Many of us has experienced this phenomenon of Sleep Paralysis where we wake up in the middle of the night and we are unable to move a muscle. Sometimes, it feels like someone is there sitting on your chest and sometimes it feels that someone is looking at you from the corner of the balcony.
In both cases, there is a medical explanation and some believe it’s the Demon.
I’ve had such experiences too back in School or College days well not recently, I don’t know why.
MY EXPERIENCE
There was this one time I was sleeping and suddenly I opened my eyes and what I felt was a brute force on my chest and I was trying to move my hands or my legs but I couldn’t do a thing. From what I could tell, it was around 5 A.M in the morning as there was a little light coming from the window. Now, this particular case happened when I was in college and we used to live in this flat which was at 5th Floor if I remember it right. The location or the area we used to live in has many such housing societies and it was surrounded by vast fields and you can’t see anything as far as one could see. So, it was usually a silent environment in the night.
This was Greater Noida and there were many stories of people dying in the accidents on the highways and people committing suicide in the society.
There were also stories of people eating other people in the society next to us, it was horrible.
So, having such experiences where I couldn’t shake a thing, it was terrifying. This event went for like 15-20 minutes if I am correct. After this incident, I searched a lot on the Internet before telling anyone as self-research helps a lot in these cases because people make stories and they tell you all different kind of things which you can’t believe in as it didn’t happen to them.
So, turns out it is called sleep paralysis BUT there’s no mention of any kind of force on the chest during this event.
WHAT CAUSES IT?
The biological explanation of sleep paralysis is that two aspects of REM sleep — dreaming and paralysis — are occurring while a person is awake. Sleep paralysis occurs more often than most people think, and it is more likely to occur when a person is waking up than during other parts of sleep.
During REM, or rapid eye movement sleep, dreaming takes place and the brainstem paralyzes the body by inhibiting motor neurons. But normally, dreaming and paralysis occur when people are unconscious. When someone experiences sleep paralysis, these two things occur while a person is conscious, with his or her eyes open. This means that the dreams are technically hallucinations, and they're just as vivid as anything you'd see when you're awake. In addition, the dreams can be "multisensorial," meaning a person may not only see things, but hear and, in some cases, feel them too.
Now what I experienced was a weight on the chest.
The sense of touch is very often highlighted in explanations of sleep paralysis around the world. Many cultures refer to a weight on the chest.
In certain parts of Brazil, for example, there are folkloric tales of a creature with long fingernails that lurks on people's rooftops during the night. The creature, called "Pisadeira," comes into a person's house and tramples on the chests of those who sleep.
Catalonia, a region in Spain, has the tale of the "Pesanta," a black animal, often a dog or a cat, that invades people's homes and sits on their chests while they are asleep, making it difficult to breathe and causing nightmares.
In Newfoundland, Canada, it's the "Old Hag" that comes and sits on a sleeping person. And among an ethnic group in Vietnam and Laos, a "pressing spirit" sits on sleepers' chests and tries to asphyxiate them.
The idea of a weight holding someone down is also reflected in the terminology used in Mexico to describe sleep paralysis. Translated from Spanish, the phrase means "a dead body climbed on top of me."
Some cultures use tales of spells cast by shamans or summoners to explain sleep paralysis.
In Inuit culture, for example, people tell of shamans who can cast a spell when a person is sleeping, causing an experience called "uqumangirniq," during which a person can't move, talk or scream and is visited by a shapeless or faceless presence.
And Japanese folklore refers to a summoner who calls upon a vengeful spirit to suffocate enemies through a phenomenon called the "kanashibari," which is "the state of being totally bound, as if constrained by metal chains.
In other cultures, ghosts or supernatural beings are the perpetrators.
In a study of Cambodian refugees from the 1970s, researchers found that many patients referred to something called "khmaoch sângkât" or "the ghost that pushes you down." In Thailand, a ghost called "phi am" haunts people when they are half asleep and unable to move. And in some traditional Chinese cultures, "ghost oppression" caused sleep paralysis.
Now, the purpose of this blog was not to belittle the various spiritual explanations for sleep paralysis but rather to "enrich the knowledge about these experiences and their psychological and cultural aspects”