The BIG sleep paralysis and old hag topic Part II

It all statred a couple years ago in the summer. I would experience all the symptoms of sleep paralysis (except for the malevolent presence) and I would have no idea what happened. When I experience sleep paralysis, it’s usually earlier than the time that I regularly wake up (around 11). So I would wake up around 8 or so, I found discover that I cannot move and I have difficulty breathing. I also have the fear that if I let myself back to sleep I will never wake up. So, using all the willpower I can muster, I try to move my leg or I try breathing hard in hopes that the rest of my body will gain conciousness. Usually I am able to move my leg enough that I do completely wake up. The first ten or so times this has happened to me I was really scared and I thought that I was the only one who experiences this phenomemon, but I got used to it eventually and I usually let myself back to sleep. Now tell me, who else regularly experiences sleep paralysis?

Yeah, I only get it if I sleep on my back or side. Sometimes it feels like my chest is being crushed and sometimes I feel pain in a certain part of my body like someone is shoving a needle inside of me. It’s a good way to leave your body, sometimes I like to roll on my side and I find myself out. When I’m out my experience’s are not always pleasant. I don’t like sleep paralysis that much, because it’s scary.

Never had it yet… but the Old Hags sound like kind of a turn-off for the whole LDing thing. Speaking of which, I used to have weird things when I was (I think) still mostly awake. I remember 3 in particular.

  1. I was just gripped by some weird terror and very distinctly heard an unpleasant voice say, “Where is your family now?” I got so nervous I actually checked on my parents instead of vice-verca… :happy:

  2. I was walking down the stairs of our house, and my vision went behind me. I looked like a simple silhouette, and then “I” tripped and when I landed, a green light flashed and then faded in my head.

  3. I think I was actually not even in bed on this one. It’s in my old house, although at the time of having it, I lived in that house. I was just sitting there with my sister and my old babysitter watching TV when a big hairy white monster chased us out of the room coming from a door that doesn’t exist in that house. It all happened in fast motion, and I had an aerial veiw, like I was a camera in the corner of the ceiling… but it was higher up than the ceiling was.

Haven’t had anything like it since though…

All this sounds interesting. Getting and Old Hag was my worst fear about LDing when I started but after reading this it sounds like it’s pretty… unfixed. I’ve heard it described everywhere from “The scariest experience of my life” to “Kinda cool.” And it sounds like a great shortcut into LD. So I’m not gonna hope for one, but if I get one… one kiss coming up. Then maybe I’ll demand a gift. What are some of the gifts people here have gotten? I haven’t heard any examples. All I’ve heard is that they’re really cool… :cool_laugh:

I would like to share some thoughts about SP. I have a forum about Sleep Praralysis, and one of the members told me some very interestings things about it. I hope it havent’ been said before. If so, sorry… :shy:

Basically, it seems like light may have an impact on how much melatonine the body generates during sleep.

For example, if you take a nap in the afternoon, there will be some sunlight coming in your room, therefore, the body will generate less melatonine than the usual, which will make your sleep lighter and may increase the chance to have SP.

Also, it could increase the chance to LD.

When i look back, i realized that during the summer i had a lot of LD and SP during naps, precisely because there is a lot of sunlight.

If you have any thoughts about that, any comment willl be welcome…

The first time I had SP, I didn’t know anything about it. I was afraid as hell and worried that the room I was staying in might be haunted (silly me). But then, when I moved into another place, I once again had SP. This time, I started to think that it was not the room, it was I that might go crazy and would need a help from a psychiatrist. It was just recently when I started reading about Lucid Dreaming that I became aware that SP was actually common. With this knowledge, I tried to induce LD when experiencing SP a couple of days ago and it worked! Too bad the dream faded away as soon as I became lucid and tried to change things (and failed). Ah well…

Anyway, in my most recent SP (the one I was able to induce LD, if not just momentarily), I actually managed, for the first time after a countless number of SP experiences before, to see a dementor-like figure at the end of my bed. IT WAS DAMN SCARY! I quickly realized it was all just happening in my head and tried to close my eyes and calm down, after which I felt my body sinked into the bed, and suddenly… I was in a dream. I then shared this experience to my friend. He told me that what I saw might not be a hallucination. It could be the real thing. I then told him about the sleep paralysis phenomenon and whatnot. He then argued that instead of giving one hallucination, sleep paralysis actually enabled one to see supernatural things. Yeah right…

:wave: hello asbereth, welcome to the LD4all forum.
SP must be terrifying if you don’t know what it is or the reason for it. I’m really glad that more people are now hearing about it in the commonly used media.

The other night I had an “old Hag” experience, here it is.

Im lying in bed almost dozzed off, when I hear a noise. It sounded like a thud. I couldn’t figure out what the noise was because everything was so dark. Probably because my eyes were closed.

As I’m trying to figure out what the noise was, I get this feeling that something was in the room with me. It was very dark, but it felt like it was all around me. A heavy sort of feeling. Then for a split second I see what looks like 2 glowing, green eyes.

The eyes were gone, but I could still feel the presence. Out of curiosity and fear I tried to find whatever the thing was.

Noises errupted from downstairs, noisy family woke me up!

The strange thing is I remember lieing in my bed the whole time.

My experience (Ill try to tell aparently related things):
I allways had some afraid of dark as long as I remember. And I remember at least after my 8 years old (21 now) to been having frequent SP experiences (I mean frequent it’s serious) not with hags. I never knew what it was, anyway till now…
There was some experience at that age when me and my sister used to sleep in the same bedroom, I “woke up” aparently, (I think the panic we feel is not any hag, it’s the feeling of being paralysed awaken and not controlling the thing or alucinations, of course it can be cheated). As I will say later it’s usual to have alucinations during that state because we are half dreaming but I never had one before. So I started the panic: couldn’t move, started trying to scream but nothing came out. So I screamed louder (some muscles have some control during the state) and started hearing my voice very low, and I got an answer like “shut up!” I couldn’t really recognize the voice so I suposed it was my sister. When I asked her that day, she didn’t remember anything and she wasn’t in bedroom that time. It came recorded in my head the moment but I misplaced the timings and thought it was a dream (as many people think).
I continued to have experiences and feeling very bad with it, very scary, and started to naturally “develop defenses against”, like never sleep in in supine position (when I do I allways get SP), and got a way to get out of it during the state, by trying to roll my body, reaching the lamp with the hand, allways works (muscle stimulation).
Casually I started telling about it to friends and they allways looked at me strange, they never had it. Recently (3 years ago) started to get more frequent. It was my bad sleeping habits, leaved my parents home and started sleeping irregularly (this is not good for SPs). Some day I had another sound alucination and started getting alarmed, and one day I had one falling asleep, never had it asleep but it’s documented also to happen, I was very tired.
I don’t know why it came to me “Sleep paralysis” keywords, “that’s something I’ve never searched about let’s try it”. I found this en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis . “Wow!” I allways knew that painting but it never looked so familiar to me! “That’s it!” As I continued reading the article I first time knew the monster.
I recomend this search google.com/search?q=sleep+pa … S:official .
I think it’s not something to play about it’s not a desease but it seems to be a symthom for a lot of deseases, like narcolepsy or head tumors, so if you have it like me, search medical help imediately! seriously.

Ok, the last but not the least, the “common” experience:
-Waking up.
-Trying to get out of bed and the body completely shut down.
-The eyes move and some basic muscles.
-(never saw anything because I allways close the eyes afraid of seeing something :smile:
-Sometimes I have the tactile feelings, grabing my arm or something
-Weight in chest
-I think I can remember looking at bedroom and seeing strange things
-Then sometimes goes naturaly but sometimes it doesn’t stop.
-So I started to try to move if you keep trying that works.

From wikipedia:
Sleep paralysis: During REM sleep the body is paralyzed by a mechanism in the brain, because otherwise the movements which occur in the dream would actually cause the body to move. However, it is possible for this mechanism to be triggered before, during, or after normal sleep while the brain awakens. This can lead to a state where a person is lying in his or her bed and he or she feels frozen. Hallucinations may occur in this state, especially auditory ones. People also generally report feeling a crushing sensation on their chest (possibly because they try to consciously control their breathing). People trying to lucid dream sometimes try to trigger this state, or accidentally trigger this state, while using a waking induction of lucid dreaming (WILD) technique to enter a lucid dream directly when falling asleep.

I think it’s the best explanation. I think alucination come from mixing the dream with reality (humm alien abductions…). Anyway after that came clear to me not afraid anymore. Now go get some sleep! :wink:

Have you seen a doctor yet, Dubaiss? What did they say? Do you have narcolepsy or a head tumour? I have met a lot of people who experience sleep paralysis, and in my case, it runs in the family. None of those serious diseases do.

Sleep paralysis is uncomfortable, it can be very frightening when we don’t know what it is, but it is harmless. I have had my share of it, it used to be scary, but now it is only annoying.

Welcome to LD4all, Dubaiss! :wave: I hope you will find the information in this forum very useful, there is a lot to read, both about sleep paralysis and other interesting topics. There are just so many nice people here, and I look forward to seeing you here in the future. There is also a “Hi, I’m new here” topic in the gathering subforum, where you can post an introduction if you’d like to. Sweet dreams!

:cool:

I’m not trying to frighten you all, sorry, I really admire how you can describe such things, dreaming is a really richfull experience and can teach a lot, I’ll try to read all the site has my spare time let me do that. I only said that because I read that in the internet in “narcolepsy networks”.
I made my “personal discovery” about a month ago, and I will try to tell to every interested person. It seems to be a scientific fact not well explained :smile:. My sister worked on psychiatry and is studing psicology so I will try to tell her. Has these “networks” describe it sometimes happens frequently in a family. My other sister had sonambolism problems. Problematic? I don’t think so but it causes problems to persons who doesn’t know about it (it’s not well discussed). Ok, my problem: afraid of darkness (as something allready happened), and a problem in my back :smile:, I used to sleep allways to the same side. Sure that where no big problems if everyone knew about it :smile:. So now I’m not really worried about it but I think we should help science :smile:.

PS: I’m used to “forum misintepretations” I don’t speak english very well, so try to take smoth everything I say.

Well, Asbereth, if it makes you feel better to identify it as all in your head, be comfortable. These sort of experiences (both lucidity and Old Hag) tend to make many people reevaluate just what their understanding of reality is, but to each their own.

I will remark that I find Moogle’s comment that “more people are hearing about it in the commonly used media” interesting. It is a comment upon the loss of connection that modern urban society has with the continuity of human experience. For centuries, such phenomenon were commonly known by the majority worldwide. After all, where do you think our word “nightmare” comes from?

Eoghan

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mara_%28folklore%29
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare
Found this some days ago.

Wait… I always thought that nightmare and sleep paralysis are two different things. All of this time, I always thought that nightmare is a ‘bad dream’ (like if you’re having an accident or something in your dream), and sleep paralysis is something that occurs when you’re not totally asleep. Ah well.

Anyway, maybe this is old for most of you, but I found out that whenever I have an SP, it would almost always lead me to WILD. Instead of trying to wake up, try to calm down and sleep! You would then see the hypnogogia images (or whatever they’re called) at the back of your head, and literally stepping into your dream knowing it. Well, most of the time I lost conciousness, but it’s still pretty cool.

They are: but quite a few people experience the Old Hag phenomena during SP.

Hi, this is my first post

I stumbled upon this site after stumbling upon the wikipedia article on lucid dreaming. I’m pretty sure that i’ve had two “old hag” experiences before. The first involved a summon from Final Fantasy 10, Yojimbo, appearing from my closet and scaring the crap out of me. The second, and worst of the two, involved seeing ghosts of currently alive relatives passing over me. I went for hours thinking they had died. Is that kind of experience normal? I plan on taking up lucid dreaming as a hobby, but now I’m worried that these will begin to occur frequently.

they might, but only if you have SP often,

Well I failed miserably at my first LD dreaming attempt. I’d post the journal but most of it would not be relevant to this topic. This part is though.

Before the match could start I appeared in my bed having to go to the bathroom. I walked to the bathroom, It was very dark in the hallway. The bathroom light worked and I went number one. I began to feel a presense. I turned the bathroom light off, but the hallway light would not work. I then preceded to go to my room, and i viewd my room from a pulled back perspective, either OOB or i was growing very large. I got in bed and saw what appeared to be a creature in a black cloak with a large nose. I verbally dissmissed it as tricks of the eye, and the creature who is upon the womans chest in “nightmare” agreed with me that it was indeed a trick of my eyes. It sat in the middle of the edge of my bed on the right side; It made no harmful gestures and I took it as normal for the world, said good night to it, laid in bed closed my eyes, and woke up.

It seemed jovial in fact. For reference the creature looked exactly like the one from this article sciencenews.org/articles/20050709/bob9.asp that I read earlier tonight. I got the link from the second page of this topic so it should be fine. I think I may be over my “old hag” fear.

I have the amazing ability to pretty much have SP occurences everytime iw ant. The easiest way for me to induce them is strange so I’ll describe them. Basically i go to school at 8, so I’m up at 7. I generally go to bed around 1 or so. 6 hours of sleep, and then 3 hours of wake, class from 8 to 10. After class I go to sleep in the library. I go upstairs and cus theres no couches (damn community colleges) i sleep in little wooden study cubicles. I have to sleep laying face down on a wood table. I have a wierd thing where when i sleep my throat opens up and my stomach ends up getting a massive amount of air in it. So I wake up periodically. Anyways I have class again at 12 so I can catch 2 hours of sleep this way. About an hour into sleep/wake cycle, i get the vibrations, and get sucked into the sleep paralysis. Now a few things about my SP’s that are strange. First is the fact that I’ve never seen anything at all. No old hags haha. Also, and for some reason people really seem to doubt this, but I CAN open my eyes during them. Barely, its a struggle. I certainly can’t move. If I open my eyes during the paralysis though what I see is basically what I normally would except everything seems bright and over saturated. I can normally force myself out of the experiencs by just screaming in my head. I don’t really panic anymore but i do get anxiety because I can never tell if I’m breathing or not. So normally i force myself awake after 30 seconds or so. I’ve tried numerous times to induce an OBE but no matter how hard i try to “rock” or “lift” (as I’ve read in some techniques) I can never get myself to lift out. Its frustrating because I feel so close yet so far. Last time I was more calm than normal so i tried a couple times, the closest i got was an odd feeling but thats all it was. Also i started to panic about breathing and when i woke up I had a headache, possibly from really not breathing? So i wanna try and be careful about it. Any advice on achieving an OBE would be great, It’d be neat to be able to cruise around a bit before class haha.

a few notes to january:
first of all: OBE is often associated with an NDE in other words, you seeing yourself from outside your body when you have an NDE
i think you’re referring to AP or astral projection which is actually what an OBE refers to you “project” your self out of your body

i have 2 techniques i’ve heard so no credit to me:
1: rebuilding(non SP):for example when you’re reading a book you close your eyes and try to continue “reading” the book
after a while you’ll get HI(i got until here and then i usually quit), ignore the HI and keep rebuilding the “scene” you were in before closing your eyes
2: the rope technique: while in SP, you can try to move out of your body (in this case for the rope technique) by(imagining yourself) taking hold of an imaginary rope in front of you,
allso, i don’t think you’re supposed to open your eyes:P