Christopher Lord

Has anyone had partial paralysis? Several times in the past year, I've awoke with full awareness, but unable to move some of my limbs. Never all at once, and although I've never tried, I think I would be able to talk.

I can pivot the limb around the shoulder or hip, but everything below is completely numb to touch and can not be moved by will. Sometimes I'll wake up and have a brief moment of panic at the apparent loss of an arm. When i start rolling around, i feel something warm against my face, and realize its my hand! very creepy. Sometimes it seems like someone else with harry arms is in my bed. Even hardcore pain (like a very awkward position or a pinch) doesnt make it though. after about 3 minutes of this (when I wake up fully) i start to get the feeling back quite slowly.

I can picture what full paralysis would be like, but I dont remember ever having it. I have fairly lucid memories of my dreams when I first wake up so I know what kind of halucinations I would have.

And as a side note, I dont think I've ever had a true nightmare. Some intense dreams with what could be considered powerfully scary topics, but they dont seem to live up to some of the wierd shit people typically describe as their nightmares.

three4jump

I can't say for sure, but it sounds like your sleep position just cut off the circulation to your arm?

Christopher Lord

typically that results in your arm 'falling asleep'

this is far more fundamental, and doesnt involve the prickly feeling when its coming back alive. It just starts working again when I fully wake up. It seems like a nerve thing moreso than a blood thing.

Who knows, could just be that though.

[ February 19, 2002: Message edited by: Christopher Lord ]</p>

three4jump

Either way, it would be freaky to wake up with what seemed to be someone else's hand.

When I was a kid and I had something that might have been sleep paralysis, I would always be paralyzed in bed, terrified but unable to scream, while a clown stood outside my window and watched me. He would never do anything, he just stood there, looking at me. Man I hate clowns.

scombrid

If I force myself to stay awake using stimulants such as caffeine or ephedra I tend to hallucinate when I finally try to go to sleep. The mechanism seems to be that my body shuts down from the exhaustion but my mind is still racing along. I tend to see flashes of color, vague apparitions, and here rushing sounds. Occasionally I hear voices as well. The voices manifest in a manner similar to the voice overs at various places in the Dark Side album, especially the end of the track, Money (put on some head phones, crank em up and listen to the last 50sec of track#5 and you'll know what I'm talking about). The voices are never my own, can be male or female, and usually have conversations having nothing to do with anything concerning me. Usually this accompanies paralysis. I've actually come to enjoy the experience on rare occasions. Outside stimulus kills the experience.


On the other hand, my higher brain disconnect tends to fail if I'm totally exhausted and go to sleep without stimulants, particullarly if I have a couple of alcoholic drinks (never fall asleep in a dormatory common room if you're a sleep walker/talker). I'm 24yrs old and still sleep walk and talk. It only happens in extremely deep sleep. I go with eyes open, appearing fully conscious to bystanders, and have injured myself in the process. I punched a wall with a broken hand. I was dreaming that I had a stingray barb stuck in the hand and was trying to punch the stingray. Apparently pain from the broken hand triggered the dream. I woke up on the third swing. I broke my headboard once. What I was dreaming I can't recall. I once dreamed that some kind of sand shooter was chasing me and woke up on the beach. I had gone to bed on the second floor of the cottage we were staying in. I think paralysis is the safer dream phenomenon that I've experienced, more entertaining as well since I usually have some memory of the experience. I rarely have memory of sleep walking. I have to wake up during sleep walking events to remember them.

[ February 20, 2002: Message edited by: scombrid ]</p>

Egoinos

I get those too. Only I get that every night a little bit of light in the room - just enough to see outlines of everything, stops it happening though. It has an unfortunate tendency to make it seem like I'm scared of the dark - but I don't like being able to see rushing colours flying about the place - its like being on one of those rides at fairgrounds. Though the sensation of doing floating backward somersaults I also get is quite pleasant

Got that when I was a kid, when I was half-asleep. I think it came out of the sound of my neck creaking and my imagination though...I thought my room was haunted by witches!

I sleepwalk, too. But usually only when I'm in the same house as my mother (wierd, eh!). I can have quite long conversations with people while asleep, but its all completely crap! I once had a conversation about "the flies in my book" - I thought there were little insects crawling inside the book I had been reading (which was Jane Eyre, not really the book of choice to get creepy things crawling in!)
I once hurt my eye while sleepwalking - I had managed to convince myself that I had left a contact lens in, and scrabbled at my eye for ages until I wandered back off to bed. It really hurt the next day! I also lost control of a leg while walking once and twisted my ankle badly. Only i thought I had been dreaming, and bounced out of bed the next morning....ouch.

I always remember sleepwalking - only I remember it in the way you remember dreams. I know that if I remember a "dream" where I've been in my house, chances are, I've been sleepwalking again. Sometimes, I can be half-aware that I'm sleepwalking while I'm doing it, like you do when you are aware that you're sleeping, during a bad dream.
I find sleepwalking can be unpleasant - I once had a nightmare that there were things hovering in my room, when I woke up it took me a while to convince myself that no, I hadn't been sleepwalking and had actually seen these things, that it was a normal dream. It was made worse by the fact that I was dreaming that I was looking at a certain point in the room, and when I woke up I was still staring at that point of the room and it was identical to how it had been when I was dreaming (although without the floating creatures, of course!) Although that sort of thing probably comes out of actually seeing my room when I'm sleeping anyway, as I don't close my eyes.

Haven't there been cases of people who have injured other people, or murdered people, while sleepwalking?

--Egoinos--

[ February 20, 2002: Message edited by: Egoinos ]</p>

Freethinking Ferret

Wow, I'm sorry I missed this topic for so long! Someone mentioned hags being tied to this experience. Here in Newfoundland, the sleep paralysis phenomenon is actually called "Old Hag".

I experience similar effects for a second sometimes when I drift off to sleep, but only had full-fledged "Old Hag" once when I was a kid... I was about 5 years old, and all of the sudden there were glowing numbers on the wall in front of me. I panicked, and tried to call out to my dad, but my voice wouldn't work. That's a pretty terrifying experience when you're a child.

A friend of mine (who also sleepwalks regularly... could there be a link?) has Old Hag on a fairly regular basis, with a regular set of occurances... he always has someone whispering in his ear, and it's always a frightening experience, even though he knows exactly what's happening. Strange stuff.

Zenaphobe

Wow!

I couldnt believe it when I saw the title of this thread. I hadn't thought of my experience for quite some time.

I used to work 3rd shift and had this experience regularly when I came home to go to bed.

Often I would feel like I was suffocating and sometimes I felt as though my body was "sliding" across the matress but never came to the end of it. Talk about freaky.

I had one experience in which I experienced a hullucination in which I had somehow ended up in the bathroom and was staring at my reflection which was screeming at me to "wake up"!

I get chills just thinking about it.

Interestingly, these experiences were filtered through the beliefs I had aquired as a child in the Catholic Church and I really believed that I was being "oppressed" by demons and I became afraid for my soul and began attending church and reading the Bible.

The experinces have become very rare for me now since I work day shift. I will occasionaly experience some paralysis when I take a catnap in my recliner.

If I had known about this before I may not have wasted so many years trying to find God.

emphryio

Sorry to hear that Zenophobe.

For some reason I never worried about the SP except when I was actually in it. Supposedly a ton of people experience it but just forget about it when they get older.

So anyway, I attempted to purposely become sleep paralyzed this Saturday. What I did was I got up at 5:45AM and went for an hour long walk. Came back went to sleep. No SP, although I did sleep more deeply and awake more rested than I had in a long time.

The affliction, (or ability) of SP apparently usually fades as you get older. It seems to have done so in me. But I'll keep trying.

Cornelius

I have had this happen to me several times as well. The first time it happened it scared the shit out of me. I was just a kid, I was lying in my bed and I heard my window shatter, I could not move and I heard a bizzare voice speaking in some "language" I could not understand. I saw something floating above my head, I tried to scream but no noise came out. Similar experiences of paralysis coupled with audial hallucinations happen to me periodically.

Just last week I had it happen again. Once again I could not move, but out of the corner of my eye I saw an alien, it looked just like the typical "grey" alien that we are all familiar with. I firmly believe that this experience is a major source of alien abduction stories. If it was not for the fact that I knew of this condition, I would believe that I had been abducted.

The human mind plays some weird tricks, does it not?

regards,

Cornelius