Extremely frightening semi-lucid sleep paralysis
This is my first post, so hopefully I fitted this topic in with the correct section.
Hey, I've had many somewhat obsessive fears for as long as I remember, but a few disturbing ones like my fear of darkness, fear of loud noises, fear of being alone, fear of the unknown, and semi-fear of sleep is what bought me to posting in this forum today.
When I was younger (5-10 years old), I used to experience these terrible sleep paralysis episodes immediately after becoming a bit lucid in dreams (knew I was dreaming, but still believed almost every event that was happening). They are kind of silly to look back at now, but I'll explain a couple of the most vivid ones I can remember.
The one I can remember most vividly took place in my house (almost all of the dreams I can ever remember are in my house and start out as me waking up in the place that I fell asleep at), where I currently, and have always, lived. This dream happened in the middle of a string of sleep paralysis episodes I have been having during that night (sometimes I would have up to 5 or 6), after the previous one, I went downstairs and fell asleep on my couch because my mother was sleeping on the recliner and I've always found it easier to sleep fearlessly when I'm around other people (by this time I was very afraid to fall asleep that night, but I was very tired).
The dream was like this:
I wake up on the couch that I fell asleep on and these little angel things the size of sock puppets that look like cupid are floating around in the dark room having fun. I want to join in with the fun too, so I ask if I can join. One of them says "Yea, of course! Follow me!". I follow it to where my stairs are near, it's still dark, and this is where I start having a little bit of fear and a helpless bad feeling. I start talking to the angels or something (don't remember exactly), and then I suddenly realize I am dreaming. I've had lucid dreams before this, and I've learned to somewhat control what goes on, but my fear just kept increasing and increasing. I walked over to the kitchen because I noticed the light was not on the last time I looked. Once I got near going into the kitchen I looked up. Standing there was a woman who looked like my mother, she had her head turned and was busy doing something. I got a little closer and something wasn't right, I was getting even more scared, everything seemed evil, I was very paranoid, and suddenly, she turns her head. She had no face, I felt my heart beat racing, and instantly I heard that noise. It's a noise that is so scary and loud. It happens during all of these terrifying experiences. The best way I can explain it is, it's the sound that comes from those fairly new red fire alarms placed in new built schools what are so loud, deaf children can hear it. It's infinitely loud and it almost seems like that's what causes me to be paralyzed in my dream. When I heard this noise it made me fully lucid and I fought incredibly hard to open my eyes. After about 5 seconds of failing to basically spaz out movement to my real body, my eyes open and I instantly bursted into tears. After everything I was always so worn out and exhausted as if I didn't get any sleep. I always wondered why this happened to my when I was younger.
I have also had instances in which I would wake up with my eyes open but be in sleep paralysis without knowing and I would be facing at a stuffed animal on my bed that would say something really weird and loudly too and scare the hell out of me. I would tell my mother of these instances but she never believed me, heh.
Recently I've thought about if it was possible to purposely have a lucid dream, because the ones that I didn't end up in the terrifying sleep paralysis experiences were carefree and fun, I was the ruler and I could do anything I wanted..
I looked it up and found this website and forum with people who do just that.
I decided to try a WILD after reading a lot of information about it here and found that once I started seeing slight hypnagogic patterns I had to stop because my heart started racing too fast I was afraid to continue for the risk that I might end up in one of those terrifying sleep paralysis experiences that I used to have every night.
I think that these sleep paralysis experiences are the causes of my fears and paranoia. At the same time frame in my life, my sister who is one year younger than me had exploding head syndrome in which she heard intensively loud voices randomly out of dead silence shortly before she went to sleep.
I really do want to try WILDing but I'm just too afraid to do so because of the previous reasons. I am also afraid to become lucid during a dream because that's how all of my frightening sleep paralysis experiences started.
I'm almost to afraid to sleep tonight because of it.
Can anyone relate to my fears or experiences?
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can cure my fears or avoid these terrible instances?
Is it easy to wake yourself up from a lucid dream, I haven't had one for a very long time?
Can I run into these experiences if I try to wake myself up from a lucid dream?
Are my fears reasonable?
The list of questions goes on and on....
Also, to stop myself from having out of control dreams I have my TV on every night. Ever since I have had that TV on, I have never had one of these experiences, so I feel safer with it on.
Does anyone know if it's easy to keep your lucidity in a dream if you have some sort of external sound that could be potentially distracting to your mind in a dream, or is it unlikely that you can hear anything external because your senses are dimmed so much during REM sleep?
Hmm...I really don't have anything to contribute.
Quote:
She had no face, I felt my heart beat racing, and instantly I heard that noise. It's a noise that is so scary and loud. It happens during all of these terrifying experiences. The best way I can explain it is, it's the sound that comes from those fairly new red fire alarms placed in new built schools what are so loud, deaf children can hear it. It's infinitely loud and it almost seems like that's what causes me to be paralyzed in my dream.
That sounds like Silent Hill (series). In most of the games, and the movie as well, a siren would signal that the darkside would take over and more deadly monsters would appear. For it to happen to you is really scary. I hope I don't have any dreams like that after reading your post :eek:
I think I have experienced full sleep paralysis one time before. As a kid, I used to be scared by voices that would come out of nowhere in the night. After a while, I learned it was just the radio that didn't get shut off :lol:
And yes...I'm trying to enter sleep paralysis in my sleep right now. I've only experienced half-SP in my abdomen and legs in a long time. Last night, I heard a cat screech out of nowhere! It scared me so much I flashed the covers over my head :embarrassed:
Good luck in the future, CheeseKeg.
