The BIG sleep paralysis and old hag topic Part IV

I finally had SP, and I didn’t use it for my advantage -.-’

I had woken up at 6:16 (yeah, the real number of the beast), and went back to bed. Then I find myself paralyzed, and I get the feeling of being pulled up (must say it was pretty shocking =P). Next thing I know, I see a door filled with light, actually, it’s made by light, it appears. I see a ghostly figure besides it, and I hear mentally someone telling me to “follow Jesus”.
I did some magick prior to this evening (yep, the kind God hates :tongue: )

Must say I’m impressed with this. My mind knew just what to do with me ^^
I hope it happens again soon =P

I know =D
My body feels ready for astral projection as well ;D

For the longest time ive been able to induce SP under the right conditions (although sometimes it happens when I don’t wish for it to) but every time I have to train myself to breath, and to breathe steadily. I never have the hallucinations that other’s have and infact im completely aware of my surroundings and usually take the time to check it all out, but breathing during the episodes are always a trial for me. Lately ive been able to discover that when unable to breathe properly, don’t force it but instead guide it but sometimes it is hard to do that. Its like thinking about it, but not thinking about it at the same time.

Either way, has anyone else actually had any troubles breathing? Every time i Have SP, breathing is hard to do sometime during the episode. Should this even be something I should concern myself with?

Hello Everyone,

This is my first post. I wanted to share my experiences with Sleep Paralysis as others may find it interesting. Caveat emptor: I have no applied experience with lucid dreaming, but have understood the basic principles since reading a book on the subject when I was younger.

I had my first experience with what I now know as sleep paralysis when I was around 10 or 11 years old. I had the typical experience; I was lying on my back on my mothers bed during the day, staring at a corner of the ceiling. After focusing on this corner for five minutes or so I began to feel four sensations simultaneously:

  1. An increasingly loud white noise
  2. My field of view began shifting, in a jerking spinning fashion
  3. A feeling I was sinking into the bed and my feet were sliding off the edge
  4. Inability to move

All I could think was “cool!”, “no wait, freaky!”, “cool!”, “ok, i’m obviously about to die, so I’m going to stop this now”. I then came out of it, sweaty.

It happened again many times in my teenager years. I did not know what it was I was experiencing. I began to develop a reverence towards the experience. Despite its “fear of god” inducing sensations, I happened to take a very scientific approach to things as a child. I started to notice a pattern in how it was induced and how it presented itself. This led me to believe that it had something to do with my physiology. I had tried to describe it to a few friends, none of whom had heard of or experienced such a thing. I erroneously concluded that I’m special and left it at that.

Fast forward ten years to my mid twenties. I had completely forgotten about the sleep paralysis experiences I had when I was younger, until one day, by chance I was lying on my own bed and staring at a corner of the ceiling (which you may gather by now that I’m wont to do), and voila, it’s still there. Keep in mind I never let it continue on past the initial sensations, primarily because up to this point I had convinced myself that I may end up in a coma if I let it continue. :smile:

And then, things got weird…

please read the forum guidelines about drug related posts :cool:

This brings us to today. Today I learned that some use sleep paralysis as a means to have lucid dreams. I’m very excited to try it again, as I seem to be able to do it when I’m relaxed and it is quiet.

…I’ve always wondered what would happen if I kept letting the noise get louder.

Take care,

Jeremy

Hello, templum, welcome to LD4all :welcome:

Sounds like SP to me. But, this is the internet, so don’t trust me 100%.

drug related comment removed

Templum, in some ways your experiences sound similar to my own, although I eventually learned to use my HSP as a gateway to LD (although I didn’t know it was called that at the time). It seems like, having had a chance to browse through some of the threads here, that someone with some bad SP experience like myself might serve as a useful lesson for some of the younger folks who’re scared of it.

My first HSP experiences started when I was very young (maybe 8-9 year old?). The first one I recall was during a really bad extended fever, and I’ve always thought of that moment as a “tipping point” for me with respect to HSP. I heard a droning sound like a swarm of bees were surrounding me. I felt pressure on my chest and blackness closing. My body was totally paralyzed. I thought I was going to die, and as an atheist (even as a small child) that was an incredibly scary thought – no heaven for me! I only finally managed to wake myself up by trying to slooooowly drag one limb off the bed to touch myself on the face. The weird thing is that when I finally woke, my real limb was still lying still, although my mental struggle caused me to jerk my arm when I woke.

From this point on, I can remember having very frequent HSP experiences, probably once a week for years on end. And they got progressively worse as I got older. By the time I was in my early teens, I was having what I now know as “old hag” HI… a being of pure shadow (wearing a long-brimmed hat! :lol: ) would appear at the foot of my bed, extend his hand, and “magically” crush me in my bed. Not having a particularly fantastic relationship with my parents at the time, I unfortunately kept this under wraps for years and thought I was either going crazy or… just maybe… there really was something coming to me in the night.

It wasn’t until early college that I had my first lucid dream. The shadowy stranger was visiting, and he was doing his new, utterly terrifying, “levitate me out of the bed” routine. And just that once I managed to resist him, having some idea that this was only a dream state. I floated back and up, away from the shadowy figure, passing through a vertical mirror of water… and into mid air, floating above my adopted city. After I finally woke up (having experienced flight on my first LD!) I decided to do some research on the topic of dreams and the neuroscience & psychology behind them, and realized what I’d been experiencing all those years.

So for those of you who are a little scared of experiencing HSP as part of your path towards LD, look at it this way: you already know that any HI you experience as part of SP isn’t real! You also have an entire community of people here that you can talk to online about your experiences good or bad! I never had this, back in the pre-intarwebs days! [size=75](Geez that makes me feel old.)[/size] You have an enormous advantage! Go fearlessly!

I guess I should insert my single experience with SP. I was on a plane in Africa heading to Mozambique (no, really I was). Everyone in my group was told not to sleep because this was a short flight. I decided just to rest my eyes. I leaned back and did just that. I heard the food coming around and tried to sit up. My body didn’t respond at all. I panicked at first (how was I going to get off the plane? I wasn’t really asleep!) I listened to them discuss my sleeping and heard my food leave. Finally as we were landing I suddenly snapped out of it, open my eyes and sit up. It was a rather frustrating occurrence that I can’t really explain. I never lost consciousness as far as I can tell so… hard to say. Upon reading about this on LD4ALL years later I longed for it to happen again but it never did.

I had SP a few times when waking up, all unintentionally (probably because of irregular sleep time), but i didn’t know about LDs yet.
Sometimes i just opened my eyes and was not able to move. No scary shadows/hags/aliens/whatever, but i could see everything around me very clearly. I didn’t even freak out, i just thought “lol i can’t move”
The most scary thing that happened to me during SP was when i was waking up and had the feeling of a wasp stinging my neck (though it wasn’t THAT painful) and heard that annoying sound of bug wings. I know it wasn’t real because there was nothing on my neck later and the “feeling of almost pain” stopped after a few seconds. This happened to me 3-4 times, but it stopped a few months ago :smile:

Even the thought fills me with fear, the first night i read about that i couldn’t sleep. I just can’t face it, i also feel that deeply inside me i do not actually want to face it.

I feel that i am not ready for such revelation.

I don’t know…

Last week I had a quite impressive experience concerning SP. Now I often dream being in SP! First time I just woke up but last time I was being lifted to the ceiling. :obe:

Quite strange and interesting. Hope it is a step forward to a LD.

You guys do know you don’t need sp to get an Ld right…?

I know this is a pretty old post, but I just wanted to say that this is pretty similar to what I started experiencing. Like, I saw the real world, and could only see the real world… but I could move and feel with my astral body (I think). Very strange. It is good to hear that someone else has experienced this before… I’m just surprised that absolutely no one has responded to him… is it really that rare of an occurrence?

I already asked this in the OBE thread, but does anyone know if this is close to an OBE? Or is it just like… all of the senses except for sight is still in the dream, but sight itself is in the real world?

I’ve only experienced SP once that I can recall. It was earlier this year, but I’d written it off as some kind of freaky waking nightmare.

I’m not sure it’s even a SP because I had moved before it happened. I had been sleeping with sleep goggles on my eyes, and after I’d woken up from a dream I uncovered my eyes and was laying there still trying to fully wake up. That’s when it hit.

I don’t remember what the dream I’d woken up from was about… I’m fairly certain it included my immediate family, or atleast my dad, but aside from that I’ve not a clue.

Laying awake in my room, it was bright from the sunlight coming through the window. All of a sudden my vision just vanished and I was descending at a rapid speed down into a very dark, circular, dirt hole. I was falling so fast that the walls were just a blur, but I could make out that the sides were rough and rocky, a dark tan/brown. I couldn’t see any light, just blackness down deeper into the hole. I’d guess the diameter was around 4-5 feet.

I didn’t notice my body, I couldn’t move or anything. It just felt like every fiber of my being was being pulled deeper into the chasm by some kind of invisible force, but at the same time I felt no physical sensation that should have accompanied such a force. I’m not sure how to explain that properly.

I remember as soon as it started I came to the realization that whatever was happening was occuring to my consciousness, not my actual body. The best way to describe it would be that it felt like my mind had cracked open and my consciousness was spilling out, down into this pit, somehow leaving whatever was left of me behind. I was rapidly diminishing, and all I felt was fear.

As I fell deeper I honestly thought I was dying, and I was completely terrified. I absolutely believed that what I was experiencing was death, and that very soon there would be nothing of me left. I’d just slip into a black nothing.

Then just as suddenly as it all started, it ended, and I was back laying in my bed. The whole experience had only lasted a matter of seconds, maybe less, but it really freaked me out. I laid in bed staring at the ceiling, unable to move or even blink. I don’t know if I was physically unable to or if I was just freaked out that much.

I hadn’t given it any thought recently but a post elsewhere triggered the memory, so I searched for sleep paralysis. I guess what I experienced was the hallucinatory effects that go along with it. Really weird, I wouldn’t want that again :bored:

I have been trying to WILD for the past week or two, and I never get anywhere. I just never can seem to hit SP. Or at least I think I can’t. I get to a point where my body becomes entirely numb and hard to move without conscious effort, but it is still very possible to move if I really try. Is this SP? Or is it just close?

I doubt it… at least from all my experiences, I actually cannot move at all. I don’t see why you’re trying to get SP. Isn’t that just an unwanted by product of lucid dreaming?

I’m a pretty seasoned SPer. I hope that doesn’t sound too boastful, but what I mean to say is that I have it a lot. I’ve been having it on frequent occasions for about 5, 6 years now. Sometimes it’s bearable; like if it happens past sunrise, I’m not so scared. In fact, I enjoy it. But if it ever happens in the middle of the night, I’m usually terrified. How can I get past that? Maybe I have this weird idea in the back of my mind that it’s a ghost/poltergeist that’s the cause of it, and that always scares me. Funny thing is I sleep with an eye mask and ear plugs in, largely in part to avoid thinking the sounds I’m hearing are external and then (providing the mask is on) not being able to see scary stuff.

The reason for my post is… how can I NOT be afraid to have SP? I mean, I have it so often, I wish I could embrace it every time and use it to my advantage. On record I think I’ve had it up to 4 times in one night. Last night I had it three seperate times (it was a rough night, lemme tell ya.) Any suggestions? Does turning on a little night light seem to help anyone?

I have read quite a bit about SP and it seems that I am getting too excited and losing it. This is while falling to sleep. I am not sure if it actually qualifies as a SP though. My heartbeat rises, my whole body feels numb and it feels like I am floating. I always get curious and move my arm and it stops.

Curiosity killed the cat :happy:
I don’t know which cat it killed, though, and if Curiosity is felicidal, who says it won’t turn homicidal?

Anyway, last time I had SP, my heart-rate increased, head felt strange, and the weird thing was - my eyelids went crazy for a second. Then it stopped.

related to the “Old Hag” phenomenon is a similar event that seems to happen to young, Laotian Hmong refugees. I heard a lecture on this once.
Sudden Unexpected Nocturnal Death Syndrome

As it said in the article they were under a lot of stress anyway due to war/migration etc. They also had a real belief that ‘the entity’ was real.
We all know the biggest factor in old hag is the fear element and not knowing that it is an illusion made by the subconscious to explain the feelings felt during SP.
So it is an interesting article but i hope it doesn’t add to any SP fears that members have.