9 years ago
2
Sleep Paralysis Is an Inescapable Waking Nightmare
Once, when I was 17, I woke up in the dark and couldn’t move. I could hear, at least. That’s why I was awake to begin with: someone was banging on the front door in the middle of the night, insistent, sharp, angry. I could see, too. My eyes were open to the ceiling above me. My head, though, was locked into position by some invisible vise. I tried to yell, to warn my parents about the angry intruder outside, and the...
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I just watched "The Nightmare" on Netflix. It's a documentary, but it's one of the creepiest "horror" movies I've seen all year.
I experienced sleep paralysis once when I was in high school. I remember distinctly being suddenly unable to move my left arm in my dream and then my perspective switching to me in bed where it took all the force I could manage just to lift my arm even slightly. Nothing scary. Just a massive amount of annoyance and determination to lift my arm until it wore off and I could move.
I have to commend this article for actually explaining the "stranger in the room" sensation instead of just attributing it to something supernatural. Since I experienced it myself with no such sensation, I was since pretty doubtful of the experience and assumed it was a placebo effect of people who had heard about sleep paralysis before they experienced it themselves and since I didn't know about it until years later, I didn't have the "supernatural" influencing my perspective. Attributing it to nightmares makes a lot more sense (including why I didn't get scared as I don't have nightmares).