to ask whether anyone suffers from sleep-induced temporary paralysis and related hallucinations?

[holmesgirl]

I believe they're fairly common and attached to stress/anxiety. Mine have been ongoing (sporadically) for over ten years now. They are so vivid and the hallucinations really are terrifying.

If you've had them or similar night terrors what are your experiences like?

Mine are pretty text book. I hear loud footsteps stomping round my bed, then feel a massive pressure on my chest and try to scream or force myself awake but I'm totally paralysed (I can feel my eyelashes flickering though...). Or worse, I have the hallucinations - usually a malevolent witch-type old lady coming towards me from the bottom of my bed. Hideous... :/

The first time it happened to me I was 21yo. My parents had just moved house (I was still at home) and I was convinced their new house was haunted - until I described what had happened to my mum - and a colleague - and they'd both had similar experiences in the past...

Tell me your story :)

xkcdfangirl that is really interesting... I'm not particularly religious but usually interpret the experience as demonic/paranormal. I usually shout help as opposed to Jesus though. I'm obviously confused :o

Does anyone get their ears popping as well?

I had this happen to me during a particularly stressful time in my life , it happened about three times over the course of a couple of weeks and at the time was absolutely terrifying . The first two times were the worst , the third time i was a bit ' oh for fucks sake i really dont need this i have to be up at 5am '

I get these too. Not had one for a while - but since they've messed up my whole sleep pattern. I don't sleep very well at night any more and always sleep with the light on. They terrified me so much!

I have to admit, I first thought for a long time it was a paranormal thing and an evil being holding me down. My heart would race so fast I'd think I was about to have a heart attack. I'm also on countdown to dying.... from 10 this 'thing' counts down and if he reaches zero I die! I try everything to wake out of it before hitting zero and never succeed but as I get closer to zero I just give up and resign myself for dead and so relax and fall back into a sleep it seems.

What scared me the most was one I had which was completely different. I woke and there were black panthers running across the walls. I had the same feeling of not being able to move and there was a deep but loud buzzing sound in my ears. Because I had not heard of this sleep paralysis at the time I looked it up and found that it was relatively common and seeing black panthers was a sign of a death about to occur! Of course I found it quite hard to believe (but a bit scary too!) - but then my brother die unexpectedly 3 weeks later at just 28 yrs old - on my birthday!!!

Of course, I think it's likely to be more coincidental than anything - but I have to admit, I do sometimes wonder.

I have had 3 or 4 of these in the last couple of years, always in the day time. The first one was really weird, I could hear music playing in the other room and hear my OH talking, but I knew that I was on my own in the house, then someone was sitting beside me on the bed, and for the life of me I couldn't move any part of my body to see who it was, I always used to believe, that I was experiencing something paranormal, which I totally believe in, but after a couple more weird experiences, I looked in to sleep paralysis and reasoned with my self that it was my mind playing tricks on me, Haven't had one since.
It is bloody freaky when it's happening, but very interesting.

I get these too, and for the longest time thought something paranormal was going on until I learned about sleep paralysis.

I'm usually woken by the sound of footsteps, or the sudden awareness that someone/something is in the room, but I can't move (except sometimes I can open my eyes).

I then feel myself sliding across the bed as if something is trying to pull me onto the floor, or can otherwise feel something touching me in random places (sometimes pricking feelings).

If I can open my eyes I sometimes see one or more shadowy figures standing there that terrify me so much I usually just keep my eyes closed now. Very occasionally it is as if I have received some sort of telepathic communication telling me that I wasn't meant to be awake, and just to go back to sleep.

The whole experience is the most frightening thing I've ever gone through in life (just sheer, cold terror), and if I try to scream all I can hear is my breath coming out a bit faster (but silent).

It ends when I either fall into a deeper sleep and lose consciousness, or feel myself able to move again (and usually just try to sleep due to emotional exhaustion).

I have almost the opposite, where my body isn't paralysed in a dream when it should be. It is usually when stressed, or I've had one more wine than I can cope with (i.e. two glasses). I had one earlier, I had fallen asleep downstairs and had a dream that I was being strangled by a phone cable in some bizzare accident, next thing dh is downstairs waking me up as I have been screaming the house down.

Think the worst was in our courting days, I was at his student digs(and wasn't meant to be), dreamt that he and I were in the headlights of a car and were being attacked, I obviously kick in the headlights and scream 'help help, I'm being attacked', as indeed any self respecting independent 20 something would. Next thing I know he is waking me up after I have repeatedly kicked both his knees, and we cower in his room for half an hour after someone in the vast shared house had called the police who were searching outside. Opps!

Dd2 seems to be going the same way, dd1 and ds just seem to have inherited my sleep through a typhoonability (which I have also done), nightmare to settle, but once asleep will only wake if they want to.

I've had hypnagogic hallucinations ever since I can remember, fortunately not sleep paralysis though! At it's worst, a few weeks on a very low dose of an anti-psychotic worked wonders for me.

I've suffered from sleep paralysis for years and years and the only thing I've happened upon which helps is making myself go back to sleep.

I think fighting against it is a natural response when you wake up to find that you cannot move - I used to panic, freak out, think I was going to suffocate if I didn't change position etc. Now when it happens and I realise what's happening, I just think "Ok, something's gone wrong between sleeping and waking, I can't make myself wake up so I need to go back to sleep and try again."

Don't struggle, don't try to force your body to move, don't try to cry out. Just make the decision to go back to sleep, and see if it helps.

Tigerlilly that put the shivers up me about the panthers. I am very sorry about your brother.

Yes I've dreamt that I've been pushed off the bed and rolled up the wall up to the ceiling by some force. Very scary, feels very out if body. I also had the feeling of being crushed by dh who had his hand on my chest. I can remember using all my strength to get this massive weight off me, I got himoff with quite a wrench he was quite offended!

I used to get this weird feeling that I was slowly inflating, fingers the size of balloons, and I would float up and look down on myself all bloated and huge, wasn't a weight anxiety dream, started when I was a child with no concept of such worries. I also once was convinced that there was a bald man in my room, holding my ankles and, er, orally pleasuring me- definitely was a night terror thing and not a dream as I felt completely awake and paralysed...I has been single for rather a long time though and am sure that was a factor ...

Robin at the bald man!

I have sleep paralysis sometimes, amazingly not lately despite having a lot of stress in my life. I hallucinated the very first time - probably 8ish years ago - that there was a man standing over me.

Now I am aware when it happens and can sort of pull myself out of it if that makes sense, but it is exhausting and leaves me wobbly for a while.

I frequently got it when DD was tiny, one time when we were cosleeping I was convinced that I was squashing her and she would suffocate as I couldn't move, that was terrifying.

I used to get these a lot, but haven't for many years.

I would wake up paralysed, and then have a strong sense that there was someone either in the bed next to me or lying on top of me. It was pretty horrible though less so once I learned to recognise it for what it was.

Apparently some psychologists think that the whole myth of succubi and incubi derived from people suffering sleep paralysis.

Touch wood, I haven't had one for quite a few months now. Worst was a faceless hooded figure climbing across the bed towards me.

They are utterly terrifying. Occasionally have the spiders on the pillow one but not very often.

Ironically, I had them more when I was a sahm and not so much now I'm teaching ft again. In hindsight I think I definitely had PND during that time but couldn't see it.

I've had both, horrible. I'm not sure why but I haven't had any for years now.

I hadn't had sleep paralysis for nearly a year but after reading this thread and the one about the paranormal just before bed, I had it last night
Does anyone ever get really loud noises with it? As in I'm paralysed and I can hear piercingly loud laughing or screaming right in my ears.

Used to have both paralysis and hallucinations. I believe it's the brain making a mistake, when you dream the brain secretes a drug (hormone? not sure sorry!) to stop the body from moving. It can go wrong too ways: either the drug is released when the person is awake which results in the paralysis and very specific hallucinations or the drug is not released when the person is sleeping which results in sleepwalking.

My dream was that there was a strange man who had broken into the house standing at the bottom of the bed which would make me terrified, then I would wake up and find...a strange man at the bottom of the bed which accounted for the dream, this would terrify me, I would wake up and find...a strange man, and so on. Very scary!

I had the same night terrors for years and years until I finally got a dog. The first night I slept with the dog and had the dream I reasoned that there can't be a man at the bottom of the bed as the dog would be barking and he disappeared! Never had the dream again!

Ooo I never got that polly that sounds awful. I saw a man coming through my window to kill me, I would sleep with the light on for a few days after, which seemed to stop them. I used to put all my energy into trying to turn my lamp on when I unfroze, and in the back of my mind I knew it would stop when I did.

Polly - sorry for causing you to have paralysis again :O I get the really loud noises too. Usually footsteps. Also my heartbeat in my ears is so loud when it happens.

I get sleep paralysis on its own when I'm coming down with something. I thought it happened to everyone until I saw something about them on the One Show. The people on there went to a sleep clinic.
It is bloody scary.

Op mine are the same as you experiance, luckily a haven't had one for a long time. It happened alot in my late teens early 20s