A Nightmare on Main Street: The Real and Frightening Phenomenon of Sleep Paralysis

The gray light of dawn crept into my bedroom and woke me. I lay on my back, and the quilt that had kept me too warm during the night was pushed down around my waist. I could see the clock on the wall by the bedroom door. I heard it ticking as the dawn's light spilled into the dark hallway beyond. I was afraid, and I did not know exactly why. At the very hair's breadth of a second that I realized I could not move, I became aware of a presence--a malevolent presence--in the room, and a mere yard from me there materialized a dark being. The first thing I noticed was the black cloak that draped from his neck to the floor, and then I saw hands that poked out of the sleeves and that were folded at his waist. The hands were of the palest white and roped with defined blue veins. Involuntary commands raced through my brain. Scream! Roll onto the floor! Run! But my body was paralyzed. My fear was palpable, and I'm sure I would have been trembling, but I could not feel my body.

Held into place and frozen motionless by his spell, I dared to look at the face, but there was no expression. No eyes. No mouth. There were only layers of brown, blue, and yellow wrinkles that oozed a viscous, glutinous substance. I tried to scream, but the paralysis held me completely immobile. The specter floated closer to me, and I could only try to move my fingers. Even my fingers felt heavy as I tried to move them. Suddenly, the spell was broken. I sat up, and the looming figure vanished. For the next few days, I dreaded sleep and even slept with the light on once. I knew that I was not asleep when this had happened, but over the ensuing weeks, I managed to convince myself that it was a dream after all.

A few weeks later, I was having cocktails with some buddies, when my friend Juan announced, "My apartment is haunted. There was a ghost in my bedroom last night pushing me against my chest and down in my bed so that I couldn't move."

The others immediately dismissed it as a dream, while I felt a chill at the familiarity of Juan's story. The details of Juan's experience were nearly identical to mine. Paralysis while lying in bed and the presence of a malevolent spirit. Was there some sort of Freddy Krueger monster visiting the dreams of me and my friends? Juan is an artist, and I took note when he said that his experiences reminded him of a John Henri Fuseli painting. Indeed, when I later found "The Nightmare" online, painted by Fuseli in the 18^th century, it seemed to depict Juan's description of his haunting.

While this all appeared to be ominously supernatural, it was not. What both Juan and I experienced, and what researchers estimate will affect 50 percent of people at least once in his or her lifetime, is a condition known as sleep paralysis. Two percent of the population experience sleep paralysis on a regular basis. Simply put, it's a timing issue between the waking mind and the sleeping body. A sleep cycle consists of two stages: Rapid Eye Movement (REM) and Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM), or Slow-Wave sleep. Although recent sleep studies indicate that we dream during both cycles, the most lucid dreams occur during the REM phase of each sleep cycle. Each cycle lasts around 90 to 100 minutes, so there are generally four or five sleep cycles within each sleep period. Also, as the sleep period progresses, the REM stage of sleep lasts longer within each cycle; therefore, dreams become longer, more vivid, and more lucid as the sleep period wears on. Our minds have evolved a function that "turns off the muscles" during REM sleep so that we do not act out our dreams and harm ourselves, in effect, leaving our bodies paralyzed. So sleep paralysis occurs when our minds wake and become aware before our brains have flipped the switch allowing our bodies to move again.

While there is rarely a need to treat this condition, the symptoms are frightening: the inability to speak; the inability to move your arms and legs; inexplicable fear; a pressure in the chest or the feeling of being "pushed down;" visual, auditory, and olfactory hallucinations; and the most common--sensing or seeing a "presence" in the room.

After reviewing cutting edge sleep research, one can deduce why this "presence" is most often felt to be malevolent. According to Dr. Patrick McNamara, Director of the Laboratory of Evolutionary Neurobehavior and Dr. Robert Stickgold, Director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition, in the Nova documentary, "What Are Dreams?", the light dreams of NREM sleep help us to process our past experiences and to process and store new information learned, essentially teaching us subconsciously how our past relates to our future. The lucid dreams of REM sleep, on the other hand, involve simulations of possible futures, and we're subconsciously taught to test various possibilities and to face future challenges.

REM sleep is where "stress dreams" occur, where, for instance you dream you're involved in a car wreck, unprepared for an exam, overwhelmed on the job, fighting off an intruder, etc. A Stone Age man might have had REM dreams regarding bear attacks or staring down a pack of wolves, which would have given him "experience" in handling the real life situation had it occurred in the future. Our REM dreams teach us to solve problems, and inspire inventiveness and creativity. Though our dreams often seem ridiculous, they have inspired such things as the invention of major drugs, scientific discoveries, novels, films, art, the Table of Elements, and the sewing machine.

So during sleep paralysis, perhaps the stress dreams from which we've just wakened at the end of a sleep cycle instill in us a momentary sense of uneasiness that translates into a hallucination of a malevolent presence in the room with us.

Sleep paralysis may explain the intrusions of the invisible night demons of ancient times, and fear of similar intruders in primitive cultures in our modern world. It may be an explanation for the stories of alien visitors experimenting on humans, or the haunting of houses by ghosts and other apparitions. Consider that the incubus and the succubus of numerous myths are said to lie upon sleepers, making them unable to move, while they have sex with them. Modern evangelical Christians whisper "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus" to keep the demons from their bedrooms at night. Vampire lore often places the bloodsucker at the bedside of a hypnotized and paralyzed victim. Many medieval legends claim that devils prey upon sleeping men and women.

Consider this excerpt from the true life court document from the 1692 Salem Witch Trials written by Cotton Mather regarding testimony in "The Trial of Bridget Bishop:"

"John Louder testified,...going well to bed, he did awake in the night by moonlight, an did see clearly the likeness of this woman grievously oppressing him; in which miserable condition she held him, unable to help himself.....He perfectly saw the shape of this Bishop in the room, troubling of him."

Did this condition of sleep paralysis contribute to the execution of Bridget Bishop for practicing witchcraft? It has perhaps inspired so many frightening myths, stories, and legends that the condition itself could nearly be called a monster. It is a frightening malady.

However, it is a recurring condition in an estimated only two percent of the population, and for this small percentage, a sleep specialist should be sought for treatment. You should in this case, keep a diary of your sleep behaviors. Your sleep physician will order a polysomnogram, which will record your patterns of REM sleep, muscle tone, etc., and possibly prescribe an antidepressant, since depressives have been noted to spend more time in REM sleep than people with no history of depression. The data gathered will be used to determine if the patient has a sleep disorder and treatment prescribed.

For the rest of us, sleep paralysis may occur only once in our lives if at all, and it is most likely to afflict teenagers. To reduce your chances of sleep paralysis, specialists on WebMD suggest regular cardiovascular exercise, sleeping on your side instead of your back, incorporating ways to reduce your stress level such as meditation and yoga, eating no large meals within three hours of your bedtime, avoiding caffeine, and maintaining a regular sleep schedule whereby your retire and rise at the same times each day.

If you do find yourself paralyzed in your bed, try to wiggle a finger, as the tiniest movement will usually wake the body, and concentrating on performing such a minute movement will take your focus off the malevolent specter standing over your bed.