I believe you had a simple case of Sleep Paralysis. We can encounter SP when our REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep is disrupted, which can happen when you are under stress. During REM sleep we enter SP to prevent us from acting out our dreams with our physical bodies. You have suffered one of the three symptoms: the feeling of floating. Under normal conditions, medial and vestibular nuclei, cortical, thalamic, and cerebellar centers coordinate things such as head and eye movement, and orientation in space. Because you are in an awakened SP state your brain basically gets confused because your body can't move and you feel a sensation of floating.
This happened to me before... I was in my 2nd year of community college, I believe. I woke up in the middle of the night and I couldn't move. I freaked out because I thought I was being abducted by aliens! (I was in to UFO research at the time) Panic and the feeling of intruders is also another symptom. You can learn more at Sleep paralysis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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