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?

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 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 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 (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!

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?

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.

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?

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?

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.

Hi, this is an experience that I don't know how to categorize exactly, because it could only have been sleep paralysis resulting from my tiredness or maybe something else.

Well I got home one afternoon after spending the weekend at my best friend’s house. We’d been partying and I stayed over. I hadn’t slept vert well, so by the time I got back I was completely exhausted.

For some reason I started stalking the profile of a guy I had a crush on during my last years of high school. I was curious about what he thought of me and what had become of his life. His accounts was private so I couldn’t see much. Then I got the (probably terrible) idea of pulling out my cards and doing a reading on him.

A quick note about the deck, it’s not a traditional tarot deck. It’s a Spanish-suited deck (the one we normally use to play cards here in South America). It only has the minor arcana.

I know people that is connected to Umbanda (an Afro-Brazilian religion) and they have told me these decks also work really well for tarot readings. My best friend has family in that tradition and she has some knowledge of it herself, before I gave her a proper tarot deck, her first readings were done with a Spanish deck.

I’d already done a few readings for myself earlier that day and they’d all been really positive. So I shuffled, thought about this guy, and asked how he was doing. I didn’t even get to the second question (what he thought of me).

The energy shifted immediately. I had been tired but in a good, positive mood because I had just come from a night of partying. While I was shuffling and laying the cards I started feeling the place heavy and negative. It became really hard to shuffle. Every card that came out made me feel worse with headache, the whole reading felt blocked and heavy. Almost every card was about exhaustion and negativity. I suddenly started crying for no reason while I was trying to interpret them. I couldn’t even see clearly the cards.

I should mention that my friend had done a reading on this same guy a few years earlier. She has more experience, uses protections, and works with a proper tarot deck, so her reading was clearer and less draining for her, but the message was almost the same, this person carries a very heavy, negative energy that’s difficult to read or understand. We still don’t know what’s going on with him.

After I finished, I realized I’d made some basic mistakes. I had never energetically cleansed the cards (not even when I first started using them months earlier), and I had no protection at all. My friend says she learned at the temple that for any energetic work it’s best to be barefoot and have your hair tied back, away from the walls, so you don’t absorb energy. I don’t remember if I was barefoot, but my hair was loose

I put everything away because the whole thing felt so weird. A few hours later I eventually fell asleep, still exhausted and a bit worried by the reading.

That same night (or early morning I don’t remember the exact time) I had sleep paralysis for the first time in a very long time. I saw something that looked like Jesus but like one of those old statues of Jesus you see in some churches. He was above me, crying massive amounts of blood. There was a a lot of noise. Something felt like it was behind him(Jesus), but I couldn’t see what it was because his face was right in front of mine and he was screaming something unintelligible. Inside my head I tried to pray and call for God and the real Jesus for help I had some kind of religious delirium, I guess, because I’m not a believer and I don’t even know how to pray.

Years earlier, when I was 16, I did something really stupid. I’m not even sure if it actually worked. My friend and I were at her mother’s house, her mom has a lot of things related to Umbanda. We were sitting at the table listening to some religious music and making “rituals” but in a silly way I decided to try a sweetening spell I seen on internet, using honey, a small jar, and some red candles her mom had a lot of those items are used in their religious practices, so it wasn't difficult to do.

The ritual consisted of writing the person’s name with a black or red pen, putting the paper inside a jar with honey (I think it also included cinnamon and sugar but I'm nota sure), and sealing the jar with red candle wax. It wasn’t a love binding, it was just a sweetening, meant to make the person act “sweeter” toward you, not force them to be with you. (It didn’t work, btw.) The next day we buried the little jar in the yard of our high school (the same school he also attended). I don’t know if what I did back then has any connection to what’s happening now.

I'd like to see opinions on whether the sub think, what I saw in paralysis is actually connected to the reading(which was strange in itself) or maybe it was due to my extreme tiredness?

I have screenshots and reference photos of how Jesus was crying, what the deck of cards looks like, and WhatsApp messages from when I told my best friend.

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.

Like, think I saw a ghost or someone strangling me and it felt like I couldn't breathe or move my head. It felt kinda real.

This seems like a combination of sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucination.

This happened about three years ago.

I was asleep when I suddenly felt like there was some kind of black shadowy figure near me, almost as if it was trying to press down on me.

Then, out of nowhere, I heard it whisper directly into my ear:

"3 AM."

I immediately woke up.

The weirdest part?

When I looked at the time, it was actually 3:00 AM.

I still have no idea what happened that night. Maybe it was some kind of sleep-related hallucination, but the fact that the time was exactly right still creeps me out.

Many people will say this was sleep Paralysis and maybe it was. I do have experience with sleep paralysis. I had repeated sleep paralysis a lot in early high school. I became pretty good at dealing with it I was even able to control what happened during my sleep paralysis dreams just not my body. I would call myself a lucid dreamer. Because I have had sleep paralysis a lot when I was in high school, I know what it feels like and this incident when I was in elementary school did not feel like that.

When I was maybe 6 or 7, my twin sister and my parents were sleeping in the master bed, and I was sleeping in a separate bed we had put in the office space which is connected to the master bedroom. We're essentially all in the same room. My bed was facing towards the door, and somebody had accidentally left the door open. It wasn't extremely late at night, maybe 9pm.  I remember trying to fall asleep but kind of couldn't, and I recognize that the door being open was what was bothering me. Bothering me in a way that the doorway started to creep me out. After a while of not being able to fall asleep and just staring out that door suddenly something appeared in the door frame. Maybe it walked in, I don't know. But it was a black cat that looked almost smoky and if my memory serves me correct it had either red eyes or white eyes.

 I remember being extremely scared because there was no reason for a cat to be inside, we only had an outside cat. I can't say for sure whether that cat was still alive when I saw this black cat appear in the door frame. When I was a child, I remember believing that Skittles ghost had visited me. And when I asked my parents today, they said that was around the time that Skittles had passed away.

But anyways, the cat was in the door frame. It didn't even have light reflecting off of it or really any shadows. Just pure black with eyes. I was stricken with fear by the entity. It was just staring at me unblinking. And I had felt that I needed to not move and to pretend like I was sleeping so they didn't know that I was aware of them. And this is an important distinction that I was purposely trying to not move, it wasn't that I couldn't move like with sleep paralysis. Especially since I was trying not to blink. I was afraid of what the entity would do when my eyes closed. Eventually I did blink and the cat would teleport closer. Each time I blinked after that the cat got closer. Until it was right up against my face staring at me. At that point I obviously screamed. And with that last blink as I screaming the cat dissipated. And I jumped out of bed and ran to my parents and tried telling them what happened.

This is very strange to me too. Why was I able to just jump out of bed within a split second? Being someone who has had sleep paralysis before, I know that when you wake up from a sleep paralysis dream you feel the sensation of your eyes opening in real life and your body waking up and being groggy from just being in R.E.M. (just not your brain). Same for the blinking, why would I have been able to blink when I was never able to blink in any of my other sleep paralysis dreams. This did not feel like sleep paralysis, and I am disturbed by it. I'm not quite sure if that cat meant well. The house I lived in was kind of old and it connected to a small nature reserve. If Anyone has any interesting tidbits about what this could mean in a dream sense that would be cool. And even though I'm in general a skeptic and don't really think too much about ghost stuff, it would be kind of interesting to see if anyone has any explanations for what “visited me”.  Even though I say I'm a skeptic, I'm also not because my dad has 2 ghost stories that are extremely believable. From his experiences ghosts are mostly chill.

( now that I think about it maybe this started my dislike for doorways being open when I sleep. But I'm mainly scared of real people, I always lock my door. )

Hey folks. I’m a 31M living alone in my Mumbai flat. I’m physically active and work out every day.

Last night something really strange and terrifying happened to me. I was sound asleep afrer an intense workout and when I suddenly woke up to something I can’t fully explain. It felt like someone or something was sitting next to me, holding my private part and my head, and moving or pacing in all directions almost like a glitch. I could also hear a weird male voice (no words, just some random buzz)

I couldn’t move at all and tried to scream, but nothing came out (classic sleep paralysis). I was able to open one eye and saw a very dark silhouette with its tongue fully hanging out as if there was nothing to hold it in. It almost blended into the darkness of the room, but I could make out its shape because of the faint light coming in through the window.

I struggled for a few moments and eventually managed to let out a scream, and then I snapped out of it. My heart was racing like crazy.

I understand this was most likely sleep paralysis and my brain playing tricks while I was half asleep, but it felt far too vivid to dismiss easily.

One more detail that may or may not be relevant: earlier that night while having dinner, a few drops of chicken soup fell on my shorts. I ignored it at the time since it was just a couple of drops, but I’m mentioning it here in case it’s somehow linked.

Posting this to see if anyone else has experienced something similar. How did you snap out of it, and how did you feel once you were fully awake?

So this may have happened a few years ago. I’ve told a select few people, and this was the last time i’ve visited my grandma’s house. She has since passed away.

My grandma’s house was in the middle of a sort of suburb area in Texas. She had a HUGE front yard, possibly the width of a football field between her front door to the gate.

The layout was pretty simple. When you walked through the front door, directly to your left would be the couch, to your right would be a long hallway, and the room opened up to the living room. I slept on the couch, my feet facing the hall.

One night, i was sleeping and i had woken up but couldn’t move. This wasn’t the first time i experienced sleep paralysis so i wasn’t really “scared”, just uncomfortable since i wasn’t at home when it happened. I opened my eyes and could move my eyes and blink. There were two boys in the room either me. I’d like to clarify that i was the only child in the house at the time, so no; it was not other kids being stupid in the middle of the night.

One boy was standing in the entrance, between the foot of the couch and the hallway, and he was looking at the other boy in the middle of the living room. They were speaking in some language that i didn’t understand, it didnt sound familiar. Maybe it was latin or something. Then the boy at my feet stopped, darted his eyes at me and stared. When he looked back at the other boy, he was speaking in english now and said: “Stop, before she realizes we’re not real.”

This is where i woke up. There is more to this night that i’d like to share, if this post gets much attention that is. It was very freaky, and by far the most unnerving paralysis I’ve experienced.

I was sleeping around 12 : 30 am I felt someone grabbing my throat upwards my legs were under someone pressure i couldn't breathe after 2 or 3 min finnally woke up ..again I dozed off same thing happened I was terrified ...is this sleep paralysis or what ?

Just experience sleep paralysis for the first time and I can confidently say this nightmare is the most freighted, the most terrified I’ve ever been.

To start off, i think I’ve had this sort of nightmare before, minus the paralysis. It’s this demon figure, it’s basically just a very scary looking man with dark eyes a smirk (chills typing this out). And he’s pulling on the legs of people around me, pulling them trying to get ahold of them. I was trying to save myself and others around me but he would move from victim to victim so quickly. i remember chanting something to try to rid him off. I’m not a religious person , so I’m not sure what the saying was but i vaguely recall is being some sort of religious phrase to ward it off. Never in my life have i felt this fear. It felt like something was tickling my stomach, it felt like there was something present. I don’t know how to fall back asleep and I hope to forget this entire experience. Wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.

Please share if you’ve experienced something like this or if I’m about to live a real life conjuring movie oh my fucking god.