Sleep Paralysis: Demon

Encounters and Terror in the

Night
The Nightmare - John Henry Fuseli
On the message board, we get numerous stories of people that wake up but
cant move. Often, they see things, hear voices, and/or feel an evil presence
near or on top of them. And no matter how hard they try, they cant move a
muscle. Feeling trapped, they lie there hoping to survive.
This week, sciencenews.org published a story on this not so uncommon
phenomenon. I dont know how long the article will be free, so Ill try to
summarize it here.

One such encounter they describe as follows:

Exhausted from a bout of mononucleosis and studying for finals, Hufford

retreated one December day to his rented, off-campus room and fell into a
deep sleep. An hour later, he awoke with a start to the sound of the bedroom
door creaking open- the same door he had locked and bolted before going to
bed. Hufford then heard footsteps moving toward his bed and felt an evil
presence. Terror gripped the young man, who couldnt move a muscle, his
eyes plastered open in fright.

Without warning, the malevolent entity, whatever it was, jumped onto

Huffords chest. An oppressive weight compressed his rib cage. Breathing
became difficult, and Hufford felt a pair of hands encircle his neck and start to
squeeze. I thought I was going to die, he says.

If this has happened to you, no, you havent had a demon encounter youve
experienced sleep paralysis.

Sleep paralysis differs from nocturnal panic, in which a person awakens in

terror with no memory of a dream. Neither does sleep paralysis resemble a
night terror, in which a person suddenly emerges from slumber in apparent
fear, flailing and shouting, but then falls back asleep and doesnt recall the
incident in the morning.

In fact, it used to be what people referred to when they experienced a

nightmare mare coming from the Anglo-Saxon merran meaning to crush.
The term nightmare means the crusher who comes during the night.

Psychologist J. Allan Cheyne has done extensive research on sleep paralysis

and found that many of the people who report these types of experiences are
average, emotionally stable folk. In some of the surveys hes done with
college students and volunteers, about 30% have reported experiencing at
least one incident. 1 in 50 people experience the phenomena at least once a
week. So whats going on?

Kazuhiko Fukuda of Fukushima University in Japan conducted a study recently.

The researchers found that during sleep paralysis, the brain, suddenly awake,
nonetheless displays electrical responses typical of sleep characterized by
rapid eye movement (REM).

Two brain systems contribute to sleep paralysis, Cheyne proposes. The most
prominent one consists of inner-brain structures that monitor ones
surroundings for threats and launches responses to perceived dangers. As
Cheyne sees it, REM-based activation of this system, in the absence of any
real threat, triggers a sense of an ominous entity lurking nearby. Other neural
areas that contribute to REM-dream imagery could draw on personal and
cultural knowledge to flesh out the evil presence.

A second brain system, which includes sensory and motor parts of the brains
outer layer, distinguishes ones own body and self from those of other
creatures. When REM activity prods this system, a person experiences
sensations of floating, flying, falling, leaving ones body, and other types of
movement, Cheyne says.

Hufford, however, regards the intrusion of REM activity into awake moments
as inadequate to explain sleep paralysis. Dream content during REM sleep
varies greatly from one person to another, but descriptions of sleep paralysis
are remarkably consistent. I dont have a good explanation for these
experiences, he says.

Interestingly, the article goes on to describe sleep paralysis as it relates to

post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in Cambodian refugees and Vietnam
vets. They even say it can explain alien abduction claims. The article
concludes by mentioning that most people that have had such frightening
experiences rarely tell anyone and assume their incidents were real. Only
after talking about them with others do they realize the experiences are
common.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For More Study about Nightmares and Demon Related Dreams :
http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/S_P.html