A few weeks ago, I experienced something very strange. It was during the day, and I was tired so I decided to take a nap. Now, I don't normally take naps during the day, so this was new to me. I awoke for a few hours (maybe five) before returning to bed to sleep for the night. Well, I was having difficulty falling asleep because I had lots of thoughts running through my head. Here's the weird part. All of the sudden, I felt that familiar sinking feeling come over me and I knew I could WILD then and there. I thought this to be strange because I knew the REM sleep cycle only starts about 60-90 minutes or so into the sleep cycle. In any case, I decided to take the opportunity and relax, allowing the sinking feeling to deepen until I felt the shift and was aware I had entered the dream state. I waited for a little while, but nothing was appearing. Not a speck of color, just blackness. Usually in this case I would walk out of bed with my dream body, but I still felt tired, so I remained in bed. Nothing was happening and I started thinking bad thoughts, so I opened my eyes. Bad move. Now, I'm stuck in sleep paralysis and I can't move at all. It was quite terrifying because I couldn't see much and all I could hear was this humming noise and other audio hallucinations. All the bad experiences involving SP that I read about online started flowing through my head and it was very scary. I knew I had to wait for it to pass until I woke up, so I did such.

Now, for my questions. How is this possible? I am familiar with the WBTB technique, but I didn't know my REM sleep cycle could await my return for five hours from the time I woke up from the nap until I went to bed for the night. Also, why didn't a dreamscene appear? I was thinking that maybe it didn't because I wasn't really in the REM sleep cycle, so I feared I was caught in this blackness for 60-90 minutes until it did. This brings up another question. Is it plausible to pass consciously into non-REM sleep? I couldn't help but to think that maybe I did. Please, any insight as to why this happened would be greatly appreciated. I just took my first nap since then, and it's almost time for bed again...