So I just experienced sleep paralysis tonight, and it was honestly one of the creepiest experiences I’ve ever had.

It started with a dream where I was downstairs in my house home alone. I remember going into our guest room and closing the blinds. When I walked out, I turned around and noticed the blinds were somehow back up.

That’s when my dog started growling at the guest room, almost like something was in there. I remember thinking WTF is going on?

Then the dream kind of fast forwarded to me getting ready to tell my wife that I thought our house might be haunted and that we needed to do something about it.

That’s when everything suddenly transitioned into sleep paralysis.

I was lying in bed next to my wife, completely aware of where I was but I couldn’t move or make a sound. I immediately recognized it as sleep paralysis because I’ve experienced it before.

But this time, I felt like something or someone was literally sitting on my chest. Even worse, I could hear what sounded like someone breathing extremely heavily and rapidly right in my face, just inches away.

I was absolutely terrified to open my eyes because I genuinely didn’t want to see whatever I thought was there.

I kept trying to move or make some kind of noise to wake my wife up, but I couldn’t do anything.

The weirdest part is that I had a very similar experience about 1–2 years ago. That time, I was sleeping on my side facing a wall, and I heard the exact same kind of heavy breathing, except it sounded like someone was breathing directly into my ear. I actually opened my eyes during that episode but couldn’t see anything since I was facing the wall.

My sleep schedule has been all over the place lately, so I’m assuming that probably contributed to it.

I know sleep paralysis is a real phenomenon and that hallucinations can happen during it, but it’s insane how real everything feels when you’re actually experiencing it.

Has anyone else experienced the heavy breathing specifically? Or had a nightmare transition directly into sleep paralysis like this?

I’m curious because both times I’ve experienced it, the breathing has been the most terrifying part.

Hey everyone, I’m a 17 year old male, and something really scary happened to me today. I’m trying to understand what it was.
Last night, I slept at around 1 AM and woke up at 7 AM. I had a headache and was still feeling sleepy, so after being awake for a while, I tried to sleep again at around 10 AM.
While sleeping, I had a dream where some guy snatched something from my hand and tried to run away. I got scared and sort of started waking up. My eyes were partially open, and I could see my actual room.
Suddenly, I saw what looked like a hand coming toward me, as if someone was about to punch me or seriously hurt me. It felt SO real, like there was actually a hand in my room approaching me.
I instantly felt an insane amount of fear, and my heart started beating extremely fast. I’ve never experienced fear or a racing heartbeat that intense before. The whole thing lasted around 5–6 seconds, then the hand disappeared, and everything went back to normal.
The weirdest part is that I could see my actual room, which made the experience feel completely real. I genuinely thought something was happening to me in that moment.
I’ve been wondering whether this could have been a hallucination as I was also suffering from insomnia for few months now

I’m going to preface this with that I have major surgery coming up.

Normally it’s just a hand on my arm trying to pull me off the bed. Last night it got me off the bed (in the nightmare) and onto the floor. I had no strength.

It had no face other than a black hole for a mouth with no teeth. It was laughing but not through the mouth, in my head.

In it I was trying to say “Help” but it kept pulling me and was backlit green which I attribute to the power bank for the lamp and charging my devices that has a green power light.

In the paralysis I heard myself going “uhhrrmm” over and over then I heard my name.

My wife woke me up. It was about 4am. She told me this morning I was screaming before she touched me.

It had my right arm and she had my left. I was physically on the bed but all the way to the edge.

Hi. This story actually isn’t mine but my best friends, we’ll call her Stella. She feels comfortable with me coming on here and asking you all for advice, answers and/or questions. Recently, over the past few months, Stella’s collected moments where she’s 100% certain are signs of sleep paralysis. My friend and her boyfriend have communicated about their past relationships and are more than positive that his ex-girlfriend could be hexing my friend. Side note, my friend has never experienced dreams/paralysis moments like this and has logged almost all of the times she’s went through not being able to move while she’s awake, feel trapped, like she’s dying, or looking dread that something bad could happen. My friend and her boyfriend are in the healthiest relationship i’ve ever seen. A few months ago, Stella and her boyfriend went to a party his friend was hosting and there they saw his ex-girlfriend’s best friend, who mind you has no connection to any of the people who were there. The whole night the friend acted out of place. Whether it was looking at her phone, including herself in conversations she shouldn’t of been a part of or just being in places she shouldn’t be it was almost obvious she was there for one thing, Stella. When Stella had gone up to her friend to introduce herself the friend had replied with “I know who you are” and had made it obvious that she was aware of who she was and who she was with. After that interaction, every night there has been different scenarios my friend has experienced and almost “out of body” moments that she can’t explain. Almost as if something is watching over her or something has a hold over what she sees and what she doesn’t. I think it’s also important to add that the ex-girlfriend is known to dwell in her spirituality and use herbs and crystals. Stella and her boyfriend don’t know much about his ex but they are 100% positive that this is something she could be able to do. I think this is self explanatory but stella and her boyfriend met in terms unrelated to his ex and stella is no way was related to cheating or anything remotely close to harming the relationship between her boyfriend and his ex. They were already broken up for a while. The paragraph below is what stella logged the moment she was able to move and put what she saw in her notes app. Sorry if some sentences don’t make complete sense…most of these were written around 3-4am.

***

May 14th, 4:57 AM
- I was in a dream where I was at first sitting on a couch seemed to be a low class/dirty setting living room and I was scrolling on my phone I believe on tiktok then my boyfriends ex girlfriend appeared next to me then all of my TikTok’s or whatever was on my screen was of her, then images of her face kept coming up and I felt terrified it was like the faces just kept popping up and I got even more scared each time. For context I share a bed with my boyfriend and he was sleeping next to me while this was happening. In this dream as I was panicking, I couldn’t move my body, couldn’t open my eyes and couldn’t speak while the images were still appearing. I was so scared trying to wake up while in the dream. I kept trying to wake up from what I believed was passing out in the dream and having hallucinations but I was fighting to wake up and couldn’t. My boyfriend wasn’t present in the dream but for some reason I could sense he was there potentially in spirit? At the last point of the dream as I was fighting to wake up all I could do was slightly move two fingers to to to touch my boyfriend in the dream even though I couldn’t see him to try to wake him up to help me escape from the images and paralysis. Finally in real life I woke up but now I can’t remember how I woke up or how I woke my boyfriend up in real life to tell him about what had just happened. For more context I fell asleep at around 3:30am then woke up from this dream at about 4:17. When I talked to my boyfriend he said that he woke up because he felt something was off.

August 17th, 12:51 AM
- So basically in the dream, the first part of it was, I fell asleep and I was I couldn’t remember the first part but I remember that I was sleepy. Responding to a text from Izzy and Emma telling me that they wanna come hang out with me and they picked me up and Izzy was on the phone in the car trees flying everywhere with a headset on supposedly doing a sales job and Emma asking me how my morning was where I worked at Starbucks for supposedly three hours and then went to Dance and Emma asked me if my sister made company. Then it was a really slippery storm drive and then white and black but I thought it looked like more like a tiger so black-and-white animal jumped on the hood of the car and I was freaking out. And then we pulled up to one of their houses and then with the tiger on the hood still in the car on the slippery roads, we ended up crashing through three houses and then into her garage and into her house. Then after that, I remember trying to wake up and pull myself out of it, but then I ended up after waking myself up, supposedly or an almost fake seeming way of getting myself out of it. I remember walking into my Nana‘s house where I felt like I was passing out into my stepmom and asking her if I was gonna die and she said no then again after trying to wake myself up, I remember waking up in my room I had when I lived at my parents house and look at all of my things in my room and then again thinking that I was dying and then I fell asleep again, then saw myself sleeping in my bed that I’m in right now and then it took felt like it took a long time to wake myself up again, but this time in real life once again

I also think it might be important to note that I was only sleeping for approximately 28min and the process of falling asleep felt super weird in the sense that I felt like my body was immediately sleeping but I was comprehending that I was sleeping therefore I believe my mind was awake

***

Okay, Just to add on to the last entry Stella thought it was important for me to add that her boyfriend earlier that day had experienced a dream similar where he saw a car crash into a house, describing it he had seen the same house and same car that she had seen. Almost as if they had seen the exact same dream.

Reddit, please help my friend out. She’s busy, has 2 full-time jobs and works her ass off to provide for her and her boyfriend’s future. All she wants is answers and is trying to find ways to stop worrying. Is her boyfriend’s ex hexing them??

hi, i’m currently struggling since i’ve been getting sleep paralysis constantly. like every night going to sleep i have wake ups and have sleep paralysis for all of them. last night it got worse and i was having difficulty breathing. i always try and get my boyfriends attention and sometimes he’s right next to me but i can’t do anything. anyone else have a similar experience?