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This is one of my experiences with sleep paralysis:
I was renting a room in a 3-bedroom apartment in Rome, Italy at the time. I fell asleep on my back. I woke up in the same position, but immediately after opening my eyes I knew something was different. The lights were on, and I noticed right away that there was something off with my sense of sight and hearing. It was dead silent in an eerie kind of way, and all I could hear was myself breathing very heavily and so intensely - it was taking over my entire body. I could also hear my heartbeat, which was beating very heavily in an almost overwhelming kind of way and I could hear it so loud and clear as if it was right next to my eardrums. I could feel it pounding throughout my body so intensely; it felt like it was going to explode inside of me. The air was thick and pliable like waves in the ocean. I could actually see the air physically moving in space in this manner, and with it objects fluctuated, giving them a sort of blurry and distorted look as I observed the room around me. It was all so surreal. Then I started to hear other-worldly and frightening sounds. The best way I could describe it is the audio feedback or the ringing/squealing/screeching sounds produced by a microphone/sound system. It was deafening to the ears but there was nothing I could do to stop it.
At this point I could sense a presence in the room, a threatening and evil one and I felt in my gut it wanted to physically hurt me. I felt an impending sense of doom. I started to panic and all I wanted to do was jump out of bed and get the hell out of that room. I tried to move my limbs, but realized I was paralyzed! My brain was in life-or-death survival mode and was telling every fiber and muscle of my body to get off that bed, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get my muscles to even start to contract, let alone even feel my own body.
As I was in this state of panic and paralysis I started to get this sense that I was floating above my bed. The air felt even thicker as it now surrounded my entire body and it felt like it was carrying my weight from underneath and controlling my levitation in mid-air. Its wave-like motion was deliberate and with purpose. I could still feel the evil presence was in close proximity to me which made me feel even more terrified and helpless. All of a sudden the green wooden window shutters to the right of my bed started to open and shut by themselves so rapidly and violently. The banging noises were deafening as the shutters banged against the walls and against each other with such forceful rage, and it went on forever. At that moment, I thought I was going to die.
In an act of desperation, I did one thing that I thought could save my life: I started to pray the "Our Father." I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic schools but was never very religious (didn't go to Church every sunday or anything like that). I recited the prayer and probably mid-way through, it all came to a halt in a nanosecond. I opened my eyes for the second time waking up to the same room, lying in the same position on my back. Only difference was that the lights were off, it was pitch dark in the room. I knew everything was back to normal now, but still I was terrified to death to even dare to move an inch to get up and turn on the lights. I finally got the courage to run for the switch. As soon as the lights came on, I took a look at the green wooden window shutters, and saw that it was securely latched close. I spent the rest of the night in the living room horrified and wide awake with as many lights on as possible. For the longest time after that episode, I was terrified to sleep in that same room again without keeping the lights on and the door wide open all night long.
Call it what you like - a lucid dream, hallucination. To this day, I know in my gut that my experience had nothing to do with either. I was wide awake and fully aware to be sure, and I know in the deepest reaches of my soul that I was in a different dimension and that my experience was of a paranormal nature. This experience will stay with me forever.
No, but I do get nightmares if I sleep on my back. There are a number of scientific theories floating around on the net for these occurrences and there seems to be many others who suffer from this condition.
Yes.
But I don't anymore....it is the astral body coming back into my phys body
But me waking up when it is...I'm in between planes, there is no evil presence...that
was me feeling intense fear...of this unearthly new feeling.
No more fear now.
Read up more on it...even on other forums...you'll see.
It's all ok...
I did not know what this was until I researched this phenomenon I was having in my bed. I would feel awake but then could not move my body. It was so creepy. I would wonder if I was just having a bad dream. I also remember experience this while I was dreaming and then feeling the need to move in a dream and being unable to move. Crazy stuff. Don't think I have had an experience in a while. Remember it vividly when I was younger living my parents.
I used to get SP quite often when I was younger in this certain house my family used to live in. The episodes ranged from panicky to full-on frightening.
It really doesn't happen to me anymore. So either I have grown out of it or the environ was the factor.
One time (in another house), my father brought in a cabinet he found at a yard sale and put it in his bedroom. My mom was getting SP almost every night until he had gotten rid of the cabinet.
Sleep paralysis has been fairly well studied, and the experience you've described is pretty textbook.
Basically, instead of smoothly transitioning from one stage of sleep to another, your stages were overlapping.
When your body enters REM sleep, it shuts down your muscle movement. Otherwise, you would actually act out the actions that your body was taking in your dreams. When your sleep stages overlap, you get some cells in your brain telling it stay asleep, and blocking you from having control of your muscles, but you get other cells telling you to wake up, and raising your consciousness.
Feelings of fear or terror are very common during sleep paralysis. Your amygdala plays a vital role in processing the stimulus that your body receives and deciding how you should react to it. During a sleep paralysis event, the pathways around the amygdala become overloaded and start perceiving every stimulus as a threat. As a mechanism of evolution, when your brain encounters an unknown or unsure event or stimulus, the safest course of action is to treat it as a threat and generate fear.
That, combined with the fact that you're paralyzed, which leaves you extremely vulnerable to attack, very often manifests as a feeling of another person or entity in the room. This other person is almost always accompanied by a sense of dread or terror.
As far as "out of body" experience, your brain has many systems working together to coordinate your bodily movements as well as tell to tell it what your body is doing at any given time, such as lying down, standing up, walking forward, etc... In sleep paralysis, these systems activate, but there is no movement, which is confusing and leads to a "floating" sensation.
Luckily, the one episode you had is likely to be the only one of your life, however there are cases of chronic sleep paralysis, although they are quite rare.
That was quite an interesting post. I've never really studied up on it, so thanks for those conclusions, though I'm pretty certain that there's more to it than just the physics of it.
As far as it being "likely to be the only one of your life" I wouldn't count on it......
I had this happen to me too. I was also very scared, but called on the name of Jesus Christ too, and whatever was pressing on my chest (I could not breath and was paralyzed) , immediately lifted and I was relieved! I still am not sure to this day, but I believe it is spritual and I pray for protection each night to Jesus Christ. I know some explain this away with science and sleep paralysis, but I still think it is spiritual like the original poster wrote. I sure wouldn't want to be without the protection of Christ Jesus!
I still remember couple of very vivid sleep paralysis incidents from when I was little. In one of them, I remember a the vague shape of a tall, dark demon type spirit looking over me. It was freaky at the time, but I don't think it was anything supernatural. IMO it was just some sort of scary dream.
I haven't experienced anything like that for many years.
I had this happen to me too. I was also very scared, but called on the name of Jesus Christ too, and whatever was pressing on my chest (I could not breath and was paralyzed) , immediately lifted and I was relieved! I still am not sure to this day, but I believe it is spritual and I pray for protection each night to Jesus Christ. I know some explain this away with science and sleep paralysis, but I still think it is spiritual like the original poster wrote. I sure wouldn't want to be without the protection of Christ Jesus!
same thing happened to me, and i prayed,,, and then i could breathe,,,as i woke up i realized i was sweating...
scared the hell out of me,,,i remember clearly,,,not being able to breathe and arms/legs would not move,,
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