Sleep Paralysis: The most terrifying moment in sleep!

Have you ever came into situation in sleep that makes you hear voices and feel your body but could not move and feel like something is sitting on your chest. Throughout the history, people talk about this as an act of evil or spirit. It is told that an evil or a ghost is sitting on your chest at sleep. Yeh, it even feels like something like this.

In my personal experience, it happens to me once or twice in a month. How it happens to me is even very much terrifying too. It happens normally when i am tired and need a deep sleep. Once i fell into deep sleep, suddenly i start feeling a wind and then feel hearing footsteps and sometimes, sound of someone outside the window in my room. I could not move my body even though i try it hard. I could not shout even if i try my best to shout. Whole body is paralyzed. It feels like someone is holding my body and that's why i could not move. So, i try to shout as much as i can and i try to move. I feel like suffocating too. After very hard time, finally i get the ability to move my body. Once, i can move, whole situation gets over. I feel normal. But feels like no more sleep and even get afraid to sleep anymore. I feel sweating and fast breathing.

Above is what i feel when i have this worst thing at my sleep. At first i also thought that it is something related to an evil. And i was really terrified. I did not want to tell anyone about this. But once, i thought i will go to someone who can make some Anti-evil spell for me and check what is going wrong. But, i really could not help myself on it. So, while i was in worry, i thought i will check the internet about it. Now i am totally clear what is going on in me. I am not very much terrified about it anymore. But still i don't feel so good when it happens to me. Because, it is totally helpless situation and i hear sounds while i am in sleep.

So, really what is sleep paralysis? 


Source: http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/paralysis.html ( below information is taken from this website)

In a scientific researches, it explains as it consists of a period of inability to perform voluntary movements either at sleep onset (called hypnogogic or predormital form) or upon awakening (called hypnopompic or postdormtal form).Sleep paralysis may also be referred to as isolated sleep paralysis, familial sleep paralysis, hynogogic or hypnopompic paralysis, predormital or postdormital paralysis



What are the symptoms?

• A complaint of inability to move the trunk or limbs at sleep onset or upon awakening
• Presence of brief episodes of partial or complete skeletal muscle paralysis
• Episodes can be associated with hypnagogic hallucinations or dream-like mentation (act or use of the brain)

Polysomnography (a sleep recording) shows at least one of the following:

• suppression of skeletal muscle tone
• a sleep onset REM period
• dissociated REM sleep

Is it harmful?
Sleep paralysis is most often associated with narcolepsy, a neurological condition in which the person has uncontrollable naps. However, there are many people who experience sleep paralysis without having signs of narcolepsy. Sometimes it runs in families. There is no known explanation why some people experience this paralysis. It is not harmful, although most people report feeling very afraid because they do not know what is happening, and within minutes they gradually or abruptly are able to move again; the episode is often terminated by a sound or a touch on the body.
In some cases, when hypnogogic hallucinations are present, people feel that someone is in the room with them, some experience the feeling that someone or something is sitting on their chest and they feel impending death and suffocation. That has been called the “Hag Phenomena” and has been happening to people over the centuries. These things cause people much anxiety and terror, but there is no physical harm.


What else can you tell me about sleep paralysis?


Please visit to Stanford.edu for more..