You wake startled in the middle of the night, terrified from whatever nightmare you were just experiencing. You try to sit up but discover that you can’t move your body. You try turning your head in your wife’s direction, hoping to get her attention, but quickly realize that not only can you not move any part of your body, but you can’t even speak. Not so much as a whispered plea to your wife, a desperate entreaty to get her attention so that she can rouse you from this terrifying state.
You feel a presence in the room, an ominous shadow in the corner, at the foot of the bed, or even sitting upon your chest. You can’t breathe from the crushing weight of some invisible force pinning you down. Your whole body is alive with an electric buzz as if you’re hooked up to a string of car batteries. You strain with all your might against the paralysis, trying to fight against the weight on your chest, but to no avail. You try to fall back asleep, but the electric hum builds as if every nerve in your body is pulled wire-tight and begins to sing louder and louder to a building crescendo of intolerable proportions. You think this is it. I’m going to have a heart attack. There’s nothing you can do. You’re stuck–fighting between a futile attempt to move against unseen forces keeping you immobile, and the fear of falling back asleep to possibly never wake again. This is sleep paralysis–a waking nightmare.
The above description of what it’s like to “wake up” in the throes of sleep paralysis is based on my own personal experience with the phenomenon. When I began working at The Alaska Sleep Clinic, my first line of questions pertained to “what is called when I wake from sleep, but can’t move for a few minutes?” I then began describing my symptoms and was finally given a name to my experiences. I was relieved (in a way) to discover that I wasn’t alone in my suffering.