Sleep paralysis

[TrickyRic]

Hi,

I woke up this morning around 5.30am, quite unusual for me actually but there you go. I have a laptop on a chair next to my bed and upon waking I turn the screen on every morning to see who's online, check my accounts, and browse the web for a while. Put simply, once I'm awake - I'm awake.

Having gotten bored of browsing and with nobody online I put some music on and laid back down, waiting for the sound of someone pinging me. At some point, around 11.30am by now, I rolled over to be face down and almost instantly something pretty freakish happened - I felt something push me down into the bed. I could hear someone go to the bathroom outside my door and I could still hear the music playing on the laptop, I was certainly awake and later found someone was in the bathroom at that time - I was fully aware of my surroundings.

Having since read other postings on sleep paralysis the events I experienced have a very similar context. I felt like something was sat on me, and I definately felt a presence in the room. I felt like I was being pushed down into the mattress and I couldn't move a muscle. I could open and close my eyes, even look around the room, but I couldn't physically move. Towards the end I was shaking a little, possibly a reflex action from trying to fight whatever seemed to be holding me, and after maybe about a minute of paralysis I could finally sit up and relax.

However, I also seemed to experience different effects to others. Most reports I've read explain the sound of buzzing in your ears, yet all I could hear was a very loud gusty wind with the sound of my music in the background, and somebody moving around outside my door (heading to the bathroom as I explained earlier). They also explain a feeling of static rushing up and down your body, some claiming this is our neurological system giving false readings as we try to force our limbs to move, but again I just felt the wind - To me it felt as though I was being forced into the mattress by a very powerful gusty wind I couldn't fight, and whatever was causing this wind was somehow on me.

I also experienced a somewhat unusual feeling of being unwanted, as if this 'spirit' wanted me out yet was holding me down, and oddly I was relatively calm throughout. The first second or so I felt an immense panic of an unfriendly presense holding a power over me, but given I've had lucid dreams before I quickly concluded I was somewhere between both a conscious and sleeping state, and all I had to do was awake properly. Towards the end as I started shaking I then felt almost worried I was having some form of a fit, or panic attack, yet again I remained calm.

Once awake I could see I was covered in goose bumps and my hair was on end, both of which faded within a few seconds. This would surely suggest the cold gusty wind wasn't entirely in my mind. Whats more I also noticed a physical hole on the center knuckle of my right hand, around 1-2mm wide, sort of like a needle mark. This 'hole' had completely vanished when I checked again around 10 minutes later, having already shown it off once.

Being a very scientifically centered person with no belief in any afterlife or religion, and a very scientifically explained sceptical approach to paranormal activity, my own personal conclusion is that I somehow, without actually falling asleep or attempting to, ended up in a state similar to that of lucid sleeping, which I have known myself to experience in the past. However I also, almost unwillingly, believe I wasn't simply hallucinating. I believe in and have experienced a 6th sense in animals, I know and understand that they sense things us humans are incapable of, whether this is related to anything paranormal or not. Rather than hallucinating a presense that wasn't actually there, I believe this state of mind opened my senses to activity we cannot detect in a fully conscious state. That said, I'm also positively certain that I was fully awake, that I hadn't been asleep or begun to drift off.

I'm very interested in opinions, views, and most importantly - alternative conclusions to this event.

Thanks.