Clear as real life. That sounds about right. In my opinion SP and Old Hag are terrifying…until you know what they are. Then it can be entertaining, and it offers and excellent opportunity to LD since you are so close to being in the dream state.
Actually one of the reasons I want to learn to WILD so badly is because the very first time I tried it (about a year ago), I got to the point of very vivid HI and then SP.
I felt extremely strong vibrations in my whole body for what seemed like 5-10 seconds and after that (or during, not quite sure), I saw all kinds of weird colors and heard strange sounds etc. Then it went black and moments later I found myself in a sort of starry tunnel, with me floating in the middle. And then I decided to move, thinking I was in the dream world. Woke up, disoriented, standing next to my bed, still half asleep 
But anyway, I found that experience so interesting that I’ve been wanting to do it again, though I never got to that stage again. About two weeks ago I started getting into LDing again, after a 10 month break, and I’ve come close a few times.
So yeah, it’s definitely entertaining, so long as you’re aware that it can’t hurt you in any way. When I told my friends they asked me if I was high. I guess, them being the experts on that, my experience was similar, haha.
I just took a nap and when I woke up I didn’t move a muscle. I could feel tingling all over my body, but I could move. Well mostly… The tingling was strongest in my right hand especially the pinky finger and I could NOT move these parts. It felt exactly like when you cut your blood circulation off, but I wasn’t in a position to do that, and it didn’t go away after staying still for at least 10 min. I was seeing if I could WILD from there but gave up. Even when I got out of bed my hand was still numb and unable to move. I started touching it and I couldn’t feel a thing, but after a while I slowly regained ability to move it and to feel. This feeling was all over my body, but much weaker in the rest so I could still move and feel. What I’m asking is, Was this SP? My right hand was definitely paralyzed and the reset of my body felt similar but less extreme.
Sounds like you woke up at the very end of SP, just as it was beginning to fade. Many people describe a tingling sensation as something that comes with the onset and departure of REM paralysis.
I had a wierd experience last night. I was trying to WILD and felt some symptoms of SP, like seeing flashes of light, having a tingling sensation in the hands, eyes twitching etc. Then after a while, I suddenly felt like I melted away into the bed somehow, the feeling just came suddenly in my whole body, and here’s the wierd part, as I “melted” away I got a hard on!
That has never happened to me before with pre-SP, have any of you guys experienced it?
I usually get SP when I am not waking up on schedule such as sleeping in on the weekends, and I seem to be getting them more often lately. Anyways, at first I was very scared, borderline terrified when it happened because my breathing speeds up rapidly and it seems as if my heart is beating very fast. I managed to let out a whimper which i guess woke me up from the sleep paralysis.
Nowadays I learned to like them because if I just relax and realize that nothing bad is going to happen then I can see some pretty cool images and hear some pretty wicked sounds, and eventually venture off into a dream where becoming lucid is very easy. Hope this helped some people fearing sleep paralysis.
Aww man,just read the first post of first topic.
I was always wondering what the old hag is.
I hope i won’t get one 
That could be the manifestations of your worse physical fear
Is it possible that some people dont hear/see anything in SP?
In all the SPs I had, I never saw/heard anything.
The only feeling I had was that I was feeling my body in another position than it was lying and some shaking, i never had something scary.
I was/am always scared by SP, I often had sleepness nights because of fear.
Is it possible that my brain blocks those scary images/sounds out because I know that these could be psychically dangerous for me??
Well,probably.
But i don’t worry…
I don’t sleep on my back…
Reverse HAG 
I’ve had several experiences of SP combined with fear and sometimes the feeling of a “malign presence” throughout my life, but recently I had an encounter with a special kind of the “old hag”: I woke up, flat on my back, paralyzed, feeling that BOB (from Twin Peaks, see large scary picture here) was lying on my chest, invisible, growling into my ear. At first I was overwhelmed by fear, but then I realized that he was only imaginary. This made me confident and I kind of started taunting him and making fun of him, since I knew he actually couldn’t harm me 
It was great. Finally, he faded away.
I started to get interested in SP a few months ago…( a little story though: I remember when i was little that when I woke up in the morning but was still tired I got like smth like a fraction of a second that buzzing that happens when I get in SP.but how I said it happend like a fraction of a second…U know…like a buzzing and then whaaamm I woke up …couse …I don’t know felt strange…anyway back to my story)
A few months ago…had this SP…didn’t knew what it was…First time woke up paralised.
The second time heard the buzzing…and felt like moving to a kinda tunnel…no point in telling I got scared…Anyway…I was so intrigued about this.Felt so unnatural.
Next SP…i was dreaming…a very vivid dream…but then I was starting to vibrate (in my dream)…I looked to my hand …u know…(in my dream) …and they were vibrating…didn’t took long then…the buzzing started…I said in my head this exacts word : oh man…Here we go! …So the buzzing started …and tried to go whit the wave… ( Iwanted to see what is at the end of the tunnel)…From here I don’t know exactly couse it happened real fast…and I was madly scared. It went black…I don’t know if the buziing was still on couse I was realy scared…freaked out …I couldn’t felt my body…and tryed to get out…
The thing is that I did a little research and came across on youtube over the Coast to Coast radio program whit Albert Taylor as a guest. ( you shoul try and listen to it if u haven’t heard it already…on youtube…do a search)
He said that SP is before an OBE.So if ppl would overcome their imense fear…they could focus theire thought and could move out of body…and from there u know…the greatest thing in the world…
If> SP> OBE> then:
- Going anyware you want ( like Mars for example)
- Going to the past and even future
- Going to othere astral planes
U get the point…
Like moving past the fear is the hardest obstacle…
The scaryest thing u ever experience…damn…I will probably have more of this…couse u know…if ur tired…u got to bed…u somehowwake up being tired…and then go back to slepp…it will happen…but I don’t know if Iwill overcome the fear and just go whit the wave and try to get an OBE…lucid dreams may be great but OBE would be even more
Lately I’ve been having trouble with SP. I tried to WILD once, a long time ago, and entered SP consciously for the first time in my life. I didn’t get a LD out of it, but SP scared me so much that I haven’t tried WILDing again since. Lately though, I’ve taken sort of a hiatus from LDs and stuff, and suddenly I’ve started getting SP insomnia.
Whenever I’m having a hard time falling asleep (especially if I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep, I’ll automatically start going into SP without falling asleep. Basically my body says “You are going to sleep NOW, whether you like it or not!” but my brain says “No, I don’t want to!” So I end up in SP, having to deal with the vibrating and weird noises (I usually get pretty bad HI), unable to move for what feels like several minutes. I just wait it out and eventually I “wake up” and can move again. But I still haven’t gotten any sleep! This cycle can repeat itself two or three times a night, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t fall asleep through the distracting HI.
Anyone know how to get past this? If I can’t fall asleep into a normal dream while conscious during SP, how will I ever learn how to WILD so that it turns into a lucid dream? SP isn’t as scary to me now as it used to be, but it’s still not pleasant to deal with when you really just want some real sleep.
Last night I decided to try a WILD and to my complete suprise it was very succesful! I saw the HI and managed to retain a state of alertness while my body relaxed and for a while it was entertaining.
Then things started to happen, the first was that my heart rate became really fast, I could hear it beat in my ears like drum beats. I felt as if I was moving very fast through a dark tunnel, and, trying to follow things I’d read about WILD’ing, I attempted to “reach out” mentally. At this point though I was completely terrified. I’ve never experienced sleep paralysis previously and didn’t know what to expect. I was so scared though, that I decided that I would rather awaken than pass the threshold into a lucid dream. At first I couldn’t open my eyes and that got me even more frightened, especially when I realized I couldn’t move anything. But suddenly I opened my eyes really quickly and everything stopped, the sensation of motion ended, but my heart hadn’t stopped beating really fast. When I got out of bed I was shaking all over and my teeth were chattering.
I’m not sure if I’d want to go through it again for the sake of a lucid dream, approximately how long can SP last before you sink into lucid dreams?
It gets easier as you go, don’t worry. Trust me, everyone is terrified at first. All you have to do is remind yourself that it’s all hallucinations, that it’s not real. When you think about how convincing your brain can be just with hallucinations, it actually becomes kind of cool.
It usually feels a lot longer than it really lasts. Just be patient and stay calm. Don’t wish for the hallucinations to end. Just kind of ignore them (as hard as that is) and keep visualizing what you’re visualizing, and soon you’ll find yourself in a dream. It may take a few tries, but keep working at it.
If you’re really not into WILDing, though, why not try MILD? It works for many people and doesn’t involve any conscious SP. 
Thanks
I’ll try to stay calm next time, and I’ll try the MILD technique, too. Hopefully one of them will work for me!
i have this sometimes too but i am lucid dreaming and know i am dreaming but my head is stuck and i know someones sitting behind me on my bed, it feels like a woman n im scared of her, but my neck wont turn 2 see her, then i wake. i didnt think other people had the same thing, glad 2 no they do 
I had a freaky one last night, but it wasn’t with an old hag (at least not that I could make out).
As usual I’d woken up a couple times during the night, remembered the dream I’d just had, then went back to sleep. But this time one time I woke up I was laying there and felt someone pushing down on my legs and arms, holding them tight as if they were restraining me (I was on my side). I was freaked out and opened my eyes to look, there right next to my bed was the shadowed shape of a person bending over my bed. I could feel the sensation of being held down as real as if I were to grasp my arm right now.
I thought I was dead, that this was it. I couldn’t move with them restraining me and wanted to yell but didn’t dare, so I just shut my eyes so I wouldn’t see whatever it was they were going to do to me. After a few seconds the feeling of being restrained was gone, and I opened my eyes to look. No one was in the room, my bedroom door was still shut.
It registered that it must not have been real at that point, but it felt so real at the time. It was freaky 
Took me a while to fall asleep again after that, lol.
edit: OMG, I was reading about this today and came upon the wikipedia hypnagogia page. There was a link in the Sleep Paralysis section…
“SP has been proposed as an explanation for at least some alien abduction experiences and shadow people hauntings.”
I followed the link of “Shadow people”.
“Some individuals have described being menaced, chased, or in some rare instances, attacked by shadow people. …Witnesses report that encounters are typically accompanied by a feeling of dread.”
That is exactly what this was There’s a picture on the page (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_people) and every time I see the Hooded Figure my back and neck turn to ice. That looked so much like what it was!
You should have thought about that shadow man something like: “You have some very interesting ways in trying to get the freak out of me, would show me more about them?” That was my first thought when I had the very first SP during the night, when I was about 8 or 9 years old.
Since then that shadow tried only 3 or 4 times to scare me again but it couldn’t because I always realise that this is not an IRL scenario, so I start to get excited about it, like: “Wow, another creepy man to come visit me” 
In the last 3 years, my SP’s are not followed by any kind of fear or strange feelings, sometimes I start to hear people talking when I’m about to have an OOBE but they are not harmful in any way, just boring.
Interestingly enough, it seems that I have managed to enter Sleep Paralysis before actually going to sleep in the first place. I happened to be laying still in bed with my eyes opened, as I found that i couldn’t fall asleep. The next thing I knew I was seeing visual hallucinations and my body was paralyzed. I person that looked like a shriveled up prune materialized in front of me, and I saw strange patterns in front of my vision.
Also, since I experienced this before sleep, does this mean that I could successfully complete a WILD without initially falling asleep? 