1
What was that?
Me and my brother,
we'd just got out of the shower,
and he was about
two years younger than me.
And while my mom
was taking care of him
'cause he's tiny,
I was in the living room,
drying off, watching TV.
Five, four, three...
In a Miami, Florida,
courtroom today,
former Panamanian dictator,
Manuel noriega...
- hey, Chris.
- Whoever the newscaster was
starts kind of getting
my attention...
- Chris.
- Saying like, "hey, Chris. Hey, Chris."
Hey, Chris.
- And It's saying, "don't worry."
- Don't worry.
Everything's gonna be okay.
And one day, We'll be back.
It terrified me.
I remember screaming
to get my mom,
bringing her to the TV,
who now was back to doing
normal news casting,
because that's,
you know, what it was.
And her basically
explaining to me, like,
"tv's don't talk to you.
That's ridiculous."
I'm disenchanted,
because now I thought
something really cool happened,
and that's not a thing
I remember,
I know it was there.
And, you know, I was wide awake.
I had literally
just gotten out of the shower,
and it was this very
overwhelming experience for me
because now,
as a five-year-old,
I didn't know where I belonged.
Okay. Set.
So how did this start, Jeff?
Um, probably about 10 years ago.
My girlfriend at the time and I
were talking about
different paranormal stories,
and she started telling me
about how sometimes
she'd wake up
in the middle of the night,
just, like, unable
to move or breathe.
She said it felt like
there's, like,
an evil presence
in the room with her,
and they would just, like...
kind of, like, torment her.
And she would eventually
wake up,
and it'd be like
it was just a dream.
After she told me that,
I didn't really know
what to make of it.
I was like, "okay, I got
involved with some crazy girl."
And I just kind of changed
the subject,
started talking
about something else.
Then about a week later,
I laid down to go to sleep.
And just as I started
to drift off,
I felt my body
just become extremely heavy.
It was like I fell asleep,
but then woke up
at the same instant.
And my whole body
started tingling.
It just felt like
really weighted down,
like something was pulling me.
And I heard this, like, sound.
It wasn't outside of my head,
but it was just
inside of my head.
It just sounded
like a washing machine
that kind of out of balance
or something,
just banging against the wall,
and just really terrified me.
I kind of started,
like, freaking out,
and, like,
started seeing things.
And it was really bizarre.
Well, what did you see?
Um, it was kind of like...
it was kind of like...
All these different colors,
like a laser light show
or something,
like, I was like flying
through, like, a time warp.
It just had all these colors
just, like, shooting at me
in a light show.
And I found that I had
zero control over my body.
Like, no matter how hard
I tried,
I couldn't move my arms,
my legs, nothing.
And so I really started to
kind of have a panic attack
because I didn't know
what was going on.
I thought I was dead.
I thought it was like
a stroke or something.
Nothing worked.
I couldn't move.
I had no control over anything.
Finally I decided, well,
I'm just gonna try to build up
all the strength
that I have in me
just to get myself
to roll over onto my girlfriend
hoping that it wakes her up.
So it was just like
this last-ditch effort
of everything I had,
I just, like, wrenched my body.
As soon as I flipped over
on top of her, I woke up.
And I was still laying
in my original position
like none of it had happened.
I was just completely shocked.
I had no idea what was going on.
I just did not know
what to make of it.
After that, it was like,
constantly,
night after night after night,
for a couple weeks,
maybe even a month or so.
And...
I just did not know
how to process it at the time.
And so, finally, I told
my girlfriend about it.
I was like, "okay,
this is what's happening to me."
"I think I need
to go to the doctor."
I think I'm having strokes,
like mini-strokes,
or seizures maybe even,"
and she's like,
"no, that's exactly
what happens to me.
That's what I was trying
to tell you about."
I was about 29 years old.
Mm-hmm.
And here in this room,
as I would lay down to sleep,
I'd start feeling tingling
in my feet,
and then I would feel it
rise up my legs...
Up my torso, on my hands,
and I'd also hear buzzing.
You know, like bees buzzing.
That's when these episodes
would start.
I would feel tingling
and I would get...
I'd feel the energy.
I felt that my mind was awake,
but my body was stiff.
I'd try to move my head
from side to side.
I just...
I couldn't move.
And in that moment,
I would hear tapping
on the window.
They would tap here.
I would hear tapping.
And I'm thinking, "well,
maybe It's just a squirrel"
or a raccoon,"
but it was like a pattern.
It was definitely a knock.
And I would open my eyes,
and I'd look toward the window,
and then it would stop.
But after a while,
I started feeling
an actual presence.
And I would feel this presence
right next to me
trying to take my soul out.
It would torture me at night,
and I would try and fight it,
but I felt I was...
my body felt paralyzed.
It was just so strong
that I would just let go,
and then I'd feel myself
floating in the air.
And I could try and see myself,
but I would just see a blur.
And it happened
for many years, and...
when I was pregnant
with my daughter,
and I felt the baby as well,
trying to come out.
But I was trying to fight it,
and I was saying, "no, no."
So I would pull back.
It's like If I would pull back.
And it would pull, you know,
the other way.
When I was in
my mid to late 20s,
I had a really awful breakup.
I was miserable because
I was so brokenhearted.
And I started my first teaching
job around the same time,
so I was super stressed-out
from that.
I would just see this, like,
dark figure by the bookshelves,
and I could not move,
and it was fucking terrifying.
I didn't know
what was happening.
I did think that somebody
had broken
into my apartment at first,
because at that point,
my roommate and I lived...
I had a roommate then...
we lived on fourth street,
and we were on the top floor
of the building.
And our building
was really easy to get into.
Like, the door in from
the balcony to our apartment
didn't really lock,
so I think I was like,
"Oh, fuck,
somebody actually broke in."
To be lying there and know,
I want to move,
and I'm trying to move,
and I cannot...
absolutely terrifying.
I've always had a problem
with states of consciousness.
Slipping in and out
of different states
of consciousness.
And I do remember...
When I was very, very young...
two, three,
I was still in a crib.
And there was
a plug-in night light,
and it was that orange
cast color.
And it was all dark
except for that orange cast,
and the room turned red,
and I felt like something
was coming after me,
and I cuddled down
and covered myself.
It was my earliest memory
of the scariness
that happened to me
and continued to happen.
Laying down to go to sleep,
I would feel utterly exhausted,
almost as If
I had just been drugged.
I mean, you know,
having been in the hospital,
I understand what that's like.
It's just like
I had been injected.
And my eyes sealed shut.
My mouth sealed shut.
And It's as If everything
was shutting down,
except for my awareness,
my consciousness.
And then I could feel
a vibration.
Sometimes it was so intense,
it felt like being electrocuted,
but it was definitely
an electrical vibration.
I began hearing voices
and screams
and crying...
And all of this really
emotional drama,
yelling to crying,
but all negative emotion,
all of these different voices.
And then that is when
the shadow man
would come toward me.
Stupid, stupid, stupid,
stupid, stupid! Stupid!
And he looked just like
a three-dimensional shadow,
outlined, just perfect.
And he would walk...
Disjointed.
And he brought
the vibration with him.
It's as If
it was emanating from him.
And he would come towards me,
and I would just feel that.
Hear... hear...
I would hear
all the sounds of hell...
I don't know
any other way to put it...
and feel his awful vibration.
And I would have
a fight/flight response,
and I would completely,
you know, freak out,
and try to scream or get away.
And many times,
the intensity just continued.
I was very scared,
and I was upstairs,
and I didn't feel like anybody
was gonna get to me
If I screamed.
It's very dark.
And it scared me forever.
I mean, it really scared me
to the end of my wits.
And If anything
was gonna drive me insane,
it was gonna be that.
What happens is
when you're falling asleep,
You'll get an electrical shock
through your body
just as you're falling asleep,
and that's the usual indication
that you're gonna have
a visit that night.
Then You'll fall asleep,
and then You'll wake up,
and you're totally paralyzed,
you can't move.
Um, and...
There's static in the room.
And you're being visited.
They'll circle your bed,
and now and again,
They'll try and touch you.
The first one
is a generic shadow person,
which is just basically
an outline of me and you
on a sunny day, on the pavement,
on the sidewalk
in a 3-d form.
And the second...
the second entity,
which is the hat man,
seems to have a direct link
to them.
He's... he's a very
authoritarian figure.
He's very menacing.
He's very...
he's in charge of them.
His minions, so to speak.
And, um...
They're a team.
It's hell.
He's awful, awful, awful.
It all starts with that
electrical shock.
I have my two separate lives.
I have my life like
we're here talking about it,
and It's cool and I go to work.
Then when I go to bed,
I have this whole other life
that I have to deal with.
When it first started,
it was pretty intermittent.
It wasn't every day.
Don't know the age.
Around this time.
My brother didn't live
with us anymore,
and I had my room all to myself.
It's kind of funny
'cause I can remember
my bed had collapsed,
onto a box of beanie babies
that my mom collected.
My mom was a big collector.
And so my bed kind of pivots,
right?
On top of this thing
there's a frame,
the bed pivoting.
And I remember
the bed was pivoted,
on this particular night,
with my feet
closer to the ground
and my head higher up,
like a seesaw.
And I remember
the paralysis starts,
and I can see the door frame.
Like I can see...
I'm looking directly at...
you know, I'm looking at a wall,
and the door is right here.
So, here's a bed, there's me,
then straight forward,
there's the door that exits,
right?
And there's the light
from the hallway.
And I remember seeing, you know,
your traditional darkness,
your, you know,
everything kind of exists
in shadows.
I mean, it all looks like
It's moving.
All the darkness looks alive.
But I remember seeing...
People, beings, whatever,
just coming in.
They just...
they look...
they look like a...
If a person were to walk
in front of a light,
and their shadow
were to follow them,
they looked like an almost...
more shadow-like version
of a shadow.
Like... and kind of...
Just...
Didn't do anything.
Like, I remember now, um,
that they would... they just...
shadows moving in,
like, they would
kind of intersect the light.
I actually... I remember this
kind of well now,
because I was on
this weird tilt,
so it wasn't just me looking up,
or, like, being able
to kind of see around.
This was me looking
straight at the door.
And just seeing these things.
I remember in the paralysis,
I thought that they were real.
I always think they're real.
Even to this day,
I think these things are real
in some sense, um...
But when I woke up,
they weren't there.
It was definitely the first time
that I saw something
that made think
that this was more
than just a sleep disorder.
I do remember it happening
as far back
as when I was a little girl.
As far back as maybe
five or six years old.
And then the same thing happened
when I was about 15.
During that time,
I was a rebellious teenager,
so I was really out of control
and feeling, like,
unloved and stuff.
I don't know how I got that way,
but it was kind of like
a brokenness inside,
like, I was just broken,
spiritually broken.
And that time,
I was in a two-story home
in torrance,
the city of torrance.
It was in the middle
of the night,
but I was wide awake.
I was literally wide awake.
My eyes were open.
But I could now feel
this presence,
this evil presence behind me.
Lying on my side,
like on my left side...
I'm a side sleeper...
and then the door is behind me.
And... and then
I could feel the presence
just right behind me.
And I remember just trying to...
wanting to move and turn around,
but I could not lift a finger.
Again, it was...
I was just frozen...
Utterly in terror.
And it was the...
If I could describe
what death would feel like...
and It's a kind of horror
that is worse
than like in the movies.
Um, It's an icy-cold,
kind of dark
evil something's in the room,
and It's watching me.
That's the scary part.
That you feel a sense
that It's watching you.
And It's... and It's...
and It's making you feel afraid.
And it wants you to feel afraid.
I was a year and a half old,
probably.
And I was born and raised
in rural Vermont
in an old farmhouse about 100,
100-plus years old,
and I was in the middle
of the woods.
Um, so it was very dark
and very quiet,
just pitch silence,
which, you know,
itself kind of has a sound.
Um, and...
so here I am, I'm a baby.
I wake up and I can't move.
I'm in my crib.
And so I'm surrounded
by the bars
of the crib on all sides.
And above me,
at the end of the crib,
before the window,
are two anthropomorphic...
Kind of, beings, I guess.
Uh, best word to describe them.
I still remember them vividly
because It's actually
my first memory.
So in a way,
It's kind of
my awakening into the world.
Dark.
They always
just look so cartoony.
I've tried to draw them before,
and it just looks so goofy.
It just doesn't have, uh,
the same malevolent impact.
And their skin, um,
was like television static.
Um, you know, it had,
you know...
like an old TV,
when the signal's...
when you're not getting
a good signal.
It had that same kind of
texture,
that kind of...
they were tall, kind of thin,
these kind of thin limbs
and these long fingers.
And they had
these very simple faces,
almost cartoonish faces of,
you know,
these two inky eyes
and this big inky smile
on their face that's kind of...
It's tickling, tickling,
tickling fingers,
these, like, long, slender...
they were laughing.
And here's my little feet,
you know.
They were tickling me.
And, you know, I was paralyzed.
I couldn't move,
and I couldn't stop them.
And they were laughing about it.
There was kind of like laughter.
Like, ah-ha-ha.
They were, like, there,
you know?
And bars,
these two anthropomorphic
things, the windows.
You know,
according to my parents...
but I kept on repeating
the words "zines."
Like, z-I-n-e-s,
over and over again
in like kind of a panic.
Kind of like,
"zines, zines, zines,"
you know, like,
hanging on to them.
And so maybe as a child,
you know,
seeing these kind
of anthropomorphic
sort of not human but human...
uh...
So I wouldn't sleep
in my crib again.
My parents tried
to put me in my crib,
and I just wouldn't do it.
I would just scream and scream
and scream and scream
and scream.
I made this
as a Halloween costume
some years ago.
Now you're staring
into my childhood right now.
I don't know.
Is it scary?
Did you seek any medical help?
No, because I didn't think
I was going crazy.
I knew what I was experiencing
was real.
I didn't want someone else
to come and tell me,
"well, no, that's not real."
Did you seek any kind of help?
Did you try to do anything
to keep it from happening?
Did I get an exorcist?
No, I did a Google search.
I got on the Internet very early
compared to most people,
in about '94 maybe.
I'm totally guessing.
'94, '95.
And one of the very
first things I looked up,
was "the shadowman"
and "nightmare."
And from there,
in the search engines,
it wasn't very far down
the page... sleep paralysis.
I was like, wait,
sleep frozen, sleep paralysis.
And I called my mom up
right away.
I said, "Oh, my gosh, mom,
It's sleep paralysis."
That's what they call it.
It's a thing."
She was very excited, too,
and she wanted to understand
more about it because she felt
that maybe something medical
could be done
so that we no longer had it.
Because when the scientists
figure it out,
they figure out a medicine
to go with it, right?
So we felt that we would
actually have answers
and medication or something
to make it better.
I called a doctor
and made an appointment
and came in, and explained
to them what was going on,
and my doctor said...
she was kind of concerned
that maybe I was having seizures
while I was sleeping.
So she set me up for a cat scan,
an eeg and all that.
So I went in for those,
and my results
for the cat scan were normal,
but the eeg came back with...
said I had abnormal results.
That's all she said.
"You have
some abnormal readings."
"You have sleep paralysis.
It's just caused by stress."
So If you just make
some lifestyle changes,
"it'll go away."
Well, you get a cut-and-paste
answer from doctors,
"you're stressed.
Change your lifestyle,"
without asking
what your lifestyle is.
There's no answer.
It's just a dismissal of...
basically, they don't know.
And If they don't know,
then they don't...
they don't care.
Every time I would talk
to a psychiatrist, I'd be like,
"I'm having this sleep problem.
This is what happens.
This what it feels like."
They'd be like, "okay, okay.
Tell me about, like, you know,
how are you doing at home?"
And I would always try to be
like, "no, no, no",
let's talk about this hideous
sleep problem I have."
She seemed really interested.
She sort of leans in.
And she's like,
"It's not sleep apnea."
And I was like, "I know that."
And she just said,
"that's really messed up."
I remember, like,
the following night
after it would happen,
I'd lay in bed being so scared
that it was gonna happen again.
And then, most assuredly,
it would happen again
'cause I was thinking about it
and obsessing about it.
Like, when I'd go through
these dry spells,
basically,
where I wasn't having it,
If I started telling somebody
about it,
then it was, like,
almost 100% guaranteed
that I was gonna
have it that night.
This is in
our college apartment.
- Okay.
- So, I was here.
I had my bed right here...
And then my roommate
was right here.
And the blobs...
I saw these black blobs...
I could see them.
Blobs of black,
coming onto my bed.
And I could see my roommate,
just in the corner over there,
and I was trying
to scream her name
so that she could help me.
And she's sleeping away,
and I'm straining to talk.
And nothing can come out.
I'm a diver,
and I've experienced...
well, been close to death
quite a few times.
I'm a deep diver,
but nothing's as terrifying,
as what happens,
and I have it once
or twice a week.
When I was about 10
is when it started to happen,
every single solitary day
of my life.
Nobody ever really took me
entirely seriously, you know,
even though
I was a petrified little boy,
you know, terrified to be alone,
hated my bedroom,
hated the room below my bedroom,
and had sleep paralysis
probably every night.
You know,
had voices talking to me
in the sleep paralysis,
very abusive experiences.
Hey, forrest.
- Hey, forrest.
- Hey, forrest.
You just won the
giant insect of the month club.
Insect of the month club.
We're sending your first prize
up to your bedroom right now.
You know, and again,
it goes back to the fact that,
you know, because it wasn't
like a real experience...
If somebody had come
into my bedroom,
and some creepy guy was
whispering to me every night,
you know,
my parents would definitely
have done something about it,
but the farthest they went
was kind of being like,
"well, maybe we should take him
to a psychologist? No."
I was trying to fall asleep.
I felt this overwhelming
pressure come over me.
And my breathing just stopped.
My body was trying
to kind of tell me,
"I'm gonna kill myself now.
And you have the option
to stop that."
If I want to continue
to breathe,
I have to actively override
whatever else is going on.
I have two options...
either try to break free
of the paralysis
or I breathe.
You know, that was
kind of the beginning,
and that was the beginning
of me being afraid of,
not going to sleep,
but, you know,
I would just pressure myself,
to wait till exhaustion
to fall asleep,
for the most part,
'cause after that,
it just never stopped,
um... kind of ever.
I'll get it just about anywhere.
Some places will be much worse.
And the voice
is different by place.
Um... I had an apartment
in Boston.
I lived in Jamaica plain
in Boston for a while
above a pizza place,
and I would always hear
this middle-aged woman
singing in a baby's voice there,
this gradually faded away
until I pretty much
almost forgot
I had ever experienced it.
And I... thought I was good,
finally over.
It was just a phase
I was going through,
and now It's done.
One afternoon,
I was up doing housework,
and was kind of tired,
and I figured
I'll lay down and take a nap,
because I'm gonna go out with
some friends later on tonight.
So I went, laid down,
and set the alarm on my phone,
checked, saw the time,
and just kind of threw it
on the nightstand next to me,
and just laid down.
And...
As I started to fall asleep,
I felt, like, this tingling
sensation come over me,
and since I had been
dealing with it so long,
it was kind of like
a familiar feeling,
it was like the warning sign,
"okay, sleep paralysis
is about to happen."
Like, my body would tingle,
start to feel heavy.
I'd see, like,
all these pixilated colors,
and so I set myself up
to wake myself up,
kind of shake it off.
So then... it felt like
it went away.
So I just, like,
picked up my phone,
looked at the time,
okay, laid back down
and started going to sleep.
And just as I fell asleep,
my phone rang.
And so I laid there
for a second.
I was like, "do I answer it,
don't I answer it?"
Just fell asleep,
and now somebody's waking me up.
So finally, I gave in
and I answered it.
I grabbed my phone.
"Hello?"
When I did that,
the person on the other end
of the line said, "hello,"
they said something else
I couldn't really make out
'cause it was all staticky
and cutting out.
So I said,
"I can't understand you.
You're breaking up.
There's a bad connection."
I said, "hello," again,
and I was like,
"you're breaking up.
I can't, like, hear you."
And so, finally I...
trying to make out what
they were saying and whatnot.
And I decided I'm up.
I'm gonna go get a cigarette.
So, I got up,
just talking to him,
like, "hello, hello?"
And then finally I'd walked
out into the living room,
and just as I got out
in the living room,
it became...
the connection cleared up
and the person on the other end
was this very pleasant man.
He was like, "hello."
I was wondering
If you could do me a favor."
What kind of favor?
Let me in.
I freaked out.
I was, like, there's a demon
on the other end of my phone.
I wanted nothing to
do with this.
So I threw my phone
across the room
and it broke into pieces,
then everything around me
just went into complete chaos.
Then just like...
almost like an earthquake hit.
Like, everything was shaking
and dark.
My whole body started vibrating.
It felt like
something was trying
to rip me out of myself,
kind of like pull my soul out.
You know,
just trying to process this,
like, what's going on, you know,
just absolutely terrified.
And so the only thing
I could think to do
was I just started praying.
I was, like, "God,
If you're there, help me."
I don't know what's happening.
Just, please,
somebody help me."
And as soon as I said that,
I felt like somebody
just grabbed me from behind,
just, like, yanked me back,
like, down the hall,
and just, like,
slammed me back into my body.
And, like, I hit my body,
and I, like, sat up instantly
and, like, looked around,
and was like,
"did that just happen?
Was that real?"
And so the first thing I did
was grab my phone, you know.
I'm like looking through, "okay,
who did I just talk to?"
And, like, no...
there was no missed calls
or no answered calls or nothing,
and I looked at the time,
and it had only been,
like, two minutes
since I initially laid down
to go to sleep.
Um, I did tell my mom,
and she just
kind of told me I'm nuts.
She's like, "it was a bad dream.
It happens all the time."
"No, mom.
It wasn't a dream."
I was in seventh
or eighth grade,
about '87 or '88.
And I saw "a nightmare
on elm street"
with my mother,
thank goodness, on cable.
"And she was like," Oh, my gosh!
This is like our dreams,"
and I was like, "yeah, I know."
So we definitely agreed on that.
And I kept watching it because
I wanted to find some clues,
some answer
to what was going on.
And of course, they mention
a little bit of myth
in the movie but not enough
to really research.
Did you ever read about
the balinese way of dreaming?
No.
They got this whole system
they call dream skills.
They get all their art
and literature from dreams,
just wake up and write it down.
Dream skills.
What If they made a monster
in their dreams, then what?
When I was... you know,
we had hbo when I was little,
and my dad was very liberal
with letting us
watch whatever we wanted
to watch on hbo.
Once he was watching a movie,
and I just kind of wandered in.
I didn't really know
what the movie was.
And then this, uh...
Creature emerges
from behind a dresser.
And It's like...
It's an alien.
And It's like the...
it was the movie "communion,"
with...
what's his face?
The guy
who was in the dancing video.
I don't know.
Christopher walken.
Yeah, exactly.
Christopher walken.
And when I saw that face...
My mind immediately drew
a parallel
to the things I had experienced
as a child,
and I was petrified.
I remember just being petrified.
And...
and then, you know...
but I stayed watching
as this, like, little kid.
And, you know,
these images I remember
as incredibly shocking images
to me, as a child.
Because it was the first time
that the kind of things
that I had seen
aligned with something that...
that was known about
or was explored.
A bunch of people came over,
and they're like,
"let's watch this
'insidious' movie."
And I was like,
"yeah, sure, why not?
"I don't care," and, like...
about 20 minutes into the movie,
I'm like, "this is about sleep
paralysis, I'm pretty sure."
I was like, "all right,
that's kind of cool."
Somebody made
a horror movie about it."
When, you know,
the dude's, like, in the chair,
he just goes into this world,
and he's searching for the kid.
They're pulling from
so many different parts
of sleep paralysis lore.
The shadow man.
I kept leaving my body.
The night hag.
The old hag.
I sat there and, like,
just kind of getting annoyed.
I mean, I don't even know why.
It wasn't like,
"this movie sucks!"
I mean, it was...
it was okay.
And then, all of a sudden,
they do, like,
the head shaking thing,
like this, like, weird...
it was in "Jacob's ladder,"
and it freaked me out.
I was like,
"that's exactly how it feels."
And that was the first time
I ever...
I saw somebody represent
what it feels like...
or I guess,
not what it feels like...
what it feels like
it looks like to be in it,
like when I'm coming out,
like, sometimes
my jaw will, like,
just fucking go back
and forth real quick,
or, like, my head will shoot
from side to side.
And It's what I imagine
it looks like.
Even my girlfriend,
she was like,
you know,
"those weird head movements,"
like, that's kind of what It's
like for me to watch,
"you know,
except not magically blurry."
That's the sleep paralysis.
Hey, It's got to be.
Yeah, I had my own
sleep paralysis episode,
and, well, in that one,
it was sort of like a classic
three-dimensional,
black shadow man,
who came up in the woods
behind my house,
leaned over my bed.
And I think
maybe a year or two later,
I saw "natural born killers."
And there's a scene,
and it goes by just in a flash,
where that guy is, like,
in the opening credits,
coming through, like,
this strange red tunnel,
cloudy vortex thing.
I think It's over the credit
of "producer arnon milchan."
But it went by in a flash,
and it must have been
kind of complicated
to call into existence.
So I was like,
"why was that there?"
And I still didn't know
what sleep paralysis was.
I didn't know
that anyone else had had it.
So I saw that and almost
kind of took it as a message,
like, "the people
who made this film"
had the same experience
that I did."
And It's kind of
like a signal to me
in some...
some strange, scary way.
No, It's true.
It was kind of the same
as a child.
It was very validating.
I never thought it was
my mind playing tricks on me.
I just knew something bad
was always happening to me.
And I didn't... I didn't
know what to do about it.
I've prayed my whole life.
I still pray.
I'm a very spiritual person.
However,
praying never made it go away,
even when
I was within the attack.
I would pray within the attack,
and still, no help.
I started exercising,
started eating better,
cut back on caffeine and doing
all that kind of stuff,
and just no matter
what I did, though, it was...
it had absolutely no effect
on the sleep paralysis,
and it just kept happening
night after night after night.
I finally decided
to go to one of these ladies
that read cards, and she Says,
"I can't look into your house."
I'm trying to look
into your house,
"but I see
this black shadow over it."
I thought
I was abducted by aliens
for a long time, years,
years and years and years.
Before I went to bed
every night,
I would lay in my bed
and close my eyes
and just pray,
"not tonight, not tonight,
not tonight, not tonight,
not tonight, not tonight."
And I would just repeat it over
and over and over in my head,
as If I had some
kind of psychic bond
with my alien abductors
and that I could communicate
with them telepathically,
and just plead with them,
to make tonight not the night
that they would come back
and do that to me.
Over the years, I would find
different mechanisms
to avoid sleep paralysis.
I noticed that it wouldn't
happen every night
If certain requirements
were met,
like, If I would...
like, there would be, like,
a TV in my room.
And If I left it on,
for some reason
it was easier for me not
to get hit by the paralysis.
And, you know,
younger me thought it was
maybe that little
high-pitched noise,
tv's make
when you leave them on,
so I would leave it on
overnight on mute
for that little
high-pitched noise.
Eventually, that stopped
working after about a year.
So I decided,
like, "you know what?"
If one TV worked,
what about two?"
And I used to collect junk,
so tv's, like, were plentiful.
And two worked
for a little while.
And I just escalated
with that for a while,
'cause I'm pretty smart,
apparently.
No, it made me look like
a crazy person until one day,
I realized that
even If this was a problem,
this was not a functional way
of, like, dealing with it.
So I just removed all the tv's
at that point from my room,
and, you know, all it did
was leave me
with a much stronger and more
elaborate sleep paralysis.
And that's kind of the thing
that I've realized
is If you have it every day
and you have multiple episodes
a day,
it will kind of learn
how to adapt to you.
Like, If you try to, like,
avoid it, it will find you,
and it will make it happen
somehow.
And another time,
I actually felt it
go on the bed.
You know, it was as If
It's climbing up.
I was laying there,
and it came here.
I just closed my eyes.
And it was on top of me,
and it was...
It's like I was
having sex with this thing.
And I said, "Oh, my God,
this can't be real."
This can't be real."
This demonic thing,
and I don't know,
why am I feeling this?
What else is gonna happen next?
But it happened.
Did you see anything?
I didn't see anything.
It was just the feeling.
And then it was gone again.
A lot of firsts
all happened in one night.
When the pain started happening,
the hallucinations
got more vivid,
and I started to be able
to be interacted with.
And I go directly into this
very, you know, lucid dream.
I remember the architecture
of this world,
of this dream,
it was just very angular,
and I'm just
kind of walking on it.
There were, like, stairs
that went down to places
that they should have thought
out a little bit better.
As I was walking around,
I remember a kid
that I was friends with
growing up in elementary school,
my only friend
from elementary school
comes up to me,
and his name was Danny.
And behind him
is this gigantic dude
with really crazy orange hair.
And Danny Says, "this is him.
Can I go now?"
And he just leaves
the guy with me.
And he repeats,
"you know who I am."
I start thinking of like,
I don't know you, I don't.
I start listing places.
"Do I know you from school?
"Do I know you
from McDonald's?"
'Cause I used to work
at McDonald's.
"Do I remember you from
the comic book depot?"
Which was my comic book store.
And he just keeps on going,
"no. But you know who I am."
One last time.
And then the entire world
just disappears,
and I'm in the strongest
sleep-paralysis episode
I've ever had in my life.
Like, I cannot move.
Like, I can't even
try to force myself out of it.
Like, that little wiggle room
I get sometimes
just wasn't there.
And it felt like
I was completely constrained,
you know, fully,
to the point where
I'm just trying to breathe,
because I don't know
what else to do.
Immediately after that
dream drops,
and everything's gone,
he kind of fizzles away.
And this was the first
experience with pain.
If I had to describe it,
picture like
a claw-machine game.
You know, three...
three little things.
And that's
when the pain starts coming.
The worst one is when
It's around, like,
you know, my fucking dick.
And I still felt the pain
after I woke up.
I did not go
back to sleep that night,
I remember,
and I think I just played
video games until the morning
and kind of questioned
my existence.
Like, I just remember
being like,
"and this is different now,
and now it hurts,
and now there's
a dude talking to me."
And, like, I...
that was kind of when I started
to feel a little crazy.
Like, I started to feel like
something was definitely wrong.
Was it me?
Maybe.
Was it something supernatural?
Maybe.
I immediately stopped
being an atheist.
And sometimes
they're very, um... articulate,
like that one was
when I was a little boy,
and They'll be like,
"Oh, I can talk to you,
and I know your name,"
and this and that.
And sometimes, they're just,
like, gobbledygooking,
just, "blah, blah, blah,"
like they don't have
the capability to speak anymore.
When I was older and
I went back to the house
and was staying there...
I mean, I hated
going back to that house.
You know, I had other
bad experiences there,
and so I hated going back there.
I hated sleeping there.
I would usually...
If I go back there and visit,
I leave the TV on
because It's just such
an overwhelming force.
So I fell asleep,
and I had this nightmare.
And then I woke up,
and then I woke up
in a sleep paralysis.
And I was like,
"Oh, hmm," you know?
But I was so put off
by the dream
that I wasn't immediately
shocked by the state
of sleep paralysis,
which normally is what it does.
And I can kind of see it
out of the corner of my eyes,
that there was this man
standing down
at the end of my bed,
kind of like
this schlumpy old man.
That's too young
for some reason.
Maybe It's his posture.
And I'm like,
"huh," like, "that's weird."
So I'm lying there,
and there's this man
down at the end of the bed,
and he Says to me,
"he Says," forrest...
You just came all over
your mother's sheets."
You just masturbated all over
your mother's bed sheets.
You're disgusting!
A pervert.
And I had not masturbated
that night, I will say.
But his voice
was immediately familiar.
As the voice that talked
to me as a child.
The same voice.
It was like...
it was like as If, you know,
you get a phone call
from a relative
or somebody you haven't
talked to in a while,
run into an old friend
and hear their voice first,
and you recognize the voice.
You haven't heard it
for a long time.
But you know it.
It's that person.
And I had that experience,
I'm like,
"Oh, It's that voice.
That man."
I've seen him
two or three more times
in that physical incarnation.
But I've also had, like,
times where I've seen people,
that have approached me
the same way
and I've felt like,
"yes, that's him."
Like, I...
it was a different body,
but it was that same entity
that was talking to me.
We had a friend staying over.
We had people over that night,
and we had a one-bedroom
tiny apartment.
So we're all
kind of crammed into my bed.
And I remember I had...
Um, gone to sleep.
You know, the two girls,
they were asleep.
You know,
they were out like a light.
Almost immediately,
the paralysis hits.
Normal paralysis.
Completely normal.
You know, situation, like,
stereotypical dark room,
but in this,
there's a really tall entity,
like, you know, If the room's
eight feet tall,
he is an eight-foot-tall dude
with a hunch.
Like, he is not fitting
in this room.
And they were red eyes.
This is what I remember.
And very mothman type shit,
actually.
And it starts talking to me.
He repeats,
"you know who I am."
You know who I am.
You don't know who I am.
Right now, but I know you.
And you know me.
You...
Are going to die.
I just had
this horrible experience,
you know, and,
you know, I believed it.
I believed that this thing
was telling me
it was gonna kill me.
I'm going to die.
And I'm sitting here
feeling bad for her
that she's freaking out,
and I'm trying to calm her down.
I figure out she has this...
I figured she had a sleep terror
or something like that,
and she's telling me
that on her chest,
she saw something on her chest,
a cat with red eyes,
and it was looking at me
and talking in a language
that she couldn't understand.
Like, it was on top of her
but threatening me.
And the second she said it
had red eyes,
I just, liked, freaked out.
Like, I was just...
I, like...
I remember this was during
a time of my life
where I was like,
"maybe I am crazy. It's fine."
And then this happened.
And then it immediately affirmed
I thought I was gonna be dead.
Like, I was like,
"Oh, I'm going to die."
And, like, shit like that
immediately makes me
want to be like,
"fuck, like, regular life."
Like...
sorry about the language.
When things like that happen,
It's very hard
for me to be like,
"yeah, I'm just gonna go
get a normal job
and, like, live my life."
Like, I'm like,
"I want to figure this out."
Any idea why it happens to you
more than other people?
I have no idea.
I mean, I guess, you know,
It's all presumption,
but, you know, you could assume
that maybe it had something
to do
with being such a young child,
you know, and having
such a profound experience.
You know, It's kind of like
when you see something
for the first time,
you know what it is.
You know, you go to sea world
and see a killer whale,
and you've never seen it before,
and now you know
what a killer whale is.
I read the very few
websites out there about it,
and I didn't really learn
anything new,
except for, there is a chemical,
Melatonin,
that goes into your system,
and is released upon sleep
that's supposed to paralyze you.
And I was like, "okay,
maybe this could be medical."
But again,
there was never an explanation
for the shadow man
except for hypnagogic
hallucinations,
which is a nice word
that the doctors
like to throw around,
but it really means
you just imagined it.
My guess is we conceptualize
things in our unconscious,
based on, like,
snippets of information
that we picked up
along the road somehow.
If I came from
an Evangelical community
where they really believed
in evil demons,
maybe my immediate association
from my unconscious
as I'm rising out of sleep,
would've been like,
"Oh, shit, It's the devil!"
Yeah, that's interesting.
Although, I wonder If you look
at your own reaction
to your experiences
as similar in a way.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Like, that's true.
Of course. Like,
also my unconscious is like,
"what is the scientific
explanation for this?
There must be a reason
that has to do with logic."
So, yeah, of course
I leapt for that, too.
I can see it just as easily
there's the commonality
of human experience, like,
how our brains and our hearts
and our personalities function,
like, we're all people.
Why wouldn't we see
similar things?
Like,
we're not different species.
Why wouldn't we have similar
go-to archetypes in our brain?
So jungian.
But it can't entirely
be born from you.
You know, that's to say
that everybody has in them
the capability of bringing out
these horrible things
before they've even witnessed
anything horrible.
It's one of my theories,
that we're actually
running our brain,
we're kind of overclocking it,
you know, more than we would
when we're just sleeping
or just awake.
And that kind of heightened
sense of perception,
while we as humans...
Can't really...
we can't interpret it.
Like, we're still not, you know,
interpreting it right,
but now we're seeing
the raw data.
We're seeing, you know,
"Oh, that could be a demon."
I don't know how
to visualize a demon,
because that's not a thing
that my brain can interpret.
And, I mean,
I actually kind of believe
that probably a lot of people
who do believe
that they have been abducted,
were actually victims
of sleep paralysis
of varying degrees.
And of course, reading more
about sleep paralysis,
and realizing the prevalence
of this experience,
you know, exists in every
single culture in the world.
There are these common
archetypes that keep popping up,
and all over the world.
Like, It's not just in America
people get
these red-eyed demons.
And It's not...
you know, they're everywhere.
You know, the shadow man...
The cats on the chest.
A giant cat that would
come into somebody's house
while they were sleeping,
hold them down...
It's like clawed...
like teeth and claws.
Sometimes metal
or like metal-ish.
Yeah, there are the ones
in Turkey.
There's the ancient morse...
the ancient norse one,
like, the mare.
And there are just so many.
The haint, like "the haunt."
The hmong immigrants.
Subsequently,
a lot of them died,
you know, from sleep paralysis.
Right, right,
and I know Wes craven
read an article about them,
and that helped inspire
"a nightmare on elm street"
and Freddy Krueger, which,
you know, then went on
to create a weird feedback loop,
inspiring other people's
nightmares
and sleep paralysis experiences.
So I had a dream
about Freddy Krueger,
and he obviously wanted
to kill me,
wanted to harm me,
wanted to scare
the crap out of me,
and I believe that that fear...
Creates a substance,
and I got this black ink
scared out of me,
like an ink fish.
And I believe
that's what it eats.
The physicist
michio kaku said that
maybe that we don't live
in just one dimension,
that we live
in multiple dimensions.
And If you imagine
a block of flats
that as an infinite extension
of yourself,
so it keeps adding
to itself all the time
and never stops,
and in every room
of this block of flats,
is an entire universe like ours.
Now, in every other room,
there must be another universe.
So, If that's true,
maybe some other us
have found our way
into the hallway,
and are knocking on our door.
Ready, two.
Right after my mom died,
I was very depressed.
And so I'd be crying.
You know, there was this one day
I remember
that I had a breakdown,
and I was crying a lot, a lot.
And then the next day,
since I work night shift,
I came home, slept...
you know, to sleep.
And then for some reason
that day,
I wanted to sleep on my side.
So I slept on my side
facing the door of the bedroom.
And all of a sudden,
I felt my body getting numb.
I felt it getting paralyzed.
And I said, "Oh, my God.
I'm getting this again."
But then it felt different.
I heard somebody walking.
This presence came around.
And it came behind me.
I was like this.
It came behind me,
and it hugged me.
And I heard the mattress
depress also.
I heard that depress,
like someone went in the bed.
And I felt it was my mother,
and I heard her voice,
and she Says,
"honey, I'm here. I'm here."
And it felt so different
from that past presence,
because, you know,
this was my mother.
It didn't feel evil.
It felt warm, and I was happy.
And I would talk to her.
It's like...
through my mind I said,
"Oh, mommy, It's you.
Oh, my God."
And she's hugging me tight
saying, "I'm here, I'm here."
And that was just
a matter of seconds,
all of a sudden, she was gone.
So I really...
you know,
I think It's my mom
that comes to visit us.
Does that still happen?
It happened, like,
two or three times.
Because even though
I feel It's her,
there's a part of me
that sometimes Says,
"what If It's this thing?"
Because sometimes
when I have felt her,
all of a sudden,
then it kind of switches,
and then I do feel, like,
If there's another presence.
And then I don't know
If It's this thing again
that used to haunt me back then
or If it is still her even
though it does feel different.
I can tell the difference
in both of them,
and I have said,
"who are you?"
But of course,
I don't get an answer.
And then it just lasts
for a few seconds,
and It's gone.
The one that stands out
above all others,
it happened one night
when me and my girlfriend
went to bed,
and it was around 10:00,
and I wasn't really tired.
So I played on my phone
for a bit,
a game on the phone,
and I must have fallen asleep.
When I woke up,
I stood at the side of my bed,
in a very oppressive atmosphere.
I can't describe
the atmosphere to you,
unless you were there.
I mean, I've never
experienced it before
and I've never experienced it
again like that.
It's a kind of
a very staticky...
Uh, just presence of evil.
And as I turned to my left,
I see my girlfriend in bed,
and I see me in bed.
And now I'm confused,
but I also see my eyes open,
and then I heard myself
labored breathing,
which is what I do when I have
a sleep paralysis attack.
I'm shocked, scared, and...
I don't know...
I don't know what's going on.
I'm confused more than anything.
I can't...
I can't think straight.
I don't know what's going on.
And almost instantly,
as I'm thinking that,
I can see three beings
over in this corner of the room.
There's no
looking me up and down
and seeing who I am
and what I'm doing there.
They...
the two generic shadow people,
they advance on me straightaway.
A grapple ensued
between me and them.
I'd like to say
it was a noble fight,
that I had to really
put my foot down and win,
but it wasn't.
They just retreated straightaway
when I put resistance up
behind the hat man.
And the hat man shielded them.
And I had no intention
of going forward
to investigate any more.
All I know is that
I have to get back in bed,
that some sort of...
some voice in my head saying
and my own voice saying,
"get back in bed."
And as I turned,
I can see a long silver thread,
for want of a better word,
that's going towards my body.
And I decide that now I have
gotta get back into bed.
And just as I decide that,
I shoot up in bed.
There's no in between,
going back in my body
or whatever.
It's just I'm there.
I sit straight up,
and I go downstairs
into the kitchen, get a drink,
and I'm instantly hit
by the fear and guilt,
that I've left her
on her own upstairs.
Because they're still
in that room.
I know they're still
in that room.
And as I go back upstairs,
I sit in bed,
and I stay up all night.
And It's like I'm on watch.
They just wanted me really bad.
I remember I was just
sort of laying in my bed,
and then there's now
the loud noise,
and, Oh, I hate the sound
of the noise.
It's, like, almost like
spirits or demons,
like, kind of like
screaming at you.
So then you hear, like...
It's almost like
a buzzing that starts,
and then I can sense a presence,
right...
like, standing over me.
Just standing right here
next to me
on my bed standing over me.
Then you hear, like, this sound.
It's like...
it feels like
somebody's screaming
right in your ear,
like they're right here,
and they're screaming.
And I can sense the color red,
as If they were wearing
something red
or like a dark red robe
or something red.
And I tried to look at the face,
but I couldn't.
Like, every inch,
every centimeter
feels like over a ton.
And so I'm trying to move,
and I wanna see it,
and I'm looking,
like straining to look up,
straining to look up.
I could...
I could barely move my head.
It was almost going like this,
like...
and then, like,
I think I said something.
I just said,
"I remember this guy."
His name is Jesus,
and I'm gonna use his name
right now.
And I'm gonna say,
'in Jesus' name,
"you know, get out," or...
I said something to that effect.
Jesus...
Jesus...
In Jesus' name...
In Jesus' name...
Get out.
And I suddenly sensed
that the demons,
or the thing
that was happening to me,
that evil presence
just left. Gone.
And it was amazing.
It was like a feeling
of victory, yeah.
And they never came back?
They never came back.
I wasn't even a Christian then.
I actually abhorred religion.
I didn't want...
some lady a long time
ago told me
I should marry a Christian man,
and I just laughed in her face.
Anyways, I learned
very late in my life
that the name of Jesus
has power,
and that's how
I became a Christian.
So do you not...
do you believe in
the Wikipedia definition
of sleep paralysis?
No.
Um, that would be
sort of like the...
I guess, the...
the worldly term,
like, what people would deem
as something
that's a physiological response,
that It's like a natural thing
that happens with the body.
But I don't think that's true.
I do think
that It's something to do
with the spiritual realm.
And It's closely tied
with possibly demonic activity.
At 33 years old,
I don't think It's gonna get
any better for me.
I've experienced it
most of my life,
If not all my life.
I know what It's like.
I don't believe that
this is just a rare occurrence.
I think It's...
I think none of us are special
that have this happen to them.
There's no reason why we should
have this happen to us, so...
but I'd like to know
how many other people
out there experience this.
I know there are quite a few,
but I think there's a lot more.
Hey, everybody,
It's Connie here,
A.K.A. Phoenixrising11.
Thank you for joining me.
I first wanna start out
by saying that,
I'm about to tell you
a very personal story,
and If you get weirded out
easily
or you're not
that open-minded...
So you made a pretty
powerful YouTube video
about your experience.
Do you watch
a lot of other people's
sleep paralysis videos?
I don't really like to listen...
I haven't seen a lot
of other people's
sleep paralysis videos.
Although people
do send me their stuff,
I just am not in a place
to want to listen
to that kind of stuff anymore.
I don't know why.
I feel like It's just...
It's kind of like that's
the past,
and I'm not in that space
anymore.
You know, I found faith,
and I met my husband,
and I never thought
I'd get married, and...
So you're actually
trying not to think too much
about sleep paralysis anymore.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, why?
For what, you know?
Um...
I was, uh...
Dating a girl
who was pretty crazy.
She was kind of really into
being very nature-y.
Not like a hippie,
but kind of like
a crazy wood spirit nymph
was kind of her vibe.
A lot of her clothes
were, like, stitched together.
She was crazy.
She would do things like,
say, start walking out
in the middle
of an incredibly busy street,
and I would try and stop her,
and she'd be like,
"no, no,
the spirits are guiding me,"
with her eyes closed.
I can't believe she survived.
So she was definitely
on the cusp of something.
So was I.
We were both really living
in the fringes
of sanity at that time.
And we went up to a cabin
that my dad has
in the bay of fundy in Canada.
And we were walking out
in the woods.
And it was getting dark.
It was kind of dusk.
So she said,
"let's build a stone circle",
because we'd just gone
to a pebble beach.
So we took our pebbles
and laid them all down.
And then we decided
to be receptive,
If you know what that means.
And so she, like,
closed her eyes
and she was, like,
standing like this,
and I was just kind of
standing there like this.
And suddenly she goes,
"Oh, something's coming."
She's coming! She's coming!
And she had her eyes closed,
and so she was not...
could not see anything,
and I was looking,
and it was like
she was listening
and I was looking.
And I looked into the forest,
and, um...
Out came this blue form.
It started approaching,
this very, very blue thing.
Like, it had the same quality
as the black things
that we talked about,
but blue, peaceful,
just really, like, nice.
And she's like,
"Oh, she's blue."
She said, "she's blue."
Eyes closed,
you know, like this.
And it came and approached,
and then it just
kind of stood still,
and it was maybe, like,
six feet over there.
I'm getting goosebumps
just thinking about this.
And here's my girlfriend,
and she's just laughing a lot,
like, "Oh, she's saying
the funniest things."
Like, just crazy.
It was really crazy and weird.
"And she goes," Oh,
she Says not to be worried
about the demons behind you."
And I was like, "what?"
And I turned around.
And I saw them.
That same face.
The face that people see
when they're abducted by aliens.
The face that I saw
as a small child.
And then in that moment,
I suddenly had this, like,
kind of realization.
'Cause it wasn't, like,
linguistic.
I didn't hear anybody
talking to me,
but I felt a thought in my head,
something external,
and it was all about how, um...
Fear empowers bad things.
To have fear when
you're in a bad environment
or a bad place
or around a bad thing
only gives that thing
more strength.
What that kind of made me
begin to realize
is that, you know,
here I'm hearing these voices,
and they're disembodied,
confused,
schizophrenic ghosts, you know,
yeah, those are people.
Maybe they're dead.
Maybe they're alive.
I don't know.
But then the other things,
the black, cloudy thing,
these gray things,
um, those are something
more primal,
something more just
environmental.
And when I came
to that realization, I'm like,
well, does it
have to be any one thing?
And shortly thereafter,
the blue spirit,
uh, dissipated into the woods.
And then we went back to,
you know, the cabin,
and that was that.
You're talking
about something that happens
at the absolute edges
of dreaming.
Like, you can't explain dreams.
You can't explain them
logically.
They're all little bits
and pieces
that come up from
your unconsciousness,
and from things
you've experienced,
and who knows how the sleeping
mind puts things together?
And now you're talking
about an experience
that happens
in that in-between stage.
It's so liminal.
You can't put logic
onto liminal situations.
I need you to also understand
that I was in
an abusive household.
I believe because I was
beaten so much during the day,
that at night,
my soul had to heal
to keep me here.
That's why I had to get through
the fourth dimension,
and that's why I had to go
somewhere else to be healed,
so that I could come back
and deal with my life.
I knew absolutely nothing
about sleep paralysis
until I was told about it.
And then I, almost instantly,
began experiencing it.
I don't believe, like,
the medical explanation to it,
the physiological stuff,
just a sleep disorder.
There's got to be
way more to it.
I told my one friend about it
when I was just talking,
I was like, "have you ever heard
of sleep paralysis?"
She's like, "no,"
and so I shared my experience.
And then the next day,
she's texting me.
She's like, "I hate you.
I hate you."
Whatever you were telling me
about happening to you,
now It's starting
to happen to me."
Kind of like an std,
"sleep-transmitted disease."
There was an experience
during this time
that I actually
did think I died.
Whole dream's going fine.
I don't really know
what we're doing.
It's one of those three-,
four-day-feeling type dreams.
I'm just kind of existing in it,
sort of enjoying it.
And all of a sudden, like,
somebody knocks at the door.
It's, like, two homeless dudes.
And they're trying to get in,
and I'm trying to tell them,
"listen, we're at capacity.
We're at capacity for homeless
people in my weird dream town."
There's a guy on roller blades
in the background, very '90s.
And I wasn't thinking,
but he, like, turns,
and he starts
roller-blading towards me.
And I'm like, "that's awesome.
He's gonna come into play here."
This is cool.
I'm probably gonna wake up soon
'cause It's all evaporating."
And as he gets really close,
he just pulls out a gun.
And then I'm in the paralysis.
But It's not a paralysis
I've ever felt before.
It's just nothing.
I don't see anything.
I don't feel anything.
I'm just nothing.
So I guess maybe
this is an afterlife.
And I was like,
"nah, probably not.
Maybe I'm in a coma."
And I'm starting to think
sleep paralysis
probably finally fucked me.
Like, I'm probably done.
And I've probably stopped
breathing,
and this is what happens
when it happens,
like, I'm just nothingness.
And, like, five,
ten minutes go by,
and I'm just like...
get a little nervous,
but, like, at the same time,
I'm just kind of weirdly serene.
Like, "this sucks."
And...
I remember thinking,
like, I'm gonna try
to pull out of it.
Like, the same motion I would do
to pull out of sleep paralysis,
I'm gonna just try
to emulate that.
And I try over and over
and over again,
I mean, hundreds of times.
You know, just...
but I'm getting somewhere,
and I remember I come up
for, like, half a second.
And I can see my room.
It's like I can open
my eyes a little bit,
but nothing's...
there's nothing there anymore.
And It's almost like
I'm just in bed
and the room is like...
all the details
of the room are gone.
There's... I can see my
now ex-girlfriend's dresser,
her little vanity,
and there's nothing on it.
And I remember
I called out her name,
and nobody came,
and then I was
back in the paralysis.
And then it was another five,
ten minutes of pulling out,
and then eventually I woke up.
And...
She wasn't there.
Nobody was around,
but... it just...
it was...
it was the worst.
I just felt like I died.
You know, it became this
kind for turning point for me
in, you know, just...
how I saw all this.
And I definitely didn't
want that to happen ever again.
So how did that change your...
the way you saw all this?
It just... it...
whereas before,
I felt like I was maybe,
you know,
learning and exploring
and it was, like, kind of fun,
it stopped being fun.
Like, It's not like I get to...
you know, people talk
about astral projection
and all these, like,
awesome-sounding things,
like how they get to fly around,
and, you know, I don't know,
do cool things.
And I don't get that.
I don't get, you know, those.
I just get
these weird experiences
where I feel like, for a second,
I can see something
that most people can't.
Like, there's what we see
in the world...
And right behind it,
you know, almost like...
It's like everything's
cellophane-wrapped or something.
And for half a second, that...
that wrapper's gone,
and I can see
or perceive something
a little bit more real...
or whatever real is...
and then It's gone.
But I can see it
for that half a second.
And so no matter what fear
or pain comes along with it,
I always get this experience,
where, even If It's in my head,
It's made something interesting.
It's something
that I can pull from
that makes my life
almost kind of worth it,
which is, you know...
for a long time,
is something
I don't feel like I've ever had.
And It's gonna probably
just keep getting worse,
and I truly believe
that one day...
it will be the reason why,
like, one day I don't wake up.
And one day I'm just...
you know, I don't breathe,
I can't control the breathing,
and It's done.
And I feel terrible
for whoever I'm dating
or married to when that happens,
um, but I'm kind of ready
for that now.
Chris. Hey, Chris.
You know,
I'm ready for that to be,
you know, just kind of
what happens to me.
But I would like to figure out
a lot more about this
before that happens,
and It's also made me feel
very comfortable with the idea.
Like, If something's happening,
that's more than...
I'm just crazy.
Then something's happening.