What is the weirdest/creepiest thing you've seen while you had sleep paralysis?

I suffered from sleep paralysis for several years in my 20s to early 30s. Likely related to work stress and poor sleeping habits. Luckily they died down and I haven't had an episode in quite a few years.

To answer the question most of the time I fell asleep with my tv/pc playing a movie or something (I need background noise or I can't fall asleep) and the sounds and visuals would "bleed" into the room. So audio might seem to be coming from right over my shoulder or near my ear but it wouldn't sound clear; more like a warped record might sound. And of course my own groans of fear as I was fighting to fully wake up would also be in my ears. Visually whatever was on the screen would leak out from the sides of the screen. Most of the time my eyes wouldn't be focused on the screen so I would see stuff stretching onto the walls in my peripheral. If you want something specific just go watch 'The Ring' and imagine seeing that shit creeping into your room.

Shit sucked and I'm glad those experiences are behind me.
 
I never got any of this hallucination stuff. Just waking up and being unable to move is terrifying enough, trying to struggle yourself out of it, not being able to communicate to my wife sleeping next to me.
 
The closest I've had to sleep paralysis is a single bout of exploding head syndrome (I think?). I was sleeping well, then all of a sudden I was woken up by this incredibly loud and painful noise. It was like an explosion that became white noise. I thought my house was blowing up, but everything was peaceful and dark when I woke up.
 
Never had it. I have had dreams where I feel like I can't run and I am moving in slow motion from a threat.
 
DeVeAn said:
Never had it. I have had dreams where I feel like I can't run and I am moving in slow motion from a threat.
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I get these, too. I run a few steps, fall flat on my face, struggle to get up, repeat. Feels like I'm at Earth's gravity times 3. All while some unidentified threat chases me.
 
When I was maybe 5 or 6 I had an incident where I saw one of the trolls from 'where the wild things are' leaning down looking into my bedroom door. 40 years later and I do still get it occasionally involving head sized spiders but I know what's going on so it's not as bad...
 
I only had it once for a minute. I woke up from a nap on an uncomfortable couch. I thought I had been paralyzed and was in an absolute panic. Pure terror. I tried calling out but couldn't do anything.
 
Had it many times across my life; usually back it college etc, there wasn't a visual hallucination but there was an intense knowledge of a presence, someone in the room just out of my sight, and I desperately want to be able to move my head / eyes to look at them because I know they are immediately out of frame to the side staring at me. I can sometimes even hear them, nonsense whispers or something. It's a 100% certainty that someone is there.

I did sometimes see a large spider move across the ceiling, but I have had that more in times without paralysis as a post-dream eyes open image, like the dream world spills into real world for a few seconds after eyes are open and then it vanishes.

Now, usually when this happens (when irregular sleep, on back, etc formula obtains) I'm in bed with my wife and things just get very surreal... I want to tell her to wake me but I can't move, and I go in and out of various dreams, so suddenly there are people hovering in the room speaking gibberish or the TV or something comes on with weird images or I walk out of the bed, but keep finding myself back in it again with my eyes open and passing back into another dream, unable to stop the loop. But only maybe once a year, not often.
 
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Shadow people can be terrifying.. but my most terrifying episode of sleep paralysis was ms in my side and a presence in bed behind me, speaking in a very demonic tone. Audio hallucinations are pretty common too.
 
I think I have a variation of this exploding head syndrome: from time to time, I hear - very loudly and clearly - a doorbell sound, a siren, or someone knocking on the door. This sound wakes me up and I still hear it for 1 second or so. But then - nothing happens. And the sound is a generic one, totally different from my actual doorbell :)

Luckily, I've never had a proper sleep paralysis with hallucinations, shadow people, witches or voices. Only once I woke up, paralysed, feeling an overwhelming hostile presence in my bedroom, which seemed illuminated with a green glow. Of course, I assumed I was being abducted by aliens and got scared shitless, but then I thought it must be the light from my LED alarm clock reflected on the walls!, so I calmed down and went back to sleep. In the morning I checked the clock, and its display was actually red, not green :)

When my wife was sleeping with our newborn, she once said he must have crawled on her chest and suffocated her a little... but I'm betting it was sleep paralysis.

Also, I felt very intense smell of baking bread/burnt toast 3-4 times in my life, directly after waking up. I was convinced someone is in the kitchen preparing the breakfast, but no one else could feel it, and the sensation always disappeared for me in ~1-2 minutes. Not happening any more to me, but there are people on the internet who had similar experiences.

Last but not least, I love hypnogogic sounds when falling asleep. Either some catchy, AI-generated music or short fragments of sentences spoken out by the voices of my friends - totally random, making no sense at all, but rather pleasant and soothing.
 
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Grildon Tundy said:
I get these, too. I run a few steps, fall flat on my face, struggle to get up, repeat. Feels like I'm at Earth's gravity times 3. All while some unidentified threat chases me.
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Y'all brains are real jerks. I'm glad I haven't experienced paralysis. Though once I ran outside in my underwear because I half-dreamed that a hunter was under my bed going to hunt me and I panicked. It was real terror, but luckily my dad called me back inside.
 
Trilobit said:
Y'all brains are real jerks. I'm glad I haven't experienced paralysis. Though once I ran outside in my underwear because I half-dreamed that a hunter was under my bed going to hunt me and I panicked. It was real terror, but luckily my dad called me back inside.
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Ive never done some dumb shit like that or sleepwalk lol
 
pachura said:
You're awake when you get it. But the hormone that keeps you from sleepwalking is still active - hence the paralysis.
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That must be the trippiest thing you can have :messenger_open_mouth:

I've never had the easiest time getting to sleep at all but once I'm gone I might as well be dead.

My wife can sleep in 0.5 seconds but wakes up at everything. She used to get night terrors, that sounds just as horrific.
 
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