Sleep Paralysis-HELP!

My 19 year old daughter called me last night, frantic because almost nightly for the last month she has been woken up at around 3am and is having bouts of sleep paralysis/ or night terrors where she wakes up screaming and doesn't know why.
At times she says her eyes are open, and she can hear voices.

I'm not a believer in alien abduction theories. But she moved recently into this new apt. which is actually an old early 1900's home converted, and her landlord has been doing reno's since they moved in....could he have disturbed some spirit attached to the house, or is this all to do with my daughter..such as stress?
Open to suggestions to help her, because she is to the point she spends the night with friends instead of going home.

Hallucinations are normal during sleep paralysis. But it's scary ...
had it once - didn't get abducted.

The best thing to do in this situation, is to try and fall back to sleep.

It can be hard at first, but if it something that is re-occurring, it should get easier with time.

Once she realises she cant move, she should close her eyes and think of something that is appealing to her. Friends, family, that sort of thing.

In this state it is very easy to induce lucid dreaming.

The one thing that she would want to try and avoid thinking about is either what she hears/see's when she first opens her eyes, or whatever she was dreaming about prior to opening her eyes.

The more she fights it and tries to regain movement of her body, the more stress she will cause upon herself.

Originally posted by beta.services
The best thing to do in this situation, is to try and fall back to sleep.

It can be hard at first, but if it something that is re-occurring, it should get easier with time.

Once she realises she cant move, she should close her eyes and think of something that is appealing to her. Friends, family, that sort of thing.

In this state it is very easy to induce lucid dreaming.

It seems very god advice but what about old outmoded p r a y e r?!

This is normal I think.

I always get sleep paralysis. Once I got a dozen continuous event in one night since I can get a bit hard-headed at times and refuse to sit-up for an hour before going back to sleep.

I haven't exactly pinpointed what's causing it but I do get sleep paralysis when I drink soda close to bed time. I've also pinpointed the intake of buttery foods and some other oily foods an hour or so before sleeping but sometimes it happens without those foods except that those cases that aren't food related aren't rare.

I've heard cases of people dying in their sleep which were attributed to their pancreases failing while asleep which is obviously related to food.

And yes. Those episodes often have voices and hallucination. My best guess is that the senses heighten for some reason. It's just a guess. I never visited a doctor regarding it since I found no reason to. It's just a normal sleep disorder that is being attributed to weird things.

When I first discovered ATS years back and read about alien abductions' relationship with sleep paralysis, I just can't help but laugh.

I had sleep paralysis on 2 occasions, the first was quite frightening being a middle aged man, the second I took control and it hasn't happened again so far , even though I hope every night it does, I want to experiment with it and see if its possible.
I find from experience and from other SP'ers that it seems 'positive reinforcement' is the order of teh day, either it be a prayer' , a curse , or even a state of mind ( in my second episode I firmly stated " I do not want this, I am in control ( and to the 'figure' standing over me) I don not want you in my presence again).
The figure may have been my imagination running rampant and creating this figure from 'fairy stories' and others experiences IMO. A shaodowed figure, evil feelings etc.
As soon as I said the above the figure disappeared and I woke up fully.

Tell your daughter or anyone who experiences sleep paralysis, its just a conditioning they have to overcome, like a phobia that can be controlled.
They are semi concious in a dream like state , liek the split second between fully asleep and nodding off, you hear thigs see things and not sure if what you saw is real or not?

reply to post by AccessDenied

I'm not a believer in alien abduction theories.

There are other possibilities. I recommend you not make assumptions.

HELP!

First, understand that people here on ATS have agendas. There will be any number of people who will tell you all about how it's aliens responsible, and fill your head with their solutions. There will be people who will insist that it's medical, and try to rush her off to a doctor. Some will insist she's delusional and try to dismiss her problems.

I encourage you to ask her to examine her situation, and not blindly accept any explanations given to you by people here on ATS.

into this new apt.
could he have disturbed some spirit attached to the house

If the problem manifested immediately after moving into the house, then it's very likely the problem is related to the house. Whether it's a spirit or a demon or an alien or a ghost or a who-knows-what...these things are just different names given to things we don't really understand.

The simplest solution is to leave the house.

she spends the night with friends instead of going home.

See? Whatever it is, you say it does not follow her when she leaves. So her options are simple:


1) Leave the house. Move.

2) Attempt to identify the problem and deal with it.

3) Ignore it, or accept it.



I recommend she not choose option 3. Option 1 is probably the safest choice. If she chooses option 2, there will be people willing to help her, but it means dealing with her situation until it is resolved.

Let us know what she decides.

reply to post by beta.services

The best thing to do in this situation, is to try and fall back to sleep.

To the original poster, this is an excellent example of people on ATS feeding you their own answers based on their own assumptions. This reply, as well as a few others have latched on to the words you used: "sleep-paralysis" and they are completely ignoring everything else you said and basing their answer on these two words.

Yes...if it's simply "sleep paralysis" that she's experiencing, then she doesn't really have much cause for concern. But "sleep paralysis" is not the end-diagnosis of the problem. You are simply using those words to try and describe what she's experiencing.

The one thing that she would want to try and avoid thinking about is either what she hears/see's when she first opens her eyes, or whatever she was dreaming about prior to opening her eyes.

The amazing quality of bad advice that is available here on ATS sometimes astounds me. Yes, your daughter is frantic, and is waking up screaming and is so terrified that she's sleeping elsewhere...and the advice people here are giving you is "Oh, just don't think about it. Ignore it. Pretend it doesn't exist."

Please...examine your situation. Don't assume that any advice given here is correct. Nobody knows what your daughter is experiencing but her. Nobody here can give you a complete diagnosis based solely on what you've said.

reply to post by LordBucket


People can only give advice genuinely IF they have experienced it, they can only give hearsay advice if they heard ffrom another party , I myself HAVE experienced sleep paralysis on 2 occasions, I even wrote the experience down.

My first experience was very frightening for me being a middle aged man I can tell you.

It started ine night , I was sleeping on my left side in the foetal posiition, it was dark obviously being nighttime, I had my wife lying next to me to my left.
I woke up unable to move, or speak and then I noticed out of the corner of my eye a small hunched over figure down by my feet ( I have my pillows 2 of them with the top one folded over ( making 3 levels of pillows , wierd I know)), this figure looked as I can only describe as a gnome, grey in colour about 3 feet all, it disappeared behind my back, I didn't feel anything touch me or anything like that but I remember trying to call out to my wife but all that came out of my mouth was a croak, barely audible even to me. I fell asleep again. but a few minutes later I woke up in a panic and looked frantically round the room. Nothing was there. so I went back to sleep or at least tried to with no success and at 3 in the morning I spent the day being very tired.

2nd episode I was again sleeping left sided in the foetal position, my wife in her ususal placeon my left, when again I awoke unable to move, I again saw the gnome dispapear behind my back but THIS time I also noticed a hooded figure at my feet, it seemed about 5 foot tall, cloaked in shadow and seemed to have a hood over its head, but I could feel the eyes looking at me, there was a very faint light behind it so I could determine its outline, this time I got 'defensive' I thought " not again" and 'created' a green shield of energy surrounding both myself and my wife, it must have worked because the gnome was pounding on it trying to break through, I remember seeing 4 green white flashes as its hand bashed against my 'shield'.
I then stated in a very clear thought " I do not want this, begone from my presence" and the next thing I know they both disappeared. I woke up again later but this time actually felt better and not frightened at all.

I am also hoping for a third episode so I can try and 'communicate' with these 'beings' and find out who or what they are .

Also to note that I also have tried to astral project , meditate and use biaural beats quite often so I myself am open to alternatives, as for 'alien abduction I'm not sure unless I communicate with these beings , I also am open to interdimensional contact with them 'sedating us' physically so we can't resist or fight back and then hurt them?
Or it could just be a semi conscious dreamstate were we project our own fears when we suddenly become aware that we cant move , fell like theres a weight on our chest ( as some people describe) and its dark, we are still afriad of the dark IMO , and when we experience SP we project our fears onto a hallucinatory dream world. but we a re still semi conscious and able to remember it, You remember a dream if you wake up straight after it, but you don't if you pass through different dream stages. Maybe you should all look into all the web info and make your own minds up.

[edit on 21/10/09 by DataWraith]

OP look up Sleep Paralysis on ATS. There have been dozens of great threads on this topic over the years. I know because i have posted in most of them as one who suffers greatly from this. I have to say to me there is nothing positive about sleep paralysis everything i have experienced is negative.

I am unable to take control of the situation as others here have suggested and as in other threads and other comments made by other people i too every time have the feeling that i am not alone. On a few occasions i have caught a glimpse of someone stood beside the bed and the feeling is that it is a being of complete and utter evil like nothing i have ever experienced before. im not going to attribute my experiences to anything in particular such as ET or spirits etc as i dont know what it is other than its the most terrifying experience for me and i believe im not alone when i have this.

I know others will have opinions on this (And rightly so this is ATS after all) but i can only offer the experience i have had.

I had bad bouts of sleep paralysis when I was a teenager.

And recently read up on it as a way to have an out of body experience- it is most common with teens.

And to get out of it, tell your daughter to try wiggling her toes!

Cant say that will work but have read that can help bring you out of it.

Funny you should mention spirits because at the time I thought the exact same thing!you think there is someone there but there isn't!
I even had my Mum bring her christian friends in doing all sorts of things to try and get rid of the 'bad spirit'- of course it didnt work as there was no bad spirit, lol

read up on sleep paralysis- back in the day they called it the old hag or incubus- but its just sleep paralysis and is quite normal though can be absolutely terrifying!!

we all go into sleep paralysis every time we sleep- its how we dont wake ourselves up like if we're dreaming....our body goes to sleep first, then our mind....whats happening is the mind wakes up when the body is still alseep and its a freak out!

Hope it goes away! for your daughter

reply to post by thesaint


I, of course searched the topic here first before posting....but I wanted fresh info from newer members.I found most of the older threads chalked it up to alien abduction.
She called me last night to tell me she had gotten no sleep at all for fear of falling asleep . Tonight she is coming over to my house and we'll see if being at home with mom is any comfort for her.
I asked her if she felt it may be stress related, and that could be the case, but not sure.
I will say however, that her place gives me the creeps, and she has decided to move out Dec.1.

reply to post by LordBucket

My Advice is based on my own experiences.

And I never intended it in a way to never think of the issue. Obviously, once the person in question has had a chance to sleep, relax, calm down and is fully awake then would be the time to reflect on the situation and try and figure out what caused it in the first place.

But I stand by original advice. That at the time of the incident, it is always best to relax as much as possible. And to try to return to sleep as soon as you can.

Concentrating of the situation when you are in a state that is likely to induce lucid dreaming is something that you would want to avoid at all costs.

I've suffered sleep paralysis or night terrors for years. Not so much just lately, but there's no pattern to it that I've been able to fathom.

What helped me was taking a homeopathic remedy, Belladonna. There are different remedies you can try depending on what you are experiencing. The best thing would be to do a Google search.

I can understand how distressed she is. It's awful trying to go back to sleep after an experience like that. I used to find that once it had happened it wouldn't happen again on the same night, which was some comfort.

I can't give any advice on how best to make it stop once the experience has started. I've always struggled to wake up and I've always felt desperate to put the light on as if I'd be safe then. Maybe a night light would be some help?

I've only one other thing to suggest - is there any possibility that someone could have attacked her recently, while she was sleeping? It's possible that she's reliving a real incident.

reply to post by beta.services


Great advice. That was exactly what I was going to say. I usually make myself go back to sleep. It's all anybody really can do.

This is what i've discovered after having it on and off for a few years now.

Try and twitch your toe, or your thumb.

While you're doing that, no matter how odd or scary it is.. try and think of something positive - whether it be spiritual, family or friend or anything.

You'll come out of it faster that way (in my experience).

This sounds like exactly what you said. Night terrors and nothing more. I say this because you say she awakes screaming and doesn't know why. Thats a night terror. The voices are probably auditory hallucinations carred over from whatever she was dreaming. A question that will help verify this is does she remember the dreams? People who experience NIght terrors usually don't. They have no idea why they wake up screaming. Hope this helps.

[edit on 21-10-2009 by Jheysoda]

I used to have sleep paralysis frequently. I found the worst thing to do is panic and try to fight it, it only makes you more freaked out. What I did is realize I had no control over the situation so I calmed down closed my eyes and tried to breathe deeply and relax. It worked for me, the episodes lasted for shorter periods and eventually they stopped altogether.

Originally posted by mr-lizard
Try and twitch your toe, or your thumb.

While you're doing that, no matter how odd or scary it is.. try and think of something positive - whether it be spiritual, family or friend or anything.

You'll come out of it faster that way (in my experience).

i agree with this 100% i used to get it whenever i took naps during the day. usually in class my senior year in high school.
but seriously whenever it happened to me i would try as hard as i could to try to move my fingers or toes or lift my head. usually the thing that worked was lifting my head after a minute or two of fighting. (im sure some people thought i was wierd when my head would fly up from my desk from trying so hard)

its like you're struggling within your own mind to get pass a block. the more i fought the more i can feel me starting to gain control. mind over matter i guess

one thing i also agreed on that i never though about was to try to go back to sleep. i guess because i was in such a panicked state it never occured to me and i never knew what sleep paralysis was until a year or two later.

there are plenty of people here it seems that have gone through this at some time or another so im sure you'd get great advice from personal experience.

hope were all able to help or point you in the right direction.
i can assure you there were no aliens involved.



[edit on 10/21/2009 by Bean328]

I have sleep paralysis all the time, however I use it as a gateway to out of body experiences.

I see sleep paralysis as some sort of " bug in the system", something that shouldnt really occur, but does for some reason or another. It is an inbetween state of consciousness, between this world and the next.

Most people experience fear in this state, because it is their first response when everything they know is turned upside down, and their body becomes usless. .....and when inbetween, when thoughts are instantaneous, fear can manifest itself in various ways, be it demons, aliens, a presence, or the thought of suffocation and death.

Since she has recently just begun experiencing this, and lives in a new location, ... the reason may very well be another entity, because believe it or not, they CAN attempt, and even succeed at pulling someone out of body. Perhaps its just a restless soul who seeks a playmate, or even just acknowledgement, ..... as they can't really communite on the physical level.

If this is the case, perhaps before she goes to sleep or after an episode she should tell this entity to leave her alone, as he is frightening her. If the entity is an a-hole, their are other, ... less friendly methods of dealing with them.

but either way, when sleep paralysis hits, her fear is what makes it frightening, most people would pay to have S.P. every night, and if it interests her, ... i do not think it would be hard to learn to out of body travel from that point.

When S.P. hits me, I do not fight it, .... I give in to it.

[edit on 21-10-2009 by IntastellaBurst]