About a month ago, I woke to my wife yelling our daughters name. I got pissed and glanced in the hallway to see a shadow of my daughter standing completely still, looking into our bedroom.


I said loudly "Sweetie, wake up!". She didn't budge. I turned the light on and POOF, she was gone. I went to her room to find her fast asleep.


I can explain it, but it's still spooky. My son's book bag was hanging across the hall, along with a vacuum, which in the dark looks like long hair and a standing human form. When my wife said her name, it told my subconscious to expect to see my daughter, so that's what I saw.

Freaky what the mind can manifest.

There is a GREAT book (grounded in reality) that explains that most people who think they've been visited by something out of the paranormal are really just experiencing sleep paralysis.

http://www.amazon.com/People-Believe.../dp/0805070893

They actually document an experiment in which they sleep deprive a man while he's on a road trip and he becomes delusional and is convinced he's been abducted. It's fascinating.

I am a lucid dreamer with an active mind, so sleep paralysis is usually a living nightmare for me.


When it happens, it's almost always paranormal-like. That's why I think that a lot of people think they see something when it's really their minds manifesting things in a half-asleep state.

I am living proof, but I can see why someone would believe what they see if they aren't educated and scientifically grounded.

Those last few comments (I'm not being critical when I say this...) are why I'm such a big fan of physical or other types of evidence of events. Stories of lights in the sky, or abduction experiences, or ghosts, or bigfoot, or even stuff with multiple witnesses or caught on camera with today's technology is interesting but at the same time so easy to write-off as being something else, or nothing at all. Whereas when, let's say, a pilot says he sees something and it's confirmed by radar, something tangible that you can actually produce, that's another story...

Absolutely.

May be some interesting stuff in the near future (knock on wood) with multiple-camera and -sensor setups in areas known to have frequent high strangeness events, like the San Luis Valley.

That's one of my favorite areas.


We drive by it on our way to Pagosa every year. Blanca is MASSIVE compared to the surrounding terrain, and the dunes are awesome.


They have cattle crossing signs every once in a while, and some prankster started putting flying saucer stickers that shows them "beaming" the cow up! ROFL

Similar to this, only on a real highway sign!

http://whofortedblog.com/wp-content/...7/beamedup.jpg

Heh. Reminds me of Nevada and the Extraterrestrial Highway. Although I guess that's official.

I am sure most people here are aware but just for anyone reading sleep paralysis is pretty well studied and occurs when the REM cycle of sleep overlaps with being awake or in a light sleep. Since REM is when dreams occur for the most part you are already in a very imaginative state so separating fiction from reality us very difficult.

Additionally, REM sleep is the part of the sleep cycle when your heart rate increases, blood pressure rises, and you are breathing heavy. Combine this with the fact that you were just dreaming and are awakening in state of panic (physiologically), almost anything feels threatening, especially when you are aware that you are unable to move.

Forget what I said. I'll figure it out.

It sucks.


Take apprehension, stress, fear, anxiety, and mix it with your imagination and the inability to move.

Sleep paralysis mixes reality with hallucinations. Scary stuff if you ever get stuck in it like I have.

The best is coupling it with 'limb death' when you sleep positionally cutting off blood flow to an arm or leg. So even when you overcome sleep paralysis, you have a limb with no motor response to deal with until blood flow is resumed.

I have experienced limb death a time or two in my arms. That's never fun.

I mentioned sleep apnea. It hasn't happened for a while, not sure if the improvement's connected with improved diet or exercise or nothing at all, but popping awake with the realization that you weren't breathing a moment before and feeling like you're about two seconds from asphyxia is freaking terrifying.