Sleeping Paralysis
This post is not for weak heart people, so if you are one of those or planning to sleep alone tonight, its an honest request to please just hover away to something else.
It was around 3.20 am when I heard some noise coming from my sisters room. It was a cold winter night and even a small sound could be heard clearly. It was like my sister was either struggling to speak or was suffocating, I rushed to her room, her door was not locked. The next thing that I saw sank my heart, there was nobody around and it looked as if she was just having a nightmare. I woke her up, she was sweating like hell. Now that I narrate these events to you, the goosebumps just bid a Hi to me.
She woke all of sudden, like she was trapped in her dreams, as if something was holding her from waking up. She looked around like a insane person, trying to find something. This is not something that you expect from a person who just woke up from a nightmare. A person who was having a nightmare,when woken up, thanks you and tells you about his dream, but this was different. The way she behaved was as if there was no nightmare and someone was really in her room, and that someone was definitely not pleasing. She told me that she knew she was sleeping and the light of the room was off, she was aware of everything around her, and then she felt as if someone was sitting beside her, she was unable to see her face said it was like a shadow was sitting next to her. She was trying to wake up but was unable to open her eyes, her body was not moving ans she could barely move her tongue, but she was damn sure that she was awake and this was no dream, all she could manage was make a little sound without opening her mouth and that sound barely made any sense.
That night she slept with my mother. I am not one of those who believe in superstitious things, so I took it for a nightmare, it was almost 2 years after the incident when I came to know about a Psychological phenomenon called "Sleeping Paralysis", and trust me it happens to everyone in their life span and is worstest kind of nightmare that you can imagine, cause it is not a dream, but reality.
Here is something from wikipedia that might help you understand better:
Sleep paralysis is a phenomenon in which an individual, either during falling asleep or awakening, briefly experiences an inability to move, speak, or react. This is a transitional state between wakefulness and sleep, characterized by an inability to move muscles. It is often accompanied by terrifying hallucinations to which one is unable to react due to paralysis, and physical experiences (such as strong current running through the upper body). These hallucinations often involve a person or supernatural creature suffocating or terrifying the individual, accompanied by a feeling of pressure on one's chest and difficulty breathing. Another common hallucination type involves intruders (human or supernatural) entering one's room or lurking outside one's window, accompanied by a feeling of dread.
Genetics and sleep deprivation are a major cause of sleep paralysis,[1] and it has also been linked to disorders such asnarcolepsy, migraines, anxiety disorders, and obstructive sleep apnea.[2][3] Sleeping in a fixed supine position increases the chance of sleep paralysis. The underlying mechanism is believed to result from disrupted REM sleep, when there should be a general inability to move muscle to prevent the sleeper from acting out their dreams. About 8% of people experience sleep paralysis at one point in their life.[4]
Signs and symptoms[edit]
Sleep paralysis is closely related to REM atonia, the paralysis that occurs as a natural part of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Sleep paralysis occurs either when falling asleep, or when awakening from sleep. When it occurs upon falling asleep, the person remains aware while the body shuts down for REM sleep, a condition called hypnagogic or predormital sleep paralysis. When it occurs upon awakening, the person becomes aware before the REM cycle is complete, and it is called hypnopompic or postdormital.[5] The paralysis can last from several seconds to several minutes, with some rare cases being hours, "by which the individual may experience panic symptoms"[6] (described below). As the correlation with REM sleep suggests, the paralysis is not complete: use of EOG traces shows that eye movement is still possible during such episodes; however, the individual experiencing sleep paralysis is unable to speak.[7]
Visions and hearing a demonic voice when resistance is attempted are symptoms commonly experienced during episodes of sleep paralysis. Some scientists have proposed this condition as an explanation for reports of ghost parasites and alien visits.[8][9] There are three main types of these visions that can be linked to pathologic neurophysiology: the belief that there is an intruder in the room, the incubus, and vestibular motor sensations.[8][10]
Many people who experience sleep paralysis have a sense of terror when they sense a menacing presence in the room while paralyzed—hereafter referred to as the intruder. A neurological interpretation of this phenomenon is that it results from a hyper-vigilant state created in the midbrain.[10] More specifically, the emergency response is activated in the brain when individuals wake up paralyzed and feel vulnerable to attack.[8] This helplessness can intensify the effects of the threat response well above the level typical of normal dreams, which could explain why such visions during sleep paralysis are so vivid.[8] Normally the threat-activated vigilance system is a protective mechanism to differentiate between dangerous situations and to determine whether the fear response is appropriate.[8] Some hypothesize that the threat vigilance system is evolutionarily biased to interpret ambiguous stimuli as dangerous, because "erring on the side of caution" increases survival chances.[8] This hypothesis could account for why the threatening presence is perceived as being evil.[8] The amygdala is heavily involved in the threat activation response mechanism, which is implicated in both intruder and incubus SP visions.[11]
The specific pathway through which the threat-activated vigilance system acts is not well understood. One possibility is that the thalamus receives sensory information and sends it on the amygdala, which regulates emotional experience. Another is that the amygdaloid complex, anterior cingulate, and the structures in the pontine tegmentum interact to create the vision.[10] It is also highly possible that SP hallucinations could result from a combination of these. The anterior cingulate has an extensive array of cortical connections to other cortical areas, which enables it to integrate the various sensations and emotions into the unified sensorium we experience.[10] The amygdaloid complex helps us interpret emotional experience and act appropriately.[12] This is conducive to directing the individual's attention to the most pertinent stimuli in a potentially dangerous situation so that the individual can take self-protective measures.[12]
Proper amygdaloid complex function requires input from the thalamus, which creates a thalamoamygdala pathway capable of bypassing the intense scrutiny of incoming stimuli to enable quick responses in a potentially life-threatening situation.[10][12] Typically, situations assessed as non-threatening are disregarded. In sleep paralysis, however, those pathways can become over-excited and move into a state of hyper-vigilance in which the mind perceives every external stimulus as a threat. The hyper-vigilance response can lead to the creation of endogenous stimuli that contribute to the perceived threat.[10] A similar process may explain the experience of the incubus presence, with slight variations, in which the evil presence is perceived by the subject to be attempting to suffocate them, either by pressing heavily on the chest or by strangulation.[8]
A neurological explanation hold that this results from a combination of the threat vigilance activation system and the muscle paralysis associated with sleep paralysis that removes voluntary control of breathing.[8] Several features of REM breathing patterns exacerbate the feeling of suffocation.[8] These include shallow rapid breathing, hypercapnia, and slight blockage of the airway, which is a symptom prevalent in sleep apnea patients.[10] According to this account, the subject attempts to breathe deeply and finds herself unable to do so, creating a sensation of resistance, which the threat-activated vigilance system interprets as an unearthly being sitting on her chest, threatening suffocation.[10] The sensation of entrapment causes a feedback loop when the fear of suffocation increases as a result of continued helplessness, causing the subject to struggle to end the SP episode.[8]
The intruder and incubus experiences highly correlate with one another, and moderately correlate with the third characteristic experience, vestibular-motor disorientation, also known as out-of-body experiences,[8] which differ from the other two in not involving the threat-activated vigilance system.[11] Under normal conditions, medial and vestibular nuclei, cortical, thalamic, and cerebellar centers coordinate things such as head and eye movement, and orientation in space.[10] A neurological hypothesis is that in sleep paralysis, these mechanisms—which usually coordinate body movement and provide information on body position—become activated and, because there is no actual movement, induce a floating sensation.[8] The vestibular nuclei in particular has been identified as being closely related to dreaming during the REM stage of sleep.[10] According to this hypothesis, vestibular-motor disorientation, unlike the intruder and incubus experiences, arise from completely endogenous sources of stimuli.[8]
Thanks Steve
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