[SmackytheFrog]

Last night I experienced something strange. I woke up and I felt paralyzed, a numb feeling throughout my entire body, and a weight pressing me down. I tried to talk, to move anything, but I couldn't. And then it was gone and I fell back to sleep, being too tired from hardly sleeping to further think about it. Then I dreamt of various situations with this phenomenon and this has left me unsure of whether or not the original happening really happened. But it felt so real.

[Perna]

Sleep paralysis. Our body locks everything when we sleep and dream so we don't "act out" our dreams and hurt ourselves (or those we're sleeping with :-) Sometimes we wake up faster than our body and surprise it

http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders...leep-paralysis

[SmackytheFrog]

I thought so, I mean I actually recently did a lot of reading into it after I watched a show on the "Old Hag" phenomenon.

Could this have been partial to the power of suggestion? Or just the result of a night of poor rest?

[pgrundy]

David Hufford's book, The Terror That Comes in the Night, presents a really interesting take on this phenomenon.

He makes the argument that unlike other folkloric takes, this one seems to have a genuine experiential base. He argues that calling it "sleep paralysis" isn't really an explanation for what happens inside the experience itself.

I personally think the world is full of lots of weird things that we don't quite understand and this may be one of them. Maybe you became interested in the experience and so the experience became interested in you.

[Charlie_J]

I had this once, and never want to repeat it. Nothing to do with any of my mental issues.

One night years and years ago I realised I was dreaming, and was really pleased because I was aware in my dream world and so I could do anything (or so I thought). A simple test of my "power" backfired, and then I found myself in the clutches of this demonic thing, squeezing me. And it was like hag, wizened physically, like an old apple.

I kept trying to wake up, and kept getting flashes of my darkened room in front of my eyes, only to to end up back in the dream again. And the thing. It knew I was trying to get out, that I was trying to wake up, and it laughed. *shivers*

No nightmare before or since has ever equalled it for sheer malevolence, and I've had some nightmares.

[SmackytheFrog]

Fortunately it wasn't accompanied by any sort of terror other than the shock of not being able to move and then repetitive dreams about not being able to move and trying to alert my fiance to get him to help me. I found the experience more intriguing than frightening though, most likely because I had been reading about it.