

Being Ridden by the Witch: Sleep Paralysis Is the Greatest Nightmare - Thereasione
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/being-ridden-by-the-witch-sleep-paralysis-is-the-human-species-greatest-nightmare

======
error54
Having suffered from this before I can say this: sleep paralysis is absolutely
terrifying. Whenever this occurs there is a small, rational part of your brain
that tells you that nothing is wrong but this is drowned out by the absolute
certainty that something or someone is just about get to you and you can't
even move to defend yourself. It's a very primal fear unlike any other I've
experienced and I find interesting is that it's a common theme across people
who've also suffered from sleep paralysis.

I've experienced lucid dreaming as well and I can assuredly say that it is
nothing like sleep paralysis. The physiological effects might be similar but
there's a very big difference between consciously deciding to do something and
waking up to a nightmare.

~~~
leahculver
I've only had sleep paralysis a couple times and I agree that it is AWFUL. I
felt like someone was standing in the room with me and was (irrationally)
terrified.

I lucid dream far more often, probably once a week. I agree that it's nowhere
near as frightening but I find it to be unpleasant as well. It's not very fun
to stay dreaming when I know I'm awake.

It's funny but the movie Inception really helped me with my lucid dreams.
Falling (in my dreams) will wake me up. I double-check that I'm actually
dreaming by flying first (aw yeah, I can fly in my dreams - kind of like
swimming in the air). So I'll often wake up by flying high into the sky and
then falling to the ground.

~~~
vubuntu
>"...kind of like swimming in the air" OMG. That's exactly what I dreamt more
than couple of times. In my dreams I would be walking on water. Like if I pump
my legs up and down fast enough, that keeps me afloat on the surface of water
in a swimming pool, or a pond etc. Kind of like that lizard that walks on
water
([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhsxo7vY8ac](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhsxo7vY8ac))
. It feels so realistic and so normal an ability to have. Alas I tried it
quite a few times at our local swimming pool, and it never worked :)

~~~
vubuntu
>"I felt like someone was standing in the room with me and was (irrationally)
terrified."

This has happened to me couple of times as well.

Upon reflection I have noticed uncanny similarities to the below movies..

Lucid Dreams == Inception
([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/))

Sleep Paralysis == The adjustment Bureau
([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1385826/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1385826/))

------
hcarvalhoalves
Unrelated, but interesting:

> That is to say there isn’t pain in the conventional sense; as CO2 goes up
> past critical levels, in the absence of fear or panic, the body will try
> breathing harder or faster and, eventually, you’ll pass out.

This is why most people drown. They panic and aspire water, long before they
reach critical O2 levels and pass out.

It's possible to train and control the instinct to breath though. It's a great
self-control exercise, and it's safe to try it outside the water. Try this:

Fill your lungs and hold your breath for as much as you can. You'll notice an
irresistible urge to let go and breath (this is when most people panic, even
though O2 levels are not anywhere critical yet). If you ignore your brain and
keep holding, you'll notice involuntary movements in your diaphragm, forcing
you to breath (this is when people drown). If you _still_ keep holding, you'll
notice the diaphragm movements get more intense, up to a point when it's
impossible to keep holding your breath, but it takes a while still.

With enough practice, you learn to stay relaxed and post-pone those reactions
as much as possible. After a while, you start being capable to hold the breath
many times longer than expected. If you couple this technique with exercises
for increased lung capacity and cardio (for lowering your base BPM), you'll be
free-diving like a champion.

~~~
pcl
_you 'll be free-diving like a champion_

Note that this can be dangerous while free-diving. You are essentially
temporarily disabling your body's CO₂ buildup alarm thresholds, which is a
proxy for too little O₂. So you need to take care to make sure that you don't
run out of O₂ without noticing while under 30 feet of water, possibly while
weights.

The Wikipedia page on shallow-water blackouts¹ has a nice little diagram
illustrating the issue. I don't know enough about freediving and O₂
consumption to really have any clue about the margins of safety typically are,
but it certainly seems like something worth understanding before messing
around with too much.

¹
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shallow_water_blackout](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shallow_water_blackout)

~~~
hcarvalhoalves
This exercise shouldn't be done underwater. This is an exercise for being
aware of the diaphragm reflex, to go thru the sensations without panicking,
which helps you to stay relaxed and develop a proper routine while diving.

By relaxing and exhaling you post-pone CO2 saturation as much as possible, but
it still happens before O2 deprivation (it's only a problem when you reach
<85% O2, and it takes a while for that).

Here's some great footage of a native from Philippines spearfishing the old
way, showing a lot of self-control:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDspP4BhlTw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDspP4BhlTw)

------
simonster
To expand on the uniqueness of the experience of suffocation: Suffocation is
apparently the only experience that can produce fear in patients without an
intact amygdala. In a recent study
([http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v16/n3/full/nn.3323.html](http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v16/n3/full/nn.3323.html)),
researchers administered a mixture 35% CO2 and oxygen to three patients with
bilateral amygdala damage and who could not recall experiencing fear in any
decades for decades prior. All three had panic attacks. While it's thought
that the amygdala contains CO2-sensitve chemoreceptors as this article states
in the first paragraph, this behavioral result shows that other brain areas do
too, and activation of these chemoreceptors is sufficient to produce fear even
without the brain's "fear center."

------
druiid
I am reasonably sure that many of the people who believe they have been
abducted by aliens (or seen them in their room with them) have probably just
experienced sleep paralysis. I say this knowing that when I was younger I had
a few episodes of it that still haunt me to this day.

I can remember at least one episode where I woke up into this state to a black
tall figure essentially in my face.. giant eyes and the whole bit. I couldn't
move and given that this was the first time sleep paralysis had happened to
me, thought (and it truly felt) like the entire experience was real. If I
remember correctly I broke out of the state by somehow getting my eyes to
close in fear and then waking up what had to have been just a couple minutes
later. Obviously there was no alien right in my face but it sure felt like it
and bringing this story up now I can still 'feel' the experience all these
years later. Odd how the brain works.

Edit: Ah, I'm not the only one who thinks most alien stories can be explained
by this [http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/06/science/alien-abduction-
sc...](http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/06/science/alien-abduction-science-
calls-it-sleep-paralysis.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm)

~~~
kaliblack
I agree and have thought the same thing. When I got sleep paralysis in my
teens I had the terror feeling and had the feeling of a ghost in my room.

The only time I was able to relax during an episode, I had the experience of
moving out of my body. If it is possible to think that with the brain in a
state of sleep paralysis then it could be possible at other times too.

~~~
vubuntu
But have you ever wondered why its always the feeling of a ghost or (some form
of human/human-like presence)? Why not a snake or a lion, tiger etc.

I have sleep apnea and used to wake up short of breath some times. Before I
got a CPAP machine, there was a period when I experienced sleep paralysis
episodes. In some cases I experienced the sounds of fast running steps
approaching my bed sometimes that of a child, sometimes adult, which used to
terrify me (of ghost presences. These episodes also coincided with my wife and
kids away on vacation and I was alone at home, which added to the fear) and
wake me up after breif sleep paralysis experience. After lot of post-self-
analysis I figured out that my brain must have been replaying events from past
to try to wake me up so I could recover from my short breath/sleep apnea
situation and get more oxygen to my brain. .... my son used to run into our
bedroom early in mornings after waking up from his bed (early days of his
sleeping in separate bedroom), and we used to wake up to his running and
jumping into our bed. Some times my wife walks up to my bed on weekends when I
sleep late, to wake me up.

I believe my brain was using, what were familiar ways of me waking up to, and
trying that on me to wake me up to protect me from my low oxygen situation
brought upon by sleep apnea short breaths. Nevertheless, this was kind of a
vicious cycle for a while even with me fairly certain of my analysis. The
terror of waking up from partial sleep paralysis to such ominous 'other
presence in room' irrational feeling caused a bad case of insomnia...it was
not easy to fall asleep. And the insomnia in turn worsens sleep apnea and
sleep paralysis episodes.

The CPAP machine helped a lot. Nevertheless is absolutely dreadful and
irrationally terrifying.

~~~
vubuntu
Also it is during such episodes, there are high chances that you will also
experience what I call as 'recursive wakeups', several levels (mostly 1 or 2
levels deep) of indirection out of which you are unrolling to wake up like in
the movie 'Inception'. I would feel very certain that I am awake, and have
come out of my sleep paralysis by doing what ever tricks others have also
pointed out (rolling sideways, wiggling toes, sitting up on bed etc), only to
suddenly realize that the 'presence' is still there and panicking and
eventually realizing I am still not fully awake ! Absolute terror until then
:)

In fact, I would not be surprised if the writers who came up with the concept
of 'Inception' and 'The adjustment Bureau' movies are probably themselves
sufferers of these conditions (lucid dreaming, sleep paralysis) or at the
least have heard accounts/experiences from some one in their circle (family,
friends) and did further research.

------
redlizard
Err... sleep paralysis can be bad if you don't realize that its an instant
gateway into a lucid dream. I had lucid dreams long before I realized this,
but at some point in my life during a sleep paralysis event i realised it was
a dream, and after that i could fly, have sex, and be magic for as long as i
remembered i was dreaming. Have fun the next time you have sleep paralysis,
its not awful, its awesome.

------
gexla
Wow, there is a term for it! I get this all the time and didn't think enough
of it to seek out understanding of it. It's it bit scary, but mostly annoying.
If I'm sleeping I want to be sleeping, if I'm awake I want to be awake. Being
somewhere in the middle isn't fun.

For me it's like a dream where I can see what I would be seeing if I were
awake and I can make the decision to try to wake myself up, but moving is
really difficult. In fact, I'm not sure that I'm actually moving myself at all
or if I'm just dreaming that I am. So, I have to try to move my arms and
shoulders, first very slowly and then I pick up momentum until I finally wake
up. It's as if I'm trying to learn how to move again.

I never feel like there are demons in the room, but I do get a feeling of
paranoia that someone could be messing with me and I couldn't do anything. Not
really a rational thought since people could have been messing with me while I
was totally asleep anyways.

~~~
Manger
I think I also experienced it several times. Basically, I was seeing what I
would see if I was awake, but I could not move and if I tried, I felt I was
moving "in my imagination" or in a dream, but not in "reality".

However, I never felt any terror while experiencing this, which makes me doubt
it was sleep paralysis. It was just like dreaming I was lying on my bed,
unable to move.

It only happened while attempting to nap in the afternoon. Now I try to always
listen to music while napping (preventing me from going into deep sleep), so I
don't have this kind of experience anymore.

------
wellpast
I experienced sleep paralysis for several years before finding out that it was
a phenomenon that happened to other people.

Less than 5% of those occurrences were hallucinogenic with extremely vivid
hallucinations. Often the hallucinations involved a frightening but oddly
archetypal witch hissing in my face.

Later, when I learned of the phenomenon I was both relieved (to know I wasn't
alone) but also terrified that others who experienced this also saw witches.

I still don't understand the connection, and it's frightening still.

Curious if anyone else saw similar visions or otherwise had potent
hallucinations accompany their paralysis. I have few other notable images;
would be interesting to see if anyone else had similar ones.

~~~
heurist
I've had a demonic child standing across the room, a calm and unfrightening
peasant sitting next to me, a woman watching me, and the girl from the ring
standing nearby. The most terrifying one by far was the demonic child. I don't
remember seeing any witches.

------
simon_weber
I experience sleep paralysis often after starting study of lucid dreaming. For
me, though, it is rarely the terrifying experience the OP describes. In fact,
since it's such an easy situation to identify, I tend to become lucid
immediately. Don't let this scare you if you're looking to start lucid
dreaming.

There are also tricks you can use to escape. For me, scrunching my face and
wiggling my toes always worked consistently.

~~~
ChickeNES
Yeah, I've had it happen to me once or twice while waking up in the middle of
a lucid dream. I knew what it was so it wasn't all that scary, though if I
hadn't I think I would have freaked out.

------
johnchristopher
I used to experience sleep paralysis on an on and off basis. Sessions were
spaced enough that I wouldn't remember them for long. I thought it was due to
high-level general anxiety.

There comes one session when I can't and don't want to go back to sleep. I
wake up, turn on the computer and get on that old Deftones board. And there,
there is a user writing about that topic and how he just experienced it and
how he found out an article about it !

That article did a good job of demystifying the whole experience. It does not
come from anxiety but can induce it (quite obvious) _. One interviewee
reported he found the experience quite pleasurable, like being held in someone
's arms. The article also stated that one you re-frame it in a pleasant way it
wouldn't be a bad experience anymore: you could make it border on the erotic
side of things.

And since then I have always been especially quiet and relaxed when having a
sleep paralysis episode. YMMV.

Note: contrary to what I have seen in comments here you CAN´T force yourself
to wake up from a dream.

_ which is how I decide to see it.

------
anigbrowl
Oddly enough, the last film I worked on is about this.
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3033948/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3033948/?ref_=fn_al_tt_3)
if you're curious, but it probably won't come out until mid-2014 so it's in
stealth mode as far as marketing materials go.

------
phy6
I hate when this happens and I have a stuffed up nose. The only thing I can
control is my breathing and rolling, I can't even moan. So I breath in a noisy
pattern to wake up my wife (I've told her that shaking me would 'wake up' my
body), or roll onto the floor (ouch!) to regain muscle control.

~~~
phy6
To add to my experiences, I've noted that it usually happens to me with these
circumstances: 1) Sleeping on my back (it always happens this way, has never
happened on my side or stomach) 2) poor bedding, where you've worn a
divit/canoe into too soft bedding. 3) After having foods with lots of salt/msg
(chemical imbalance? dehydration?) 4) On stuffy nights with stagnant, humid
air or a stuffy nose 5) Sleeping on my back with arms above my head. I'm not
sure why this is, but it's almost repeatable.

~~~
leahculver
Thanks for mentioning these. I sleep on my back, occasionally with my arms
above my head. I'll see if I changing my sleep position helps!

------
virtualwhys
Have had this experience periodically for most of my life, although more so
during my teens and twenties (41 now, happens maybe 10 times per year).

Imagine waking up and not being able to move anything but the tip of your left
pinky; furthermore, you're not in your bed but in some kind of nether twilight
limbo that has nothing to do with time as we know it in waking life.

So, that's the starting point, basically awake in a coffin. Rarely I've been
able to relax into the experience and fall back asleep, but more often it's
been the herculean struggle to migrate the movement of that pinky to the hand,
to the forearm, upper arm, and finally, somehow, roll over on my side and wake
up.

As to its origins, not sure. Perhaps it's preparation for the final sleep, who
knows; if so, still work to be done here ;-)

------
Pxtl
I get sleep paralysis sometimes and have since I was like eleven, and honestly
it isn't that big of a deal for me since it comes rarely. But as a kid? It's a
religious experience, and not the good kind. If I'd known that this wad a
thing, it probably would've been less terrifying.

------
mobiplayer
I had this for years and it comes back every now and then.

At first it was absolutely terrifying as I "heard" people walking next to my
bed, "felt" my mattress being lifted, "seen" things floating around and other
(now) pretty cool hallucinations. Now I'm able to get fully conscious during
the process and realise what's going on, but I still have a hard time when I
feel I'm suffocating :(

Just an advice, the trick is to focus your brain on your breath, don't panic
and raise your awareness of everything that surrounds you. It will calm you
down although you won't be able to move or call for help.

------
weavejester
It's interesting the article mentions "being ridden by the witch" as a phrase
from southern Americana folklore. It dates back a bit further than that, and
is literally where we get the term "hagridden" from.

------
rytis
"Sleep paralysis is, crudely, your brain waking up before your body."

I experience this, or something very similar, every now and again, perhaps
once every two months or so. I understand that I'm awake, I can hear, but
can't move or even open my eyes. However, unlike what everyone else is
reporting, I do not experience any fear, terror or have difficulty breathing.

In fact, I find it quite amusing. I typically try to fall back into sleep,
which occasionally work, or try to stay in this state, but never managed to go
beyond a minute or so...

Maybe it's not sleep paralysis then?...

~~~
Kiro
I've experienced that as well a couple of times. My mind is awake but my body
is still sleeping, completely paralyzed. It's a bit scary and definitely a
very strange feeling but not terrifying.

------
k-mcgrady
It happened to me a lot but fortunately I've discovered the 'trigger' that
causes it for me. When I'm in bed I have to keep both arms above the duvet, if
I don't there is a very high chance I will have sleep paralysis. I believe
it's related to heat. If I get too warm it is triggered and keeping my arms
above the duvet prevents this.

I've tested the theory quite a lot simply by trying to trigger sleep paralysis
(I wanted to when I was experimenting with lucid dreaming) and simply covering
my whole body (except my head) worked most of the time.

------
Nekorosu
I experienced sleep paralysis a long time ago in the form of too darker than
black dog like creatures standing near my bed in my bedroom. They'd been
hitting me with small bolts of electricity until I managed to overcome the
paralysis then I just woke up in the same place.

I guess the condition and the visions had something to do with a therapy I was
going through at that time.

------
sfaruque
I've found that attempting to roll your tongue while this occurs tends to lift
the sleep paralysis. No idea why this works though.

~~~
vubuntu
If Sleep apnea were the cause (see my comment elsewhere above), then it would
explain why rolling of tongue would lift it. Since tongue falling back on your
throat is one of the causes of obstructive sleep apnea.

------
DavidWanjiru
So this is what it's called. I didn't even know it's a "thing". I'd say it
feels uncomfortable, not terrifying. I usually just confirm that I can
breathe, and once that fear is settled, I "haul" myself out of it.

------
skc
I used to suffer from this pretty consistently for years until I researched it
on the web and understood what it actually was. From then on it reduced to
maybe once a year.

Funny how the mind works.

------
realrocker
4 out of 10 people have it. I do too. It is the most terrible experience you
can have. And it actually feels like a person riding your chest.

------
tareqak
Given that I experienced sleep-paralysis just yesterday, it's opportune that I
got to read this article now.

Thanks!

------
dylangs1030
There are a lot of people who don't know what this is like; as someone who
used to regularly experience this, I'd like to share some of my experience.

I have been in real situations that legitimately threatened my life and
safety, and sleep paralysis consistently gave me comparable levels of stress
and fear in each episode.

Imagine having a bad nightmare, so bad that you wake up from it. But when you
wake up, your eyes are open and you cannot move. You see things that your mind
logically knows cannot actually be there, but they are real for you. The REM
dream state continues, overlapping reality.

In one case I woke up one my side to a large, dimly lit figure on the side of
the bed, staring at me with red eyes. It just stared at me, while I physically
felt something at the bottom of the bed dragging my body off. I couldn't move
or even shift my head.

I was aware that I was awake, that this wasn't a dream anymore, but that this
sort of paranormal situation should't be happening. I couldn't move, couldn't
struggle - then the thing staring at me unhinged its jaws wider than should be
humanly possible and screamed at me at the top of its lungs. It sounded like a
human mixed with the shrill cry of a velociraptor from Jurassic Park.

I just remember trying to yell but not making noise, and feeling like I was
drowning. I knew I was awake but the supernatural sense of _wrongness_ was
almost more terrifying than the hallucination.

Then, after what felt like minutes of struggling to breath, and the figure
almost eating me, it all vanished, and I shook my body so violently I threw
myself off the bed (seriously). I think I actually ran to the lights, turned
them on and sat shuddering on my bed in the blanket for a while.

It's no joke. I used to regularly have these, and I sympathize with anyone who
has had them. They're primarily caused by stress and anxiety (and have a high
incidence in people with PTSD). It's not like a nightmare where you can
convince yourself it wasn't real, because the things I hallucinated were as
real to me as the lamp and nightstand.

Obviously I should say I didn't consume anything the night before. It's almost
debilitating, and caused me insomnia for quite a while.

It was hard to describe to people - they are not the same things as night
terrors. I would talk to people about it and they would say it was a bad
nightmare. But it felt so real, it was like that scene from the Matrix with
Neo and the bug.

Afterwards, details were always fully lucid and clear, and never became fuzzy.
I eventually realized that the level of obsession I would get into when trying
to get people to understand that it wasn't _just_ a nightmare mirrored the
hysterical reactions you would see from characters in Nightmare on Elm Street
or the Exorcist. I never really believed in things like alien abduction, but I
can fully understand why repeated exposure to sleep paralysis would cause
someone to seriously question reality.

~~~
druiid
Ughh. Been there, done that. Thankfully I haven't experienced it since I was a
young teenager. You are right about the whole thing being as real, or even
more real than reality. It is almost a primal feeling of reality if you get
what I mean.

I don't know about you, but for me even thinking about these episodes has me a
bit on edge remembering them. Given that I think about 20 years have passed
since the last time I had one, that just goes to show how significant they can
be.

------
cmccabe
It's not always a nightmare. Sometimes it's quite enjoyable.

I remember going to sleep with a headache at one point and experiencing sleep
paralysis. My headache was translated to black and white flashes of light. Or
another time when I heard music.

Being unable to move isn't really that big of a deal as long as you are in a
comfortable position. Eventually the paranoia and the sense of another
presence sets in, but up until that point it can be fun.

If you try to go right back to sleep, you'll probably end up in the same
state. Standing up clears sleep paralysis.

~~~
grannyg00se
"Standing up clears sleep paralysis." There's a bit of a paradox there :)

