sleep paralysis? ...or something more? by O'C's Daughter

[O'Cearnaig]

This is from my daughter Ali:
Say hi Ali-

Hello =]
I'll begin by filling you guys in on some info about myself. I frequently experience night terrors that include sleep paralysis. If I stay up too late, don't get enough sleep, eat late, or am stressed out before i hit the hay, I get terrible nightmares. In these nightmares I find myself unable to call for aid and completely helpless. When I wake up I cannot move and have trouble breathing and I find that the only way out is to roll my body back and forth until I can move again. As frequently as I've experienced these, I've never felt pressed or held down by anything and my dreams were never carried out into reality as hallucinations if you will.

This past holiday season I spent a weekend with my family at the Alpine Lodge in Red River, NM to do some snowboarding. The cabin suite that we stayed in looked as if it were 40 or 50 years old and kept in decent condition. There was a main room, and in a hallway two bedrooms across from eachother with a bathroom between them. As the night came to an end everyone went to their beds (or couches haha) and checked in for the night. I hadn't eaten particularly late and napped part of the day. That night in my sleep I dreamt of a man that had me trapped in my dad's black suv and was looking down at me as I lay helpless. I somehow willed the car where I wanted it to go but then the man told me that I wasn't going to get away and the car came to a stop on the side of a familiar road. He looked incredibly sad and as he pulled out a knife he said, "I'm so sorry, I have to kill you now." I tried to cry for help but nothing came from my throat. I tried to get up but i could feel his hand keeping me down. He held me down and suddenly i felt myself waking up. I woke up to paralysis and gasping for air. Before I could focus my attention on getting out of the paralysis, I opened my eyes and saw the stout and ghostly figure of a man getting up from a kneeling position near my bed and walk slowly out of my room. He looked back at me with sad eyes and as he turned away his form dispersed right next to the furnace in the hall. He was just...gone; dissolved into the night. My body relaxed and I was able to move again but my mind raced...as I looked at the bright red numbers on the alarm clock next to me, it read 3:23...3 A.M. is known as the witching hour (when demons and bad spirits go out to play) because it is the inverse of 3 P.M. (the miracle hour...traditionally accepted as the hour of Christ's death). I finally fell back asleep.
The following morning I told my parents what had happened and they found it quite creepy. Later, my mom told me that as she napped she felt the pressure of a body laying or sitting next to her and that she heard a sad voice of a man whisper in her ear, "Wwwwhyyyyyyy?"

Creepy right??

Anyways, the next week I told my ghost hunting guru friend about what happened and she really got chills. She said that maybe it was a man who killed his wife. Weird.

[Fiona]

Thanks for sharing your story :-)

First of all, let me just say your experience sounds really, really scary! Having an awful dream like that is one thing, but to wake up and see that figure at the end of your bed.....You must have been so frightened?? I would have been!

I am open minded about sleep paralysis and whether anything paranormal comes into it.
There is a type of Sleep paralysis reported where people say they wake up to see some sort of figure in their room - so your story matches that theory. I suppose sceptics might think that's what happened?
But I guess it is also possible that you woke and saw a ghost! Yes, I do believe they exist, and if they do, every now and then people will see them *as they have over the history of mankind*

I'm not sure what else to say, but keep us posted if you see anything else!

[jadewik]

Being a moderate skeptic... I think that a skeptic would say that seeing a person upon waking-- especially a person from a dream-- might have been a projection of the waking dream in reality. It happens a lot. That would be the most reasonable explanation for seeing the man.

What's particularly interesting to me is your experience in conjunction with your mother's experience. Though, again, I don't have enough information to draw any conclusions... because I don't know about your mom and her heath, I cannot rule out things like Sleep Apnea, Asthma or a cold or flu (which causes snoring) as things that could possibly cause a feeling of being smothered which would be a possible result of irregular sleep patterns. The fact that your mother felt and did not see or experience something similar to what you've mentioned makes me think that her experience and yours were not connected. I'm not saying they weren't connected-- just that with the evidence you've provided in the story, I have come to that conclusion.

I've never had night terrors or sleep paralysis, so I cannot begin to assume what it's like... but this experience, paranormal or not, sounds terrifying. Though, as a skeptic, I'd say the dream was just a dream... if I had a dollar for every time I was killed in a dream, I could go to the movies several times over. Being in a strange place and not knowing what sounds are natural to the environment can spark some interesting dreams. That might also be a cause... then again... that's just my opinion.

I did enjoy reading your experience. Thank you for sharing it. No matter what I've said above, I hope you continue to formulate your own opinions of what happened because, really, you're the only one who has all the information as to what happened to you-- you're the one who experienced those events.

[O'Cearnaig]

I'll make sure she reads your response Jadewick. Thank you.

There were six of us there including her bo friend (slept on the porch, jes kiddin'). Incidentally I experienced nothing whatsoever of the incident she described as it was my first ski-trip of the year and after dinner I slept like a stone first during the movie we watched then a totally dreamless night.

I'm usually pretty observant and 'in-tune' as you can judge from my posts so I'm actually with you on this one. I think she projected her dream into her awakening concience (o'course I was out cold too).