I just experienced sleep paralysis :(

So I woke up in absolute terror this morning, fully paralysed and with a vivid hallucination of some sort of demon creature squatting over me with a knife in each hand snarling viciously in my face

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

It seemed so real it wasnt until after it stopped and I'd calmed down from the panic that I realised what it was


Has anyone else ever had one of these?

 

If you mean dreams so real, you're convinced they actually happened; even for a few moments after you wake up, then yes. However, I've never been paralysed by it :S

 

Never, I've woken up thinking what I was dreaming had been real and I've woken up wishing what I was dreaming was real but never hallucinating. The most paralysed I've been is when I woke up with a 'dead' arm.

 

...that's happened to me loads, especially recently. Such a strange feeling - even more strange is feeling the blood re-circulate.

 

For me , its usually somebody breaking in through my window and I just cant move. If i actually can get a body part to move it always wakes me right up.

 

While I love being able to feel the weight of my arm and be able to touch my skin without feeling it twice, I hate the feeling of the blood recirculating. It's horrible.

 

Not any that I can remember since I moved out and started sharing a bed, but when I lived at my parents' house, I'd have horrible night terrors and sleep paralysis. Aaackkk. But my theory that having a bed mate would solve that problem apparently worked in my case, lol.

 

I get SP once in a while. It comes in many forms. I experience it falling asleep more than waking. I hear random voices and then bad things start to happen and I can't move. And then I wake up and realize what it was and roll over and go back to sleep.

 

Only during heavy uses of codeine.

 

I've had that too. I had a dream too all about how I injured my arm. It's amazing how creative the mind can be.

 

Are they different from night terrors?

 

I get this from time to time as well, can be quite distressing sometimes. I have this recurring dream that someone is holding me down on the bed, or grabbing my legs and I wake up yelling. I quite often cause people in the room next to me to become alaramed and come to my rescue thinking I am having a heart attack or something.

 

yes, it bothers me. it happens all the time, whenever i have been lucid dreaming and then experience a false awakening, oftentimes i will be paralyzed. sometimes my eyes will be wide open but i cant move. and i'll think i'm yelling, like, PLEASE help me wake up. PLEASE! but really i am silent. sometimes i hold my eyes open. i can't help it anymore though, i wish i could just dream normally but i have lucid dreams every night now, once you pop you can't stop.

 

I love them! I wish I had more of them. I tend to have more when I smoke more pot and also when I abstain from sex for at least 6 weeks. They don't scare me that much anymore, not as much as it used to.

 

Welcome to my life. Of course, abstain indicates that I actually have a choice in the matter...

 

they don't scare me. some of them rock. some of them are fucking annoying when i keep trying to wake up and cant! my one last night was great though, i realized i was dreaming and then flew up a flight of stairs. i was in a hurry to find clothes since i was naked and my margarita was melting. i tried to go through solid ground, too, but apparently i couldn't. i'll try again next time.

 

Nice to know that you have such self control, very admirable.

I personally can't help myself sometimes, when I wake up in the middle of the night and can't sleep...

 

lol.. I have them rarely but usually I don't realise till I try to move my arm.
Sidenote, listening to all the accounts I really don't think I'd want sleep paralysis, sounds nasty.

 

Oh yeah I've done that, walking through walls. I had a really freaky dream one time, I could really feel the wall resisting my body as I forced my way through it. I also kept waking up in the dream, and the first few times I got worried that I had lost the ability to do it and tested it by pushing my hand through solid objects. Then, later on I got really freaked out that I couldn't stop it. Just before I woke up I developed the ability to see through the curtains in my window, and across the garden in the blocks of flats opposite there were loads of people just sitting in the windows looking at me.

 

nice! yeah, i remember distinctly bumping my head hard on the ceiling and being like "wtf? i can't go through walls anymore?"
better luck next time.
all those people looking at you, that's some freaky shit. could they see through your curtains, too?