|
It was probably the late 1980s when my family and I moved to Western Pennsylvania. During an early trip there to house-hunt, we were staying in an apartment over another family's home. While sleeping on the couch, I had an experience where I believed that I had awakened to find an invisible presence in the room touching me in a "very personal" way. I even had a very clear picture of the door between the apartment and the house downstairs being wide open, though that door was normally kept locked. Some time later, when we had moved into our new house, I had a much more disconcerting "visitation". In that situation, I woke up during the night, unable to move. Above me in the air I could see what appeared to be a gray cloud-like entity, which tried to force itself into my body. When I fought it, I found that I couldn't breathe, speak, or move. The best I could manage was a sort of choking sound. This sound woke up my younger brother in the next bed. I didn't tell him what happened to me. The next morning, he told me a story almost identical to my own - a gray cloud-like apparation choking him and keeping him from moving. I was convinced that the two of us had seen a ghost. Then I read this article. Apparently this phenomenon is rather common. It's called "Sleep Paralysis" and the article mentioned above describes it this way: Sleep paralysis embodies a universal, biologically based explanation for pervasive beliefs in spirits and supernatural beings, even in the United States, Hufford argues. The experience thrusts mentally healthy people into a bizarre, alternative world that they frequently find difficult to chalk up to a temporary brain glitch.
In fact, the article describes two stories nearly identical to my own. First, one similar to my experience in the apartment: 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...
This description is also very similar to my second experience: "The first time I experienced this, I saw a shadow of a moving figure, arms outstretched, and I was absolutely sure it was supernatural and evil." ...Yet another person reported periodically waking with a start just after falling asleep, sensing an ominous presence nearby. The tale continues: "Then, something comes over me and smothers me, as if with a pillow. I fight but I can't move. I try to scream. I wake up gasping for air."
As the article says later on: Even the most rational people who experience sleep paralysis often find it difficult to write off their nighttime ordeals as unreal..."I suspect that millions of people in the United States are walking around never having told anybody about having these terrifying experiences," Hufford says.
I can't argue with him. The experiences I had were extremely vivid and realistic, corroborated in one case by the fact that my choking sounds awakened someone sleeping nearby. It's something I only very rarely talked about because I figured most people would think I was nuts for thinking I'd been attacked by (for lack of a better description) a ghost in the night...
Related Blogs:
|
