Sleep paralysis

[mattsonn]

Hi, my name is Matt, this is my first post here!

I saw in one of the older threads that some of you get sleep paralysis. I do too, and I just wanted to dedicate a thread to it so that we can share experiences.

I've been getting SP periodically since 9th grade in high school or so. Sometimes I'll get it a few times a week, and sometimes I'll go for months without.

Other info about my experiences:

* Can happen in any sleep position, but lying on my back is pretty much asking for it.
* The transition from being awake and normal to paralyzed takes maybe a second. Often it'll happen without me being aware of it until I try to move something.
* Once it's happened, I'm completely paralyzed from the neck down and 99% paralyzed above the neck. Can move tongue and jaw a little. Can crack eyelids open briefly sometimes.
* On the other hand, it becomes incredibly easy to pretend to move something. Many times, I will have sworn that I just moved my arm or rolled over, only to recieve sensory data a few seconds later that I didn't.
* Usually I will try to fight it with no success. If I'm close enough to my arm, I will try to bite it, which sometimes gets me out of it. Usually I just have to wait in discomfort for it to end.
* I will feel completely 100% conscious when it's happening, but when I try counting numbers to pass the time, it's hard for me to me to keep track (wait, am I really at 50 already?)
* If I'm stuck in that state for long enough, I'll often start hallucinating or slip in and out of dreams. When I wake up, sometimes it'll take a few seconds for the "dream chemicals" to clear my mind, and I'll briefly be able to see stuff that isn't really there (like lines forming on the wall or something)
* I never feel any sense of evil during SP. I don't feel fear either unless I'm on my back and having a hard time breathing. Still, it's an unpleasant experience and it feels unnatural. Like it's caused by a slight chemical imbalance in my brain. My mom had it too, but no one else so it's probably a recessive gene.

PARANORMAL?
* It's common for me to get the buzzing feeling while in SP.
* Once, early in high school, I "felt a presence" in my head ask me something along the lines if I wanted to be introduced to OBE's or not. I was too scared to answer, so I thought nothing, and eventually the presence left. The only reason why I haven't completely discounted that to imagination is because I've haven't been asked that since. Many times since then, I've tried to make myself have an OBE only to be completely stopped as if my body was like a ceiling.
* Also, it's common for me to go into REM immediately upon actually falling asleep.
* As with SP, it feels unnatural when this happens, the dream will have a vivid surreal quality to it, and I'll usually wake up after it ends before settling into a normal sleep pattern.
* Usually, there's absolutely no negativity in this dream, just 20-30 seconds of surreallness.
* Two or three times over the past several years, I have encountered beings in this initial dream that gave me extreme, raw terror. At least a notch above a bad nightmare. And what really separates them from an ordininary nightmare is that instead of being a mishmash of mixed up events, the dream will be very simple, short, and directed. While typing this, I started to describe my most recent one (happened about a year or two ago), but I stopped and erased it because I was getting serious chills just thinking about it. It's as vivid now as when it happened. This is the only reason why I don't completely scoff at Steve and Erin's encounters with evil beings.