With me it started with god knows where, but definitely aged 12 and the michelin man shadow on my bedroom wall.
Feel free to elaborate on your sleep paralysis adventures, always curious to learn more about other folks similar yet different experiences of s-p
BeardSprite, no disrespect but you're patently a lucid dreamer, which is uncanny and awesome, but the horrors of sleep paralysis are something else.
None taken! I do think we're opperating from different definitions/understanding of 'lucid dreaming' though. I understand lucid dreaming to be where the dreamer knows they are dreaming, and is able to exert some, or even total, control over the dream experience. I almost never experience that, and on the tiny handful of cases where I have realised I'm dreaming and attempted to exert control (memorably - 'ok, this is obvoiusly a dream, nothing else makes sense. So if I jump up and outretch my arms, I'll be able to fly! *Jumps up, extends arms, flies* 'Omg this is amaz...' BAM! Wide awake now!) my brain gets all giddy at the prospect and immediatly I wake up. Damnit. :fslap:
My dreams have always been extremely vivid - at least in terms of content and detail - even though the lighting might best be termed 'gothic' for outdoor scenes (kind of like UK streets are now with their widely spaced white LED lighting - it took me a few weeks to adjust to reality looking like my dreamscapes after dark when those lights started appearing...) and either 'cosy' or 'murky' for indoor scenes.
I often remember dreams, and some I can recall from years ago, all the way back to fairly early childhood - especially the sleep-paralysis related ones!
One I recall from when I was five (so mid-ish 1976, I had just started school) was of a purple
mini crashed into, and crushed by the subsequently toppled concrete lamp post. This was a real event - we arrived at school one morning and the car was still in place on the bend (about where the lampost is on the right in
this google view), lampost still on top of it. The car would have been driving on the left (UK!) and swung across the right hand lane out into the lamp post, for whatever reason. My school was on the now waste-land behind the fence on the left.
The dream I had shortly after (not sure if it was that night or a bit later) was of that scene in darkness, lit by a full moon hanging roughly in a spot in the sky to appear where the street light would have been, and two ghostly figures hovering above the wreckage, one either side of the 'moon lamp'. There was not much more to it than that, but the details remain very clear, to this day - especially the spectral figures. just like a person draped in a wet sheet so it clung to them, even about the neck and shoulders, so you could make out moses, and hollows where the eyes, mouth and other features should be, yet still showing vertical creasing in the 'sheet' which did not appear to actually be wet, or have any holes in it. From about mid torso the definition became less clear, and began to fade through translucence to nothingness, the 'sheet' disappearing before reaching the ground, but dangling much further down than a persons legs would before fading out.
Don't remember if it was an S-P dream (my gut feeling is not), but at least its on a Fortean theme. I have no idea if anyone was hurt or worse in the crash, but that mini was in a bad way, so I wouldn't rate anyones chances had they been in it.
Anyway, back on topic! About the closest I get to my understanding of lucid dreaming in my S-P dreams is if its one of the alien abduction themed ones and the dream at that moment in an 'outdoor scene' and the following occurs:
Sometimes there is a 'normal' dream preamble - I'll be walking somewhere, see a light in the sky (always the same, 'ball lightning' leaving angular Tron-like lines in its wake) and go home so as to be 'in' when the experience kicks off.
My brain realises that for the next scene to make sense I need to be at home, in my bed, but doesn't quite grasp that 'hey, this means you're dreaming!'. Ah well
Nope. Nonononono, I'm not going to let this one slide again--somehow the "adventures" part evaded my awareness when I subscribed to the thread.
The first thing I thought when I read the e-mail notification was, "Adventure?"
Not quite sure whats to 'let slide' here
@packshaud . Its just as valid for you to be repulsed and horrified by your S-P experiences as it is for me to, retrospectively at least, find mine enjoyable/entertaining. I'd miss them if it ever stopped happening - more on that in a moment - and my intent in sharing this stuff here is not to harm or upset anyone when doing so, so apologies for that if thats happened here!
I just said I'd miss my S-P experiences if they ever stopped, and whilst I've had 3-4 over the past six months or so, their character has changed in A most unwelcome manner - I put this down to the complete and utter
the past six months have been irl!
First of all, though there have been several, I can only recall two of them, for the others my partner has been awake and informed my of the yelling, after gently waking me up because of it.
So the two recent ones I can remember have been similar - I'm being squashed under a great weight. In the first instance the enormous, flabby body of a dead giant which has somehow ended up on top of me, and in the second by the rubble of a house that had collapsed whilst I was inside it. In both cases I'm pinned with my arms pulled up close and crossed over my chest, unable to move, so I start shouting for help. Which I'm informed I was actually doing, loudly and clearly, instead of the usual S-P moaning, groaning and laboured breathing! Upon waking I've made myself into a duvet-burrito, and my arms have actually been pinned in such a manner.
Come back dead-ghost friends and alien abductions, those ones are way more fun than the recent S-P trend!
Edit: yikes, that got long and rambly - thanks for reading!