Thread: Sleep paralysis hallucinations

What kind of hallucinations have you guys experienced during Sleep Paralysis?
I'm very curious of what kinds of hallucinations other people experienced.

For example I've experienced a shadowy figure which seems to take the form of a girl, crawling towards me from the bottom of my bed.

Has anyone else have something different?

I have experienced even tactile hallucinations. I was on my bed, and I couldn't move so I started being anxious. Eventually I saw something in the background walking towards me; the girl from the movie 'The Ring'. She started breathing on my neck, and the anxiety I felt in that moment can't be described.

wow, that sounds really scary. Is lucid dreaming worth it?

I believe it is worth it because I've heard that you can do pretty much anything you want.
As long as u can imagine it anyways

It happened to me a few years ago, when I didn't even know about lucid dreaming. So yeah, it's worth it since it's not a step to have LDs

I believe what you are referring to is called hypnagogic hallucinations.

As for my experiences, I have had many crazy hallucinations. Voices, seeing demon/gollum like creatures. No matter how negative it gets, you can always cut through that shit. I use thinking or saying something positive or singing. And it is definitely worth going through a little darkness for the awesomeness that is lucidity.

But if u sing, aren't you going to lose focus and have to start the whole process over again?

Originally Posted by Chimpertainment

I believe what you are referring to is called hypnagogic hallucinations.

It can occur when transitioning into, or out of sleep. Regardless, it's not always accompanied by paralysis.

Just this morning, I saw and heard a hooded creature growl and scream at the foot of my bed. Scared the !$%& out of me, and I wasn't able to move.

I'm not used to have HI experiences, sometimes I hear explosions or voices while falling asleep but nothing really crazy.

yeah, i mean singing in your head. Hypnagogia is an extremely suggestible state of mind. So even a small influence can snowball into something huge. For example: I imagined the shape a triangle. That morphed into a tree around which a dream scene formed. Another time I visualized a square, which turned into a folded towel. As I focused on the towel, a dream scene formed around it.
That same concept works for feelings, sounds, etc.. A small negative feeling of unease, fear, doubt, can snowball into an extremely dark experience. On the other hand, a small positive vibe can make for a unbelievably blissful experience. If you can insert some positive emotion into the process, it goes a long way.

Never knew that..
So all you have to do is think about something positive, then you'll have a good dream?
Cause i dont wanna have nightmares lol

you can do that,yes. Also, if you are having trouble with nightmarish dreams, cultivating a positive feeling before sleep is a great idea. Whatever makes you feel positive and safe helps. After a while, the dark stuff loses its power because like everything else, its emotional charge is illusory.
Remember that dreams effect your mind. Your body will be fine no matter how bad a dream may get. So as long as you remain positive, by either using feeling of safety and positivity, or using your sense of humor to laugh, you will be fine.

ya...

hypnagogic = hallucinations entering sleep

hypnopompic = hallucinations exiting sleep

If you indeed do enter sleep paralysis, these hallucinations will also accompany that experience. The sleep paralysis experience is more common when waking up, and can be more frightening because the body is immobile. If you do find yourself in this situation, start blinking and move your facial muscles. The paralysis does not effect facial muscles because they are too small and the movement can help tell the body that you are awake.

I had a real sleep paralysis once - not when going into sleep or lucidity - not hypnagogic phenomena - vibrations and things.
But I tried with all my might to wake up from a lucid - having incorrect preconceptions about it being dangerous for real - "found my body" eventually - but could for the life of me not move one mm, nor scream - for quite a while - until I broke it with a head-movement.
But unlike others - I did not have hallucinations of malignancy of any kind - I was afraid of something breaking through from my dream - but nothing broke through in form of a hallucinatory perception.
Unusual, it seems.
But I was in a wild panic and thought I had lost the connection to my body and if this could be dying.

I never see anything, I just hear and feel things. I regularly feel things poking me in the back, biting me, clawing me, hugging me and its always behind me for some reason, never do I feel anything in front of me. I sleep on my side. I hear all kinds of things like music, people talking, strange high pitched noises etc. Trippy stuff. My hallucinations have gradually been getting milder over the years. I used to feel things ripping through me and I'd be worried that I'm going to get a ruptured kidney or something because it was so intense.

I always know when a dream is about to start cuz I feel like I'm free falling through the air. The minute visuals start, I know I'm dreaming.

Originally Posted by Jacen

Never knew that..
So all you have to do is think about something positive, then you'll have a good dream?
Cause i dont wanna have nightmares lol

Dreaming is completely different to sleep paralysis. Once a lucid dream starts, I'm invinsible and nothing can bother me, but in sleep paralysis I can't move, all I can do is lay there and I'm at the mercy of these hallucinations. So for example, if I start getting molested by a hallucination, theres nothing I can really do about it but lay there and wait until a dream starts. I often try grabbing these hallucinations and attacking them, but it doesn't work, the only thing that works is not reacting, but rather just observing, when I do that the hallucinations usually fade.

It's interesting how common the "something crawling from the bottom of the bed" and "gollum-like" things are. Anyway, here are some of mine:

I have had a gollum-like creature crawl down my wall, up my bed, and stare in my face, groaning the whole time. That was certainly... something.
I've had a medusa-like creature screaming in my face.
I've seen a solid black humanoid figure sitting on the end of my bed, staring at me.
I've seen shadowy cat figures out of the corners of my eyes.
I've heard classical music playing... a full orchestra. No accompanying visuals.
I've heard what sounds like a talk show or news on the radio, but too muffled for me to understand what they were saying.
I've heard people talking, but it always sounds like they're in another room, and their voices are too muffled for me to make out what they're saying.
I've heard someone call my name.
I've heard wind chimes.
I've heard very loud wind/roaring, like I'm in a wind tunnel.

I feel I will make myself very unpopular by pointing the following out - I take that upon me for the sake of "truth" or let´s say - clarification.


I went on Wikipedia and came up with something very interesting - the information there is plain wrong in critical points.
They seem to be of the erroneous opinion that the "I" in isolated sleep paralysis refers to it only occurring once.

That is not so - in fact it means it is not connected to Narcolepsy (mostly) or other medical conditions.
Since I know this - Wikipedia was discredited - but notably - even there it is not called a medical disorder - but they got the percentage wrong saying it only occurs in around 7% of healthy people.

So I went on to Stanford Medical School information - and got more puzzled - it is wrong to call ISP or in short SP a medical disorder.
In fact - half of the population experience it once or more often.
Maybe myth-busting with creating other incorrect notions is not that desirable.

http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/paralysis.html:

Sleep paralysis is most often associated with narcolepsy, a neurological condition in which the person has uncontrollable naps.

However, there are many people who experience sleep paralysis without having signs of narcolepsy. Sometimes it runs in families. There is no known explanation why some people experience this paralysis. It is not harmful, although most people report feeling very afraid because they do not know what is happening, and within minutes they gradually or abruptly are able to move again; the episode is often terminated by a sound or a touch on the body.

In some cases, when hypnogogic hallucinations are present, people feel that someone is in the room with them, some experience the feeling that someone or something is sitting on their chest and they feel impending death and suffocation. That has been called the “Hag Phenomena” and has been happening to people over the centuries. These things cause people much anxiety and terror, but there is no physical harm.

Standford links up to more sites on this:

Is Sleep Paralysis Normal? Causes, Explanations, and Stories

Such experiences are caused by what's known as sleep paralysis (or SP), a phenomenon that occurs every night in the typical sleeper to prevent him or her from acting out dreams during REM sleep

...

While sleep paralysis occurs in the typical sleeper virtually every night, the phrase itself has become synonymous with the experiences that can more precisely be referred to as awareness during sleep paralysis (ASP), or isolated sleep paralysis (iSP)

So - REM Atonia is used synonymous to SP in medical educational material linked to from Standford!

Despite being associated sometimes with narcolepsy though, awareness during sleep paralysis happens quite frequently in even the most normal of sleepers. In fact, it is said that over 50% of people will experience at least one episode of ASP during their lifetime.

To emphasize this commonality, if you experience left-over sleep paralysis when coming out of sleep it is typically not a cause for concern, even if it is extremely frightening.

It is estimated that somewhere around 1 in 5 isolated sleep paralysis experiences are accompanied by dream-like hallucinations, almost always manifesting in negative or frightening forms, projected on the hallucinater's actual physical surroundings.

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

The good news: sleep paralysis is not considered a dangerous health problem. Read on to find out more about sleep paralysis, its possible causes, and its treatment.

Sleep researchers conclude that, in most cases, sleep paralysis is simply a sign that your body is not moving smoothly through the stages of sleep. Rarely is sleep paralysis linked to deep underlying psychiatric problems.

So - I am in the 4 of 5..
Naturally you will hear more of the hallucinatory type reports..

I was about to post the section of Wikipedia where they give explanations to the underlying brain-processes and structures correlating to the hallucinations - but I refrain from that for now - needing better sources - it sounds likely - go look yourself - got to do with evolutionary pre-settings of our danger detecting in the midbrain (notably the amygdala) going wild on the basis of not moving - every stimulus is treated as a real threat - erring on the side of caution makes loads of sense for survival..


What am I on about?

If the medical profession does not call it a disorder - it is not by definition.
If that is not enough - 50 % prevalence should do the trick.

Medical literature uses SP=REM-atonia - actually recommending to call awareness while SP/REM-atonia ASP ("A" as in aware), but as a side note.
ISP can occur - and usually does - several or lots of times - the "I" means isolated as in not connected to a disorder - not count of occurance.
RISP seems to be unnecessary complication bordering on misinformation - see Wikipedia.

To call something (A)(I)SP - you need not have hallucinations going with it.



I do know, why the valiant efforts on this site have been made - having IASP (with me half of the population) myself and experienceing lucid roadblock when I came across Nick Newport - that did some real damage to my LDing, I believe.
Waiting for it - namely - even worse - I knew what I was waiting for.
Instead of learning to DILD.

But guess what - that would be him wanting people to fail after following the videos - why else buy something off him??

I was convinced the "facts" about calling things by the wrong terms (something I do intensely disapprove of - hence this post) presented on here were all fully justified.
But not any more.

Did I misunderstand something or someone somewhere?
This is an honest question - I am well able to take my own eventual bs back and "repent".
If convinced..

Originally Posted by StephL

I do know, why the valiant efforts on this site have been made - having IASP (with me half of the population) myself and experienceing lucid roadblock when I came across Nick Newport - that did some real damage to my LDing, I believe.
Waiting for it - namely - even worse - I knew what I was waiting for.
Instead of learning to DILD.

But guess what - that would be him wanting people to fail after following the videos - why else buy something off him??

I was convinced the "facts" about calling things by the wrong terms (something I do intensely disapprove of - hence this post) presented on here were all fully justified.
But not any more.

Did I misunderstand something or someone somewhere?
This is an honest question - I am well able to take my own eventual bs back and "repent".
If convinced..

I suffer from incidents of sleep paralysis, and have since I was a child. I've actually participated in a study on it. No, they don't have to involve hallucinations. I initially began my efforts toward lucid dreaming because of the bouts of sleep paralysis. I wanted to make them less "scary". I read that some people could use them as a springboard into a lucid dream. This does and doesn't work for me, though - I'll explain why. First, however, I'd like to make a clearer distinction between Sleep Paralysis as an "isolated incident" and the sensation of REM Atonia as you enter a WILD:

What many WILDers are actually trying to achieve is maintaining awareness through REM atonia, until the point that they begin dreaming. My sleep paralysis episodes are extremely different from my attempts to WILD. Anybody who has had bouts of sleep paralysis and has also completed a successful WILD would probably understand what I'm talking about when I say that they are VERY distinct and different. In addition, you don't need to achieve what many LDers colloquially refer to as "sleep paralysis" (they mean REM atonia) in order to successfully WILD. I would say that too many potential LDers get waaaaay too hung up on achieving it, to the point where they don't see the forest for the trees. I don't even notice the muscle paralysis when I'm WILDing, because it's not what I'm waiting for - I'm waiting for the glimmers of the dream to begin appearing, for a dreamlet to latch onto, or for my visualization to become "real". And even if I do notice it, it's not at all the same feeling as an incident of sleep paralysis. I will still get the "wind tunnel" sound, but that tends to pass.

When I have a bout of sleep paralysis, generally, there is an overlay of fear. This is completely detached from logic. I logically know that what I'm experiencing is not real, but I'm still quite afraid. That has subsided over time - these days, I just think, "Oh, not this bull**** again". Generally, I don't often have auditory or visual hallucinations. Usually, I will wake up, and... just not be able to move. When I was younger, before I knew what it was, I would panic. Sometimes I'll wake up and try to move, but my body won't cooperate, and I'll end up flopping into a really weird position and then get afraid that I'm going to suffocate.

Other times, I'm awake/partly awake, but all of the willpower in the world cannot make my body move. That's scary enough, but when you add in the hallucinations, it's hard not to be afraid of something crawling down your wall while it screams at you and you're unable to move. I've learned to relax and either melt back into sleep, or try to sit up out of my body. The out-of-body experiences this causes don't feel the same as a DILD or WILD, though.

So basically, while I have been able to WILD, and I can regularly DILD, I personally have not been able to successfully use an incident of sleep paralysis as a bridge into a lucid dream. Occasionally, if I relax, I can "sit up" out of my body, but generally I will find myself in the void and attempting to move is like moving through molasses. The experience of an actual successful WILD is very, very different from experiencing sleep paralysis.

I'm not really sure what you're trying to say, though. I didn't even know who Nick Newport is. I would, however, be incredibly suspicious of someone who wants money to "teach" me how to dream, when some very solid FREE resources exist (right on these forums!). I would agree that there is a lot of misinformation on SP and how it relates to lucid dreaming, and too many LDers get hung up on the idea of SP, REM atonia, and how they relate to WILD. If you're saying that focusing on SP or REM atonia as a means to an end wastes dreamers' time, I agree with that.

I have not yet WILDed - just came towards vibrations and a beautiful optic hallucination, and my feeling goes - if I wouldn´t have been so excited - I could have entered a dream from there.
So I do not know how the difference will be like - but a lot of what I read goes along what you say - the entering of a WILD is most - and really most often not at all combined with SP.
Looking forward to finding out myself - a lot actually.
As said before - I only know the waking up side of affairs - cheers for your great answer.

If you're saying that focusing on SP or REM atonia as a means to an end wastes dreamers' time, I agree with that.

I am saying that - yes.
Not based on much experience admittedly.
But it was like that for me, when trying to follow the Newport videos - a waste of time.