Formalities and the Afterglow

Alright so there you have it. Now I'll continue with my own experience. There are a few things that I think are key. Unlike some others who suffer this phenomenon, My experiences were not violent or filled with visual entities in a manner of speaking. For me it would always start as a dream whether I had just drifted off to sleep or had been sleeping for sometime. Some where in the dream things would go south, fast. Something, a new Character or object would enter my dream, and I imediately knew this thing was inherently evil. I understood it was a demon or demons. So I would attempt to fight it or get it to leave. My first instinct was to rebuke it in the name of Jesus. The only problem was it seemed no matter how hard I tried I couldn't muster the name of Jesus and when I did after much effort of which by now I had tried to wake my lifeless body. I could only mumble the name Jesus. As if I had no authority to use the name.....only after an exhoustive effort of continously speaking the Lord's name did the oppression lift. In which case I would open my eyes look around and try to catch my breath like I had just swam across a lake non stop.

I would immediately fall back asleep and forget the entire incident until the next time it was about to happen which was usually too late. I would just think "oh no not again" The events would only last 10 minutes or less as far as I can estimate. It seemed as though they would never end though.

more to come.

Part 6?

The Scientific Explaination....kinda.
The medical establishment is quite aware of this phenomenon, but has a less sensational name than "old hag syndrome" for it. They call it "sleep paralysis" or SP (sometimes ISP for "isolated sleep paralysis").

So what causes it? Dr. Max Hirshkowitz, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Houston, says that sleep paralysis occurs when the brain is in the transition state between deep, dreaming sleep (known as REM sleep for its rapid eye movement) and waking up. During REM dreaming sleep, the brain has turned off most of the body's muscle function so we cannot act out our dreams - we are temporarily paralyzed. Sheryl Crow Battles
The Old Hag

Rock singer Sheryl Crow is a victim of sleep paralysis, as she revealed in a 1996 interview with Rolling Stone magazine. "It's a bizarre and twisted feeling where you feel completely paralyzed. You are sure you are going to die."


"Sometimes your brain doesn't fully switch off those dreams - or the paralysis - when you wake up," Hirshkowitz told ABC News. "That would explain the 'frozen' feeling and hallucinations associated with sleep paralysis." According to his research, the effect only really lasts from a few seconds to as long as a minute, but in this half-dream half-awake state, to the victim it can seem much longer.

In her article, "Help! I Can't Move!," Florence Cardinal, About.com's Guide Sleep Disorders, writes: "Sleep paralysis is often accompanied by vivid hallucinations. There may be a sense someone is in the room, or even hovering over you. At other times, there seems to be pressure on the chest, as though someone or something perched there. There may even be sexual attacks associated with the hallucinations. The sound of footsteps, doors opening and closing, voices, all can be a very frightening part of sleep paralysis. These are known as Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Experiences and they are what make people dread an episode of sleep paralysis."

For all their explanations, however, the sleep experts still do not know what causes the brain to screw up like this, or why some people experience it more than others.

The Revisionist.

Ok, So that last post upon review is going in a good direction, but it's not the direction I want to go right now. The whole reason for this series if one could be so brave as to call it that. Is to raise awareness of these things and bring to light the truth of the situation, for the most part stated in the first of these posts. I also want to provide an explaination and an answer to help those who suffer from such things as Sleep Paralysis, Alien Abductions, and Hauntings.

I first want to establish a historical, factual, and scientific as well as Biblical foundation for such phenomenon. I want to focus more now on the Sleep Paralysis and what happens to our bodies in our sleep state.

I had suffered with sleep paraylsis and night terrors since I was a young teen. It did not stop until I was 28. Make no mistake my symptoms were not as reoccuring as some peoples. I would say that maybe it would happen to me once every month or two. However, I would say that as I became more aware of the events, when and after they had occured, The number of attacks increased to almost weekly.

Let me explain to you what I'm talking about ( Old Hag Syndrome or Sleep Paraylsis taken from an "About . Com" article )
The victims awake to find that they cannot move, even though they can see, hear, feel and smell. There is sometimes the feeling of a great weight on the chest and the sense that there is a sinister or evil presence in the room. And like the above reader, they are often quite frightened about what is happening to them.

The name of the phenomenon comes from the superstitious belief that a witch - or an old hag - sits or "rides" the chest of the victims, rendering them immobile. Although that explanation isn't taken very seriously nowadays, the perplexing and often very frightening nature of the phenomenon leads many people to believe that there are supernatural forces at work - ghosts or demons.

The experience is so frightening because the victims, although paralyzed, seem to have full use of their senses. In fact, it is often accompanied by strange smells, the sound of approaching footsteps, apparitions of weird shadows or glowing eyes, and the oppressive weight on the chest, making breathing difficult if not impossible. All of the body's senses are telling the victims that something real and unusual is happening to them. The spell is broken and the victims recover often on the point of losing consciousness. Fully awake and well, they sit up, completely baffled by what just happened to them since now the room is entirely normal.

Confronted with such a bizarre and irrational experience, it's no wonder that many victims fear that they have been attacked in their beds by some malevolent spirit, demon or, perhaps, an alien visitor.

The phenomenon occurs to both men and women of various ages and seems to happen to about 15 percent of the population at least once in a lifetime. It can occur while the victim is sleeping during the day or night, and it is a worldwide phenomenon that has been documented since ancient times.