25 December 2011 | Night Terrors are Real

It only happens at night.

As sure as I am writing this, a few years ago I woke up one night because I thought someone was in the room. In fact, I actually felt someone getting into the bed with me. This may sound like some cheap porno situation setup, but what happened next was anything but a turn on.

I felt someone press up against me, as if trying to get as close as possible. In the weakest voice I called out the name of the girl I was seeing at the time, but it was so forced I wasn't sure anything was said. And that alone was weird because I had never given a key to my girlfriend at all, but it was the only thing that went through my mind. That and the growing sense of dread and panic I had. I could not move at all.

It's hard to describe exactly how I figured that I was not awake because as this unseen presence kept pushing against me, my inability to move somehow made me think I was still asleep. Even now, writing about it bothers me a bit because it was so unsettling (to put it mildly) but it was also so real. I can swear up and down that I was awake, that my eyes were open and I knew what was going on. Except of course, I later discovered this was my first encounter with sleep paralysis.

I think it was perhaps a month or two later when I stumbled across an article describing night terrors and my heart froze. The person in the story described exactly what I had experienced: waking up in the middle of the night absolutely certain that there is something in the room and not being able to move at all. You start to panic because you literally feel a presence there. It's spooky as hell.

I also have read the book "Abducted," and it became clear to me that if I were of any other persuasion, what I described could've been the stock description of an alien abduction. Of course, in my case, I thought it was a girlfriend sneaking into my room. But I was also relieved that I discovered what had happened to me: sleep paralysis. This is what I seemed to have in common with some the people described in the book, only in their case, they are convinced they have been abducted by aliens. I certainly do not believe that aliens are coming to Earth and snatching people in the dead of night, but I do have a healthy respect for people who have experienced something terrifying. *How* they frame it doesn't alter *what* they went through: that is absolutely real. And I can say this because it happened to me.

I've learned that sleep paralysis actually happens to everyone, though most people don't remember it. Others, like me, remember it all too well. Since then, I've had a few other episodes, and while I hate it, I've myself told right before I go to sleep to remember some word that will remind me it's all a dream, that I am actually not awake at all. But even just doing that is sometimes an odd thing: how do you really tell yourself it's all a dream when you are dreaming that it's real?