For a span of about two years in my teens, I regularly experienced sleep paralysis. It generally happened during naps, which I often fell into while sprawled across my bed with scraps of homework assignments littered about the disheveled covers. I would wake with a start. I could look around; it almost never happened in the dark. I also had a sense, reliably, that I was not alone, although I could never see others. When I napped in the basement, I almost always knew that my dad was just on the other side of the bookshelves, well within earshot. From my bed, I was confident that my mom, in her office next door, could hear me.
The issue with being heard is that you have to make sounds. While my eyes could move, the rest of my body was trapped. My mouth clamped shut, my limbs unable to budge, even the lifting of a finger beyond my capabilities. Still, I believed that if someone heard me, they would know I was in distress; they would touch my shoulder, like Aslan’s breath on stone statues, and I would be freed.
The science behind sleep paralysis is pretty straightforward. It generally happens while falling asleep (hypnagogic) or waking up (hypnopompic). I’ve mostly experienced the latter: during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep—the time when you dream—your muscles are inactive. If your brain becomes aware of your surroundings before the REM cycle is completed, you can be constrained by the dormant muscles.
My first experience of sleep paralysis was a school day. Never one for the early hours, I often grumbled around the house before school, bitter at both the parent trying to make sure I left on time (my mom) and the parent, also opposed to mornings, who wanted to stay out of my way (my dad). My body, not yet ready for the day, had wandered into their empty bedroom and flopped my torso, face-first, on the lower half of their bed, my feet still squarely on the floor.
I did not mean to fall asleep, yet I awoke somehow worse off than either waking or snoozing. My arms were trapped under my body, and I was entirely immobile. I could only control my breath, which began to come rapidly, burning my nostrils in loud heaves. My mom was just at the head of the bed, wasn’t she? She would hear my distressed breathing and free me, wouldn’t she?
When I finally regained control—when my muscles were released—I was alone in the room. On subsequent occasions, it would always work out that way: the person I’d been completely convinced was just out of sight was nowhere to be found. I still wonder, though, whether they’d never been nearby or if my desperate breaths were not as audible as I believed, and the person simply left the vicinity before I awoke.
No one ever saved me; no one ever knew I needed saving. Once, however, I tried to save myself. I left my body to do it: I could see myself lying on my right side, a laptop tilted against my knee. I hovered above the body; I was more of a presence than a person. I lifted my (body’s) left arm and let it flop against the skin. For an agonizing eternity, my body and I did this dance: I, the body, lay gasping, willing my arm to move, and then I, the presence, looked down on myself and did my own bidding. But it wasn’t enough; my mind always returned to inhabit the still figure, where no force of will could break me free.
Most public accounts of sleep paralysis are more distressing than mine. They often happen at night and are accompanied by monstrous, demonic, alien hallucinations. Famous examples like Henry Fuseli’s “The Nightmare” (1781) and the 2015 documentary of the same name (dir. Rodney Ascher) depict horrors I have not known; in this regard, I am “blessed” with simple distress and out-of-body encounters.
I don’t remember when I last experienced sleep paralysis. It’s not that I want to revisit those fearsome spoiled naps, but I wonder what my body might look like now, were I again a presence over it. I wonder who, in the flat I inhabit on my own, I would believe to be in the next room. I wonder whether I would remember that I will wake up whole.
Brains are SO COOL and SO WEIRD. Thanks for sharing this experience!
Woah. Scary, but well described.