sleep paralysis

for years I thought I was haunted by ghosts

For years I thought I was haunted by ghosts.

It’s been happening to me since high-school. Maybe earlier than that. I didn’t find out what was actually going on with me until I wrote on my Myspace blog about a particularly scary experience in which I woke up early one morning to a small girl in the corner of my room who was suddenly on top of my body and stapling my lips shut to prevent me from screaming. A friend commented on the post and said, “that sounds like sleep paralysis.” I immediately looked into it and it was a revelation. This is something that happens to people. It’s not paranormal. It’s something that people have been documenting since the medieval times.

Sleep paralysis, also known as “old hag syndrome,” is a type of parasomnia, or abnormal sleep behavior. When we sleep our bodies fall into a temporary state of paralysis. There might be some other evolutionary reasons as to why it happens but basically it helps to keep us from acting out our dreams. Sometimes just before falling asleep completely or just before waking up the mind can become conscious and awake while the body is still in this paralyzed state and that’s when weird stuff like hallucinations can happen.

Apparently, people who are into out of body experiences are able to use this sleep paralysis state in order to go on adventures while leaving their human shell safely tucked in bed. I remember an old boyfriend who studied at The Monroe Institute telling me he was jealous that I seemingly easily triggered this state of sleep paralysis and had these hallucinations, and I remember thinking who would want this to happen to them? But now I’m thinking that maybe I should look into it more and learn how to harness these occurrences to my own advantage and let my spirit walk free at night.

I haven’t had sleep paralysis in a while. It usually happens during periods of high stress in my life. I haven’t been too stressed out lately, but maybe there is something going on astrologically right now like a retrograde hangover that I don’t know too much about. Whatever the case, it was very frightening. I talked about it in a three part series on Tiktok: part 1, part 2, and part 3. You don’t have to have a Tiktok account to watch the videos, but if you do have an account you can follow me there! I’m also about to go into it right now:

So I was laying in bed asleep on my back with Paulie Walnuts, my cat, on my chest. I woke up and heard what sounded like Paulie playing on the floor beside my bed. From the corner of my eye I could see that there was a cat on the floor playing with one of Paulie’s toys. I was confused because I only have one cat and no other animals. I tried to get up to look and make sure another animal didn’t somehow find its way into my apartment but I wasn’t able to move. I could see and feel Paulie still, sleeping soundly on my chest.

Then I heard another noise. Someone was brushing their teeth and running the water in my bathroom. Again, I tried to sit up and see what was happening but I was not able to move. The tooth brushing sound went on for what felt like five minutes but like dreaming time is weird when you’re in sleep paralysis. I heard the toilet flush and the teeth brushing sound stopped and from the corner of my eye I saw whoever it was in my bathroom come out into my bedroom area. The figure moved closer to me and I saw that it was me, but with a distorted face. Her eyes were wide and she was grimacing. She was cartoonishly evil looking, like someone made a scary Halloween mask modeled after my face.

She came over to the bed and then got on top of me. I didn’t want her to come near me but I couldn’t stop her. She laughed a sinister laugh that I cannot myself replicate (I tried to do it for the tiktok but her voice was higher pitched and echoey and sounded different from my own voice). She touched my hands and I felt them shake and vibrate. Then she laid on top of me and melded into my body. I could feel her energy going into me as if I was absorbing whatever heavy essence she contained. And then I woke up.

I could move again and the trance of sleep paralysis broke. Surprisingly, I fell right back asleep and slept through the night without further incident. The next morning I woke up with a bad headache that has been hurting since, which I’m not sure is coincidence or a symptom or maybe I was just grinding my teeth extra hard that night.

I’ve talked with a few people about it and a friend suggested some tricks to help snap out of it and make the hallucination go away, like just realize that it’s not real and turn it into something else. I think I did realize that it wasn’t real when I heard the toothbrushing sound, but I couldn’t make it stop, and by the time she was on top of me I was too afraid to do anything, and she knew it. That’s why she was laughing at me. She knew it because she is part of me.

I am choosing to believe it was not a demon or something paranormal. I believe I manifested this vision from my own imagination.

Another friend suggested that the person I saw was my shadow self who was trying to make herself known to me. We all have a shadow self, the unconscious parts of our personalities that we don’t identify with and try to bury within ourselves. Jung had a lot to say about the shadow self. The shadow isn’t necessarily negative, and apparently in people with low self esteem there are positive aspects of their personality that may be hiding within the shadow. I definitely want to explore this more.

Do you get sleep paralysis? If so, do you hallucinate? How do you deal with it?

Also if you have ever met your shadow or have done any shadow work I’d love to hear about it.