sleep paralysis hallucinations

[Baliset]

so last night after i woke up around 2:45am and went back to bed at 4am i had a series of hallucinations while in a state of sleep paralysis.

i had approximately 4 but only 2 of them seem worht mentioning:

hallucination 1: i was woken up by the very clear sound of a piano playing. it was playing something that sounded almost exactly like the intro/main theme for the King Diamond album THEM. so needless to say this scared the fuck out of me but because i was in sleep paralysis i couldn't move and finally i made some kind of transition from being asleep to being awake and although it didn't feel like i made the transition the music wasn't really there anymore.

hallucnation 2: i heard someone come into my room and because i immediately thought it was my roomate, it was him who i saw walk by my bed and walk back towards my door. then i saw him start to flap his arms up and down and he kept getting faster and faster at flapping as if he was majorly freaking out! and then again there was a transition to being awake and he was gone.

the other two involved something crawling on top of me in bed and seeing a guitar gig bag right next to my face. these weren't as freaky and my memory of them is a bit hazy but its the first two that really kinda creeped me out.

thoughts?

 

[xfer]

i have never had sleep paralysis and i don't really understand it! wow!

you should try eating some MSG before you go to bed and see if you can enhance these.

the second hallucination doesn't have anything particularly special about it i can pinpoint but it still REALLY creeped me out!

also, last night i had weird dreams, too...a really really long one involving Josh Seipp having a fling with Azar Nafisi!

 

[goatschool]

there's a lot of writing on this topic, greg. the 'crawling on top of' sensation is classic, and part of the whole 'terrible hag' night visitor experience.

i think they could be a whole lot more intense, but your analysis probably quelled a lot of that.

i think a lot of this is accessible via a quick google.

i have a lifelong series of episodes, intermittent, that entail the color orange saturating everything around me, and a really harsh buzzing noise that gets worse the more i struggle. and of course, i'm completely paralyzed.

i remember on one occasion, at around 12 years old, i was convinced that i had actually yelled out for anyone to come to help me, but no one in the house recalls hearing anything during the night.

 

[minxnim]

whoa

 

[The Dope]

Fuck sleep paralysis. Frankly, I had a week during my freshman year in which I experience sleep paralysis almost every time I went to sleep. It really made me not want to go to sleep for quite a while afterwards. Since then I have only had relatively rare occurrances, but still, that panic feeling really does have a way of unsettling you for hours after waking up.

 

[Baliset]

funny enough, i first started experiencing sleep paralysis when i was in college as well. since it was at the time that i was going through anxiety and depression issues i figured they were all linked together somehow.

 

[Baliset]

nick: i haven't actually done a lot of research on the topic because i guess part of me is feeling like the truth behind it will disappoint me. much the same way i don't try to understand lucid dreams because i *like* the random-ness of the phenomenon and it makes it more exciting to experience.

 

[goatschool]

no truths! only shifting perspectives and interpretations.

 

[Baliset]

well then that might be something fun to look into. it seemed so surreal.

 

[Sandfire]

I have had very similar experiences. Often times they occur when I wake up in the middle of the night/early morning and then try to go back to sleep 20 minutes later. I will feel my body falling asleep and my mind will start to fight against it. I'll try to move around but it takes an extreme amount of effort to even move my head the slightest bit. Then I'll start hallucinating that all sorts of weird things are happening in my room.

 

[minxnim]

i often think there's a rabbit standing on my face when i am sleeping and then i wake up in a panic to find out that there really was a rabbit standing on my face when i was sleeping

 

[minxnim]

did i just post that?

 

[inkybmistro]

no turning back, now.

 

[Firedwarf]

I was trying to induce sleep paralysis this summer but didn't have any luck. I'll keep trying though.

I guess it's part of the technique to achieve WILDs (wake induced lucid dreaming). The idea is to keep your brain awake while your body falls asleep. You're supposed to like, count to 100 as you're lying in bed and repeat in between the numbers something like "I am dreaming" to keep your brain 'aware' or something. Sleep paralysis is supposed to occur before the dreaming starts. Anyway, I got really close a few times and started getting some unreal visuals but they excited me so much that I woke up. My favorite was this big stick that had these ladybugs swarming all over it, and eventually the whole stick was covered in moving ladybugs. It looked more real and vivid than stuff I see in real life.

 

[Nut Butter]

the second hallucination doesn't have anything particularly special about it i can pinpoint but it still REALLY creeped me out!

dood I felt the same way... Shit gave me shivers as I was reading it.
Greg, all I can think of saying is try to enjoy it! I wish more unusual sleep-related stuff happened to me. I'm happy if I can remember a measly oneiric fragment.

 

[Ashmare]

I was trying to induce sleep paralysis this summer but didn't have any luck. I'll keep trying though.

Why anyone would want to induce the hellish reality that is sleep paralysis is beyond me. I've been having to deal with it on a weekly basis since I was about 5, and believe me, it isn't fun. The things I've seen.... hoo boy.

 

[Firedwarf]

See, your post just makes me want to do it more.

 

[The Dope]

Yeah, I tend to agree that it's not something I would go out of my way to try and experience. I mean, sure I guess it's kind of cool after the fact, but during the whole ordeal, it really sucks, at least as I have experienced it.

 

[Firedwarf]

Were you familiar with sleep paralysis and junk before it happened to you?

 

[The Dope]

Nope, I actually didn't figure out there was a name for it until almost a year after it started happening.