emphryio

Has anyone heard of or experienced the following?
Falling asleep while COMPLETELY maintaining consiousness. Then laying there awake but unable to move?
This is a thing that happens to my mother and I.
(I'm absolutely not making this up.)

When I had a newspaper route from age 9 to 15, every weekend after I finished the route, I'd come home and go to back to sleep. I'd say 2 to 4 times a month I would fall asleep in this paralyzed fashion.
It was always frightening. I would always try immediately to pull myself back awake by great force of physical effort. Usually I would fail quite a few times before I was succesfull. When I finally did manage to pull my head up and wake up I had to start moving very quickly or I would immediately fall back into the paralyzed state.

Also I quite often would "hallicinate" that I had been successfull. I would be up walking around my room and then realize I was still paralyzed and laying in bed. (One time of thought I had succeeded in waking up and had gone to the bathroom for a piss. Found out I was wrong too late.)

Anyway my mother has also experienced this but nobody else I've mentioned it to has a clue what I'm talking about.
I wanted to mention it here and see if any of you hopefully knowledgeable science people had ever heard of such a thing.

(By the way, it has nothing to do with drugs. I've never taken any drugs nor am I affected by any sort of mental instablity.) (Not that I'm aware of anyway).

Toto

This is a fairly well known phenomenon. I think I read an article about it in the Skeptical Inquirer recently (past year or so.) It explains a lot of alien visitations and out of body experiences.

Viti

There seems to be some good info available

I found this on a simple Yahoo searchhttp://www.stanford.edu/~dement/paralysis.html

Toto

I meant of course alleged alien abductions.

[ February 18, 2002: Message edited by: Toto ]</p>

eh

Yep, this happens to me sometimes. It's funny that you mentioned it happening after you've gotten up early and then gone back to sleep - as that seems to be the exact cause of this for me. When I was in school, I'd often take a little nap after the school day was over. Some details are missing though.

Do you get the feeling, or fear of suffocation during this process? For me it seems to be the reason I try to fight off the oncoming paralysis. Oddly, if I can get past this, the rest of me will usually fall asleep.

Ever hallucinate about anything interesting while in this state? I've had bright lights, the feeling of someones presence next to me, and even a seen a demon of some sort. Weird eh?

emphryio

Darn! I'm not unique.
To the best of my memory, my only hallucinations were thinking I had woke up, and the sensation of being stabbed in the abdomen once. That wasn't fun. I think in this state a person is very susceptible to hallucinations. I think maybe you only have to remotely think of a thing and then it seems its actually happening. But usually I was only thinking about trying to wake up ASAP! (I always had a fear I could get stuck in this paralyzed state.)
Actually it would be interesting to experiment in this state, but I fear also dangerous.
Once when I was in it, instead of immediately trying to get out, I tried calling for my mother. (I couldn't talk, but I could make muffled groaning noises. She heard the noise but didn't bother to come.)
I think I could experiment with this state if I recreated the physical toll of that damm newspaper route. In particular I personally would be interested in creating music in this state. (I've had many dreams where I created music, some of the music I remember to this day).

I never thought I would suffocate. But you say often you would just go ahead and fall the rest of the way asleep, I never did that that I can remember. (Of course, most people can't remember the moments before actually falling asleep.)

emphryio

Thanks Lady Shea and Toto

I had no idea it was so well known. How the heck did I never hear of it? (Besides obviously never doing a sleep paralysis search on the internet or library).

Egoinos

I'd never heard of sleep paralysis either. But tell me - is it normal to sleep with your eyes open? I do it all the time - actually its rather unpleasant to keep my eyes closed for any longer than about ten minutes!

Although it can be most amusing if sharing a room with anyone, as they tend to assume I've died and scream loudly!

emphryio

Wow! I just finished reading the majority of those links.

I think first of all, as I said before, I think whatever you start to think about, simply happens in this state.

I think the main reason for the majority of the hallucinations being nightmarish is because when you're laying there paralyzed and defenseless, your first thoughts are going to be about someone possibly using this opportunity to harm you.

It would seem I must have relatively little to no imagination compared to most of these people. But I think its just that I don't have much fear in me towards others physically hurting me. (I have serious confidence that I can kick ass). And also I was mostly just worried about being permanently paralyzed.

And with all the talk of demons, devils, hags, pure evil, I wonder if a lot of this people have been well indoctrinated into Christianity.

Anyway, I'm definitely going to do some experiments with this.

TollHouse

Yep! I've had this sleeping disorder for years.

Didn't it just scare the living shit out of you guys the first time it happened? I seriously thought I was dying.

There I was, a 13 year old boy, laying on the couch exhausted after a day of school. All of a sudden my body just froze and my ears filled with this noise like I was traveling fast through a tunnel or something. I immediatedly tried to get up but was completely paralysed. In absolute fear I yelled out to my Mom (who I could see brushing my sisters hair a mere 15 feet away) but I couldn't speak.

As I tried to fight it off my only thought was, "Holy living fuck! I'm dead now!".

Thankfully, my mother had also experienced this in her youth and was able to calm me down once I came to. But man, it still scares the shit out of me from time to time.