So glad I never had the visions. “Just” the paralysis.
sleep paralysis
Submitted 8 months ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/7606caf6-fb5f-48c6-bd59-00ca690a0fe2.jpeg
Comments
honk@programming.dev 8 months ago
A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’ve seen some wild shit during sleep paralysis. One of the tamer fits I had was seeing a really tall human-shaped apparition that was made of the shadow in the corner of my room. I was scared of that corner for a few nights.
One of the crazier ones: One night there was an orange-ish light coming through my blinds from the street light outside my apartment because my curtains were open, and my window was open too so the blinds were moving with the wind and the lines were moving back and forth on the ceiling like waves on a beach. It was hypnotizing. I was watching them half asleep, and eventually they slowly started morphing into what looked like pretty glowing runes dancing around my ceiling.
Then I start hearing voices outside my apartment, which in reality I’m sure was a few teenagers walking home while having an unreasonably loud conversation for the time of night, but what I heard was 3 of them, multiplying into maybe 6, then tens of them, hundreds, thousands… Eventually it felt like an ocean of people was outside my apartment, threatening to spill into my room and kill me (despite the voices sounding joyful), yet there was no visual evidence of anyone being there.
At this point I know it’s sleep paralysis because I can’t move, but I try my best to drag myself off the bed with what little motor functions I still have to hopefully wake me up on impact. Eventually I succeed, and I wake up in my bed again. The orange lines are spilling onto my ceiling again just like before. Everything is quiet again, with just the soft sound of my fan whirring, slowly turning left and right.
And then I think about what just happened… If I woke up by falling onto the floor, how am I still in my bed?
Now the fan has morphed into a monster with a head of violently spinning fan blades, twisting and looming over me while making surreal metallic sounds.
azertyfun@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
Your sleep paralysis demon should send their resume to a few Hollywood producers if they ever get bored of only traumatizing one human at a time. A+ storytelling.
duviobaz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
As scary as it sounds, I’m kinda curious to experience this just once myself
PlainSimpleGarak@lemm.ee 8 months ago
This has only happened to me once. I was conscious, my eyes were open, and I was able to move my pinky and ring finger on my left hand. My wife sleeps to my left. I kept clawing at her, trying to scream her name, but only a sound that resembled her name came out. On the other side of the room, was a tall, dark, shadowy figure with faint, white eyes. Just staring at me. Not moving. Eventually I fell asleep and woke up in the morning.
An experience I don’t care to repeat.
A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world 8 months ago
An experience I don’t care to repeat.
I think I might be weird, because I love getting sleep paralysis. I’m sad that it doesn’t happen to me very often anymore. Same with nightmares, at least when the subject isn’t something that makes me sad.
A lot of my taste in art and what I find compelling in general was shaped by surreal and terrifying cartoons like Courage the Cowardly Dog, and I think that’s partially why I enjoy it. There’s a weird feeling of catharsis I get from coming out of an intense state of fear and realizing it was all fabricated by my mind, and as a bonus I sometimes come away from it with a small story that’s intensely personal to me.
sukhmel@programming.dev 8 months ago
I once had paralysis but seems I was half asleep, because I felt like I fell asleep sitting and felt my roommate watching me, when in fact I was laying in the bed and the roommate was sound asleep 😅
Other symptoms matched but maybe it was something else ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Souyo@lemmy.world 8 months ago
On the rare occasions this happens. I usually hear distorted voices or conversations.
spirinolas@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’ve had this since my late teens. It’s more common when you have irregular sleep patterns. Nowadays it’s more rare.
It’s scary shit, specially if you panic. In time I’ve learned to control it when I have an episode and mostly succeed. But occasionally I still panic, but not like before.
Wiggling a toe will make the movement come back slowly and if you recognize what’s happening and keep calm you’ll avoid the most disturbing hallucinations. You can even succeed in controlled lucid dreaming during an episode.
I never saw the demon but I have felt its presence. It’s actually not as scary as it sounds. The scariest hallucinations were actually feeling people had entered my room and were intending to hurt me and I couldn’t budge. Once it happened with my old landlord when I was in college. He lived upstairs and I had an episode after falling asleep in my living room. I heard him enter my unit and saw him stand over me talking gibberish. It was so unsettling. I finally moved in a panic and I was by myself. He was actually a very chill guy, best landlord ever.
A few times I was unable to move, alone in the dark, and suddenly moved unexpectedly only to see my girlfriend or room mate towering over me and tell me I was moaning heavily in my sleep and thought I was having a bad nightmare. I’ve wondered how many of the sleep paralysis are actually nightmares and we ARE asleep.
theangryseal@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Man…
For me it happens when I’m under extreme stress, like my 3 year long “come back, I love you. I don’t love you anymore. I’m not cheating, he’s just a guy I snuck out with for no reason while I thought you were gonna be at work” divorce.
You said wiggling a toe got you out of it. For me it was tapping my pinky and trying to scream.
I even learned to control it and it was like an acid trip. Well, more like I learned to ride it and not be afraid.
One of the wildest ones I experienced though, I had recently purchased a hamster for my daughter that turned out to be a pregnant female. I tried to give the babies away, no one would take them. They slaughtered each other. I didn’t know they did that.
I was laying in bed watching my comfort food, Star Trek TOS. Suddenly the hamster cage appeared on my stomach with the gate opened. 40-50 hamsters crawled out and started eating my fingers and burrowing into my chest and stomach. I couldn’t move. My ex appeared at the foot of the bed as a shadowy creature with wild hair rocking back and forth laughing at me and hissing. I tapped my pinky and tried to scream once I was aware it was sleep paralysis. A hamster crawled up on my face and started eating my nose. I finally managed to mumble scream enough to get my exes attention and she reached out and touched me. As soon as she did I snapped back to reality.
The last time it happened I wasn’t expecting it. I was in a decent place in my personal life, work was chaotic though. I thought my house was full of distant relatives and they were killing people from outside of the family in my living room.
I hate that shit when it takes me by surprise. When it happens regularly I take control and I don’t mind it.
BluesF@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I get that feeling of “someone’s in the house” every single time… Horrid even though I know that it’s not true.
leds@feddit.dk 8 months ago
Don’t worry that’s just me… Really nothing to worry about , I promise
dingus@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Dude once I had this particular episode living in a first floor apartment. I was facing the opposite direction, but I heard my bedroom window slowly open and an intruder step inside my bedroom. I was absolutely fucking terrified thinking I was about to be murdered. Nope! Just sleep paralysis!
AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today 8 months ago
This is almost exactly how it happens for me, I’ve never really seen “the demon”, but I know it’s there and I can feel its presence at a super intense level. Sometimes, I hear them walk into my room and stand over me. Other times, they’re just there, staying perfectly out of sight.
dingus@lemmy.world 8 months ago
It’s interesting that other people call it “the demon” too. That’s how I’ve always thought of it. The demon comes in various forms for me. Once it was distinctly female. Another time it was a gargantuan shadow beast slowly walking toward me to kill me.
Tiefa@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I haven’t had an episode in a long time but I would try to tell myself to just breathe through it. The moving an extremity would help too. The worse part was that I’d get them in bunches. If one happened I’d have to stay awake for a bit or I’d get them over and over. Thankfully never saw any demons; just a vision of my surroundings but I couldn’t move.
LarkinDePark@lemmygrad.ml 8 months ago
Wiggling a toe will make the movement come back slowly
I have crazy “Greek Toe” and can make sounds like clicking your fingers. It wakes my wife and she wakes me most of the time.
FrostyCaveman@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I have extremely irregular sleep patterns and I’ve never had this happen… weird
fossilesque@mander.xyz 8 months ago
I got shaken by the demon until it got shoved over by a white light in my teens. I wonder what kind of wires snapped in my head.
a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
I’ve had a few episodes a few years ago while i was heavily depressed and my sleep pattern was messed up. i didn’t see much, just shadows in the corner of my eyes, but i knew something evil was in the room and i heard deep, demonic voices from behind. the first few times i was in a full blown panic, but i read about sleep paralysis before, so i at least connected the dots quickly… wiggling my pinky finger was my mode of escape.
fixing my sleep pattern with sleep meds (by force) made it go away
umbrella@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
reading this thread right before sleep, awesome.
rimjob_rainer@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
I’ve had this once in my life, when I was 3. It’s my oldest memory I guess, 30 years later i still remember the animals staring at me from the wall at the other side of the room. Until they started running towards me and I could not even scream.
doofy77@aussie.zone 8 months ago
Same, except it was toy of Petrie from land before time. It had multiplied and i was surrounded by Petries.
Stoney_Logica1@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Mine is similar but my bedroom had stretched out like a giant hallway and tiny figurines of my parents were stacked floor to ceiling at the far end with their backs to me. In the hallucination I said, “What the fuck?” and they all instantly turned towards me in anger and fell over making a tsunami wave that crashed over me, fully waking me up.
It was horrifying and I thought I was going to have a heart attack at the age of eight.
GBU_28@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Treeeee starrrrrr
dovahking@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I experienced it once during college. Mine was literally the hair ghost from grudge movie starting inside my window. Wasn’t that scared even when i had been in an accident. Can’t believe there are some people who experience this shit on a regular basis.
yamapikariya@lemmyfi.com 8 months ago
Yo when I was little I had that and it was a pig faced man.
johannesvanderwhales@lemmy.world 8 months ago
A lot of times before I’m falling asleep I think about “you know, I usually don’t remember anything from when I fall asleep so what if it’s actually some horrific experience you have daily and just forget about?”
blazeknave@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Have you watched Severance?
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
I have this every now and then except i kinda just half-wake up and everything feels profoundly wrong in some ineffable way, like the dream world merges with the real world and there’s a sense that something bad is going to happen at any moment.
Lesrid@lemm.ee 8 months ago
This is consistent with my experience. I didn’t have a paralysis demon, but I was convinced my ceiling fan was plotting to kill me. Not that it was going to fall and hurt but that it was scheming to have me assassinated and would take matters into its own hands if necessary.
Dutczar@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
My sleep paralysis demon was a black cat, and it stepped on my balls, causing astonishingly realistic pain
RandomStickman@kbin.run 8 months ago
I'm best buds with my sleep paralysis demon now. It's not comfortable but I no longer panic when I enter sleep paralysis.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
“oh fuck off bob, let me sleep!”
uberfreeza@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I hate sleep paralysis. Rather than taking the form of a demon, it takes the form of my friends/family/anyone I know walking in, seeing me with sleep paralysis, then leaving. I’d rather it be a demon.
90s_hacker@reddthat.com 8 months ago
I used to get sleep paralysis fairly frequently a while back. Some nights it would happen multiple times in a row. I never had any hallucinations, and for some reason I could always wake up properly by focusing really hard on my right foot.
tetris11@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
For me it’s my voice. As long as I can utter some kind of shout out, it breaks the spell. Usually something on the lines of “mmmmmroow!”
I_am_10_squirrels@beehaw.org 8 months ago
Move your big toe
Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world 8 months ago
How can I get sleep paralysis? It’s been years since my last experience with it :(
skulblaka@startrek.website 8 months ago
Allegedly, making an active effort towards lucid dreaming increases the rate of incidence of sleep paralysis by some ridiculous amount. Which makes sense, because in lucid dreaming you’re essentially trying to trick your brain into retaining conscious processing during a dream.
Never tried myself, but if you’re not afraid of the paralysis demons, it’s a win win. You either succeed and get to lucid dream on the regular which kicks ass, or you don’t succeed and start having nightly visits from Slim Jimmy.
A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Sometimes when I get sick I can sense that it might happen when I go to sleep. I think it’s mainly about being the right amount of tired, though.
The other key element is having enough brain activity to keep your eyes open or to reopen them while your body tries to start REM sleep. People say stress will do that, and that tracks with my experience.
Also, try sleeping on your back. I’ve never had it while sleeping in any other position. It could vary from person to person, so maybe try sleeping in different positions.
Syn_Attck@lemmy.today 8 months ago
try sleeping on your back
chronic sleep paralysis is the reason I tuck a thick blanket under me when I roll on my side, so I can’t turn to sleep on my back on accident.
The spinning wormhole at the foot of my bed was the last straw. No more ‘just ignore them and go back to sleep’ after that.
LarkinDePark@lemmygrad.ml 8 months ago
For me it’s having a large sleep debt and smoking weed.
SomeGuy69@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I wish I had that at least once, to know how it is like. Also why do people open their eyes instead of keep trying to sleep?
maniclucky@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’ve had this. No you don’t. It isn’t fun. Experiencing full body paralysis for a minute was a deeply unsettling and terrifying experience. I hated every second. Unless you’re prepared in some way, having the presence of mind to try to sleep again seems difficult.
I didn’t have a hallucination with that one though. I have that with a different parasomnia. I’ve had a hypnopompic (upon walking up) hallucination one time. That was freaky but only lasted a few seconds.
SomeGuy69@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Interesting, for me it doesn’t sound scary. I can imagin it’s scary if you do not know what it is. But if you know, isn’t it mostly annoying, like you want to wake up and move but can’t? Sorry if this is uncomfortable to you. To me it sounds relaxing, I often want to sleep.but my body is like non stop moving and only when I notice my body got really heavy, almost unmovable, I know I’ll fall asleep any second now.
umbrella@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
it can be interesting if you learn not to panic.
i had a couple of scary ones but mostly interesting ones.
A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I wish I had that at least once, to know how it is like.
It’s really fascinating in retrospect. The intense fear can be upsetting, but if you’re used to nightmares then you’ll be fine. I’ve always loved terrifying/surrealist art/media, so after I wake up it’s like my brain gave me a gift.
Also why do people open their eyes instead of keep trying to sleep?
For me, it’s poor mental health and a terrible sleep schedule lol. I can’t do it as often anymore because I have a job now, but I used to resist sleeping for some mental health reasons. So after I was too tired to want to be on my phone or anything, I’d end up staring at my ceiling thinking about whatever I was stressed out about at the time. I think that prolonged daydream-like state is what does it.
GBU_28@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Try sleeping on your stomach. Happens to me if I do
TootSweet@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Sleep paralysis is just the summoning ritual for the Hat Man.
Alsephina@lemmy.ml 8 months ago
Wonder what it’d be like if dph kicked in while in sleep paralysis
braxy29@lemmy.world 8 months ago
this was me about six hours ago! thanks, brain.
deur@feddit.nl 8 months ago
I can fall asleep physically while remaining awake mentally with relative ease, I’ve never had the entry paralysis ever associated with the typical exit paralysis sleep demons.
The worst that happens is my brain is just incredibly disoriented when I open my eyes after it thinks Im asleep.
UprisingVoltage@feddit.it 8 months ago
Thank you brain, very cool
sukhmel@programming.dev 8 months ago
If brain very cool, big problems have