(A) Sleep Paralysis: Facts, Phenomena & My Experience | Archive Ep16

[00:00:00] Hello all, I just wanted to let you know that I'll be out of town this week, but rather

[00:00:11] than radio silence, I'll be uploading Rewind episodes today, Wednesday, and Friday.

[00:00:16] I do have some fascinating episodes starting next week on Monday the 18th that I know you'll

[00:00:21] enjoy, so stay tuned for those.

[00:00:24] Until then, I hope you all have a great week and enjoy this rewind of episode 16.

[00:00:30] Sleep paralysis, facts, phenomena, and my experience.

[00:00:37] The first time it happened, I was sleeping and woke up because I felt a hand on my leg

[00:00:44] and I realized that I couldn't move.

[00:00:47] And he'd come across this object on the ground which was the shape of a flying saucer.

[00:00:52] So he jumped out of his pickup and went down there and there was four beings laying on the ground.

[00:00:58] When I raised my head back up, I was turning my head and out of my peripheral vision, I seen something hop to a tree.

[00:01:05] And it was tall, about seven, eight-foot tall,

[00:01:07] and it was black, real hairy, like a gorilla.

[00:01:10] MUSIC

[00:01:22] The first thing we saw was this winged creature, 14-foot wingspan at least.

[00:01:27] It was huge.

[00:01:28] It almost covered half the road.

[00:01:32] Welcome to the show.

[00:01:33] I'm your host, Nick.

[00:01:34] Today is Monday, September 18th, and this is episode number 16.

[00:01:38] Today's topic we're going to be talking about is sleep paralysis.

[00:01:43] It's a topic that I have some history

[00:01:45] with and I know a lot of people that have experienced it themselves as well. But before

[00:01:52] I get into kind of my story with it, I do want to share a little bit of the history of the

[00:02:01] term for those of you that maybe are not familiar with it. So sleep paralysis is a feeling

[00:02:06] of being conscious but unable to move. It occurs when a person passes between stages of wakefulness

[00:02:14] and sleep. During these transitions you may be unable to move or speak for a few seconds up to

[00:02:21] a few minutes. Some people may also feel pressure or a sense of choking.

[00:02:26] Sleep paralysis may accompany other sleep disorders such as narcolepsy. Sleep paralysis

[00:02:32] usually occurs at one of two times. It can occur while you are falling asleep, which

[00:02:39] if it does occur during that time, it's known as hypnagogic or pre-dormital sleep paralysis.

[00:02:48] I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing those correctly, but if it happens as you are waking up, it's

[00:02:53] known as hypnopompic or post-dormital sleep paralysis.

[00:02:59] So normally your brain causes your muscles to relax and be still as you sleep.

[00:03:04] This is called atonia.

[00:03:06] Atonia is actually something that helps protect the body from injury by preventing you from acting

[00:03:13] out with physical movements during dreams. Sleep paralysis seems to be when this atonia occurs

[00:03:22] while you are awake. Throughout history, over the centuries,

[00:03:26] symptoms of sleep paralysis have been described in many ways and often attributed to an evil presence.

[00:03:33] Unseen night demons in ancient times, the old hag, which appeared in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet,

[00:03:41] and even alien visitations are common themes or sort of encounters that people claim

[00:03:48] to witness during sleep paralysis. People have long sought explanations for this mysterious

[00:03:54] sleep time paralysis and the accompanying feelings of terror. What makes this different from a regular

[00:04:00] nightmare? Unlike the visuals that you would normally have in a nightmare

[00:04:06] or lucid dream, which typically occurs when your eyes are closed in REM sleep, these hallucinations

[00:04:12] occur in the state between sleeping and waking, when the mind is alert and the eyes are open.

[00:04:19] True visual and auditory hallucinations during sleep paralysis are stated by doctors to be

[00:04:25] relatively rare, but many patients do report feeling an undeniably strange or scary presence

[00:04:31] in the room.

[00:04:33] Counts of sleep paralysis can be found in medical texts dating all the way back to the

[00:04:37] 10th century.

[00:04:38] So I find that pretty interesting.

[00:04:40] Until I really started doing more research on this, I didn't realize that it has been

[00:04:44] documented that far back.

[00:04:46] Talking a little bit about my experience with it, I haven't actually

[00:04:52] encountered it for probably about 20 years now that I can remember.

[00:04:56] I may have had it as recent as maybe seven or eight years ago, but when I really

[00:05:02] recall having a traumatic event occurred I think it

[00:05:06] was probably 1995-1996. If you guys listened to my other podcast where it

[00:05:13] talks about kind of me and my background briefly and it talks about how I had a

[00:05:18] I'm not gonna call it an encounter but I witnessed kind of a light that was up

[00:05:23] in the sky. Anyway the place that I was living at that point in time was just a little

[00:05:28] duplex in Michigan. Totally different night than that night that I saw the

[00:05:33] light in the sky but same house, same place that we were living. So to kind

[00:05:38] of give you a little bit more of a background with me, essentially from a

[00:05:42] young age I suffered from what's called sleep terrors or night

[00:05:45] terrors, which if you take a typical nightmare, night terrors are quite a bit worse.

[00:05:51] For me, I would wake up and actually, you know, I would be looking, I would be able

[00:05:58] to see what was going on around me, I would be able to get up and walk around, but I was

[00:06:01] still able to see things you know

[00:06:05] whether they were hallucinations or whatever you call them I thought I was

[00:06:08] seeing faces in the walls and stuff like that so the night terror experience for

[00:06:13] me was pretty devastating at the time it affected my sleep patterns and stuff a

[00:06:18] little bit here and there but it's not something that happened every night the

[00:06:22] sleep paralysis is something that even when I did experience it, it didn't happen

[00:06:27] real frequently.

[00:06:28] But the one night in particular that I want to tell you guys about, I'm not sure what

[00:06:33] time of the night it was, I just know I had been asleep for what felt like maybe three

[00:06:38] or four hours and I was laying there falling asleep completely comfortable, no dreams that

[00:06:44] I remember well the next thing I I know I'm waking up on my stomach

[00:06:51] in bed with my face in my pillow and

[00:06:56] my hands were behind my back and

[00:07:00] My feet were crossed like at the ankle almost as if I had been like tied up or something, you know

[00:07:07] But anyway, so I wake up like I said my my face is in my pillow

[00:07:11] And I can't get a good deep breath because my face is is being pushed down

[00:07:17] Now I didn't feel anything of course pushing on me like on my head or my back or my legs or anything like that

[00:07:23] I didn't feel anything sitting on me or pushing down on me. on my head or my back or my legs or anything like that. I didn't feel anything

[00:07:28] sitting on me or pushing down on me. I just couldn't move. I didn't have any numbness in my extremities or anything like that.

[00:07:31] I just literally had no control over my body and I didn't have any control over anything

[00:07:38] except my breathing and my eyes. It was pretty scary. I couldn't breathe and I

[00:07:47] and my eyes. It was pretty scary. I couldn't breathe and I tried like lifting my head up and I tried doing a bunch of things. Finally after multiple attempts of just telling myself

[00:07:53] things like I think I just kept saying to myself wake up or get up or something like

[00:07:58] that and I told myself just to get up and I said it multiple times and finally I just

[00:08:03] kind of was able to jerk myself up and

[00:08:06] even though I had been awake for several seconds it seemed longer than that it seemed like it was

[00:08:11] probably like 30 or 40 seconds in actuality was probably only maybe five to 10 seconds but

[00:08:18] it was a very scary feeling and it was very odd to wake up in that sort of position.

[00:08:23] And it was very odd to wake up in that sort of position.

[00:08:29] I was probably about, I would say maybe 14 at the time.

[00:08:33] Something like that, maybe 16. I can't remember exactly what year it was,

[00:08:35] but let me tell you, that was pretty creepy.

[00:08:38] I've had other experiences where I woke up,

[00:08:41] and this again was at that time period,

[00:08:43] which was about 20 years ago where I had

[00:08:47] Woken up. I was on my back couldn't really move. I was able to move my my eyes around but nothing else

[00:08:53] and there was definitely several seconds of of

[00:08:56] Fear going on kind of wondering

[00:08:59] You know, what is this? Why can't I move? What's going on here?

[00:09:02] I'm not somebody that has ever

[00:09:06] is this? Why can't I move? What's going on here? I'm not somebody that has ever experienced what a lot of people claim to experience, which is the feeling of something like sitting on their chest

[00:09:10] or a feeling of being choked or anything like that. So my experiences have only been just

[00:09:17] an ominous feeling in the room, which is pretty typical for sleep paralysis experiencers. So

[00:09:22] Pretty typical for sleep paralysis

[00:09:30] Experiencers so the other thing in more recent years that I have noticed is that I do

[00:09:36] Sometimes wake up and I feel like there is like a shadow figure

[00:09:41] Standing near me like on my side of the bed typically as soon as I wake up

[00:09:46] Fully and I lift my head and I look, I can tell that there's two things happen.

[00:09:48] I either realize that I'm just seeing shadow or something on the wall, or some of my creepier

[00:09:53] experiences have included actually still seeing something, but it just kind of slowly fades

[00:10:00] away.

[00:10:01] It's almost like, if you can imagine, like a cloud,, a black or dark cloud in a human form, a very basic human form.

[00:10:10] No details, just head, shoulders, and kind of a body. That's just some of my experiences.

[00:10:19] I was really anxious and excited to kind of share those with you guys.

[00:10:25] I know that there's a lot of people that experience sleep paralysis.

[00:10:28] I've read a lot of things that claim that younger people are more apt to experience

[00:10:34] them, which was definitely my case, but I know a lot of adults experience sleep paralysis.

[00:10:40] So I want to really understand it more

[00:10:50] But I don't really know if that's gonna happen anytime soon because from what I can tell doctors really don't they all kind of have a very generic statement and and it's kind of like what I read to you about the the whole

[00:10:56] Atonia thing where it's it's your body either going to sleep or waking up and

[00:11:01] It's a it's a way of your brain kind of keeping you safe by controlling your muscle

[00:11:07] spasms and your body movement and stuff like that which definitely makes sense to me.

[00:11:11] But there's just so many people out there that witness other things during their experiences

[00:11:17] and I am definitely not one, I'm not the type of person to immediately say well this is

[00:11:23] a ghost or this is some sort of entity that's in the room here

[00:11:26] I definitely try to see a more scientific side of it initially and then if I can't really rule something out easily

[00:11:32] Then I'll start looking into other other options, but there's a lot of people that see weird creepy things

[00:11:39] So like I told you guys I sometimes see shadow people or what I what I call a shadow people or a shadow person

[00:11:48] I should say I don't really know if that's what it is a lot of people claim to see hooded figures

[00:11:52] Which in my opinion kind of sounds very similar to the whole shadow person?

[00:11:57] Experience I can't say that I've ever really seen anything that has a hood

[00:12:01] But one of the more common things that people claim to see is what's called the Night Hag, also known as Old Hag Syndrome, which has apparently been around for

[00:12:10] a long, long time. I'm finding out it's pretty prevalent, actually. So today's episode, really,

[00:12:17] I just wanted to kind of talk to you guys in a very organic way. And I want to know kind of what

[00:12:23] you guys have experienced with this.

[00:12:26] I know I always say that when I'm ending a show but it's true. I love hearing from you guys. I love

[00:12:33] knowing what your guys experiences are and it really is cool for me when I get stories from you

[00:12:39] guys. Definitely share if you guys have had an experience. is just part one of this we might go into it a little bit more

[00:12:47] So I'm gonna call this part one there there might be a part two on Wednesday

[00:12:51] Kind of at the beginning of the show Wednesday should be cool because we're gonna have just kind of a more

[00:12:57] Kind of laid-back sort of show like we're doing today

[00:13:00] Me just kind of talking not so much in the scripted sense like it sometimes is.

[00:13:05] And my wife's actually going to be coming on and sharing some of her thoughts on the topic.

[00:13:10] And we're going to be talking about the Mandela effect. If it's something you guys have heard

[00:13:16] about, awesome. If not, we're definitely going to be going into it. I'm going to be talking a

[00:13:21] little bit about the history behind it when it started and when one of my wife comes on. We're going to have a little discussion about it and I'm

[00:13:29] not going to give you guys any hints. If you don't know what it is, look it up. There's

[00:13:33] tons of information online about it. We're going to have a good time talking about that

[00:13:38] I think. So anyway, yeah, so that'll be on Wednesday and don't forget to leave any comments

[00:13:44] below. But anyway guys, thanks for listening wherever you listen from

[00:13:48] As I always say if you have questions or stories for me

[00:13:51] Please email me at mythic radio a gmail.com or you can go over to mythic radio calm and just click on the

[00:13:57] The tell your story link that I have up there

[00:14:00] And wherever you're listening to this if you if you can hit those follow and like buttons that that really helps me out helps me know what you guys are enjoying you know so so guys thanks

[00:14:09] again have a great night again as I always say from all of us at mythic radio we really appreciate