My Most Terrifying Experiences of Sleep Paralysis

If you haven’t ever had sleep paralysis please let me elaborate. Without getting too scientific about things, sleep paralysis happens when your mind wakes up from sleep, yet your body stays paralysed. You become fully aware of your surroundings yet you are still in the throes of rem sleep. As you can imagine, some pretty messed up things can happen. More often than not a dream induced entity will visit your bedroom as you watch it unable to move.

1. Died in my sleep
   
   For years I had heard the belief that if you die in your sleep you die in real life. Well I am here to tell you that, that is not the case. Which brings me on to my first experience with sleep paralysis.
   I had recently moved out of my parent’s house to go and study at university. Living in new surroundings with a flatmate undoubtedly put me on edge. Furthermore I was dealing with some issues in my life – my best friend had moved to Australia and I had split up with my long term girlfriend. I’m not a psychologist but I could hazard a guess that these contributed to my first sleep paralysis episode.
   The dream began on a crowded bus. My friends, both brothers and I were going to a football game – or soccer for my American readers. We were being boisterous on the bus, drinking, chanting songs. All was good. But as the bus came to a stop a crowd of casuals (football hooligans) from the opposition pilled on. Now it’s important to know that this dream was so vividly real, there was no way to know that it wasn’t. No deviation in story no change of scene characters or speed.
   Drunk on alcohol and animosity we attacked, and the thrill and comradery was electrifying. However it started to turn ugly as the person I was fighting brandished a knife and stabbed me. As I lay there bleeding out I was suddenly hit by a sense of the absurdity of violence. My last thoughts envisaged my family crying over such a senseless death. My last moments were of the pain I would leave them as I was stabbed in the head and died.
   The death jolted me awake into my room, my eyes were wide with tears of fear, my heart thundering away and my body cold with sweat. But I could not move. I remained on my back unable to move, just lying contemplating my dream for what felt like an eternity.

2. Alien Invasion
   
   Now this is where things start to get a little creepy. I have quite a large bedroom. So there is a decent amount of walking room from my bed to the bedroom door. Very spacious for an alien.
   So I was in bed asleep and although this dream wasn’t so memorable I am sure it would have been just as messed up. I again jerked awake. Paralysed. And as I looked over to the corner of my room I saw long green fingers opening my door. What crept in the corner was the classic alien, though bright green.
   Now by this time I had some instances of sleep paralysis so knew it was not real. I lay there and I was actually laughing at it. The classic cartoonish alien visage was strangely humorous – all lean, lanky and green. However the form soon changed.
   The alien suddenly grew to the height of the ceiling on eight thin green legs watching me from its massive height. Then shrank to a tarantula like green spider not dissimilar to the arachnids from Harry Potter. I was no longer laughing as it began to creep towards me, all eight legs crawling along. I had lost all thought of sleep paralysis as it began to climb on to my bed. Consumed by fear I convinced myself it was real, screaming for help. Though the screams were silent as no noise escaped my mouth, try as I may. Just as the spider began climbing on to my chest pinning me to the bed a single solitary squeak escaped my throat. And with that, I was able to sit up and the spider dissolved away in to nothingness.

3. Paranormal Activity
   
   Now this is the most recent and possibly the freakiest out of all the sleep paralysis dreams I have had. The weird thing about this is, I did not wake up from a nightmare in to a mode of sleep paralysis. But rather the sleep paralysis itself seemed to wake me up. And by sleep paralysis I mean ghost.
   I was lying asleep and I dreamed I was being stroked on the forehead which woke me up. I woke up with a sense of relieve that it was only just a dream, only for it to continue. I lay there on my back wide awake with the palms of fingers stroking my forehead and scalp from behind. The hand was seemingly coming from underneath my bed. Reaching up and clawing at me from behind my head, out of my line of vision.
   The next thing I know the bed starts to rumble. Again I realise it’s just a dream and I just laughed, utterly amazed at how crazy this is. Though again the fear overcame me as the bed started to pound as if something was literally punching the bed. What really shook me was that I was right beside it, could see the ripples in the bed as it was being hit over and over again but nothing was there. Again I tried to scream as I watched the bed shake and indent rapidly, unable to move.
   When I finally emerged, terrified from my paralysis I ran in to the living room. Turned on all the light and slept on the couch. Convinced there was a ghost waiting for me in the corner of my bed.