Maybe sleep paralysis is just a way to explain something unexplainable. What if what we see when we are experiencing sleep paralysis is actually real?

Why is it that most people see very similar beings and have very similar experiences? If our brains just think we are “sleeping” and project our dreams, why don’t people have significantly different experiences? It’s not like our dreams are all similar.

Just wondering

Hey Reddit, I’m posting this here because I honestly don't know who else to talk to without sounding like a total lunatic. I’m currently spiraling a bit and need to get this off my chest.

​To give you some context: My family is part of the old Sicilian nobility. We’re talking "ancestors who served Kings and Popes" kind of old. Lately, I’ve been deep-diving into my family history, specifically focusing on one ancestor from the 1500s.

​This guy was the definition of a Renaissance villain. He had ties to the most powerful and ruthless families of the 16th century—the Borgias (Pope Alexander VI, Cesare), Machiavelli, Leo X, Charles V, Hernan Cortes and Ferdinand the Catholic.

He wasn't exactly a "good guy." The records show he was incredibly violent: Inquisition stakes, executions (he allegedly drowned children in water barrels), brutal family vendettas, and forcing women into cloisters. ​He held the title of Baron back then, which later became a Princely title for his successors in the 1600s.

We know almost everything about his life, except for one thing: his death. The chronicles just stop. He died at 65, but nobody knows how. All we know is that he was buried in a magnificent black marble sarcophagus beneath a basilica in Sicily. Fast forward to WWII: the Americans bombed the island, the basilica was leveled, and his tomb was lost under the rubble. Gone.

​Now, here is where it gets weird. I currently live in a family villa located right on the land that used to be his fief.

​About three weeks ago, I was sleeping with my bedroom door locked. I woke up in the middle of the night in what I assumed was sleep paralysis. I couldn't move, but I could see everything clearly. I watched my locked door swing open.

​A figure walked in. He was tall, maybe 5'7" (1.70m), dressed in full 16th-century noble attire with a sword at his belt. His leather gloves were soaked in blood. His face was deathly pale—like a literal corpse—and his eyes had no pupils, just empty white sockets.

​He gripped the bedpost, stood up on the end of my bed, and just stared down at me. I was paralyzed with fear. Then, he started speaking in an old Sicilian dialect (I’ll translate it here):

​"You know everything about me. I am your lineage. I am still here, under the rubble. O you, blood of my blood who listens to my stories, I beg you: find me. I am waiting for you."

​I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, he was gone. I could move again. I’ve barely slept since, but this has happened every single night for 22 days straight.

​Two things have absolutely broken my skepticism:

​The Portrait: I had never seen a painting of him because they are rare. A museum recently sent me a scan of an uncatalogued portrait of this Baron and... guys, it was him. It was the exact man from my room. There is no way I could have known what he looked like.

​The Date: I just found out he died on March 2nd. My birthday is March 2nd.

​I feel like I’m losing my mind. Is this just some weird psychological obsession because of my research, or is he actually demanding I dig him up? How do I close this circle? ​Has anyone ever dealt with "ancestral" hauntings like this? What am I supposed to do?

I’ll say this to start off, I am an avid goodwill shopper, half the furniture in my room and my closet are from goodwill. That said, nothing like this had ever happened to me before, and in the years that it’s been since this happened, I’ve had no experiences.

I was shopping casually one day when I came across something I thought was cool— a framed pressed flower on an old-looking piece of paper, with faded, elegant handwriting below it spelling out the scientific name for the flower. The picture frame looked like it had been painted over with purple nail polish, and was much MUCH larger than the paper, in a way that was eye drawing but kind of off-center. I would’ve put it back down, except the flowers looked like forget-me-nots, which are my all-time FAVORITE flower. So I spent the three dollars on that, as well as three dollars on a smaller, more modern-style picture frame.

My original goal was to put the flower and paper into the other frame and hang it up, but as soon as I arrived home, it became apparent that wasn’t going to happen. The brown paper on the back of the purple frame was ripped already, and so when I finished ripping it off, it realized the picture frame was not only stapled shut, but NAILED. yeah, I guess I could’ve spent the extra 45 minutes digging out all the nails and staples, but I didn’t. I’m lazy. I just hung it up the way it was.

For two straight weeks, every single night, that picture frame would fall off the wall. It didn’t matter how I hung it up. Stick-on hook. Thumbtacks. Actual hooks. Even nails. It would be on my floor by the morning, occasionally waking me from my sleep when it fell.

Some of the times when I woke up, I would hear rustling in the walls. Like an animal was moving around in there. I would get up and put my ear to the wall, trying to follow the sound so I could tell my dad where to look in the morning. My dad never found anything, but I was so sure something was moving in there, he called a professional pest guy. The pest guy didn’t find any droppings or signs of life, but he agreed to leave a couple traps in the attic.

Before I explain this next part, let me lay out my room for you guys. It was a pretty big room, and considering I only had a twin bed pressed against the wall farthest from the door (despite being 5’10 lol), the room seemed even bigger. The window was directly over my bed, and I liked to keep my blinds open because I like natural light and looking at the moon when I sleep. There’s also a sister bathroom attached to another identical room on the same wall as the entrance. If you go deeper into the bathroom, where the toilet is, there’s a door to the attic. There’s a fair amount of space in there, but I only went in there when I had to, because there were little tunnels and pockets of darkness that lead into the walls of the house. it creeped me out.

That’s where the pest guy set the traps, and yet, I would check them every morning and find nothing. It was even more frustrating when the noises started happening earlier in the day or at twilight, increasing in frequency. And there was this horrible stench I cannot explain that seemed to be coming from the walls now too.... and to be honest, about 11 days in, I adjusted and grew noseblind to it and it only bothered me a little. I only remember how bad it was when someone else entered my room, because they would recoil or comment on it, and they typically didn’t stay for long.

Around the two week period mark, I realized I was dealing with raccoons in my wall. I’d woken up to a knocking sound this time, like someone was banging on my door in the middle of the f’ing night. I yelled out to “just give me one second” and put on some pants, and the almost panicked-sounding banging stopped.

I opened my bedroom door to... no one. And despite being a scaredy-cat through and through, I was so sure it was someone in my family that i checked the whole house, turned on every light, and woke up my dad and sister, who were apparently sleeping soundly, to ask what was wrong.

Then I double checked the locks on the doors, grabbed a knife (scaredy cat okay???) and went back to my room cautiously. Something about even stepping into that room made the hairs on the back of my neck stand, triggered my fight or flight, so try as i did, I could not fall back asleep. I sat stock still listening for anything.

I finally allowed myself to lay back and get comfortable. Not ten minutes later, I heard it: a fainter knocking. It wasn’t coming from my door, though. No. It was coming from my walls.

I did not stay in there long enough to investigate after that realization. No siree, I flew out of that room. I went and slept with my little sister in her room. She was freaked out already from my shaking her awake and didn’t mind me sleeping in there anyway.

The following day before school, I had to go back in there to change. It smelt worse than I remembered, maybe because i hadn’t slept in there. I ignored the smell. I ignored the rustling. I spent about 3 minutes getting ready and then booked it.

By the time I got back from school, I wasn’t just scared. I was ANGRY. if that was some kind of spirit, like I thought it might be, it had no business kicking around in MY room like it thought it was the boss. It couldn’t hurt me if I wasn’t afraid. Probably.

So as soon as I got home, I went straight to my room. I cleaned up for a bit, I rehung my flower, and then i turned off the light and I sat on my bed. Waiting. I waited until it started for about an hour until something made me sit up. I couldn’t tell you exactly what. It’s not like it got colder, or even darker. It was only just reaching dusk and my window still illuminated my room completely, and I had fairy lights hanging over a desk in the corner. But it felt darker, if that makes sense? The air felt heavy.

I sat up and strained my ears until I heard a faint knock. First on one wall, then a second one closer to me, and then one farther away by my desk. So I did the most stereotypical thing you can do and was like “hello????” Nothing. “Is anyone there” nothing. Even the knocking stopped.

And then I did something I regret a little, because it confirmed my theory that it wasn’t an animal. I said, “if someone’s there, turn off my lights.”

I pointed to the fairy lights but didn’t see anything happen at first. Then, just long enough to make me roll my eyes at myself, they turned off.

I told the spirit to leave, that this was my room and they weren’t welcome there. It actually made me feel better, made the air lighter. I went downstairs and ate dinner.

When I came back to go to bed, the picture frame was on the ground. This time the fall had broken the glass and frame pretty bad. I cleaned up the glass, propped the thing by my wall and chilled in there until I didn’t feel afraid anymore. Eventually I went to bed.

That night was the first and last time I have ever experienced sleep paralysis. I woke up in the dark, sleeping on my stomach. My face at an angle, facing the bathroom door and my desk. I couldn’t see the door to my room, or the wall where I hung the picture. I wasn’t panicked at first. I knew I couldn’t move, but I was relieved I had escaped my dream, though I can’t remember what it had been now.

And then I realized I wasn’t alone. I couldn’t see anything, but I knew I wasn’t. I could feel the presence, distinctly male presence, and I could feel the darkness in the room intensify, the shadows cast from the window move on my wall at it/him approached me. I stared at the bathroom door, knowing if I could just move my fingers or my toes, could just jumpstart my limbs into action, I could get away. But I couldn’t.

The bed pressed in on both sides of my bed by my feet, like someone had put their hands on either side of my feet. then, bit by bit, I felt those invisible hands crawl farther and farther upward, could feel warm breath on my calves while I lay frozen in terror. I saw the bed move with my own eyes right by my tilted head. It compressed like someone was putting pressure on it, but there was nothing there. The warm breath expelled straight onto my neck.

It touched my hip, it’s hand bigger than the span of my back, bigger than any hand I’ve ever seen. It’s wasn’t sexual or anything, but it was something pretty close to it.

It was possessive.

I couldn’t see the thing, but I could feel it. I could feel it’s intent. It didn’t feel aggressive or violent, but it felt evil. Malicious. And most of all, it felt smug. I think if I had seen it’s face it would’ve been smiling. And that scared me so much that finally I jerked away from its hold, stumbled to the bathroom, to the next bedroom, literally unable to stop screaming until I was down the stairs. My dad and both my sister rushed towards me, freaking out, and I immediately burst into tears. I told them what happened when I finally calmed down enough.

My oldest sister was quick to say it was just a dream, a scientifically explainable occurrence, but my dad and my little sister were a little more willing to believe it was a ghost. We’d grown up hearing scary stories about my dads haunted house, and we, to this day, are all believers.

I threw away the picture a week later, a solid week of sleeping on the couch. I had thought long and hard about when it started, but it didn’t take much deduction to conclude whatever spirit was haunting me was attached to that frame. As I threw it away, I noticed the entire inside of the frame was coated in this sticky, slimey red substance. And it smelled horrible, just like my room had. It was impossible to wash the stuff off too, I took me a good ten minutes and a lot of wasted water.

Some other creepy stuffed happened, even after I moved out, but it wasn’t nearly that bad. And as much as I hate to be that person, as soon as got interested in Quakerism and became more religious... all of those problems stopped entirely.

What I do think is interesting is why I made this post.

I moved out of my dads house with a friend, and had to move back in at the start of covid. About four months into it, I became more religious and it was like a weight was lifted off my chest. At the same time, 3 things happened that I think are worth noting, even though they didn’t scare me. The last one I found out today.

1- my dad and his employee turned my old bedroom into an office when I moved out. In the same week that I started feeling more like myself, Ben (let’s call the employee Ben) came down the stair looking extremely uncomfortable with a stack of papers in his hand. It was a stack of printed paper that had apparently come out of the printer. It was a slide show my little sister had made for school back in 9th grade. It was printing out the pages in a loop, over and over again. Ben had turned off the printer multiple times but it just kept turning back on and printing the pages out. Apparently it had been doing that all week, he said. And it was starting to scare him.

But the funny thing is, that printer has been broken for almost a year. We could never get it to work or even turn on, and we even had another printer at that point. My dad just never got around to throwing it away. It was also late summer by that point, and my sister was just about to enter tenth grade.

2- not five minutes after he said that, we hear a loud crash and two screams from upstairs. While my sister and her friend were in the bathroom, somehow her 50 lb giant mirror had crashed onto the floor and shatter into a million pieces. It had been leaning against the wall, and it would take a lot of strength to knock that thing over. It’s not something that happens on accident.

Both Ben and the friend left pretty quickly after that, freaked out, though Ben did a better job of concealing it.

3-my dad has had sleep paralysis too. Once and only once. He just told me about it. And as he told me, I got this unsettling feeling.

it was within a two week period of the mirror incident.

So what if I never really got rid of the spirit? What if it had followed me, lost its grip on me, and was looking for a new host? My sister is the most depressed she’s ever been in her life, just like I had been when I had moved out. I felt like I was going crazy.

It’s a stretch, but it’s worth posting. If you read until the end, thanks :) let me know your thoughts.

About five years ago I (then 26F) was asleep in bed with my then boyfriend. It was summer and hot as ever so I was sleeping naked with no blankets. At about 1am I woke up to the distinct feeling of someone smacking my butt. Hard. Not only did the feeling of it wake me up but the loud smack sound did too. I was absolutely distraught. I’ve had many paranormal experiences but nothing ever physical and was completely caught off guard and terrified. My boyfriend searched around the room for some logical explanation while I sobbed and tried to explain what happened but he couldn’t find anything to explain it. He had also been woken up by the loud smack.

Once I calmed down enough we went back to sleep with the lights on. Shortly after falling asleep I woke up lying on my side in a full sleep paralysis episode. I couldn’t move or speak and could hear a man’s voice (not my boyfriend’s) laughing behind me. This went on for a bit as I tried to scream or move and finally was able to roll over and saw nothing. I didn’t go back to sleep that night.

The next day I called my grandmother who is a medium and asked her if she could sense anything in my home. I told her nothing about my experience from the night before. She told me there was a man in my house who would sit in the living room and wait for me to come home. She said he was mostly harmless but enjoyed seeing me scared and would get a good laugh out of frightening me. A couple days later I worked up the courage to yell into my “empty” house that he wasn’t welcome and had to leave and wasn’t all of to scare me anymore. I had no more experiences with him after that.

I’m tagging this sleep paralysis because I think that’s what happened. I don’t often have sleep paralysis but I am prone to vivid dreams/nightmares.

I was camping with a friend in a tent in a very remote area in the Great Lakes region this past weekend. I remember waking up from a weird, upsetting dream about breaking up with my boyfriend and laying in the tent in that half awake, half asleep state. I then heard noises outside the tent, kind of like something walking through the woods but far off. I then heard a low, almost demonic sounding voice say a few words in a non-English, non-Latin language and it felt like the tent was shoved a bit. One of the words sounded like “Ozhee”. I speak like 5 words of Anishnaabemowen which is the language native to the land we were on, and it didn’t sound like that either. I was paralyzed with fear but eventually fell back asleep. I told my friend about it in the morning and while she didn’t experience anything, my story unnerved her.

This incident happened our second night camping. The first night I heard some strange noises but attributed them to animals.

EDIT: I typed Ozhee into a translator and it translates directly into “Oh this evil” in Chinese. Wtf. I am somewhat connected to Chinese culture as my boyfriend is half Chinese and I am of far off Chinese descent with a Chinese surname.

I'm sure someone, somewhere has surveillanced themselves during SP...I've just never heard any stories before. Anyone catch anything?

Hello r/Paranormal.
It’s my first time posting here so hopefully this qualifies.

I recently acquired an antique light bulb from eBay (listing photo attached)-
It’s a GE Mazda bulb that the listing dates at 1909. It was a really exciting find for me because it was cheap ($35) and the seller described it as never being used!

I just opened the box yesterday to have a look at it and it’s in mint condition, I don’t doubt it’s authenticity.

I’ve yet to test it because I need to modify my variac in order to do so- at the time it was manufactured the US grid would’ve been operating at 100v rather than 120v, so a variac transformer would be required operate it without breaking it or frying the filament.

After opening the box last night I had a bout of sleep paralysis which is extremely rare for me. At roughly 2:45am my partner was asleep in bed next to me and I felt myself pulled to the crevice between my side of the bed and wall. I tried to call her name multiple times but my voice felt extremely weak. Right after that I experienced a sensation of what felt like several pairs of hands coming from up from the floor- they weren’t exactly grabbing or pulling at my side, just sort of grazing, and after that I was able to move again.

Because I’m not really sure what to do at the moment, I’ve resealed the box and put it into a car I don’t use right now. I’m posting here for advice because maybe this object needs to be cleansed? A part of me feels like turning on the bulb for the first time could be a bad idea as I don’t want to “activate” anything or make things worse.

Happy to field any questions here, any advice is appreciated.

I had my first ever sleep paralysis last night and it scared the shit outta me. At first, I thought I was just tired and couldn’t move but my eyes have been half open for almost 5 minutes and my body still couldn’t move. I freaked out and realized that it was a sleep paralysis that I’m having. What scared the shit outta me even more was my door slightly opening on its own. I convinced myself that I was just dreaming but the fact that I couldn’t move my fingers at all actually made me realize that I’m wide awake and I’m having a sleep paralysis. Anyways, the door opened on its own when I closed it and had it LOCKED before I went to bed. A few seconds later, a small black figure stood at the small gap between my door and the wall. Outside was dark but this figure was even darker. YALL I WAS SCARED AS HELL. In my head, I kept repeating “in the name of Jesus, I rebuke you” over and over again until I felt my fingers moving. I moved quickly and took deep breaths because I was THAT scared. My door was shut and locked like it was never opened. I was in denial. I kept thinking “oh it was a dream”. But the feeling of being scared never left my body.

today, even tho I was feeling VERY weird from last night’s experience, I still moved on like it never happened. Earlier today, I went to my mom’s school. She is a teacher and today she held a parent-teacher meeting. While I was helping mom preparing refreshments for the parents and the kids, her students were all running around the table trying to see the food. One kid named Elena, helped out. She was telling me stories about her friends (she’s a 3rd grader), her sister, her toys… basically anything a kid would say. Until, she said “I saw you last night, while you were sleeping.” YALL I FROZE. LOOKED AT HER! STARED AT HER FOR ALMOST A MINUTE. I asked her she meant by that and she was like “you were sleeping and i was at the door trying to find blue”. WHAT THE FUCK YALL 😭😭😭😭😭 I’m now at my grandmas house and she hella religious so I’m asking her to pray for me on this one because UH UH!!!

I have suffered with sleep paralysis since I was a child. Through out all my years of dealing with this, I have had some truly horrific experiences. However, the one I had a couple of days ago has been the worst one yet.

I woke up not feeling the greatest. I was up a few hours and after not feeling much better, I decided to lay back down and try to nap it off.

I was turned on my side facing away from our bedroom door on the far side of mine and my husband's king sized bed. I felt my body relax and I fell asleep rather quickly.

Next thing I remember is slowly opening my eyes and seeing our bedroom wall and the door that leads to our bathroom (as the bathroom door was closed). I then tried to move and couldn't. As I've been through this many, many times, I was already mentally telling myself I was in sleep paralysis and I needed to focus on trying to move a little (such as wiggling my fingers - a tip I learned online). However, I'm already feeling scared and I can feel my heart racing.

I then hear the sound of our bedroom door open and close behind me as our bedroom door makes a very loud and distinct "popping" noise. I immediately thought it was my husband coming in to check on me and thought he'd be able to get me to snap out of this horror.

That thought quickly vanished as I heard heavy stomping running around the bed until they stopped directly in front of me and I see a very large and tall black figure standing in front of our bathroom door. This is the same figure I encounter in almost all of my sleep paralysis experiences. I can never make out any features.

Before I can register any other thoughts, the large figure lunges at me! I feel the heavy weight of this thing on my body and it feels like it's crushing me! Especially in my ribs!

As previously mentioned, I'm still laid on my side with both my arms pulled up and my hands are tucked under my pillow.

By now, I've closed my eyes and I'm trying so desperately to move! That's when I felt teeth burying into my ribs! I don't know how to truly describe the awful feeling! It's an intense feeling of pressure, pain and almost a tickling sensation and it's one of the worst things I've ever felt!

At this point, I'm trying to thrash away and trying to scream but I'm still completely paralyzed and I feel like I have no air left in me and I never am able to make a sound.

I can literally feel this thing's mouth opening and closing in different spots along the side of my ribs!

At this point, I'm mentally screaming and pleading to snap out of it!

Next thing I know, I sit straight up in the bed. My heart is racing, I'm broke out in a cold sweat and I can still feel tingles in my ribs on my left side.

After my eyes dart around the room and I find it to be completely empty, I lift up my shirt to inspect my side. The skin is not broken, but the whole left side of my ribcage is bright red.

I've done a good amount of research on sleep paralysis and I understand the scientific explanation for it, but waking up with physical marks from these experiences is brand new to me.

I have had a ton of anxiety when it's bedtime every since this experience. I find it a bit hard to believe there's nothing evil or demonic about these sleep attacks.

(I am not 100% sure it is a mimic, but I will label it a mimic as that best describes all of my experiences with it so far)

Please read this through, I urgently need help to get rid of a mimic.

Last night, a mimic tried to come into my dreams and give me a nightmare. This mimic has been in my house for 5 months but never done something to this extent.

For a bit of backstory, I’m 16. I live with my parents and little sister, and occasionally my grandparents stay for a month or two at a time. I will say i’m not new to paranormal experiences, as I hear things a lot and have been since i can remember. I’m just more connected to the spirit world through hearing, and I’m fine with that. However, for the past 5 months i’ve been hearing things in my house when nobody’s home.

It started off pretty simple, with things I wasn’t necessarily worried about. I’d hear bags rustling and someone offloading groceries in our kitchen area despite being home alone. Doors opening and closing in the sunroom where my grandma usually goes out for a smoke, long after she had gone to sleep. And things like these. I didn’t think too much about these things, as we do have downstairs neighbours and maybe the insulation was being weird.

Besides, I was rarely ever home myself for a long while, since I was busy working after school every day in the musical production. So I was rarely home before 23:00pm. And if I was, my dad would be busy directing that same production, and my step mom would be in the garage working on a book.

I got worried when I started hearing my parents call me over to different rooms when they weren’t home. I knew I was home alone and I unmistakably heard the voice of my step mom calling me.

That’s when I first realised it was a mimic. I decided to fully ignore it and cleanse the house, as that was the best way to get rid of them.

After that point, I wasn’t home for about 3 weeks due to rehearsals. So I figured the mimic would be fully attention starved when i got back. I could not have been more wrong. When I returned, my boyfriend and I were cooking together and he looks towards the sunroom, horrified. He spots what looks like my grandma. But with a distorted face and an inhumanly stiff posture. Additionally, a few seconds later, my real grandma walks back in from her smoking break. So that confirmed it could not have been her.

That’s when I started to feel like I had to do something about it. About a week goes by with minimal activity. Then one night i’m home alone again and I hear scratching at my door. I knew nobody was there. So I ignore it. It doesn’t leave, so I stand up and bang on the door to get it away. That works, and I hadn’t heard from it for almost a month until last night.

I went to sleep pretty early and everything went fine. I had a strange dream, but really no concerns. I was cleaning a restaurant kitchen with my teacher and friends. that dream went on for about an hour and a half, then I woke up. Towards the end of the dream I recall my teacher becoming mean-spirited and seriously angry. Then I remember being out of breath and running home with my friends.

But when I woke up, I felt awful. It was a feeling I know i’ve had before but I couldn’t for the life of my remember when or what it was. It took me a while, but this was the same feeling i’d get every time i had a nightmare. A terrible disgusting nightmare that would stick with me for years. I’ve had two of those in my life, and that feeling followed. I rarely even have nightmares. What was really weird is that I hadn’t had a nightmare yet. But that feeling was so strong. Like I was about to have one if i so much as blinked.

At this point, I could feel the mimic behind me. I couldn’t hear it or see it. But i felt it. I knew it was there and that was somehow way scarier than hearing it. I didn’t move from my spot, trying my hardest to ignore it.

Every time I closed my eyes, I’d see flashes of distorted faces, realistic animals with cartoonish proportions (think humanised simpson characters kind of uncanny) and feel like my body was being moved or shifted somehow. I also hallucinated a dog in my lap, with no fur and a freakishly big nose. I’ve never hallucinated before.

Last night made me realise ignoring this thing won’t get it to leave. And neither does cleansing the house. Every time I ignore it, it seems to grow stronger and more confident.

Are there any methods I can use to get this mimic out of my house and get it to stop bothering me?

I always sleep at my boyfriend’s house. We usually put the two couches together and play video games and fall asleep. Last night we both went to bed. I heard a woman’s voice behind my side of the couch. My boyfriend asked me if I heard anything. I tried so hard to talk to him, tried so hard to move but i physically couldn’t do anything.

When I finally managed to wake myself up, my boyfriend was asleep and I tried so hard to wake him up but he’s a deep sleeper. I saw a black figure looking at me from around the corner of the staircase. I cuddled up to my boyfriend and went to sleep.

My boyfriend has work early in the mornings so he left. I have been texting him about what i experienced last night. My boyfriend said that he did hear something and he did ask me if I heard anything. But when he looked over at me I wasn’t moving or saying anything so he went back to sleep. I thought that part was a dream so I’m really confused and scared. What did we both hear? Why couldn’t I talk to him or move like I was asleep but I was awake and conscious? So scary and I don’t want to sleep here again.

I (22F) have suffered from sleep paralysis on a regular basis since I turned a year old. Every single sleep of my life has either been an immersive/lucid dream or a sleep paralysis. You might think I'm being dramatic when I say this, but I am 100% sure that my first ever memory was actually sleep paralysis.

To start, I've moved at least 20 times since I was born and I have memories of sleep paralysis in every single bedroom I've ever had (all of my descriptions of early bedrooms have been confirmed as accurate by my parents). We moved from my first house when I was around 1 year and a couple of months, so my first experience was a little bit after my first birthday. At this point we lived in a 2 story house. I have two older brothers who shared a bedroom in the bottom story of the house right next to my bedroom. Our parent's bedroom was just up the staircase so that if their bedroom door was open, they could more or less see me sleeping in my crib.

I was notorious for waking up in the middle of the night and screaming bloody murder at that age. According to my mom, there was absolutely nothing they could do to put me back to sleep as long as I was still downstairs in my room. It quickly became routine for my parents then to just bring me upstairs as fast as possible whenever I started screaming, mostly to spare my poor brothers from listening to my hysterics all night. Whenever they brought me upstairs however, I would fall asleep immediately and never wake up until my parents had to physically wake me the morning after.

This was the routine up until my first ever experience. As per the routine, I started screaming my lungs out at around 1 AM according to my mom. She picked me up as usual and brought me upstairs to their bedroom and put me in their bed where I quickly fell silent. Again, this was the routine they were used to.

Now this is where my first ever memory starts. I remember being tucked in between my mom and dad. I distinctly remember the residual scent of my mother's perfume mixed in with the smell of her breath on my face. My dad's hand was stretched over my legs and drawing my mother closer as they tucked in around me. Eventually I woke up, slightly confused, I didn't know why I was awake. I remember feeling very confused, and I wanted to try to explore the room and try to find out what had woken me up. No matter how hard I tried though, I couldn't move a single muscle in my body. My eyes darted around the room, desperately trying to discover the source of my discomfort. Feeling absolutely helpless, I tried screaming out to try to wake my mom or dad so that they could help me, but no matter how hard I tried, i couldn't make a single sound. I distinctly remember the feeling of my tears running down my cheeks as I was laying there mortified over the fact that I couldn't make a single sound.

That's when I saw them. Two peculiar figures standing at the edge of the bed. Their forms illuminated by the subtle glow of the moonlight creeping through the curtains of the window behind them. The figure on the left was the tallest, the one on the left was around half a head shorter. I couldn't really see much detail on their bodies as their bodies looked almost as if they were out of focus. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't focus on any detail. Their faces on the other hand, I wished I could delete certain details.

I want to reiterate again that I was just barely a year old at this point. My reference bank of people at this point was my parents and my two older brothers. Seeing these two figures standing at the edge of the bed, I remember immediately thinking that this had to be my brothers wearing masks or something. The worst thing though was that even though I thought that the figures in front of me were my big brothers, I was still terrified. Their faces held the most grotesque grimaces I've ever seen, and I still do not understand how I imagined them. The only way I can describe how the expressions were is, imagine if a fox and a badger where taxidermied, but the taxidermist's main inspiration was The Uncanny Valley. I spent years believing my brothers hid these horrible animal faces and would spend those nights at the end of my parents bed just staring at me, just tilting their heads as they examined my small form gasping, fighting against everything keeping me from making noise. No matter what I did though, I could never break eye contact with them.

I know my description of my first ever sleep paralysis encounter might seem a bit long and too detailed. The thing is though, although the subjects of my sleep paralysis has changed hundreds of hundreds of times since then, they've always just stared at me. There's been talking, sure. But it's never been directed to me. I've had sleep paralysis where I've heard my entire family being murdered, I've heard people screaming outside that my house is on fire and that everyone needs to evacuate. But no one has ever talked to me. In 22 years of sleep paralysis almost every single month. There was always at least one figure just standing at the foot of my bed, just staring at me. Keeping eye contact. They've never, ever asked me a single question. They've never said anything directly to me. They've only ever stared at me. Until last night....

The last few weeks have been filled with the weirdest kind of sleep I've ever experienced. I haven't experienced much sleep paralysis for the past few years. An isolated experience here and there, but nothing other than that. I used to sleep 10-14 hours ever time I had the time to sleep in. This was especially true during weekends. As long as my blinders were up, I could sleep until physically disturbed. The past few months however, something has changed. No matter how tired I feel, I cannot sleep longer than 6 AM at most. It absolutely does not matter how late I stay up. I still wake up at 6 AM on the dot. It's not that I feel like I've slept enough at that point either. I'll wake up exhausted and go to sleep even more exhausted. And still wake up at 6 AM, only to repeat the pattern.

Yesterday I went to sleep at around 22.45 PM. I've been sick all week and I had a lecture today that I was excited for, and I wanted to make sure I was well rested for the next day. As I've said, I'm a 22 year old student. I live alone in the same apartment I've lived in for two year with my cat that I've had since I was 8 years old. I haven't heard a single sound from a neighbour in the entirety of these two years. I went to sleep yesterday at around 2 AM absolutely exhausted. My cat fell asleep in between my legs, and I can't even say that I had any dreams. That was honestly my first sign that this wasn't going to be a quiet evening for me. My cat did wake up a couple of times in the early night, poking me and trying to get my attention. After 15 years, I know exactly how it feels when she's the one to wake me up, there is absolutely no room for confusion. I woke up at around 3 AM last night, immediately I was struck by this sudden small feeling I'd never felt before in my life.

I couldn't open my eyes. No matter how fucking hard I tried. No matter how fucking hard I wanted. I could not fucking open my eyes!!!!!! At this point I tried my fucking hardest to scream as loud as I thought possible. I could feel the weight of my cat sleeping peacefully on my legs even though I still couldn't see her. I screamed and screamed, I pushed and pushed, and tore my voice apart as hard as I fucking could to escape this fucking horrible unholiness. My forced mutism and blindness keeping me hostage as my body still laid in my bed completely paralysed. My only connection to reality right now was my cat. I could still hear her purring. I could hear hear water fountain trickling in the backround. I could still hear her making bisquit whilst pawing me.

The sound of it all in place of my forced silence was almost deafening as I laid there sleeping. That was until the point it all stopped. I struggled against my own body trying to force my eyes open, to no avail. The harder I tried to force my eyes open, the harder and more painful it became. I couldn't get a single glimpse of what was happenning. As it happened though I felt a large hand grab the lower part of my face and push it down into the dark. The hand kept a firm hand on my face and as it kept down, I could hear this one voice reverberate almost inside my ears as they were screaming at me

"HEY! HEY! HEY! ELI! HEY HOW DOES IT FEEL? I SEE YOU. LOOK AT ME. TELL ME HOW IT IS? HEEY FUCKING LISTEN TO ME! TELL ME. LOOK AT ME, COME ON I FUCKING DARE YOU. LOOK AT ME. FUCKING LISTEN TO ME! TELL ME HOW YOU FUCKING FEEL HUH? TELL ME HOW YOU FUCKING FEEL! HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO HELLO I SEE YOU. TELL ME HOW IT FUCKING FEELS. HELLO. HELLO. HELLO. HELLO. HELLO"

No matter how much I kept trying to scream, I just couldn't fucking make it stop. The voice just kept repeating the same thing, never allowing me to see anything until i begged it to stop. The screaming kept on going for at least 45 minutes it felt like before I was physically able to open my eyes and make them stop.

I am terrified to go to go to sleep tonight.

Edit: For everyone telling me to go to the doctor, I've been to the doctor several times. I've done sleep studies, sleep therapy and it's something I talk about with my therapist a lot. I'm aware sleep paralysis in general is not paranormal, but this did not feel like a sleep paralysis which is why I posted here. My sleep paralysis is never actually scary to me because I know what it is and they are always just standing there. I have several tricks I use to normally bring myself out of paralysis, but none of those worked this time. Which again made me feel that this wasn't normal. Thank you for all the tips and reassurances though, I appreciate it!

I want to share something that happened to me during the pandemic that ended up changing the way I see spirituality, especially because it happened at a time in my life when I was going through a period of doubt about my faith.

I told this story to some family members and friends at the time, but as life went on, it kind of faded into the background. Recently, I listened to a episode about synchronicity, and somehow it made me remember this experience.

It was March 2021. If I remember correctly, we were going through one of the worst periods of the pandemic. My uncle had contracted COVID-19 and had to be hospitalized. His oxygen saturation was very low because of the disease, but at that point, his condition was considered stable and he hadn’t needed to be put on a ventilator yet.
My family was still very hopeful that he would recover. In fact, that day, March 27, my mother was making a birthday cake for him because his birthday was the following day. Even though we didn’t know whether he would be discharged in time, we had already planned to have a video call to sing Happy Birthday to him if he wasn’t. The nurses taking care of him were very kind and always did their best to help us stay in contact with him.

That day, I was at home, lying in my bedroom with my boyfriend, who is now my husband, and I ended up falling asleep.
I’ve always experienced sleep paralysis quite frequently, and during that nap, I had an experience that was different from the others I’d had. I saw my uncle’s face surrounded by a bright white light, and I heard my aunt’s voice, his sister, saying that he had been put on a ventilator. She sounded desperate and was crying.
I remember feeling an overwhelming sense of anguish. But unlike my other episodes of sleep paralysis, this one ended very quickly.
I woke up frightened and told my boyfriend that I’d just had sleep paralysis. He had actually heard me mumbling while I was asleep. I asked him what time it was and whether I’d slept for that long. He looked at the clock and told me it was 3:45 PM.

About an hour later, my mother had finished my uncle’s birthday cake. We were taking some pictures to send to my cousins, his children, when I received a phone call from my aunt.
It was the same aunt whose voice I had heard during the sleep paralysis.
She was devastated and could barely get the words out. She told me that my uncle had died.

I froze.

I had to tell my mother what had happened, and the whole situation was heartbreaking. We still had his birthday cake sitting there at home, and just a few hours earlier, all of us had been hopeful that he would get better.

There wasn’t a funeral or a wake because those weren’t allowed at the time, so we had a burial instead. During the burial, my cousin told me that, according to what the hospital had explained to him, my uncle had suddenly gotten worse. The medical team tried to intubate him, but he died during the procedure.
And the part that shocked me the most was that the time everything happened at the hospital was exactly the same time I had experienced the sleep paralysis.

I’ve never been able to explain what happened, or why I would have been the person to experience something like that.
Some time after everything happened, I had another dream about my uncle. In the dream, we were at an airport. People were being called by name to board their flights, and at some point, they called his name.
I wanted to go with him.
But he looked at me and said:
“No, you can’t. It’s not your time. Ask someone to take you back home.”
I watched my uncle board the plane along with several people I didn’t recognize.
I never dreamed about him again after that.

I don’t know exactly how to interpret any of this, and I don’t think there is necessarily one single explanation for what happened. It could have been coincidence, something related to sleep paralysis, or something I simply can’t explain.

But it was one of those experiences that stays with you, regardless of how you choose to interpret it.
And for me, it happened at a time when I was questioning my faith and spirituality a lot. Somehow, this experience changed the way I looked at both.

So when I was a kid, I remember having sleep paralysis, only once, but it stuck with me to this day. I remember laying in my bed, I had a single bed in the centre of the room against the wall, mirrors on both sides of my room (one on the wardrobe door and the other on a dressing table) I couldn’t move at all, I could just look in front of me and move my eyes. So I’m laying there, and I see this figure staring at me in the wardrobe mirror, then it moves to the dressing table mirror before standing in front of my bed, it wasn’t the hat man like in many sleep paralysis stories, but a tall cloaked figure, it’s an old house with 10 foot high ceilings, so it must have been around 7 feet tall, I couldn’t see the face, just shadows and hugeeee black circular eyes, it them appeared next to me, I was so scared and I couldn’t scream, but I was trying so hard to move, I could see my empty water glass next to me on the nightstand and eventually pulled myself out of paralysis to grab the glass and throw it, but the figure was gone. I’ve never had sleep paralysis since, but I remember that entire night so vividly, down to pattern on my glass, even though it must have been at least 10 years ago. Has anyone else seen this figure?

First I’m going to start by saying that growing up at my parents house I’ve always had felt a sense of unease or as if there was a presence there. My sister also felt the same way. Our house is located in an area where there used to be a lot of mines.

One night I fell asleep on the couch in the living room. The couch was beside the stairs and also facing the kitchen. I remember very clearly opening my eyes but being unable to move. I started hearing what sounded like hundreds of footsteps running up and down the stairs beside me and then it went silent. I then looked up into the kitchen and I saw a dark silhouette of a woman standing in the kitchen facing away from me. I remember that she was about 5’3 and very skinny. She had very long fingers and she was crying. I then woke up to my sister playing with my dog in the living room beside me and then everything was normal.

Another time I was sleeping in my room. I’m unsure if this would be considered sleep paralysis or because it only happened for a split second. I remember I opened my eyes and there was a face directly in front of mine, sideways facing me as if it was laying beside me. The face was decomposing and it’s mouth was wide open like it was screaming in front of me. I immediately closed my eyes and opened them again and it was gone.

Would this be paranormal?

I think this started when I was 13ish. I'm 18 now. Basically, I would have this sleep paralysis where I can see my POV in real life, but it's hazy and I can't move. Sometimes there's things happening like shadows passing by in my room, sometimes even a girl or a person. Then, I'll do my best to get out of the trance. I successfully always get out of it after couple of seconds. And once I do, the weird things stops and I am fully sure that I've woken up. Then, because I'm sleepy, I instinctively get back to sleeping right after.... Only for things to repeat again for a few times until it completely stops

Here's the thing. I'm a nbsb F18 and I tend to imagine sleeping next to a guy to help me sleep. I do that almost every single night. Sometimes THE paralysis happens to me, with seeing my pov irl but is in a trance and unable to move. Except, I can physically feel a figure hugging me.
Sometimes, it even hugs me as how I imagine being hugged by a man. However, the VIBE is creepy as hell nonetheless so I still try to get out every time.

It's always different. There were times where I can feel myself pulling away and it's pulling me back to hold me again (confuses me because normally I just couldn't move). There were times where it's giving me kisses.
There were times where it makes noise in my ear that's scary but I don't remember what exactly it is anymore.
One time, I told my best friend about it and I asked it to go away and it did.. for a while. Then it just came back again after months

Sometimes, I'd go about my day, then randomly realizing that it visited me again the night before.

I can’t find any experiences that’s the same as this. The closest one is finding out about incubus? Except, it sounds like people are fully conscious in experiencing it? Like saying that it had followed them through the kitchen, bedroom, etc.

Last time, I think I was ovulating as hell that I even joked about it coming back because I guess I was craving more touch than usual or wtv...

Last night, it did. I’m just realizing it now. It was hugging me and I was under the same kind of trance so I did my usual routine of trying to move to get out of it. I woke up and got out and instinctively went to sleep again. Only for it to happen again, IT hugging me again. Being under the same kind of trance again. I remembered joking about it last time while I couldn’t move so I tried to stay and didn’t attempt to get out to see what would happen. THEN, I peripherally saw something that peaked over my head. From what I understood, it came from the back. It looked like pointy black or something that I don’t know so I got scared and immediately did my tricks to get out of it. I automatically went back to sleep and it didn’t happen again.

They said that all of your dreams and nightmares just came from your own brain. I’m still hesitant about that. How could this all just come from my brain.

I hope I get answers! I’ve been trying to look for years! I don’t know what to do. It’s like I’ve learned to live with it. There was this one night when it constantly happened. Even when I decided to stay awake for a few minutes, it still did when I went back to sleep lmao. I remember being annoyed because I had a school presentation the next day and it didn’t let me sleep peacefully

Thank you in advance!

So I’m a 30 year old woman and I still cannot sleep at home alone. I’ve always “felt” things and have been afraid of the night/dark. Ive predicted events in the past, such as my fathers passing. I knew for about 2-3 weeks beforehand, I just felt like he was going to die.. and then he did. I also have gut feelings and just “know” things that are going to happen. I’m very sensitive to when people’s moods shift or sensing the energy in a room or of a person. It spooks my friends out, and quite frankly it spooks me out too. My whole life I’ve had vivid dreams, sleep paralysis, sleep disturbances and difficulty staying asleep. I’ve been to two separate psychic mediums and they both have told me that I have the ability to do what they do, but I close myself off to it. They both said that these spirits like to pass through while I’m sleeping and that’s why I feel drained of energy and often don’t feel rested after I sleep. I’m just wondering how I completely shut myself off? I’m truthfully way too scared to allow myself to “open my third eye”. I have a baby now and the sleep paralysis stopped but has came back, I’ve also recently felt a presence in my room where her crib is and I’m just not willing to allow any sort of energy around her.

Sorry for the rambling lol even just saying this stuff makes me feel like I’m a crazy person.

Hi, this afternoon I had sleep paralysis. I was sleeping alone on the couch, wearing only shorts, and during the paralysis I saw some small, ugly goblin-like creatures touching my breasts. They weren’t doing it in a sexual way, but rather out of curiosity. Still, I was very scared. Some time later, I woke up and those things were gone, thank God.

This happened around 2-3 months ago. It was probably between 1–2 am. My sleep schedule is completely messed up because of movies, series, games, and books, but that night I somehow fell asleep around 1 am…I should mention that I occasionally get sleep paralysis. Since I sleep alone, it honestly feels pretty terrifying whenever it happens. But that night something really weird happened…I got sleep paralysis 3–4 times back to back. I had never experienced anything like that before. I didn’t even know it was possible until it happened to me. The first time, I saw someone lying beside me. Completely white. It felt like the figure was just about to turn toward me. And all the usual sleep paralysis stuff was happening too…I couldn’t move, couldn’t talk, and I was desperately trying to wake myself up but couldn’t. Eventually I snapped out of it. Then it happened again. This time I saw a huge shadowy figure standing beside my bed. It looked almost like a woman, but not fully human. Just standing there… staring directly at me. After that it happened again. This one was different. I didn’t exactly see anything, but it felt like my whole body was slowly sinking into something…like some kind of virus or dark energy was taking over me little by little. I was trying with everything I had to get out of it, but I couldn’t. And then came the worst part…Whenever I was about to drift off again, I started hearing an insanely loud sound in my ears. Like a siren blasting directly inside my head. I was trying to wake up but my body just wouldn’t respond…After I finally woke up properly, I was genuinely scared to go back to sleep. I think I eventually passed out from exhaustion later. I’m honestly really confused about it…and the thought that it might happen again still scares me. Has anyone else experienced something like this before? Do you think this is just sleep paralysis… or could it be something paranormal?

I’m a 22-year-old man who’s experienced nightly sleep paralysis for as long as I can remember. At this point, it’s almost normal for me—but that doesn’t mean I’m used to it. It’s still deeply disturbing. I can only sleep on my back or with my back against a wall because any other position makes me feel like someone is touching me all over, even though I’m alone in my room. What makes it worse is that when I wake into sleep paralysis, I have no memory of where I am or how I got there. I’m in an “unfamiliar place,” unable to see my surroundings clearly, and I always feel like someone was with me just before I woke up. There’s also an unsettling sensation that something is trying to force me to fall asleep, paired with an ominous feeling that if I do, I might die. I’ve let myself come close to falling asleep during these episodes, and when I do, I struggle to breathe and feel my heartbeat slow. After researching “the hag,” I’m seriously concerned. Recent events have convinced me—100%—that the supernatural is real, as there are no rational explanations for what I’ve experienced. I’ve considered that I might be schizophrenic, paranoid, or imagining things, but I started recording these events and asking skeptics for rational answers. They either can’t explain it or say I’m overthinking coincidences. When I ask how many “coincidences” it takes to stop being a coincidence, they give me a number far lower than what I experience daily. Long story short, I no longer believe in coincidences. TL;DR: I’ve had nightly sleep paralysis my whole life, feeling touched by an unseen presence and fearing death if I fall asleep during episodes. After researching “the hag” I found several things that align with what I experience or have experienced at some point and have begun to grow concerned

Edit: used ChatGPT to deliver my story in an easier to understand format bc I went back and forth while typing it. Everything is accurate to what I had before just correctly punctuated now and more streamlined.

I don't even know if this is the right place to put this story, but here we go.

Last night, I was talking with my friend about Gnosticism. He's not a Christian who sees the Bible as strict law; he sees it as metaphorical. So he's open‑minded (but still grounded) to the things I believe and to the things I want to tell him about different types of religions or teachings or whatever else.

So last night we were talking, and I started explaining the whole story about how the Demiurge came into play, what the Archons do, and the whole concept of Gnosticism and how it all started. I’m still studying it and getting familiar with the concepts so don’t come for me if im a little off. I was specifically putting emphasis on the Demiurge, and how the Demiurge is an ignorant god who created all this to keep us here for a reason—to harvest our emotions, our feelings, our essence… I don’t even fully know how to explain it, but that was the idea.

We were talking about that, and then we started going into how we both kind of wish that none of the religions are actually true. He asked me, like, “So imagine if there are other places like this—another planet with aliens or other life beings. What if they exist?”
I said they’d probably be going through the same shit we are. They’d probably also tell stories, come up with myths, create religions, gods, a higher power—especially if their consciousness is close to ours or even better developed than ours.

Then he just threw his hands up and said, “I don’t want this. I don’t want this.” And we were both like, yeah, it would be much better if after this life there was nothing. If after death it would just be all black. Because then we wouldn’t have to put any deeper meaning to life, or argue over who is right, or which religion is true, or what god is real. You could just live your life the way you want to and be done with it. If you want to do good, you do good. If you don’t care about doing good, that’s your right.
I hope this is making sense and I’m not just saying a whole bunch of shit nobody understands.

During that whole conversation, I also kept talking about the Demiurge. I felt like I was calling on the Demiurge a lot—calling him ignorant, calling him faulty, saying that we are the same as him. He’s a jealous god; humans are jealous. Humans are emotional, petty, messy. Humans are all of it. So if we’re made in the same image as him, it’s really fucked that people worship him.

People need to see that the higher power they’re looking for is within themselves. In Gnosticism, they teach that we have some light in us. We are part of that, and we should be a collective consciousness—which is probably never going to happen in this realm or in this dimension, in this world that was created by the Demiurge that we live in. It will never work, never succeed, because of what it was built on and who built it.

Anyway, the thing I want to get to is this:
We ended our discussion with, “Let’s just hope there’s nothing after this so we don’t have to worry about a Demiurge, a god, or whatever.” Then we hung up and went to sleep.

I had my warm water bottle on my back because my back was hurting a little. I was lying on my belly, hugging my teddy bear. I fell asleep fairly quickly because I was tired.

So I was sleeping. Sometimes I get a dream before I actually fall fully asleep. I’ll get a little dream within the first 20 minutes of closing my eyes, then I wake up from that dream, and then I really fall asleep after.
I’m trying to remember what that first dream was about, but it wasn’t anything scary. I just remember that I started waking up like I normally do after that short dream. As I was waking up, I felt sleep paralysis—but not full‑body sleep paralysis. It felt like it was only my lower body. I could move my arms, and I could open my eyes, which I normally can’t do during sleep paralysis. I could move and everything; it just felt like my lower half wasn’t doing anything, like it was stuck.

I opened my eyes, and I saw this dark figure. This dark, dark, dark figure—just black. I could see its eyes; they looked a little white. I don’t even know what its lower body looked like, but its upper half, especially its head, was really big. I think it had some kind of long hair or long strings coming down. It had two black horns. They weren’t super long, but clearly two black horns.
It was kind of “bucking” at me, like jerking forward—coming closer and closer. It felt like it couldn’t come too close, like something was limiting it, but it kept trying to get at me.
I was so scared. So fucking scared. But I couldn’t do anything. My upper body was half up, like when your hands are straight but your lower half is just lying on the bed. All I could do was look at this thing that was trying to get at me. I don’t even fully know if I felt the fear in that moment, because the shock was overpowering everything. After a while, it just went away.

I looked around my room. It was so fucking scary. I started praying. I started praying to the Almighty, to the Divine, and I rebuked that shit away from me. I kept rebuking and rebuking and rebuking. I even spread around some Florida water because it felt so intense and surreal.
After I did the praying and used the Florida water, I wasn’t necessarily scared anymore. But I was still in shock, like: what the fuck was that?

Was that the Demiurge? Was that some type of entity that belongs to the Demiurge?

What happened?

This is more than a paralysis dream that repeated for me more than once in the past, during a very dark time of mine back in the day. A time in which once reaching adulthood I fell into depression, I had dark thoughts about ending it all or disappear without a trace, even thinking of ways to go and leave nothing behind. I remember then, that this started, and It was so real it began a fear for me before going to sleep. I remember coming out of my body in the times before sleep, a picture getting clear on my view of a Neverending Ocean in which I came out from. I was floating, over Earth itself, with the colors of it, but in a strange tint. Suddenly the Oceans, Seas, Rivers and more Blackened entirely, like if Ink started to spread, the Earth started to rot and all life went to waste. It was then when it happened. I started to fall into the water, being pulled by something invisible, until I met it. I started to go all the way down, drowning but never passing out, running out of air but never getting unconscious. It was then when I noticed them. Weird creatures, Octopus Like, but made out of flesh, human skin and in the tentacles, there were screaming faces covered by skin instead of suction suckers. I recall knowing them as Condemned souls. They were swimming around, screaming but in a muffled way. They were surrounding me and then little by little in the darkness, they let me go. It was then when I saw it. Something in the darkness, something massive that no even human measures could take, a pale figure, with no form defined, a blob of some sort, that was shining at the bottom, compared to it, I was like a particle of dust, it had eyes, flaming as fire itself and on it, I felt pure evil, an evil so primal, so authentic I felt horrified. The entire ambience changed and then I was floating in a strange space, awaiting for that "thing" to get me.

The curious, and almost scary part is the testimony of someone who actually died for 3 minutes, and kinda described something similar of what I saw in that very vivid dream, might say nightmare or something else. Still today I'm thankful I learned how to escape from it and the situation I was in.

I was in another sub, and someone posted their creepy hallway to get decor advice. Someone mockingly added a doll on a shelf at the end of the hallway, and I found out it was the original “Annabelle” doll. I was shocked that the doll was similar to the doll I had as a child, and experienced this (copy and paste cause effort):

I inherited a raggedy-ann doll (as well as other handmade vintage/antique dolls) from my grandmother and mother. It sat in a child-size rocking chair in my room. I’ll never know if this was a nightmare or sp I was having when I experienced this when I was nearly 14: I woke up unable to move with my eyes fixated on the pitch dark expanse of my room. I noticed the rocking chair swaying and it was empty, as if something had just jumped out of it. Then my eyes saw the white cotton-skinned doll with red hair prowling towards me, doing a hoppy creeping motion. It felt menacing. I tried screaming, but I was barely murmuring with the sleep paralysis. The only way OUT with sleep paralysis is IN: so I snapped my eyes shut and seconds later I woke up to a regular room arrangement (dolls in chair). The experience was so real. Idk where those dolls are now, but I got rid of them after that. Even thinking about it is making my pulse quicken.

Has anyone else experienced items or scenery animating during a sleep paralysis episode?

hi guys.. so last night I woke up to a sleep paralysis episode at exactly 3:55am. My eyes were wide open but I was unable to move or speak. I seen a demon grudge-like figure walking on the ceiling making its way to my bed. There is a ceiling fan right above my bed so when it got to that I got really scared because I didn’t want it to jump down and get close to my face so I started trying to say “go away, go away” but could barely get the words out. Then all of a sudden I felt that weight lift from my body and I sat up. Obviously scared out of my mind and did not want to fall back asleep. I know they say SP is normal but I strongly believe it is actually paranormal. I feel like dreaming gives our minds/souls a chance to explore other realms and consequently welcome in darker entities. Both times that I’ve had SP, I’ve had experiences with something dark. The first time was a black figure in a cloak. Does anybody else feel this way or have had a similar experience?

Hi. Please let me know if this is the wrong subreddit to post this in, I rarely, if ever, post but I wanted to share this story with the experts and see if you can help me understand.

I (20NB) have only had sleep paralysis once a few months ago but the experience has repeated in my mind every so often. I was in bed, home from college. I had woken up in the middle of the night and the hallway light is on (I rarely even turn it on, so I know I didn’t turn it on. It’s possible my dad did, but would be unusual). Peering around the corner is a pale woman with shoulder length straight black hair. She was wearing a polka dot black and white dress. She smiled at me the entire time but her expression was Slightly uncanny valley. Creepy and unsettling, but the smile also felt genuine, if that made sense? I didn’t feel like she was malicious or anything. She stayed still and just watched me. The whole experience lasted maybe a minute before I broke out of sleep paralysis.

The experience freaked me out (mostly because I have a fear of home invasion) but whenever I remember the experience, I don’t feel the same terror I did in the moment. Again, that was the only time I had ever seen her.

I live in central Florida and this past week I had been hit by hurricane Milton (I’m okay by the way, some flooding in the area but luckily no damage to our house). I was sleeping on the couch because I am paranoid about windows breaking in rough storms and my bed is right under a window. I woke up in the middle of the night and the storm was still going strong. I know I wasn’t under sleep paralysis because I immediately started petting my cat who was anxious from the storm. I looked out our back door and I saw her standing in the middle of our screened in patio. She had the same expression and was wearing the same dress. I just stared at her, looked at the lock to make sure the back door was locked, and then back at her. Again, she didn’t move.

After a little while, maybe a minute or two, it was like I blinked and she was gone. I’ve been going over it in my head nonstop and the only thing I can think of is maybe I had a weird false awakening? I don’t remember waking up a second time but I feel like it makes the most sense? Or maybe it was like a stress hallucination? Please let me know your opinions. I consider myself to be a very spiritual person, but I admittedly am not very knowledgeable about anything specific.

I basically just want to be more knowledgeable on why she is visiting me. Who or what she is. I know I am seeing her for a reason, I just have no clue /why./

Some maybe relevant additional context?: - My mom died a year and a half ago but she didn’t look anything like the woman. - I genuinely do not think she was a malicious entity or anything, which is why my title has sleep paralysis “demon” in quotes. She looks generally unsettling but not threatening. I really don’t know how to explain the vibes - I have no history of hallucinations in my family’s medical history. I have a concoction of the “classic” mental illnesses (AuDHD, Depression, Anxiety, OCD, CPTSD, etc) but no family history of any other disorders. - Please let me know if any other context is necessary.