[sdm]

I get occasional sleep paralysis. I can remember having it since I was a teenager. I may have had it as a child as well but I don't remember.

It  usually happens when waking after a bad dream so the adrenaline is already pumping and I'm already in a state of heightened anxiety.

I am much more likely to get it if I am staying somewhere unfamiliar like a hotel, and I'm more likely to get it during periods where I am sleeping badly or when I'm stressed.

I will be unable to move. It feels like I cannot breathe, as if someone is sitting on my chest, with their hands around my throat. It usually feels like there is someone else in the room, often "they" will be at the edge of my field of vision. This will probably be something vaguely human shaped like a jacket or dressing gown hanging up but because I cannot look directly at it or focus on it, it looks like a person.

After what feels like a long time, I will slowly gain movement. This will begin by being able to move my eyes, but initially only tiny, slow movements, and it takes huge effort. After what seems like a few minutes, I will be able to move my eyes normally. Then, I will regain the ability to blink. Only then do I begin to feel like I can breathe again. Then finally, comes movement of my limbs, starting with very slight movement in my fingers and toes.

Now that I know it is sleep paralysis, and know that it will be over shortly, I can relax after the initial shock and just accept it for what it is.

I don't know if there is a confirmed genetic element to it(?) but both of my sisters and my grandmother have/had it with identical symptoms to me.

My grandmother used to tell us stories about the ghost that tried to strangle her in her sleep in the 1940s when my grandparents rented a house in which the previous tenant had died. They only stayed in that house for 2 days before moving out. The ghost then caught up with her a decade later when they were staying at a holiday cottage.

[sdm]

I also sometimes get hypnogogic jerks, usually in the form of a violent kick of one or both legs. Thankfully, they tend to be straight up into the air so they don't connect with anyone or anything.

I managed to tweak my hamstring once with a hypnogogic jerk.

I can also lucid dream, although I don't do it very often anymore.

When I was a student, I had a housemate who wanted to learn to lucid dream because he thought it would allow him to use his sleeping time for studying, giving him more free time when he was awake.

Hearing him regularly talking about the techniques that he used to trigger lucid dreams meant that I began to recognise them during my dreams.

The techniques he used:
- Keeping a dream log. Anytime he woke up, he would immediately jot down any details he could remember from the dream he just had. Often, he would find in the morning that he had made notes in his dream log, even though he couldn't remember waking up. I never kept a log.
- Learning to recognise the telltale signs that you are dreaming such as: lack of colour, electrical appliances that do not work, clocks without hands, geographical anomalies, seeing a long lost acquaintance, or seeing people out of their usual context
- Confirming that he was dreaming. His method for doing this was to reach into his pocket to pull out an ice cream. If he was dreaming, he would be successful. I never bothered with this step.
- Fighting the brain's natural instinct to force you to wake up once you have realised you are dreaming. My method for doing this was to grab hold of the nearest object and to squeeze onto it with all of my strength. I think the theory behind this was that the sense of touch is the last one to go after a dream ends. Things would go dark, and sounds would become more distant until I couldn't hear anything, but as long as I didn't let go, I could bring myself back into the dream.

Once I was more used to it, I didn't need to do the grabbing technique, my mind learned to accept that it was dreaming and that that was ok.

Once I had learned not to wake up, I could control my dreams and fly, or decide that there would be a beautiful beach on the other side of that closed door, or I could walk through walls (I discovered that my brain thinks the inside of walls are extremely cold). It was comforting to know that I could recognise a bad dream, and could then control the situation to turn it into something more pleasant.

I've heard some people use a technique where they deliberately induce sleep paralysis as a window into lucid dreaming. I have never been able to control anything during sleep paralysis, it always ends with me waking up. And I would never voluntarily go through sleep paralysis, it is not at all pleasant.

[rodma]

I used to have sleep paralysis as a child but at the age where everything you described was just labeled as nightmares. I only realised many years later because it stopped by maybe 10-12 years old. I would regularly wake in the night but be unable to move. If I was facing towards the wall I would often have the feeling someone was standing behind me, but couldn't turn to look.

Facing into the room was much more bizarre and specific. I had a large shelf system on the other side of the room (250*50cm or so) and I would wake in the night to see a woman lying on the shelf staring at me. She was always dressed in a black dress with white lace sections around the neck and sleeves. The odd thing was initially it really freaked me out but I remember at some point having the realisation that she just looked confused rather than scary. We would just stare at each other for a while and then I'd fall asleep again. Very odd.

Exactly this.

When I was 8 or 9 years old I had the same thing, except I was always facing into the room, back against the wall.

For a few weeks, every night without fail, there was an old woman hovering outside my bedroom window (we were first floor and at this time I had no curtains in my room). She was slightly translucent, shimmering slightly,  speaking very softly and the words would get muffled down to silence with the peak of each beating of my heart. She always looked troubled. I'd end up absolutely screaming my head off once I'd fully awoken each night.

My overriding memories of it are of my dad screaming and shaking me trying dragging me back into my bedroom, turning my head to face the window and trying to force me to open my eyes to prove they're was nothing there. I guess that's what several weeks of interrupted sleep does to a middle aged man.

I eventually (just as MischaHY did) came to the conclusion this person meant me no harm. On occasion I've seen a very mild ghost story on TV that's set my the hair on the back of my neck on end because of the sound effect they've used, or the shimmering apparition, or combo of the two.

These days I generally get absolutely wild dreams when I have a fever, which I look at as a wee silver lining, something to look forward to accompany the night sweats

[monkoffunk]

Incredible stories all round. It’s so bizarre how stereotyped the experiences seem to be and also how similar the stories are across generations. These ideas of ‘sleep demons’ or the ‘night hag’ are new to me and I had no idea that the term ‘night mare’ used to specifically refer to sleep paralysis. Amazing that stories with such similar imagery can be found dating back hundreds of years, yet re-occur in people who have never heard these stories before. These images also seem to occur in a similar way across different cultures. I wonder how much these sorts of experiences might have influenced myths or ghost stories. The idea you might just assume that a ghost really is trying to strangle you in your sleep and that image of the old lady in the black with the white lace are particularly chilling!

Personally I’ve never had the visual hallucinations, I’m aware of the presence, but I never see it. I don’t hear it either as far as I remember, I just know that it’s there and that whatever I do I can’t turn to see it. It doesn’t bother me, given that I was an adult the first time it happened, and knew about sleep paralysis, but certainly I don’t get any sense that the presence is benevolent. I can see how terrifying it would be to a child, or adult experiencing this without insight.

In answer to sdm’s question, my reading around seems to suggest that, yes, there is a genetic component to this, but also it’s probably a lot more common than I realised.

Also, that story about the shoes melted into the carpet is excellent.

[sxrxg]

I love reading this type of stuff as I find it amazing... The way I sleep is I get into bed decide now is the time to sleep and then am getting woken by my alarm. In between nothing usually unless I get disturbed by the kids and even then I might vaguely hear something is going on and then just go back to sleep. It is like I just lose 5-8 hours of my existence. I don't remember ever dreaming. 

I have needed to shake the wife from sleep paralysis though (pretty obvious when it is occurring with the noises she makes), she says it helps as she feels trapped and likes to get out of the situation.

[MischaHY]

that image of the old lady in the black with the white lace

Bizarrely something I’m very clear on is that it wasn’t an old woman. I would suggest 30-40s with a worried expression and a very intense stare.

Maybe she’s also experiencing sleep paralysis somewhere and we’re just vibing with each other. Not sure why she’s on the shelf though.

[Wellsy]

For years I have had incredibly violent dreams on occasion but last night I dreamed that Fiend and I were playing warhammer under some random grit crag and all the dice kept rolling down the hill so that was much nicer

[Oldmanmatt]

I love reading this type of stuff as I find it amazing... The way I sleep is I get into bed decide now is the time to sleep and then am getting woken by my alarm. In between nothing usually unless I get disturbed by the kids and even then I might vaguely hear something is going on and then just go back to sleep. It is like I just lose 5-8 hours of my existence. I don't remember ever dreaming. 

I have needed to shake the wife from sleep paralysis though (pretty obvious when it is occurring with the noises she makes), she says it helps as she feels trapped and likes to get out of the situation.

My partner has so far battled a wall of giant reds spiders (while stamping on my slumbering body), yanked the bed clothes off to chase “escaped hamsters”, pushed her foot through a duvet cover trying to “apply the brakes before hitting a lorry”, clambered over me to get to the windows (which she threw wide open) to “let the swam of bees out” and sworn blind that the walls were moving/closing in; to name but a few of the past 12 years nighttime adventures…