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