In the dark of the night, are you tucked up cozy in your bed? Do you ever think that maybe someone or something may be crawling around the corners of your room just out of your line of sight? What would you do if you woke up unable to move or scream as an unknown creature comes to kiss you goodnight? Today on The Odder we talk all things Sleep Paralysis and hear first hand accounts of those who experience it. If you are sleeping peacefully now, get ready not to be!
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All music featured in episode comes from Incompetech.com.
In the dark of the night, are you tucked up cozy in your bed? Do you ever think that maybe someone or something may be crawling around the corners of your room just out of your line of sight? What would you do if you woke up unable to move or scream as an unknown creature comes to kiss you goodnight? Today on The Odder we talk all things Sleep Paralysis and hear first hand accounts of those who experience it. If you are sleeping peacefully now, get ready not to be!
Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tiktok!
All music featured in episode comes from Incompetech.com.
Hello and welcome to the O podcast. I'm your host, Madison, Paige. And today we are slipping into our PJs, fluffing all our pillows and taking a deep dive into sleep paralysis. I hope y'all brought some Niel because there ain't nobody getting a good night's sleep after this one, grab your sleeping bags and let's go Welcome one. And all back to my little slumber party, we are going to paint our toes and watch 13 going on 30. Like it's going out of style. I wanna thank everyone who tuned into our last episode about the day disappearance of Michael Bryson. I apologize if that audio was kind of off, I was actually recording during a tornado. So I was really nervous. Happily. The tornado passed right over and I'm still here making podcasts for you. However, this audio may again be a TA off. As I have contracted a cold it's dark in my doorway for about a week. Now, I already had a deep voice, but now I'm verging on the cadence of Sam Elliot. So I apologize if I don't sound like myself, I do have a foggy teapot full of honey tea and a bag of Cough drops. And I am living on DayQuill and Mucinex right now. So we'll try to get through this as best we can. But if there is an a cough, I do a Today, we slip away from the missing person's bulletin to snuggle into bed with a boogieman haunting more than a few people's closets, settle in, get comfy, get a blankie and prepare yourself. As we talk about sleep paralysis. I woke up to the front door opening and thought it was weird. The dog didn't bark. I tried to wake my husband up, but couldn't move. My eyes were open and I could see him in bed next to me, laying on his side, facing away from me, but I couldn't move or speak to get his attention. I heard the Russell of blue jeans rubbing together. As someone walked through the living room, into the kitchen, the refrigerator door opened, and I heard someone get a piece of ham out. Then heard the dog eating it. I tried to scream, tried to nudge. My husband, tried to move, tried everything, but I was frozen. I somehow knew then that my and was dead. Not sure why or how, but I knew he wasn't alive. I heard the heavy footsteps of boots coming towards the bedroom. So I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep all while still trying to reach out and touch my husband. I figured out it was a man. He came around the foot of the bed to side. And even though I couldn't turn and look, I knew he was there. I kept my eyes closed and tried not to let him see the tears. Then he leaned down over me. I can still smell the alcohol on his breath. As he leaned up to my ear and said, honey, he is already gone. And you are next. That terrifying story comes from a Reddit and the user. You don't know me, dog.<laugh>, it's horrifying, right? A man breaks into this person. House kills the husband and whispers threats into their ear. Now you might be asking, why are we hearing stories about a home invasion and the answer assembly. We aren't, this isn't a story of an alcoholic stranger breaking in bribing the dog and committing a heinous crime. This is a story from an episode of sleep paralysis. The man with the gene is just a hallucination and the user is not alone in the experience of this bed. Wedding terror, According to web MD, as many as four out of every 10, people have experienced sleep paralysis. At some point in their life. This phenomenon occurs when the brain and body fall outta sink during the sleeping process. If you've never experienced it before, it can be kind of hard to imagine. But bear with me. Imagine yourself in bed. You're in comfy pajamas and it's late. You have to be work early in the morning. So you're being a, a responsible adult and trying to get your full eight hours or more likely sex on a good night. Suddenly you wake up, your eyes are open you brow slowly in your sleep drunken state, and try to sit up. But you can't. You begin to become aware of the fact that you cannot move any limbs. Your body will not respond to you. You wanna call out maybe Roe, a, a roommate, or a significant other to help you, but you are also unable to speak. You might feel like you're choking or like something heavy is sitting on your chest. You might see figures, hear voices or feel hands touching you all while you can either move nor speak. Sounds terrifying. Isn't it? This is one of the many ways a sleep paralysis episode might take place. Some people get these regularly and can tell when they're slipping into a state while it is terrifying in the moment they can feel like it goes on for hours. The reality is that they usually only last a few seconds to a few minutes and your body will eventually come out of it. So what's really happening when this is going on. Are we really seeing beyond the veil into the unknown where terrifying shadow people wait to pop out and suck out our souls like seven 11 Slurpees. Not quite. Let's go all the way back to the beginning. You're in bed. You're ready to sleep. What happens next? Well, the brain is a fantastic organ. Sometimes on a usual night, the brain will send signals to the muscles in your body via your nervous system with them. All right, boys, shut it down. Message. This locks your body into place so that you are unable to move. The reason for this is to prevent you from hurting yourself in a dream state. Normally with the exception of chronic sleep walkers, this process goes off without a hitch and you safely slumber under the wash eye of your neurons. However, just like any well oiled machine, sometimes things just don't work out like they're supposed to during REM sleep, the deepest part of the sleep cycle. You're likely to have dreams. Now you can be at top hat wearing tap, dancing, frog, and your dreams. And as long as your brain keeps your muscles removing, your are completely fine to rat attach your little lumbering hearts content. But when you suddenly regain awareness during the cycle, that's when you run into our old buddy sleep paralysis. The disruption to your regularly scheduled programming happens because the Insing processes between the brain and the body are happening at the wrong speed. If the rim cycle ends and you begin to arouse, but your brain doesn't send out the real least, the muscles message in time, you will wake up while your body will continue to snooze this uncomfortable. And frankly, scary realization that we cannot move or speak activates our limbic system, which is the part of our brain's responsible for emotional reaction. The reaction the limbic system usually comes up with is fear and panic. This is worsened. If the victim is in the middle of a nightmare, where the sense of fear was already present and may now begin playing those nightmares into your bedroom in the form of auditory or visual hallucinations, these hallucinations can be as simple as hearing a whisper or as horrifying as seeing a seven foot tall spider crouching over in bed. Eventually the right signals get where they're supposed to. And the episode ends now. I'm sure everyone, but the most avid of bud lovers would not be happy to see daddy long licks get up and close in the dark of your bedroom. So what causes these episodes and how can you avoid them? I've got bad news and bad news. The bad news, the cause of sleep para is not really known, but people suffering from narcolepsy. People on shift work, people experience, sleep deprivation due to things like stress, college, maybe a new baby and people suffering from obstructive sleep apnea are all at the highest risk. The other bad news is there is no treatment of cure. All. There are several tricks and tips for trying to break out of sleep paralysis scattered far and wide over the internet. I have found many recommendations from wiggling your toes, hold your breath or focusing on relaxing each muscle group from your feet to your head. However, none of these are proven to be the secrets to sleep paralysis. Most commonly, once you are in you're in for the, a ride during sleep paralysis, the most commonly reported phenomena is visual hallucinations. Of course, in the moment, it doesn't feel like hallucination. It just feels like someone or something is in your house. Many people describe humanlike figures. Also commonly call shadow people. These creatures may walk, crawl, float door, just about anything else in a person's room or house. Everyone sees different things during these episodes. However, we do have some key players. Several reports feature the same cast of characters seen by different people all over the world. While the repetition makes some people question. If this is actually a parade of demons, instead of the night willies, let's go through them all before you make your judgment. The first is the hack. The hack is a horrifying old woman who loves the stand over or sit on the chest of the hapless. They can do nothing but stares. She is said to cover their mouths. The claw eye cans scream in their face and cackle menacingly she's often reported accompanied by the feeling of the victim's chest caving in the ha actually has some roots in folk belief of Newfoundland, South Carolina and Georgia, where a story is told of a ha who leaves her body at night to sit on the chest of victims in a spectral form. The victim's wake feeling terrified, struggling to breathe and cannot move. This experience is typically called being ha written, being ha written is also an old term for experiencing sleep paralysis. Even if the hag is not present, the hack was seen so commonly during these episodes, it stuck to such a Modu, aand that she actually spawned her own form of sleep paralysis called old hag syndrome. Would you like to hear a story from someone who has old ha syndrome? Of course you do. This story comes from user fluffy bird on Reddit. I have old ha syndrome in my experience, I wake up paralyzed in the dark. I send some malevolent evil presence in the room that wants to kill me. And I can see an possibly old and terrifyingly, ugly woman crouching in my closet, across the bed, staring at me. I desperately try to move a finger or a toe or blink, but nothing. My body is unresponsive. The old ha then stands up and starts to walk towards the bed very slowly. The entire time I try to gain control of my body, but nothing is responding. The old woman then climbs on the bed and sits on my chest. The witch wraps her hands around my throat and begins to strangle me the entire time she is choking me. Her face is just beyond my peripheral vision, but I instinctly know that she is beyond hideous. Sometimes I then wake up from this terrifying scenario at the brink of losing consciousness because of the strangulation, but I am still para realized I am not fully awake. I still sense her evil in the room. And she is sitting on the floor beside my bed and I can hear her breathing, smell her foul stench, and feel her stare upon my face. She then crawls back on the bed and begins choking me again. If I'm lucky, I then wake up up for real. The phenomena of being scared by an old woman is not new. And it is a tool used in several pop culture movies to send viewers scuttling from a kiss from grandma movies that use this trope of the terrifying older woman even used the tag horror. Ha think of the scene in the 2019 movie, it chapter two, where Beverly is suddenly rushed by the specter of a naked elderly woman who transforms into Pennywise while this horror trope is overdone and ageist to be Frank the side of the ha crawling onto our chest at night to slowly suffocate as to death will haunt those suffering from sleep paralysis for eons to come. If the devil's Memaw, isn't the one to pay you a nighttime visit, you might meet his kid, a shadow. Child's another commonly spoken about figure on the sleep paralysis scene. They are described as full warm, less smokey, or can be very solid with hair, raising details. Some people who see a child claim to feel no malice, just a curiosity or a shyness. Some have claimed to hear a horrible version of a nursery rhyme. If it does approach, it may jump into the bed and tangle its fingers in the sleepers hair gently. However, not every child you see during sleep paralysis is innocent. Take the story from run buns, 2, 4, 7 about a terrifying child. They saw, I was spending the night at a friend's house in high school and awoke to a very pale child, very long arms and legs like three times longer than they should have, have been. It was in kind of a backwards crab walk position with its chest facing the ceiling. Its head was spun around backwards facing me and I just sat there, staring at it until I was able to sit up and then it was gone terrifying. The backwards joints alone. Would've had me in tears and ready to vomit. Again, a child is a commonly used horror theme, the orphan pet cemetery, the omen, and a host of other horror films and books have centered their antagonist on a baby faced baby horror. This is so scary because children are seen as inherently innocent. And so to see a child turn monsters, a terrifying betrayal to human sensibility, a child cannot be greedy or vengeful or bigoted in a way an adult villain can be. So it makes the reveal so much more startling. Also children can just be creepy. There are whole Reddit threads dedicated to parents reporting, terrifying things or kids say to them, such as commenting on the presence of someone. No one else can see or saying terrifying things like mommy's gonna die soon. I terrified my own mother as a child. I have chronic insomnia and I have, since I was little, my mom would tell stories of waking in the dark of the night to be scared to death by a small six year old me just standing over her. I'm sure many parents can relate to similar stories. However, one of the, the most important factors that the child's shadow is that it doesn't always appear as a terrifying apparition. It's dual nature of also being a comforting specter brings into play the comfort of being young and being without responsibility. The child is curious because it is still learning. It is gentle because it has no intention of causing harm. There is something in the shadow child. We can all relate to The most popular figure, sometimes spotted with the shadow child, but usually by himself is the hat man. The hat man is so pervasively reported that he spawned blogs in his honor, the whole Reddit threads talking about him and even was the inspiration for Netflix is the haunting of hill house. Even before the internet was a widespread thing in sleep. Brows, chat rooms filled with stories about him. Several different people from across the globe reported sightings of him in the midst of sleep arrest. He described as a human form with a hat that ranges from a top hat to a Quaker hat, to a wide brimed fedora. He is sometimes reported wearing a cloak as well. Sometimes he has a face which is menacing and terrifying with yellow snake-like eyes, but sometimes he has no face or simply that the sleeper felt they must not look at it. If he appears with a shadow child, he has said to not feel threatening people, report feeling safe and protected when the pair comes together, it is when the hat man comes alone, that the real terror begins. He lingers and doorways or towers over the ends of bed at his reported height of six feet tall. But some even report him as being hall is eight or 10 feet. However, it is rarely if ever reported the hot man touches anyone more often than not. He is a horrifying watcher who just stands or walks about admitting a cloud of fear that people report feeling coming off of him in waves. They feel he wants to do them harm. So as the hat man comes with a hoard of other shadow people, when this happens, the victim say is very obvious. He is the leader. So who is the hat man? Is he the king of the shadow people, the devil himself, or just a silhouette. So common to most everyone that he is easily overlay into the nightmare of sleep paralysis. We will likely know him know, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy stories about him. There are a whole Reddit threads and even a blog child, the hat man project dedicated the stories of encounters with him. This story comes from to drawers. PERCA on Reddit. I've had a dozen episodes of sleep paralysis throughout my life. All were accompanied by feeling some panic and dread. Naturally my experience with hat man happened during one such event afternoon, naps were a normal part of my young life and this particular nap took place about 35 years ago in a first floor bedroom. I was awakened from a deep sleep facing a window. I came to the realization that I could look out the window into the front yard, but could not move any part of my body even to speak before I could gain the use of any voluntarily muscles, a man wearing a fedora style hat and a long coat slowly walked by the window from right to the left. All the while as this man walked past the window, he pivoted his head to maintain direct eye contact with me knowing that this person's presence was highly irregular. I was filled with a deep feeling of dread this man wearing a hat, absolutely exuded, a strong essence of malevolence after the coming fully awake and functional. The cobwebs of this encounter blew away in the late summer evening breeze. But I knew it actually happened. This was a decade before the worldwide web brought instant information to nearly every household. About 20 years after this particular afternoon nap, I first read about the Hotman on the internet. I immediately made the connection and I knew, I knew that for some reason, the Haman came to visit me. Ooh, even a simple nap. Isn't safe here. Haman didn't even have to linger to strike fear into the hearts of his victim, Tim and brown Jr. Started the apprehension blog there. He has been collecting stories and is going to be releasing a book called the hat. Man revealed. Timothy has own experience with hat man and has been spreading the word ever since all the stories on the blog are anonymous, but the majority of them are actually described encountering the hat man outside of a sleep paralysis episode or encountering a regular shadow person. This makes you wonder a, if the hat man is something far outside the ha of the child, some people believe he is a demon or the devil come to torment or haunt people. The blog specifically talks about him, feeding on the destruction of families. Some people feel when it is dark and they are frozen and his cold stare is fixed upon them. That all they can do to save themselves pray. Now we have our final cast. We have the hat man, the child, and the ha all lined up and ready for their roles. However, we have two other leads who are so dressed down for their appearance. They're practically invisible. Now seeing a ha on your chest, a top hat wearing demon in the, or in a child that's fingers in your hair might all be terrifying, but there is something even scarier, seeing nothing, specifically seeing nothing but feeling something tactile hallucinations are you physically feel something that isn't real. Let's be clear. You are not being touched, but your brain thinks you are. If you've ever had a nightmare where you were burned, scratched, bitten, and felt like you could really feel it happening, then you know what that is like. Personally, I remember a nightmare from years ago where I crashed my car into a fence. And to this day, I can remember the burning feeling of the bar while scratching over my arm. Of course, this was just a dream and it didn't actually hurt me. But imagine being in sleep paralysis, you can't move. You can't speak, but you can feel hands running over your body or pulling you off the bed. You can't see anybody, but it feels like someone is sitting on your stomach or your chest. You can't scream for help, but you are being held down. Some people have even reported feeling a fallen sensation or like they are freezing. This is a terrifying experience. A boogeyman is one thing, a threat you can't see is another ready users, meat, salad report, experiencing a tactile hallucination that is skin crawling. I woke up because I felt weight on the bed between my feet. Almost like my cat had jumped up onto my bed. Then I felt a sensation of something crawling up my body that was much heavier than a cat. It stopped once it got to my head where I felt it weighing down my mattress and then it got so close to the side of my head that I could hear and feel its breath on my neck. It sniffed my hair really loudly and blew air into my ear. Then leaped off the side of my bed. And I could move again as someone who has cats, who do this to me as well as an as so in the bed. I have the comfort of knowing if something breathes in my ear, there's likely no threat, but the slithering, the body makes me feel like I'm going to faint. Just reading the story. I hope you appreciate just how horrifying a tactile hallucination can be. I also appreciate this user name. Meat salad is a chef's kiss of a moniker. The last actor in the terrifying cast, or at least the one I think is the scariest is auditory hallucination. The cat demon in the body is so scary. But imagine just hearing, speaking in the room with you, these sounds can range from routines, such as footsteps, knocking or whispers to the bizarre like radios static, carnival music or growling. These noises may not be accompanied by anything visual or tactile or the, they may be accompanied by both. That can be voices, wishing good wishes or seeing sweetly to harsh threats or screaming. A user on Reddit whose account has been deleted, posted a great story about an auditory hallucination. And I really wanted to share it. The first time I experienced sleep paralysis. It was an extremely vivid auditory hallucination. I couldn't even open my eyes. It was winter and I slept with my windows open and I heard people running through the snow like that crunching sound. Then they started screaming, followed by gunshots. I thought I was paralyzed with fear. When I finally able to move, I was too scared to look out my window cuz I thought someone just got shot outside. So I jumped outta bed and ran into the living room where my mom was watching TV. I asked if she hurt the gunshot. She looked at me like I was crazy. She helped me investigate, but there was nothing. And that's when and how I found out about sleep paralysis. So we've covered visual auditory and tactile hallucinations. Old factory hallucinations is where you smell smells that aren't there also happen, but they are very rare. And I couldn't find much info on them. If you are super curious about sleep paralysis and want to learn even more, there is a great documentary titled the nightmare. It is terrifying. And I actually had to stop in the middle and come back later because it frightened me so badly. Also be warned that sleep paralysis is one of those things you can cause by dwelling on it. So don't go digging too deeply in the rabbit hole. If you aren't prepared to face the rabbit, I feel like a good way to end this. And, and just a fair way because I took so many stories from Reddit is to tell you my own experience with sleep paralysis. As I've said before, I always had sleep issues. And though I've experienced sleep paralysis. A couple of times, this incident really stuck with me. I wasn't caught. I lived in the attic of the haunted dorm on campus. It was finals and I was stressed outta my mind. One night I walked to darkness and I slowly realized I couldn't move. My bed was in a small enclosed area. Under a window. I was staring directly at the ceiling where a thick black cloud began to form it, swirled around and blocked out all the light from the window. Suddenly I felt hands all over my body, holding me down, covering my nose and mouth. And I felt like I was slowly starting to suffocate. I wanted to look down to see them or push them off me, but they were everywhere and I couldn't move I from in the cloud. I hear a deep voice. I can only describe as demonic say, we can kill you. We will kill you. Nobody can save you in time. Then it started to laugh. It sounded like dozens of different voices were laughing in the cloud. I felt like I was going to be smother to death. And I was just really trying to scream, to wake my roommate, to make her help me. I don't know how long it lasted, but suddenly it was over and I could sit up. My roommate later told me that she hadn't heard anything that night. Well, that's all for this episode. Did you like my experience? I would love, love. Love to hear yours. Please email any experience with sleep elses. You've had to the Otter pod, gmail.com. I'd like to do a follow up episode with your stories. I lost a lot of good sleep making this episode. So I hope you are spook, startled and entertained. Let us know what you think on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and leave you please, please, please leave a review. Especially for listening on Spotify or apple, Spotify. Won't show me until things I've had enough on a side note. I'm going on vacation to San Francisco in a couple weeks. And I'd really like some recommendations on what to do while I'm there. Particularly any spooky or true crime thing. I already have tickets to Alcatraz and the Winchester mystery house. But is there a ghost tour you thought was particularly spine chilling, maybe a bar you visited with a murderous history or just a bar with a great cocktail. Send me recommendations on Instagram or Facebook. The OPO is now on TikTok. Come follow us there and see my face. If you're curious and the O podcast posts every other Thursday. If you have a suggestion for a subject on the podcast, you can email us@theopogmail.com. Thanks for listening. And I'll see you next time on the O side.