Thread: Unintentional Frightening Hypnagogia

You are certainly suffering from sleep paralysis.

Originally Posted by Shift

Every night when you fall asleep, you go through a series of sleep cycles. These are divided into the N-REM (non-REM) and REM (rapid eye movement) stages. Though it is possible to dream in both NREM and in REM sleep, during REM sleep your body makes intense efforts to keep you from acting out your dreams and hurting yourself. It does this by completely paralyzing your body, except for your eyes and diaphragm, so that your muscles cannot move and you are completely relaxed. This is called REM atonia (atonia = lack of tone, your muscles are not tensed, but relaxed).

Sometimes, you can have a problem with REM atonia. This can happen when it fails to kick in and you act out your dreams (REM Behavioral Disorder), or when it happens when it is not supposed to- when you are awake. This paralysis of your body, abnormally and outside of REM sleep, is called Sleep Paralysis.

Sleep paralysis can happen randomly, and it often does a few times over a person's life. They may be laying in bed, either having woken up from sleep or just about to fall asleep, and find themselves completely paralyzed. In some people, it happens MUCH more frequently, and this is called Isolated Sleep Paralysis (ISP). In those who suffer from disorders such as narcolepsy it can also occur very frequently, but since it is related to other disorders it is not called Isolated Sleep Paralysis, just Sleep Paralysis.

A good read on SP

Some of the best advice you will be given is to learn to use your sleep paralysis episodes to lucid dream, turning it into a positive and beneficial part of your life that you look forward to rather than fear.

Another is to try to moderate your fear, as your own fear will cause your hallucinations (all of your symptoms, except for the paralysis, are just hallucinations) to get scarier and scarier.

Try not to sleep laying on your back in the supine position, as it will happen most often in that position. Try to reduce stress, and not get too exhausted, as this will exacerbate your SP.

There are quite a number of members on Dreamviews who commonly and regularly experience ISP, I am sure some of them will be able to give you firsthand advice.

Kudos to you, Video_Junkie for not jumping to conclusions and assuming you are being abducted by aliens or molested by evil spirits. I'm glad your research brought you to DreamViews instead of... say... to this site:
http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/200...ow-people.html

I hope that link doesn't give everyone the wrong idea, and start a shadow people riot My point is only that this experience is very common, safe, and normal. No reason at all to be afraid. Like you've already said, this is normal hypnagogia / sleep paralysis. Troughout history, this has been seen as everything from demonic posession, to alien abduction, to ghost hauntings, ect. Do an internet search on "Old Hag" or "Succubus" to see what I mean. The experience is filtered through our world view to give life to our mythology.

What you are experiencing is the sometimes rocky transition from wakefulness into a dream state. As real as it seems, you are actually just dreaming you are floating around your room. That is not your real room, only your mind's reconstruction of it. The natural reaction is fear, because this is such an unfamiliar state to be in. I've always assumed the terrifying hallucinations are generated by the fear, not the other way around.

I get this all the time. I get the textbook Sleep Paralysis, with all the associated hallucinations. I sense presences, see shadowy figures, hear loud sounds, feel vibrations and body distortions. This is what led me to lucid dreaming in the first place. I can induce it at will, and it is no longer frightening. The trick is to relax through it, as you did when you floated up out of your bed. If you sense a presence with you, ask it for help, embrace it, or expect kindness from it. Dreams work on expectations, so try and keep your expectations positive and inquisitive. With a little patience, you can turn it into an amazing experience.

Here is one good example from my dream journal:
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...653#post951653

As you get more comfortable with the odd feeling, it will be less frightening and more FUN! Just imagine, you can experience your wildest dreams with that same vividness and realness you felt in your brief floating. When people recount their lucid dreams, they are not just rambling off some brief imaginary daydream. They are recounting something that felt as real as real life. Sometimes more vivid than real life.

People are always trying to prove Out of Body Experiences are 'real' by attempting experiments like the one you suggested. As cool as it would be, none of the experiments have ever worked. It seems like it would be the easiest thing in the world to prove, but sadly, so far it is impossible. Obviously I'm still holding out a little hope, because it would be one of the greatest discoveries in human history.

Originally Posted by Video_Junkie

It has never been my intention to screw around with Lucid Dreaming or OBE's or Astral Projection. Yet throught my entire life (I am 38 now) I have had semi-regular hynogogic experiences which are both terrifying and unintentional. My mist recent was was ten minutes ago, so I searched online and found this forum. Hopefully I will get some intelligent replies to my situation.

Let me start by saying that I have never had a 'pleasant' hyonogig experience. A few years ago I went searching online to find out what was happening to me, and found out the name for it was most likely hypnogogia. I would be asleep, or I guess almost asleep' and then I would feel paralyzed or more accurately held down by a malicious presence while I was forced out of my body. Each and every experience is accompanied by the feeling of an evil presence. There is no joy here. The worst one i ever experienced was last year when I was falling asleep and felt the familiar paralysis as I rolled out of my body and onto the floor. It was as though I was in 2 places at once (asleep on the bed AND awake on the floor). I tried crawling along the floor into the corner of the room when a hand grabbed my arm and strating pulling me toward it very roughly. Luckily, I jolted back awake. I was scared as hell. It felt very real and I was convinced there was some evil spirit trying to'get' me. Another time I was asleep and then got that paralysis and heard footstpes coming up the stairs while something strong held me down again, and a light in the hallway was on that should not have been. When I awoke, the light was not on and everything was as it should be. I cannot stress enough how REAL the experience is, however.

Just now, I had the experience again. This time, I decided to not fight it and just let it happen and see where it lead. As I heard the familiar ringing/buzzing sound and my body sliding out of my body I said to myself, let it happen. I tried floating up to the top of the room. It worked. I even saw my pillow release it depression from my head and the blankets on top of me move with my ascension. Then I came back down. There was less of the sense of 'evilness' this time but still scary as hell. I tried getting into positions that would help me see the rrom from a different angle so that when I awoke I could remmeber the name of a book, or the placement of a certain bject in the room, so that I could prove I had actually gone out of my body during the experience. I didn't get that far however. Starting tonight I am going to have my girlfriend write a long number (that I will not look at) on a piece of paper and place it in the room somewhere that I cannot see while I am awake, and I will try to float up to it next time I have one of these.

The only consistent theme to all of this is that about 80% of the experience happen during daytime naps, rather than night time sleeps. I get little sleep at night so I try to make up for it in the day. The other mitigating factor is that I am usually quite stressed out when these things happen, although I had them as a small child as well so I can't really explain that.

If anyone can shed some light on what and why this is happening, and what I can do with it (because it seems to be a stepping stone to some other consciousness) I would be grateful. I live in Toronto Canada an would love to meet anyone who has this experience as well. I figure if I'm npot even trying to get to this state, I will probably have an easy time achieving some of the results a lot of people on this website are trying to achieve with LD's and the like. My fina question is this: why are these experiences so often associated with a malevolent presence? And what is the horrible ringing sound I hear just before I leave my body?

Paul

Sounds rough, but, its interesting that it happens on its own. I've experienced SP a couple of times, most of them automatic but the last three I experienced(one was yesterday) were due to me trying to get to SP. I haven't had any of these entities, mostly heavy body, numbness, so, I wasn't able to feel the way my body was positioned, sounds such as beeping and yesterday, got some green and purple colors swirling with my eyelids closed. Considering you are getting so far without doing anything means that you can probably get a LD easily compared to others here that have to work for months on end to get one. As for your little experiment with the number, if you are indeed having an OBE, you won't be able to see the number. The reason is from what I've read, the room can change when you OBE and even if you get the same room, the number won't be there/changes, something along those lines. Anyways, keep us updated on that. Would love to see what the results are. BTW, what you are trying to do is called remote viewing if I recall correctly and welcome to dreamviews

Originally Posted by Robot_Butler

Kudos to you, Video_Junkie for not jumping to conclusions and assuming you are being abducted by aliens or molested by evil spirits. I'm glad your research brought you to DreamViews instead of... say... to this site:
http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/200...ow-people.html

I hope that link doesn't give everyone the wrong idea, and start a shadow people riot My point is only that this experience is very common, safe, and normal. No reason at all to be afraid. Like you've already said, this is normal hypnagogia / sleep paralysis. Troughout history, this has been seen as everything from demonic posession, to alien abduction, to ghost hauntings, ect. Do an internet search on "Old Hag" or "Succubus" to see what I mean. The experience is filtered through our world view to give life to our mythology.

What you are experiencing is the sometimes rocky transition from wakefulness into a dream state. As real as it seems, you are actually just dreaming you are floating around your room. That is not your real room, only your mind's reconstruction of it. The natural reaction is fear, because this is such an unfamiliar state to be in. I've always assumed the terrifying hallucinations are generated by the fear, not the other way around.

I get this all the time. I get the textbook Sleep Paralysis, with all the associated hallucinations. I sense presences, see shadowy figures, hear loud sounds, feel vibrations and body distortions. This is what led me to lucid dreaming in the first place. I can induce it at will, and it is no longer frightening. The trick is to relax through it, as you did when you floated up out of your bed. If you sense a presence with you, ask it for help, embrace it, or expect kindness from it. Dreams work on expectations, so try and keep your expectations positive and inquisitive. With a little patience, you can turn it into an amazing experience.

Here is one good example from my dream journal:
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/...653#post951653

As you get more comfortable with the odd feeling, it will be less frightening and more FUN! Just imagine, you can experience your wildest dreams with that same vividness and realness you felt in your brief floating. When people recount their lucid dreams, they are not just rambling off some brief imaginary daydream. They are recounting something that felt as real as real life. Sometimes more vivid than real life.

People are always trying to prove Out of Body Experiences are 'real' by attempting experiments like the one you suggested. As cool as it would be, none of the experiments have ever worked. It seems like it would be the easiest thing in the world to prove, but sadly, so far it is impossible. Obviously I'm still holding out a little hope, because it would be one of the greatest discoveries in human history.

I've heard about "Succubus", supposdly they steal your energy if you are in contact with them when you OBE. Also, remember reading people's accounts of OBE and in one case, someone said that they saw someone sitting at the bottom of their bed licking their teeth. Scared the hell out of me and I've decided not to OBE because of those two cases and a couple of other things I've heard which might be true.

daytime naps? classic

sleep paralysis usually happens because of bad sleep habits

also, instead of fighting the paralysis, the alternative is to close your eyes and literally fall into a dream. the hag won't follow you into the dream, and you'll wake up naturally

I dont think there any good answers why almost everyone perceives the hag, the pressure, the evil presence in a sleep paralysis. reality is strange, the answers are even stranger

wow...your so lucky to be able to get it that easily...

I've read about a lot of situations where people even physically 'see' evil beings sitting ontop of them during SP. also i think it's very common to feel hands grabbing you.

It can be a frightening expieriance but personally i think your paranoia about the whole situation is worse. thankfully i've never had a scary experience so I'm not that sure.

I don't think continuing to ignore whats happening to you will help.

I would continue to explore the phenominon--based on your last experiance it wasn't that bad.

Also read some things on how to get rid of evil spirits etc. that would probably help tremendously. good luck.

I've always subscribed to the "Blind Spot" or Charles Bonnet theory for these types of visual hallucinations:

Originally Posted by Robot_Butler

Thats a great description of Old Hag. People often forget to explain the way the visual aspects of Old Hag work. Its not just random hallucinations, or dreams overlapping reality. I'm sure I won't explain this right, but maybe it will encourage someone who knows more about this to correct me

Basically, you have a blind spot in your vision. It is always there. You can test it by focusing on an object, then bringing your fingers in from the sides of your vision to the center. Don't focus on your fingers, just see them move while keeping focused on one spot. You will see your fingers disappear when they reach a point around the center of your field of vision.

In normal life, your brain fills in this blind spot with what it assumes to be there. This happens automatically, based on the surrounding context, short term memory of what you just saw, since your eyes are always moving. When you are sleeping, your brain does not have any context to use to fill in your blind spot. Your brain still wants to fill in this blind spot, because it is programmed to. So, basically, it fills the blind spot in with dream imagery. This can happen when you are awake in a totally dark room also, and focus on one single spot for too long. Your thoughts start to appear in your blind spot.

The fixed position of your blind spot in relation to your vision explains why hallucinations of this kind are often out of scale with their environment, change in size, have a lack of depth perception, bob around, ect. Its like when you have an afterimage burned into your vision. It follows where your eyes move, and your brain can't make sense of its positon in space.

Its called Charles Bonnet Syndrome. It commonly occurs when your eyes are receiving a lack of information. Your brain fills in the gaps.

Everyone posting in this thread should read this article. You won't be sorry.
http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=604

that article was interesting, that part about the brain compensating for a shortage of visual stimuli, reminded me of sensory deprivation, though only vision is affected in that syndrome