sleep paralysis and old hag syndrome
I was using StumbleUpon, and I found a website about lucid dreaming. So I started thinking about my episodes of sleep paralysis and I found some really interesting information on sleep paralysis and something G told me about, years ago, called Old Hag Syndrome. Apparently, the best way to wake up during sleep paralysis is … wait for it … Astral Projection. Yep, so many people have experienced this phenomenon and I thought it was relatively rare. A bunch of people on the thread I was reading said don’t bother trying to move your body, just leave it where it is, and go somewhere else.
I had no idea so many people experienced this phenomenon. I first experienced sleep paralysis at probably 8 or 9 and I remember I was sleeping on the floor at my dad’s house because I didn’t have a bed there. I tried to scream for so long, so someone would wake me up and eventually I woke up and screamed anyway, just because it frightened me so.
During my first semester of college, I often experienced “false awakening,” where i get up and get ready and slowly realize that something is off, that the experience could not possibly be real. I am still dreaming.
The second experience of SP I can remember, I was sleeping at a friend’s house and I was having a regular dream, when I suddenly snapped awake and when I was able to focus my eyes, I was looking at a very sharp set of enormous teeth! When I tried to move, the thing lunged toward me and I screamed, waking up my friend. It was about 4 in the morning but we drove to Denny’s for breakfast immediately because I wasn’t willing to go back to sleep. when G told me about Old Hag Syndrome, we thought it was probably related. A lot of people report seeing “shadow people” or very old women, who sometimes hold them down or do other frightening things.
It was a few years later when I started to experience SP regularly. It is now usually accompanied by a sense of dread and a presence in the room, such as a shadow person. It helps if I sleep with all of the doors closed. I struggle to wake up but nothing works. I’m going to try astral projection next time.
my first experiance was in 2004, but i was lying on my stomach. alot of people say this happins when you are on your back. its happened to me alot and almost every time i am on my stomach. ive smelled sulpher at times and have seen straggles of long black hair brush by my face. the first time it happened i saw a very grotesque face and finally let out a scream waking every one in the house. my belief in Jesus leads me to believe that demons are responsible. i pray every night now for God to send His angels to protect me while i sleep, and the experiences have not happened nearly as often as before.
That is an interesting hypothesis you have there, Jason. Keep the faith man.
It is amazing how many people have experiences like this. I could go much deeper into explanations, but I think it’s much more important to let people know how to get rid of them. They are usually negative energies looking for a way to either use or influence a physical body and fear is a great way for them to gain control. In order to remove them and keep yourself safe you need to raise your “vibration” so you aren’t on the same level anymore. Repeat the word “OM” over and over. OM is actually a sanskrit name of God which carries a very high vibration when either thought of or spoken. When the shadow figures are on you or in your room just think the word “OM” repeatedly and they usually scream and get further away. They will eventually have to leave because they can’t take the higher energy. Please spread this to anyone else who is having the same issue. It works every time and it works quite fast.
yeah i know same with me!
i experienced this like for about a year. and i had no idea what was wrong with me. it held me from sleeping in my bed anymore….i gotta sleep up in my moms room. i feel like a little kid..so yeah anyway; i get this odd feeling that something or someone is coming over me causing this….pressure, i am completely in bodily movement arrest. i cant even scream out or move. followed by visual and audio hallucinations. so after a while i was like look i relle dont even care anymore so i’ll just wait for this to end so i can get wake up and get on with my day. its pretty hard to explain even though its happened to a lott of people, ive learned to live with it cause i mean its not like i have a choice…unless i kill myself [haha] but i dont think that would happen. soo um yeah STAY STRONG AND ROCK ON! xDDDD xoxoxo
I have had this experience several times in my life. I completely disagree with the Medical REM crap. I am aware what is going on. My last episode I was being choked, gasping to breathe. It was overwhelming that I finally dished out what happend to a family member in the event something happens to me. Shadow people are not your friend, nor are the REM sleeping issues. They are real.
I agree that there must be something more “real” about this phenomenon than meets the eye. Nearly everyone has the same experience of it, even without ever having read about it or talking to someone else who has experienced it. However, the definition of “real” is what we have to question here. Is a thing real only when it has a physical being? Are dreams real? As far as your neurons and receptors are concerned, “real” life is no more real than a dream. Experientially, your sub-conscious mind doesn’t know the difference. What is dreaming, anyway? Can some part of our mind find something in the dark that the conscious mind refuses to acknowledge? Perhaps these shadow entities that visit us in our waking-dreams are in some sense “real,” but I don’t believe they have physical power over us, as they are not physical entities. Their torment is purely psychological, and therefore we have the power to shut them down. I have tried the OM trick (see previous comment), and it worked. I’m not saying it’s a magic word, but there certainly could be something about that vibration that makes them uncomfortable, so they go away. Try it. Or try switching your conscious thought from them to something that makes you feel good, and see what kind of effect it has. Just know that this non-physical thing can’t hurt your physical being unless it’s through the power of your own mind. Don’t let them control you.
I have had an SP dream. I was sleeping in my son’s room (he went in beside his mum) when I woke up to see a sort of miniature witch on a broom stick hovering in the bedroom. I felt myself say go away (probably slurred) as it came towards me. I turned a way from it and felt that I kept my eyes closed. However I decided I was going to face it down. To me it was just tiny but ugly. So I felt myself turn around to face it down. It wasn’t there but a dark humanoid figure was hunkering beside me at the top of the bed. I looked up at its face and it seemed almost like a spiderman mask. I woke up looking/staring at nothing. I remember the witch appearing almost magic like and my eyes totally following it. I have tried to rationalise the experience. I had ate a tiny tiny piece of cheese before I went to bed. I know that I couldn’t move during the whole thing.
I’ve had sleep paralysis/night terrors about a dozen times, but last night I had one of the worst ever. It was horrifying. Everything was very dark; I was in a dark, ghastly, netherworldish dreamworld. There was this evil old man with a distorted, grotesque face threatening me, very close up and in my face. I could not get away from him. I was overwhelmed with a horrible, all-consuming fear. Suddenly I realized that I was dreaming. I became aware that I was lying in bed. I was fully conscious of both my real body lying in bed, grasping my covers, and simultaneously being within the dreamworld. I knew I had to escape. It was absolutely terrifying. For what seemed like an eternity, I struggled to break free from the dream. I would move my arms in bed and shake my head, trying to awake my mind by using my body to shake myself. It occasionally seemed to be working–I would sense myself being slightly awoken, and I would pull out of the dream ever so slightly and lift my head a few inches from the pillow, hoping to break loose. But time and again, I would feel this horrible, powerful “sucking” back into the dream world, threatening to completely remove me from the real world and trap me back within the dream. I was terrified.
I started noticing that every time I felt that I was getting sucked back into the dream, I would hear a very distinct hum, a rather low vibration at a certain pitch (I think it was probably between 50 and 130 Hz but I can’t be certain–I tried to locate the frequency using Audacity, and even now it makes me shudder to listen to it)*. I started fighting the Hum as hard as I could, because the louder the Hum, the further I was sucked into the dream. I would weave in and out, and the vibration would get softer and further away, only to suddenly gain on me, threatening to consume me. I felt like I was fighting a monster.
After what was probably only a couple minutes, but seemed much longer to me, I finally shook myself completely free, jumped out of bed as quickly as I could, and turned on the lights. I was shaken and had a headache. I could barely stand up straight. I waited for a while to try sleeping again, and surprisingly, the rest of the night was uneventful–I don’t even really remember dreaming anymore after that.
Of course, all day I’ve been perfectly fine, but DURING the whole event, it felt like total torture..
On March 25 at 12:40am I was in Florida from London Ontario Canada. That night I went to bed around 10:00pm as I was not feeling very well. As I layed in bed I could hear the conversation that was going on in the other room from family memebers when I felt a cold senation enter into the room I was sleeping in. At that moment I started to feel frightened the coldness seemed to present it’s self as a female, an elderly female. As i layed in my bed the feeling moved to the right side of my bed and just stood there, at that time my sons dad came into the room to get ready for bed I could hear him moving around the room and going into the wash room to brush his teath with the presence of this lady still beside my bed I could not move or make a sound. At that time my sons father came over to my bed and tried to remove my left sock off my foot and I julted because I thought it was her touching me. Other then the jult i could not move or make a sound. He left my sock on and procedded to get into bed. a few moments went by and this thing just stood there and seemed to be waiting, as time went by she got closer and closer to theh point that it felt like she was right on top of me holding me down on the bed and getting joy from being able to scare me. I tried to call out but nothing would come out no matter how hard i tried. i tried to reach for my sons dad but could not move no matter how hard I tried. As she sat on me holding me down I started to cry. I cried for a bit and then my cell phone rang but not in real life. I dont remember answering it but I could hear Jane on the phone and all she said was my name. and then it was over. when I woke up I was freaking out and my sons dad woke up and other family memebers came running into out room to see what was going on. I have Never in my life had this happen to me. It was so real to the point that when i had my shower i was loking for marks where she was holding me down on the bed. The other part of this that freaks me out is that March 25 is the day that my sons grandmother had past away 3 years ago, she was the voice i heard on the cell phone. This thing came to me again on my flight home to Canada on the next Thursday. Can anyone please help me make this go away. I have only learned about the Old Hag after telling a friend about my dream and then that night she seen a show on T.V that night after me telling her. I need to make this go away, my family is starting to think i am going Nuts. Please help.
Scared to go to sleep for she will return.
I find it very interesting that so many people have experienced hypnagogic sleep paralysis. The first time that I remember this happening to me was on my 14th bday. It was during the day, i was on the bottom bunk and I must have dosed off but all the sudden I was totally aware of my surroundings and i felt something evil come into my room. It was a man and he started to sing happy bday to you. He then started to walk towards my bed and as he got closer and closer the creepier his voice became. He finished the song… and at that point he was all the way up to my ear and whispered the ending lyrics in the most terrifying voice i have ever heard in my life. of course during all of this i was unable to move. i was paralyzed. to this day it still gives me chills. anyway thats not even the end of my stories with sleep paralysis. It has happened so many times… recently this creature took me by my own wrists and held me down in my bed and asked me why i didn’t tell it my name… last night i woke up to something choking me but just enough to let me breathe and i remember thinking in my head what it wanted… and it then touched me. and then i woke up and i was naked, i had fallen asleep right after my bath.. in the past 10 years i have never been touched like that. i have never been choked or assaulted by these creatures til now. I have woken up to voices by my bed but i can’t understand what they’re saying and of course during all this i’m paralyzed so really i’m not really waking up. it has happened to me in about every sleep position i’ve ever been in. it doesn’t help to have a man sleeping next to you. for awhile i believed that but i was certainly proved wrong. even while i’m being held and protected by my luv it will happen. my mind will be on happy things but still i’m awaken… not every night sometimes it happens more often than other times of the year… i dk why. but yes pretty much every time there will be a pressure on my chest. a pressure that is holding me down causing me to be paralyzed like that. an evil energy of some type. there is now new research that connects HSP to Sudden unexpected death syndrome (SUDS) or Sudden unexpected nocturnal death syndrome (SUNDS) do your research, its quite interesting. and i agree, whatever you do, don’t stay in that dream, try and fight and get out of it as soon as you can. you can train yourself. its all on a mental and spiritual plane. spiritual strength is what you need. they only conquer the weak minded. </3
I may of experienced the “Old Hag” syndrome. Just recently, I had surgery on my foot. I had just ruptured my achilles tendon playing basketball. I was at my mom’s place recovering. It was about 1 to 2 weeks after surgery. At this point in time, I was taking a half a pill of Oxycodone per night, a pain killer. Anyways, very early on this one particular morning, it happened. I was in a semi conscious state, “half awake-half asleep,” when all of a sudden, this old, evil, demonic looking woman, literally jumped on me, attacking me in my bed. She had my arms pinned down. Her grotesque face was only about a few inches from mine, her tongue flicking in and out like something out of the exorcist. It was still semi dark in the room, so her face wasn’t entirely clear. Anyways, I was paralyzed and petrified. The incident only last for maybe a good 5-10 seconds at the most, but it felt like an eternity. Being a Christian, I was finally able to blurt out Jesus’ name, and it was gone. Thankfully, it hasn’t returned again. Although I was in a semi-conscious state, it was very real. I’m sure some of you know what I’m talking about. From what I understand, a person is most vulnerable when he or she is sleeping on his or her back, I was, and in a state of weakness or sickness: As I mentioned before, I had just had major surgery on my foot.
So anyways, take this story for what’s it worth. But I honestly have to say, that this was probably one of the most, if not the most, terrifying experience’s of my life. I have no doubt that it was a demonic attack. There is no way that this was psychological.
Kenny.
i agree with the OM thing. higher vibrations are the only way to go. No fear, no stress, some spiritual growth and those things won’t have any more use for you. i’ve tried to astrally project away from these attacks but i am chased down like a dog. don’t bother fighting it, don’t try any energy exchange of any kind. especially drawing its energy into you. really bad idea. why fight what you don’t understand? communication seems a waste as well. And this SUDS thing is dead on. i’ve drawn very little conclusions from all my related HSP experiences, except that if i don’t wake myself up in a timely fashion, I’m toast…
I might as well comment, since I have a story to add.
The first time I experienced SP was about a year ago. I awoke early in the morning. I was sleeping on my stomach but I felt as though some force had paralyzed me. There was a male figure who was raping me from behind. Ugh, it was awful to be so helpless, but I chalked it up to something in real life that I was unable to control affecting my dreams.
The second time I experienced what I considered to be the same presence, I was sleeping and woke up next to a man. At the time I was dating a guy who would occasionally sleep over, so I assumed it was him and snuggled up against his arm. When I glanced down at his hand, he had this huge demon hand with claws.
About a week ago I was dreaming and there was some mystery man involved. I don’t remember what the dream was about. My alarm went off and I sat straight up, completely alert. At the foot of my bed was a silhouette of the man I’d been dreaming about. I sat there blinking, trying to see if it was still a dream. It took about 5 seconds to dissipate.
I don’t know who’s seen Paranormal Activity, but the idea of a demon following someone around seems legit when you have dreams like this.