On the way home from Blades of Glory, we got into talking about Sleep Paralysis, aka “when you’re dreaming but you know you’re awake”. It happens to me. It happens to Dan. Paul and his brothers get them. My dad and all the uncles and aunts on his side get them. Nobody on my mom’s side knows what they’re like. They’re terrible as kids but you get used to them.
Anyway, it seems to happen when you haven’t slept for a while then fall asleep in an awkward position. My dad says it’s when you eat too much. It’s hard to describe with words other than paralysis. You’re squinting, so you can see whatever is in front of you, but you can’t move your neck, or anything else for that matter. You hear sounds, but you can’t really listen. You can’t talk, but you want to scream when you’re not used to it. To me, it feels like you just deja vu the entire time and you keep trying to wake up, fail, rewind, and try to wake up again.
Two things happen: you wake up or you fall asleep. When you wake up, it’s apparently out of nowhere. Sometimes it’s really more frustrating than scary. That chest is thumping real fast when you wake up.
Back in middle school, I saw part of a Discover Channel program that covered sleep paralysis. Since you can dream at the same time, some people figure that UFO abductees probably had sleep paralysis and dreamed of the UFOs. It causes some sort of primal fear. Some people get the sense that someone is watching them or approaching. Faceless people in robes and that sort of creepy thing. It’s scary but I don’t get them as bad as that. Most likely I’d have a heart attack.
The worst I’ve had it, and I apologize to those that’ve heard this story four or five times, was at Wally’s house. I was on his couch facing the TV. Then I couldn’t move. This isn’t that bad but it was the night that I watched The Ring for the first time. I knew it was happening, but I was thinking about how you can still experience a half-dream and that I wouldn’t have a hard time imagining a person crawling out of the TV. Anyway, I did the usual, which is to try to yell to wake myself up. This never works. You just have to wait it out or fall asleep.
I hope that was somewhat interesting. Considering everything else that goes on in the world, sleep paralysis isn’t bad at all. They’re still not that cool. The Wikipedia entry scares the hell out of me. And so does the Google image search. Have a good night!