[ogrekilleat]

It certainly could have been sleep paralysis, which I find I experience often when I'm tossing in and out of sleep, but only you can decide if you were awake enough to really be experiencing something outside of that.

As for me, I think I might believe in the "Old Hag" as a real outside force:

I've had many sleep paralysis related dreams, I'm very familiar with them. But recently, I had a strange experience when I was wide awake in bed (for various reasons I went to bed long before I was tired). Also I had moved my air mattress into a different room in the house, and my head was in line with the doorway to the room and, beyond that, an exterior door.

As I was laying there, thinking pleasant thoughts, I soon felt something pressing very heavily on my chest, and it was difficult to breath. I was terrified and it was a great struggle to sit up. As soon as I sat up, everything was fine. So I lay back down, and few a minutes later it happened again. Again, I was filled with terror and I had to struggle to rip myself into a sitting position.

I had a strong feeling that it was because I was in line with the doorways and thus "exposed", so I turned my bed around so I was sheltered by walls from the back door, and after that everything was fine...except of course that I was still scared.