- Sleep paralysis, the temporary inability
to move or speak that occurs when you're waking up
or falling asleep.
It's a terrifying experience
that can go far beyond an annoyance
and actually become life threatening.
The following stories are real cases of sleep paralysis
that are going to make you pray it never happens to you.
Here are the 10 Scariest Cases of Sleep Paralysis.
(creepy music)
Number 10 is Heart Throb to Heart Stopper.
It's not uncommon for sleep paralysis
dissociated hallucinations to alter elements
of our physical environment in upsetting manners.
This is what a person, known only as D. Jansma, experienced.
When Jansma was around 12-years-old,
they were a devoted fan of Canadian pop star, Justin Bieber.
Like many youth, they had a poster
of the singer and their bedroom
and would fall asleep at night, facing their mirror
so that they could see its reflection.
However, one night, upon waking up,
Jansma discovered they couldn't move.
Panicking, they looked to the usually reassuring poster,
but instead of seeing Bieber looking back at them,
they discovered a deformed, decomposing man.
The ghastly figure stared at them
while perched on the edge of the bed.
Jansma closed their eyes, waiting for the terror to end.
Once it did, they quickly took the poster down.
Number nine, is the Spider Shower.
Reddit user, pigwig775,
experienced an episode of sleep paralysis
that shook her to her core
and included visual hallucinations
of her two best friends
and a swarm of uninvited, eight-legged guests.
She woke up to find herself
lying perfectly straight in her bed,
unable to move with her two friends
sitting on either side of her body.
For quite awhile, they silently observed her
with disturbed looks plastered on their faces,
shadows and darkness dancing over their features
as she struggled in vain to move.
Suddenly, they began to throw handfuls
of massive spiders at her,
each one seeming to make contact
as she felt them scurry across her skin.
All pigwig775 wanted to do was to turn on the light
and shake off the arachnids,
but she was trapped by the paralysis.
Number eight is When Death Visits.
For one anonymous poster on Quora,
their first sleep paralysis experience
was the most terrifying that they would ever endure.
As they laid on their back and drifted in and out of sleep,
they suddenly felt an immense weight on their body
and realized that they were unable to move.
It was then that they became aware
of a malicious presence in the room.
The grim reaper was suddenly visible
beside their dresser, roughly one meter from their bed.
It hissed and clawed at the air.
And the paralyzed individual could somehow sense
that it intended to cause them not just fear,
but physical harm.
It slowly retreated backwards,
as if pulled away by an invisible force,
all the while still fighting to attack them.
The episode ended, but the other incidents
involving evil beings continued occurring monthly,
leaving some, understandable, mental scars.
Number seven is the Silent Scream.
On occasion, sleep paralysis appears to affect
multiple individuals simultaneously.
KJ recalled an episode in which her husband and her
were seemingly both affected.
She opened her eyes after
hearing him mumble, "she has my hand,"
only to see his unmoving hand in front of her.
At the same time, she felt a heavy weight
on her face, making it impossible to move,
breath, or make a sound.
Suddenly, she felt as though a hand had grabbed her head
and was pulling her hair.
The force was strong enough to make her want to cry out,
yet she was unable to open her mouth
no matter how hard she tried.
Paralyzed and frightened,
she resigned herself to wait for the pain to end.
After some time, the pressure vanished.
Shaken, she turned over to find her husband deep asleep,
unaware of her traumatic event.
Number six is The Witch.
(woman cackling)
While some people are terrorized
by a variety of different evil presences
throughout their experiences with sleep paralysis,
others, like 42-year-old Jane Owen,
are haunted by the same figure for years.
From the age of 16, she had been tormented by a witch
dressed in a black cloak and hood.
Evil seems to radiate from her presence.
And some nights, the witch perches on her chest
and stares down at her, creeping slowly
and steadily closer.
On other occasions, the witch reaches
around the back of Jane's head
to grab her top jaw from above,
and pull on her teeth to yank her head back.
Over the years, the witch has resorted to biting,
appearing around and on her bed,
making noise and whispering menacingly to scare her victim.
Many claim to have similar experiences with an evil witch.
Perhaps it's not a hallucination at all.
Number five is Drinking Acid.
Two years ago, 24-year-old Redditor, Resistance,
who has suffered from sleep paralysis
since they were in the fifth grade,
experienced a sleep-ruining incident following a dream.
In the dream they were observing themself
in the third person as the dream version of them
was starving and decided to satisfy their hunger
by breaking open batteries
and drinking the acid inside of them.
At this point, the dream switched to the first person
with Resistance tasting the acid
and feeling it burn away at their inside.
This is when they woke up to the sleep paralysis.
The sensations of the burning acid in their mouth
and throat were still there
and they were helpless to escape them.
After unsuccessfully trying to wake their dog
to snap them out of it,
they stopped fighting and finally, fully woke up.
Number four is Escalation.
Reddit user, ArPhKSh,
is apparently no stranger to sleep paralysis,
experiencing it several times each week.
Initially, the fear of the realization of the paralysis
and struggling to free themself was enough,
but upon deciding to accept the paralysis, things escalated.
It began with auditory hallucinations
of phone calls or friends' voices
trying to convince them to break free to respond.
When they learned not to engage,
nightmarish whispers began to be heard.
After ignoring the whispers, they began to feel
as though they were sinking down
through their bed into the darkness.
Following this, they experienced
the feeling of being flung into the air
and left to fly without control.
The episodes finally stopped as an unfriendly entity
grabbed their foot as they were launched
and threw them to the floor of their room.
Number three is The Night Drags On.
Reddit user, Jellybeanskittle
discovered, rather unfortunately,
that sleep paralysis experiences
can worsen following a trauma.
After a head injury, they began having episodes
at least once a night for several months.
It began with a sensing of an unseen presence in the room
and they would soon realize that
they could not move or scream.
Then, it would feel as though
they were being dragged off the bed,
by their arm, towards a mirror on their wardrobe,
or by their legs to the bottom of their bed.
After some time, they began seeing a dark figure
that appeared to reach for them
to drag them by their head.
They became able to occasionally make enough noise
to wake their husband to help shake them out of it.
These experiences were so traumatic,
it left them fearing sleep itself.
Number two is The Cuddling Demon.
A poster on AskReddit described
their truly terrifying experience
with a sleep paralysis demon
that occurred one night as they were laying on their side,
facing away from their door.
They felt as though an unknown individual
entered their bed against their back.
The unseen intruder wrapped a clawed, skeleton-like arm
around the victim and breathed onto their neck.
It felt like the demon stayed in this position
for as long as 30 minutes before it seemed to move closer
as if to kiss them behind their ear.
Instead of a kiss though, it whispered,
"Not yet.
"You're not ready yet.
"I'll come back when you are."
The poster recalled thinking that the voice sounded
both disappointed and excited,
and believed that the demon
intended to return in the future,
likely when they were close to death.
And number one is Snake Eyes.
Imagine waking to a nightmarish masked man
walking through your bedroom door.
Two years ago, Reddit user, Hoobshanker
shared his experience with a nightmarish figure
wearing a demon-like, blood-red mask
adorned with massive, violet-colored serpentine eyes.
The man wore a hooded brown robe
and dragged a burlap sack behind him
as he made his way to the bottom of the bed.
The figure pulled every one of Hoobshanker's
friends and loved ones from the sack,
one at a time, and forced him to watch
as he slit their throats with his long nails.
After the murders, the figure approached the bedside
and stroked him with the bloody nails
as he removed his mask and said,
"Enjoy the time you have left
"because soon, your life will be mine
"and your soul as well."
And the face behind the mask?
It was his own.