I thought it was storming outside (it wasn't). Every episode I try to scream. I don't exactly know why, as at this point, I know good and well nothing more than a faint gurgle will come out, but it's not something I can control. The panic completely consumes me.

I'm much more educated about what I'm actually experiencing now, after 7 years of dealing with it, but I can never shake the panic. After the episodes I experience now, I'm much more clear-headed about what just happened than I was as a 20 year old who felt like a demon had it out for her...but it's still terrifying. The hallucinations, in that moment, seem as real as can be. I stay quite scared and lonely for a while after, and almost exhausted from trying to fight the paralysis in panic. I continue to see shadows and think things are moving around me a few minutes following, and the "looming" feeling tends to stick around for a moment, as well.

For me, these episodes happen in phases, due to stress and lack of sleep, for the most part. When I do experience an isolated incident, it is usually on a night I've had a lot of trouble falling asleep, as was the case tonight. I laid in bed for hours, tossing and turning, and the minute I "realized" I was asleep (those who have these will recognize that moment, I think), I "woke up" to paralysis. I've experienced episodes while dozing off to sleep, but usually I am woken up by them after dozing. The paralysis I've experienced while drifting into a doze is usually less frightening because the hallucinations are not as present, it's more just the paralysis and trouble breathing, but I tend to come out of it and then fall right back into paralysis multiple times before being able to actually sleep when this is the case. But I prefer that over the hallucinations, 100x over.


Sleep paralysis has been the source of some of the most terrifying experiences of my life, particularly before I was able to figure out what was happening to me, but after I've learned about the disorder as well, as I am overwhelmed by my panic in each hallucination. I come to after, but during that time, I'm almost always just as terrified


http://www.brainyhubb.com/2016/10/sleep-paralysis-contd.html

Ur village pple don use brt bus trace u,u dey talk paralysis

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Doctorfitz:
Ur village pple don use brt bus trace u,u dey talk paralysis

JesChill:

hahahahahaha, you no weh!!

no mind these people,even them alfred adler einstein and isaac newton as their brain dey boil reach still knw say mehn village people dey 1 side...