Adventures In Sleep Paralysis

Interesting, I do take vitamin D throughout winter as it is only produced in the body with exposure to sunlight. Summer I don’t bother with it. Not that I would notice any difference in sleep.

At least the article does recommend that you speak with your doctor first. It is the fat solvable vitamins such as E that you can overdose on. The water soluble ones such as C you just pee out the excess. I laugh when “health“ articles ie non medical ones, recommend vast amounts of vitamin C to prevent getting rid of colds.
 
IbisNibs said:
Even if it were fleeting, could there be an underlying health issue
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I have an ectopic beat sometimes but I think the paralysis was more to do with it being summer and me wearing an eye mask to try and keep the light out. It would slip and put pressure on my nose. I haven't had one since that last one in September.
 
brownmane said:
Interesting, I do take vitamin D throughout winter as it is only produced in the body with exposure to sunlight. Summer I don’t bother with it. Not that I would notice any difference in sleep.

At least the article does recommend that you speak with your doctor first. It is the fat solvable vitamins such as E that you can overdose on. The water soluble ones such as C you just pee out the excess. I laugh when “health“ articles ie non medical ones, recommend vast amounts of vitamin C to prevent getting rid of colds.
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I also take Vit D, but all year round. Although I'm out running for at least an hour a day, every day, quite often there's no sun even in summer!
 
brownmane said:
Interesting, I do take vitamin D throughout winter as it is only produced in the body with exposure to sunlight. Summer I don’t bother with it. Not that I would notice any difference in sleep.

At least the article does recommend that you speak with your doctor first. It is the fat solvable vitamins such as E that you can overdose on. The water soluble ones such as C you just pee out the excess. I laugh when “health“ articles ie non medical ones, recommend vast amounts of vitamin C to prevent getting rid of colds.
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:chuckle: It's one or the other!

We know what you meant.

The vitamin C cold prevention/cure discussion rumbles on.

BBC link -
Can Vitamin C cure a cold?

The idea originally came from Nobel prize-winning chemist Linus Pauling in the 1970s. Pauling reported that there was ‘strong evidence’ that vitamin C decreased the incidence of colds.

However, his optimistic analysis was based mostly on a small and short randomised study on school children in a skiing school in the Swiss Alps, which reported a significant reduction in the incidence (-45%) and duration (-35%) of colds.

It wasn’t a good enough basis to drawn such strong conclusions, but Pauling’s authority made people listen.
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Vitamin C is easy to take anyway if you like fruit and vegetables. I must be eating my own bodyweight in Vitamin C.

 
escargot said:
:chuckle: It's one or the other!

We know what you meant.

The vitamin C cold prevention/cure discussion rumbles on.

BBC link -
Can Vitamin C cure a cold?



Vitamin C is easy to take anyway if you like fruit and vegetables. I must be eating my own bodyweight in Vitamin C.
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Linus Pauling also thought that vitamin C was a preventative for cancer. He did have two Nobel Prizes and died aged 93.
 
I used to get SP about 4 times a week, (not so much now) It was invariable if I napped in the day but prior to that I sometimes experienced it at night. Although I now know what it is, it always takes a while to remember and overcome that initial terror. If I don’t wake myself up, and don’t fight it, that’s when I can lucid dream.

SP does fascinate me though, as you can hear (especially if it’s in the day) external noises, the ticking clock, even see the clock face and the room but there can be things there that definitely are not in the room (hah, I hope! What the waking eye doesn’t see the mind doesn’t grieve over).:D
 
I had sleep paralysis once, and hallucinated the fake alien Balok from Star Trek;
I think there was a certain measure of lucid dreaming involved, so that I deliberately transformed my apparition into the peculiar shape of that creature, complete with odd multicoloured lighting.

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I've had sleep paralysis a couple of times before, but none as strange as sometime last week.

I was sleeping in a sleeping bag on some blankets in the back of a truck. That's pretty much my life. Anyway, I woke, to find I was unable to move, yet I somehow knew that Darth Vadar was sleeping in the truck nearer the back. I was terrified if I moved he'd realise I was there and use some terrible force power on me.

Not really strange that I should 'dream' of Darth Vadar. Since getting in to The Mandalorian I've also finally watch that terrible last Star Wars film and started on Rebels. What's weird to me is that I've been watching Star Wars since I was a really small kid, and have never, ever, even once found Vadar scary. Suddenly, he was the boggart in my sleep paralysis.
 
eburacum said:
I had sleep paralysis once, and hallucinated the fake alien Balok from Star Trek;
I think there was a certain measure of lucid dreaming involved, so that I deliberately transformed my apparition into the peculiar shape of that creature, complete with odd multicoloured lighting.
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Was it less frightening once you'd turned it into something familiar?
 
Well, yes. I was probably fully asleep at first, but at some point this alien appeared in the corner of my room. So I somehow morphed it into Balok; I took control. Supposedly lucid dreaming is something you can learn, but I've never bothered up till now.
 
eburacum said:
Well, yes. I was probably fully asleep at first, but at some point this alien appeared in the corner of my room. So I somehow morphed it into Balok; I took control. Supposedly lucid dreaming is something you can learn, but I've never bothered up till now.
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So you had tried to train yourself to alter your dreams?
 
No, I haven't.
If this experience is anything to go by, I could probably do it to a certain extent, but the idea doesn't really appeal to me. My dreams are weird enough as it is without me trying to shape them.
 
Damn, this has got me thinking about how German rocket fuel would actually have smelt. I've got as far as an (uncorroborated) statement that each rocket was fuelled by ethanol distilled from thirty tone of potatoes. so they ran on (impure/) 100% schnapps or potato vodka - which might indeed have a volatile sweetish smell to it. The decomposition product of ethanol - ethanoic acid - has a sharp, metallic, vinegary smell to it....
 
I had one of my daughters to stay over Christmas (she's in my 'bubble' or something, so she tells me, so it's allowed, even though I spend upwards of 7 hours a day in contact with random strangers in the shop, I'm not supposed to have members of my own family in the house, I dunno, grumble grumble) and we got to talking about 'spooky things'.

She was telling me in more detail about her one episode of SP. Well, all right, I was grilling her about it, I've never suffered so much as one tiny hint of it, so I was interested. So here's her input.

She had gone (just pre first lockdown) to the wedding of a relative of her partner's. They were staying in a hotel in the Lake District for a couple of nights, as the wedding took place there. On the first night she'd fallen asleep, but 'woke up' knowing there was someone in the room. She said that she didn't think it was SP as she turned her head, but I posit that this could be an illusion as a remnant of dreaming. She suddenly 'saw' a young man in an orange and black hooped rugby jersey, who attempted to pull her from the bed.

She (having been raised in a family of Forteans) knew it was a kind of dream and that she had to move and wake her partner (which I suppose would be a good move, dream or reality, really). She eventually managed to wiggle, the man vanished and she woke up properly. I was most interested in why she would see this young man in the rugby jersey rather than they typical 'alien/scary monster' vision. She has never exhibited any fear of young rugby players to date.
 
bugmum said:
That'd soon change if she met any!! :chuckle: Son No 2, meet Catseye's daughter...
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Sorry, you old matchmaker you, she's been firmly attached to a surfer for the last seven years!
 
catseye said:
Sorry, you old matchmaker you, she's been firmly attached to a surfer for the last seven years
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Excellent choice. A much better prospect than Son No 2 and his rugby mates, trust me! (He normally tells me what is said on the WhatsApp rugby chat, but sometimes he refuses to, despite me being a liberally-minded creature...)
 
I had a sleep paralysis episode the other day while taking an afternoon nap. It consisted of several false awakenings, but I was aware of my surroundings. My face was covered but I could 'see' the layout of my room, though the specifics were different (the pattern of my curtain was different and at some point dissolved into psychedelic patterns when I tried to touch it). However, I was at least partly awake because I could hear the podcast I put on before sleeping. I had the sense of somebody lifting up the cover and touching my leg, and I assumed it was my girlfriend until I remembered that she was at home. I was unable to move or communicate with her, or see her. What was interesting about this episode is that I didn't feel a sense of fear, rather just frustration that I was unable to properly wake up and get out of bed and felt trapped. I have previously had one SP episode and it was terrifying.
 
Well this is a little slice of the past! About 11 years ago I was in an extremely boring job where I pretty much just answered the phone (but had unlimited access to the internet) and I used to spend a lot of time reading the IHTM boards. I used to suffer from bad episodes of sleep paralysis so I thought I'd read this post. As soon as I started reading the original post I realised that I was the OP, all those years ago. This was probably my last ever experience of SP but reading the original post took me back to that intense and strange period of my life. Despite that, if you were to offer me a one way trip back to the date I wrote the post, I would take it, even if only to enjoy the last few years with my son living at home before he went to university and the last few years with the "boyfriend" who I still miss. I've no idea what became of my super-religious neighbour, we lost touch when I moved back to Scotland in 2014. I hope she's happier and that she longer thinks that you can "catch demons" if you sleep with someone you're not married to. She used to come out with all manner of strange stuff but that one was my favourite.
 
Marsha Klein said:
Well this is a little slice of the past! About 11 years ago I was in an extremely boring job where I pretty much just answered the phone (but had unlimited access to the internet) and I used to spend a lot of time reading the IHTM boards. I used to suffer from bad episodes of sleep paralysis so I thought I'd read this post. As soon as I started reading the original post I realised that I was the OP, all those years ago. ...
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I have never had a sleep paralysis episode. However, last night I think I came close.

I was lying in my bed and, in the dream, my feet were sticking out of the end, with the padding of the end of the bed sticking into my ankles. as if I'd gone to sleep on a sofa with my feet over the arm. I was slightly uncomfortable and could feel my ankles aching. Then I heard a knocking on the front door. In my dream I was living in a Victorian terraced house in a long row, with wooden doors and I could hear the knocking, gently and quietly on the wood, as though someone was checking whether anyone was in. I was slightly scared, but didn't want to move to go and check.

Next thing, my bedroom door, (my bedroom was precisely the same, even though I only live in a row of four houses) began to slowly open inwards. I gave a gasp and woke up. If I'd stayed asleep I had the feeling that I was about to enter that 'terrified and unable to move' state. The whole thing was bizarre because of my belief about where I lived and the bed being too small, even though everything else was just as in real life.

I suspect that the 'knocking on the door' was the dog, who was asleep out on the landing, dreaming pressed up against my bedroom door, twitching and making it 'knock' slightly.
 
catseye said:
I have never had a sleep paralysis episode. However, last night I think I came close.

I was lying in my bed and, in the dream, my feet were sticking out of the end, with the padding of the end of the bed sticking into my ankles. as if I'd gone to sleep on a sofa with my feet over the arm. I was slightly uncomfortable and could feel my ankles aching. Then I heard a knocking on the front door. In my dream I was living in a Victorian terraced house in a long row, with wooden doors and I could hear the knocking, gently and quietly on the wood, as though someone was checking whether anyone was in. I was slightly scared, but didn't want to move to go and check.

Next thing, my bedroom door, (my bedroom was precisely the same, even though I only live in a row of four houses) began to slowly open inwards. I gave a gasp and woke up. If I'd stayed asleep I had the feeling that I was about to enter that 'terrified and unable to move' state. The whole thing was bizarre because of my belief about where I lived and the bed being too small, even though everything else was just as in real life.

I suspect that the 'knocking on the door' was the dog, who was asleep out on the landing, dreaming pressed up against my bedroom door, twitching and making it 'knock' slightly.
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I have episodes where I have much difficulty waking. I feel, in my dream state, very fatigued and so keep sleeping. Oddly in my dream state, I also dream that I am sleeping and can't open my eyes, or I am very sluggish.
I eventually waken, though I think it takes me about 1/2 hour of trying, to do so. If, however an external noise, such as you mentioned catseye, I can awake immediately. I think that this might be related to whatever causes sleep paralysis
 
brownmane said:
I have episodes where I have much difficulty waking. I feel, in my dream state, very fatigued and so keep sleeping. Oddly in my dream state, I also dream that I am sleeping and can't open my eyes, or I am very sluggish.
I eventually waken, though I think it takes me about 1/2 hour of trying, to do so. If, however an external noise, such as you mentioned catseye, I can awake immediately. I think that this might be related to whatever causes sleep paralysis
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Do you also have dreams where you can't open your eyes during the dream? I sometimes dream that I am awake but literally can't open my eyes, or can't keep them open for longer than a second or two. I've often wondered if this is a part of sleep paralysis too.
 
catseye said:
Do you also have dreams where you can't open your eyes during the dream? I sometimes dream that I am awake but literally can't open my eyes, or can't keep them open for longer than a second or two. I've often wondered if this is a part of sleep paralysis too.
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Yes, I sometimes have those, I take it to mean it's because my eyes are closed in real life, and that sensation is affecting my dream. Does this happen to sleepwalkers, I wonder? Do sleepwalkers have their eyes open at all?

For more discussion on the sleepwalking angle see:

Sleep Walking / Sleepwalking & Unconscious Nocturnal Activity
https://forums.forteana.org/index.p...pwalking-unconscious-nocturnal-activity.9889/
 
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I had another 'not quite sleep paralysis' dream the other night, in which someone (it was my ex husband, actually) came into my bedroom and climbed onto the bed, pinning me down. I wasn't 'awake' in the dream though. And the feeling of terror that seems to come with SP - I had that on a different night (see Vivid Dreaming thread, where I dreamed of a tiger). The feeling was so strong on waking that I had to get up and go for a glass of water that I didn't want, just to make sure I was awake enough not to lapse back into the same dream. It was doom and terror and like that awful feeling you get at three a m when you are awake and convinced that you forgot to pay the milkman and the bailiffs are going to be round in the morning to seize your goods and you're sure that meat you had for dinner was off and you are going to die....

So I seem to be getting the elements of SP, but not all together. I have never had SP, except, as stated, disparate elements.
 
Anyone experience the sensation where you're partially awake, perhaps able to get a half-glimpse of the room (or dreaming that you're getting the glimpse) when suddenly you hear a gradually loudening ringing tone and an electrical sensation overcoming your body?

The intensity seems to rise at a steady rate for perhaps 5 seconds at which point you feel yourself slipping away (back into a dream state?) unless you overcome it for a brief period of what feels like 20 seconds and the cycle repeats. This keeps repeating until you either force yourself awake or let yourself slip away. This is the best way I'm able to explain it while still recognizing that the sensation is beyond words. The experience itself is only slightly unpleasant.

Anyone experience this exact same thing or able to better describe it? I've read so many lucid-dreaming/sleep-paralysis/half-awake accounts but never seen it described the way it feels to me.

[edited to bring more clarity]
 
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I can't recall the ringing tone aspect (except for when an alarm clock or telephone was involved) or the electrical sensation, but I've had the half-glimpse / full vision of my actual / physical environment when coming out of a dream into wakefulness.

The full vision (accurate / realistic view of my actual surroundings) occurred in a recursive dream reported back in 2007:

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/dream-thread-ii.30422/post-722578

The more common version (for me, at least ... ) is finding myself in a bed in a room that's laid out exactly like the room in which I'm actually / physically sleeping, but within which all the items are modified from their actual forms. For example, the room layout and my supine vantage point are identical to "reality", but everything's rendered as a cartoon drawing or a room furnished from a prior era.

As recently as this past week I had one of these transitional viewings in which the room was accurately arranged but everything in it was rendered like a 19th century photograph with antique furnishings. This view / vision then did a gradual video-dissolve-type transformation into the "real" room with my eyes open.

I've never been able to finally decide whether:

(a) I wake first, only to have the "real" imagery clothed in the dream's fading motif as I "boot up", versus ...

(b) I'm still dreaming and pre-viewing my "real" environment within the dream motif, then opening my eyes which forces the "real" imagery to supplant the dream version.
 
Human_84 said:
Anyone experience the sensation where you're partially awake, perhaps able to get a half-glimpse of the room (or dreaming that you're getting the glimpse) when suddenly you hear a gradually loudening ringing tone and an electrical sensation overcoming your body?

The intensity seems to rise at a steady rate for perhaps 5 seconds at which point you feel yourself slipping away (back into a dream state?) unless you overcome it for a brief period of what feels like 20 seconds and the cycle repeats. This keeps repeating until you either force yourself awake or let yourself slip away. This is the best way I'm able to explain it while still recognizing that the sensation is beyond words. The experience itself is only slightly unpleasant.

Anyone experience this exact same thing or able to better describe it? I've read so many lucid-dreaming/sleep-paralysis/half-awake accounts but never seen it described the way it feels to me.

[edited to bring more clarity]
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As mentioned by Enola, I have only had the "half glimpse" of my room as the "standard" start to a possible SP experience. I think that the rest of our experiences are not 'standard" as this is when we enter into the dream state, and our own dreams then make what they will of the external half glimpsed reality of our actual surroundings.

I have had few straight up SP experiences for many years, but I do deal with not being able to awaken when I want to (post 172). The trigger that helps me to come awake immediately would be a bell or alarm or anything that is "real" noise. I have become so attuned to SP incidents, that they no longer frighten me, and I subconsciously (?) know that I am still dreaming and so don't experience the panic or dread.
 
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Had my first ever experience of sleep paralysis a week ago. Asleep in my own bed and "came to" realising that there was something (definitely not "someone") standing behind me at the side of my bed. I was aware to some degree this wasn't real (found myself saying in my head "sleep paralysis, sleep paralysis") but was genuinely terrified. I then felt a hand reach out and run long fingernail/ claws down my upper arm which isn't a sensation I want to repeat. At that point I physically woke and scuttled across the bed and heard myself say out loud "get away from me". Of course, nothing there, bedroom door was shut so no way for anyone/ anything to have left the room, but genuinely unsettling

Edit: One thing. I've always laughed when, in movies, people having nightmares sit bolt upright in bed, gasping. But that's effectively what I did. I sat up and clawed my way across the bed shouting at the bloody thing.
 
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