Cologne last year was a great experience.
To meet and to greet so many people from the CS:GO scene.
To experience one of the biggest tournaments in the biggest stadium that I’ve ever seen
was something that I’ll never forget.
But there was something else that I’ll never forget, either.
The journey home was a nightmare, stuck on a hot stuffy bus through the night, a guy
slumped next to me, blocking me from doing something about that REALLY ANNOYING empty
can in the walkway that would roll back and forth every time we turned a corner.
I mean I’ll never forget that either, but that’s not the only thing: I finally arrived
home as the sun was-a-rising, I reached my room and collapsed on the bed.
Only to wake up about half an hour later.
But something… wasn’t right.
I felt uneasy.
My body was locked up in fear but it took my mind a couple of seconds to catch up.
It didn’t appear straight away, but in front of me, peering over the top of my computer
chair, was a black figure.
Urgh.
I tried to move but it was as though I had suddenly become really lazy, only able to
wiggle the tips of my fingers but even those felt like they were submerged in treacle.
So what did I do?
I closed my eyes.
Problem solved!
Until I woke up for real and all was fine.
I quickly filmed this bit of footage FOR SCIENCE then went to sleep again because I was still
really really tired.
What I had experienced was Sleep Paralysis.
And I knew it was at the time, too!
Much like most of the internet, I had previously watched documentaries on it.
Typically, English encounters involve something staring at you in your room.
American ones are always far more over the top where some evil being lunges at the sleeping
victim, straddling and then strangling them or worse.
Mine wasn’t like that.
Mine was a dressing gown.
Imagine being given the opportunity to see a ghost.
To be able to say that you’ve seen it and with your own eyes!
No matter whether you believe in them or not, I’m pretty sure that if given this chance,
that most of you would like to experience this.
Just to say you have.
Thing is, if it involves being alone and in a really scary situation then you’ll probably
have second thoughts about it.
That nicely sums up sleep paralysis for me.
I’ve had it a few times since then!
There are 3 parts to the experience worth mentioning:
The first is when it first starts.
I said earlier that you know that something’s not right!
And I’d really like to elaborate on this.
Even before you see it, you know that something’s staring at you.
There was no doubt in my mind that I was experiencing sleep paralysis.
There was a disconnection between my body and my mind.
As though my body was still panicking from something scary but that my mind, having just
woken up from sleep, didn’t know what it was and was trying to make sense of my body’s
state.
And I’m sure the room SOUNDED different, too.
Almost like a very low-level hum, or under-water bubbling kind of feeling.
The sort that makes you turn around and to check that somebody’s not peering into your
room from the doorway.
I think that some Russian guy shouted VLAD half way through too but I don’t remember
too clearly, I was kind of busy with the BLACK FIGURE IN MY ROOM.
The second interesting thing is the paralysis.
It’s not what you might expect from paralysis, either: I still felt as though I could move
if I tried hard enough.
But I just…
couldn’t be bothered.
As though doing so would require the effort of a marathon, just for the sake of doing
it.
My body felt so heavy that I could only really move my finger tips or make weird scream sounds.
I’d love to say that I fought hard and managed to break out of this frozen state, but instead
I found it much nicer just to close my eyes and to wait for it to end.
Oh and third is this DARK FIGURE THAT I SAW IN FRONT OF ME.
That’s not right.
That shouldn’t be there.
Even before I saw it I could feel a presence.
You know when you’re going to the toilet at night and feel like there’s something
behind you, catching up with you REALLY QUICKLY?
Imagine that feeling.
That sense of not being alone, only when you turn around there’s ACTUALLY SOMETHING THERE.
That’s what seeing the thing is like.
It doesn’t matter what it is.
It’s just that it’s something.
In my room.
Watching me.
Unlike this FANTASTIC video you’re watching right now, the thing didn’t move.
It didn’t even look that convincing.
It was like it was shrouded in pitch black cloud.
Like a rubbish particle effect from Morrowind or something.
But it scared me!
I feel like my mind needed to justify how scared I felt by matching it to something
physical in my room.
So it chose my dressing gown.
Good choice.
It felt like being near a person in the same way as standing near a shop’s mannequin
does.
I don’t think that this was the first time I had encountered sleep paralysis.
As a child once I was lying in bed and something grabbed me from behind, pulling me downwards
into the bed itself whilst exhaling deeply into my ear.
Didn’t last more than a second or so, so rather than being scared I was more like ‘oh
cool!’.
But that phantom fabric that I saw after the Cologne event was the turning point for me.
I’m going to call this the Cologne Encounter, as it triggered a number of very very strange
events at night for me, even when compared with the other videos in this series.
Indeed, since this first encounter I’ve had more sleep paralysis experiences.
I’ve just pussied out and closed my eyes before I can see anything.
I don’t care that it’s a rare phenomenon that could make for a great Youtube video.
I don’t like malicious bits of clothing staring at my paralysed body.
Sleep drunkenness.
I’m going to call it that even though a Google search reveals that it’s already
a term used to describe how people feel confused and groggy after waking up.
It’s not that, but it fits the term ‘drunkenness’ a lot better.
Only it happens when I haven’t had any alcohol!
Whatever this phenomenon is, it seems strongly associated with sleep paralysis.
It makes you feel like you’re drunk!
But for me, it was more than that.
I felt WASTED!
This actually immediately followed one of the later sleep paralysis experiences that
I had.
After shutting my eyes like a PUSSY I found myself lying on the ground in the corner of
my room, face down and absolutely RUINED by alcohol.
And I mean like, more than I ever remember being in real life.
To the point where you can’t even do simple maths, which is the go-to Philip benchmark
for drunkenness.
I felt sick, threw up in my mouth in a very convincing fashion and then was like ‘hey
there’s nothing in my mouth’, at which point I woke up in my bed again, unparalysed
and not drunk at all.
So please, if you’ve had this then let me know and we can start an official site documenting
the idea or something.
I dunno.
And this isn’t to be confused with the far more amusing experience where it suddenly
feels like your vision is zoomed in and that your room’s really small.
I’ve had this quite a bit and it lasts for a few amusing minutes.
It’s pretty awesome even though I’m sure that in reality I’ve just gone cross-eyed
because it’s so dark I’ve had nothing to focus on.
And now, just in case this video wasn’t ridiculous enough, I’m going to top it all
off with an Out of Body experience.
I covered this briefly in my previous sleep video, about how as a child I’d try really
hard to achieve it.
Ironically when it actually happened to me for real I didn’t realise what was happening.
Unlike sleep paralysis.
Though I’m still sure that they’re linked in some way.
I don’t think it’s my spirit leaving my body or anything like that.
But it’s very interesting for other reasons.
Much like most of these experiences listed in this video, this one happened shortly after
I went to bed at an unusual time.
Suddenly my head began FIZZING.
SHAKING.
And I mean, this was really intense.
This was like that popping candy stuff, only instead of being in your mouth it’s across
your ENTIRE HEAD.
You can hear it!
HSSSSSSS.
HSSSSSSSSSS.
This shaking, rumbling, vibrating feeling eventually extended to my whole body.
I felt as though I was being rocked back and forth, like being on a swing but with super
fast-forward mode enabled.
It was a horrible feeling!
I gritted my teeth and scrunched up my eyes and everything.
And then it stopped!
And I was just lying in bed.
But then my groin started moving, quite calmly, away from me, towards the other side of my
bed.
Before I knew it, my whole body was calmly floating in a similar manner and I felt drunk
again.
Indeed, my first thought wasn’t ‘oh wow I’m floating’ but rather ‘why do I feel
drunk?’.
By now I was hovering above the side of my bed and I slowly turned until I was facing
downwards, checking to see if there was alcohol next to my bed.
‘Nope’, I thought.
‘I don’t know why I could be feeling drunk!’
And that was it.
I woke up in my bed having completely wasted the highly sought-after spiritual encounter
with Out of Body Experiences.
Had I made sense of it I would have tried to have read my clock, or to travel up to
the ceiling for a unique view of my room or whatever.
You know, anything that could confirm or disprove that out of body experiences are something
more than just elaborate dreams!
I’d do it for SCIENCE.
But no, instead I spent it trying to figure out why I felt drunk.
Damn you, sleep drunkenness!
But with hindsight, the most interesting thing about this whole encounter was the fizzing
head thing at the beginning.
It seems common with out of body experiences.
I can certainly say that it was more intense than the floating itself!
Why does this precede Out of Body Experiences, though?
In what way is it linked?
And what separates these things from dreams is how ALERT you are.
How can I describe this?
Rather than a dream that feels real, it’s real life that’s imitating a dream.
In a dream you take a lot for granted.
Even if you finally do discover that you’re dreaming, that realisation is gradual, partial
and typically mid-way through one.
But with these you’re equipped with a capacity for thinking from the word go.
It’s YOU experiencing these things!
Hell, even in my wasted sleep drunken state I still had an awareness beyond anything I’ve
had in dreams.
It’s like a switch that’s usually turned off during sleep is accidentally flicked on.
And unfortunately, you just have to experience it for yourself to understand just how uncanny
that feels.
Oh and you’re also aware of how they begin.
With dreams you start remembering them seemingly half way through.
But with these, I wake up in my bed and THEN these strange things happen.
I mean there are small jumps, like how my groin was moving then suddenly my whole body
was as well, or how I suddenly found myself on the floor for the sleep drunkenness episode.
But my mind was already actively thinking and I have recollection of events that happened
before these things.
In fact it’s the end of these experiences that are harder for me to remember.
After the brief panic of what has just happened I tend to sleep after them.
With the out of body experience in particular it only really dawned on me how strange it
was the day after.
A feeling that has been increasing ever since.
In all seriousness though, I’m a lot better now.
These things occurred when my sleep cycle was PARTICULARLY bad.
Even for me!
We’re talking tired all the time and sleeping 3-4 times a day kind of bad here.
Since then it’s gone back to monophasic, if still at antisocial hours but at least
I’m no longer haunted by drunken feelings, fizzing heads or rapey robes.
And I’m quite happy with that.
Sleep and I, we’ve always had a rocky relationship.
I have battled with my subconscious and have experienced things that every cult religion
wants to claim as their own.
But they can’t.
Because they’re mine.
ALL MINE!
There are a lot of wonderful things in this world.
And probably in many others.
But I still think the most important and profound discoveries will be found inside of our own
heads.
I don’t need to explore to go on an adventure.
Indeed, every night, I go to bed, shut my eyes and pray that I don’t go on one.