Sleep Paralysis

                I have had sleep paralysis since I was very young, perhaps as early as age 6. Some nighttime memories of my younger years eclipse those of conventional nightmares, which indicates something more severe. Sleep paralysis is much more intense and traumatic than anything that occurs during dreaming. Normally I feel a powerful wind or compressive force against my face, or the presence of something menacing. However, my latest sleep paralysis episode was unlike any of my former experiences.

                I went to bed at 10:41 p.m. on April 21^st, 2012, which is not my normal bedtime. I was exhausted after many continuous days of work and after having attended my brother’s wedding. I awoke around 4:30 a.m. on April 22^nd and carried on with my normal activities, despite the fact the time was abnormal. At 8:25 a.m. I fell asleep again, on the couch. I had plantar fasciitis in my left foot, so I was wearing a night splint.

                I had a dream that took place in a world resembling the textures and visuals of the video game Blast Corps (© 1997, Rare). I was not actually in the game, but the real world had been altered to look like the game, with the same textures. The water and concrete was what gave it away. I was driving on a one-lane entrance ramp to a highway, with 1 meter high barriers on either side made of perfectly smooth concrete. Thin black lines ran at regular intervals along the wall, orthogonal to the road, which were flaws that indicated the repetition of the textures. The same flaws were visible on the road. To my right, I could see a perfectly flat and rectangular pool of dark blue water. The water was immobile and made of repeating textures, just like the concrete. Very thin lines of no color showed the delineation between the textures. The sky was pure azure, unending and unfading. No other structures were visible in the distance, and if there was a horizon, it was very far away. Or it was very close.

                The artificial world of Blast Corps suddenly filled in all the infinitesimal gaps between the textures and became visually continuous. The real world, oddly enough, is more like the discontinuous, texture-laden, video game worlds. If one were to view the smoothest known object in the macroscopic* world with high magnification, it would be full of gaps, holes, and caverns. An underlying repeating texture of atoms would soon become apparent. I soon found myself driving on an elevated city highway, with buildings on either side, other cars on the road, and a dark, very dark sky. A tornado appeared next to the highway and it took my vehicle into its vortex, madly grinding it against the other cars, as if it were a giant pepper grinder. I quickly felt my death. I woke up from the dream and I felt the weird electric vibrations that precede every attack of sleep paralysis.

                I was fully awake at this point, yet unable to move. My eyes were closed. I have never, ever, dared to open my eyes during these attacks. A low, quiet growling noise came from the direction of my feet. I desperately tried to move my body, but I couldn’t. The growling noise repeated, but more loudly and persisted longer; I couldn’t breathe. I cried, thinking this was it – I was going to die. I felt my arms on my chest; they began to move. It was over. I got up and felt my face – it was dry. The time was 9:14 a.m. The dream and the paralysis happened in a time span of about 45 minutes.

                I have never heard noises before during sleep paralysis. The noise was definitely coming from inside the room. The constrictive sensation on my left foot due to the night splint may explain why I heard the noise coming from my feet. I had a similar experience when I was in the hospital after lung surgery. In order to prevent embolism, the nurses put python-like devices on my lower legs that cycled through squeezing and relaxing. I had a dream that someone was attacking my legs and I tore off the anti-embolism pads during my sleep. So it is entirely possible that therapeutic, though constrictive, devices can cause the body to become defensive during sleep. A possible explanation for sleep paralysis is that it could be acute schizophrenia. All of the symptoms of sleep paralysis disappear upon recovery of body movements. Take note that the symptoms do not disappear during consciousness; one is fully awake during sleep paralysis. If one were awake and not paralyzed and still suffered all the symptoms of sleep paralysis, then that would be chronic schizophrenia, or simply schizophrenia. My argument is that the hallucinations, false tactile and auditory sensations, are acute schizophrenia. This is what sleep paralysis might be.

                How did I feel about having heard the growling noise? I was immediately traumatized. After I was able to move my body, I turned on the lights and searched for a “something”, an unknown thing that was growling. I was kind of shocked that I didn’t find some new type of mammal; that’s how realistic the growling was. After a thorough search of my condo, I got into my regular bed and slept until 12:30 p.m. No further episode of sleep paralysis occurred. What else was different about this episode? It was immediately preceded by a dream. This is unusual. Sleep paralysis occurs while going to sleep, so I barely managed to wake up from the dream, started to fall back asleep, and became paralyzed. What was usual about this episode is that it happened in the morning. Sleep paralysis almost always occurs (for myself) in the morning, after I have slept for a while, and while I am trying to finish my sleep. Another oddity was the fact that my face was dry when I broke free of the paralysis. I clearly felt myself crying. This means that my mind hallucinated the bodily function of lacrimation.

                I have just described a single episode of sleep paralysis, but I have had multiple attacks before. A multiple attack is when one manages to recover from the paralysis and becomes paralyzed again. In all of those cases, I felt the powerful wind on my face. It’s also very loud. All episodes of sleep paralysis are preceded by the fuzzy electric feeling, where the body slightly quivers. It is not like the tingling of a limb falling asleep; it is a buzzing in the body. It’s very subtle and doesn’t hurt. A similar feeling I have felt was during the insertion of the chest tube after my lung had collapsed, at the point when the nurse administered morphine. I felt morphine flow throughout my whole body. The only real difference here is that morphine provides a fuzzy, pleasant feeling while the fuzziness before sleep paralysis is not warm.

                The earliest case I can remember of sleep paralysis happened at age 6 or 7. I had a plastic yellow raincoat hanging in my closet and I remember seeing my closet door opening and closing, but the raincoat was not yellow – it was purple. This may explain why I no longer open my eyes during sleep paralysis. Some people do open their eyes. I can remember my old girlfriend, Donna, claiming that she saw a small boy staring at her when she opened her eyes during sleep paralysis. Another early episode of sleep paralysis I can remember happened at age 9 or 10. I was sleeping in my grandparent’s house and I had a dream that the toys in the basement were floating and remaining stationary in the air at strange angles. I somehow became paralyzed after the dream with my eyes open – I couldn’t close them, I couldn’t move my body. But I didn’t hallucinate, either. I was so disturbed that I woke up my grandma and we went to the basement. I didn’t know what had happened. Not being able to move had confused me considerably, so I felt I had to check the basement, to make sure the toys weren’t floating. I had reasonably connected the dream with the sleep paralysis, but they are separate events, which I did not know at the time. That specific episode is the only one I can recall that happened in the middle of the night.

                Sleep paralysis might be caused by stress. I do have unusual stresses and normal stresses. My unusual stresses are mainly derived from paruresis. My normal stresses are derived from work (such as workplace politics), trying to understand women, noisy neighbors and trying to figure out what I should do with my life (other than staying alive). The ultimate solution to stress reduction is diet and exercise. There is no such thing as stress elimination. Here is a relevant quote by Frederik Pohl:

                “You solve one problem and another one comes up and starts biting you on the ass before you have a chance to catch your breath. Welcome to the real world, where the only final solutions come when you die.”

                *I used the word “macroscopic” to refer to the world because we cannot see the microscopic or subatomic worlds without technological aids. Although they are very real and do affect us, the small worlds are not real to everyday people going about their lives. Most people are ignorant of them and ignore them with aggressive persistence. I believe that many people believe only the macroscopic world exists, so I could very well have not specified “macroscopic” when referring to the “world”.

DREAMS

     In this post I have listed some of my dreams, in a random order. I have listed the origins to the best of my memory.

1.

I was in a massive structure that solely consisted of long hallways ‑ as far as I could tell. People were, for the most part, just walking aimlessly about. There were very nasty creatures rolling through the hallways. They never bothered anyone while in transit through the hallways. In fact, people seemed rather used to vile things rolling past them all day.

I noticed several things. At the very start of a hallway, a creature would sometimes talk to a person. That would result in the person running as fast as they could to the end of the hallway. The person would simply stop at the end. The creature rolled to the person and uncurled. (I never got close enough, but they did look extremely scary.) At this point, the creature proceeded to heartily maul the person to death. Heavy cracking and smacking of bone could be heard.

Here were the facts I compiled after wandering the hallways for several days:

1. People only run after a creature has talked to them.

2. After they run to the end of the hallway, they die.

3. Creatures never stop people in hallways, only at ends and beginnings.

I did not want to gamble anymore. I needed to get out of that place. If one of those things talked to me, I would find out why the people run, and consequently, die.

So here's what I did. I ran. I figured that the creatures wouldn't mess with me as long as I ran. They would think I was the meal of some other creature. My strategy paid off. I got out and came upon a vast field ‑ and never stopped running....

  (Suspected Origin: The dream occurred after I watched Logan’s Run, so it may be the basis.)

2.

 As she stood on the roof, her father was crying in the basement. That was a paradox to me. If he knew it was coming, he would not be worried. But he knew it was coming, therefore he had to be involved. Why would he cry? He was down there with a bottle of Jack Daniels, one knee on the ground.

She stood proud on the roof, eyeing the skies. The farm girl was prepared for this. Her role in the plan was beginning to take shape. A faint rumble in the distance was all she needed. This was it; the culmination of years of training could finally be put to use. It came quickly, crashing into the surrounding woods and fragmenting into thousands of pieces, as an airplane should. There was no fire, no smoke, no bodies. Although she didn't understand what they signified, the symbols "TWA" were still visible on some of the wreckage.

Ah, part of the camouflage, she thought.

Then they came. The rocks rolled out of the wreckage, spinning faster and faster. They knew where to go.

One came by me, as a matter of fact. It was pulsating as it rolled, a truly vile creature.

Somehow I knew it all. That wasn't an airplane ‑ it was an alien vessel in camouflage. It was merely dispatching troops and crashing was meant to cause confusion. No one would figure out where the airplane came from. Even aliens have a sense of humor.

(Suspected Origin: I don’t know. Completely generated by my unconscious mind.)           

3.

I awoke suddenly, because something was making a noise. Usually it's the cat, but the noise was slightly different. I was on my right side and looked up to notice a flexible tube hovering near my face. Whatever it was, it probably wouldn't expect an attack, so I grabbed it and pulled hard. It didn't offer much resistance and I had pulled in nearly 15 feet of it until I reached the end. It shrunk quickly, to perhaps 1 foot in length. I picked up the peculiar tube and placed it on my computer desk, turning on the lights in the process. It looked like a cylindrical piece of bubble gum and felt rather pliable; it had ceased moving. I went into my closet to get a small box. When I returned to my desk, the tube was gone.

Confounded, I let my eyes wander for a moment, searching for signs of the tube. I decided to look under my bed and noticed lots of little tubes, perhaps 4 inches long and 1/10 of an inch in diameter. They were squirming. I gathered them all and held them in my hand, squeezed hard, and felt them resist. They didn't like being squeezed. At this time, I was trying to decide if the original had broken into smaller pieces or if the others were already under my bed and the bigger tube was seeking them out. Either scenario was equally strange. But something even stranger happened. As I was squeezing the tubes, they eventually stopped resisting. This was not good. Either they had disappeared or sensed...an exit. They could've shrunk so small to have tunneled within my skin and into other areas. And what if, while inside of me, they decided to expand again? That would be very bad. I panicked and ran outside and stopped cold. The ground was covered with little pink tubes, squirming.

(Suspected Origin: The short story Colony, by Philip K. Dick.)

4.

I had found a special shoe which could also be used as a horn, for the purpose of producing mating calls of killer whales. I never investigated the reason for needing such a thing, but I had one and my friend had one as well. We both decided to blow the shoe horns and see what would happen. A killer whale suddenly rose out of the water and swam towards the shore. It hit the beach and did not slow down; it was slightly different from a standard killer whale and could move like a snake on solid earth. We both froze and watched it moving towards us, mouth open. It realized we were not a mate, but food. Our ability to move was temporarily disabled by fear and I recall feeling the tip of its teeth on my shoulder ‑ it came that close. I lost track of my friend; he dashed in one direction and I darted in another, up a hill. I expected to be safe on high ground, but it was slithering up the hill.

I found a wooden tower and ascended. There was a man on the top, in a small cabin. He was older than I and listened to my wild claims, while phoning the police.

"I've got some nut here. I need someone to ‑" The snake‑whale slithered past the tower as he was reporting me, and he dropped the phone.

I woke up at this point, and seeing a killer whale/snake hybrid was quite interesting.

(Suspected Origin: The novel Maker of Universes, by Philip Jose Farmer.)

5.

 The surface they were walking on looked like grass, but was really an advanced polymer. They didn’t know the difference for they’ve never seen real grass. The only obstruction in their view was a huge mountain, with an opening at the bottom. The mountain was to their east and a vast ocean of green invaded their eyes. No one knows if they were real humans, all 150,000 of them or so. The difference between artificial and real has long been forgotten and not a single person is aware the entire planet is artificial, created millennia ago. But such concerns were not on their minds. This was where they needed to be, for this was the entry point. If necessary, they would wait for days.

Sharp cracks and hisses like miniature lightning bolts penetrated their ears and a vast portion of green polymer was pelted with thousands of objects. Some were still kicking, some were still clenching and unclenching. What lay before these wretched, worthless people was a mound of freshly severed human limbs. These were to be saved for later, of course. They had to be gathered up and deposited in the mountain. For the next 50 days they would have food. It has been this way for countless generations.

(Suspected Origin: The “thinny” from the Gunslinger books, written by Stephen King.)

6.

 A swimming pool lay in the middle of an infinitely vast sheet of white flexible plastic. The weight of the water was enough to dent the plastic, thus forming sides and making a standard swimming pool. In this isolated pool were many people, none of which were swimming. Rather, they were treading water, as they were engaged in a game of water volleyball. The dent made by the weight of the water was great enough to make the walls unscalable; they were like sheer cliff faces, but completely smooth. So these people had been treading water their whole lives, playing water volleyball. They knew of nothing else.

Suddenly, one man started screaming. His screams became muted as his head was pulled under the water by an unseen force. In an attempt to help him, other people submerged and soon swam away, in terror. A powerful grinding force tore through bone, tendon, and internal organs, mixing them up and distributing the remains throughout slightly ellipsoidal regions, which exuded into smaller passages. A faint outline could be seen through the man’s blood as it made a tube-like path in the water.

Another man was grabbed by the invisible force, and through more entrails, an outline became more apparent. The people writhed, screamed agonies, screamed for help. Help that would never come. A shark, completely invisible, had slipped into their pool.

(Suspected Origin: I have never read in a book of this or seen such a thing happen in any movie. I have also never consciously thought of such a thing happening. This is a fabrication of my unconscious. The infinite white plastic sheet definitely came from the video game Super Mario 64. If you looked “outside” some levels, you could see an unending white surface.)

7.

            I was traveling in an RV with a co‑worker, named Tony. He was seated at the dining table and staring daggers into a plate of quesadillas. There were other people in the RV with us and they became panicked; Tony was not Tony. Somehow, we all suddenly knew his brain was empty. While the actual brain was there, his consciousness was gone. It had somehow left and entered the quesadillas. So the quesadillas contained Tony's consciousness; they were him ‑ his personality. Since Tony's body no longer contained a mind, it ran purely on instinct. The smell from the quesadillas was enough to make the body start eating them, which horrified us. He was devouring himself.

(Known Origin: One of my co‑workers went to Jamaica with his girlfriend and he paid $4200 for 6 days, which included airfare and 24 hour room service. One day at work he suddenly started talking about it and told me he kept ordering quesadillas. If he wanted a plate of quesadillas at 3 in the morning, then they had to cook them and provide room service. He kept going on and on about the quesadillas. This naturally became embedded somewhere in my wetware and my unconscious mind decided to play with it.)

8.

            There was something wrong with my abdomen. Little white bumps protruded from the skin, like jelly beans. One of them was squirming, and I grabbed it. I pulled out a very large maggot, about as large as a good‑sized shrimp. Another one stuck its head out but slipped back into the safety of my stomach before I could grab it. Rather than going into a wild rage, I drove to the hospital.

     By the time I got to the hospital, all of my internal organs were gone. Never mind how I was breathing or pumping blood. It apparently wasn't necessary. It was such a strange sight, to look down and observe one's midsection and chest cavity empty. There was a benefit to this. The maggots were gone.

     I walked into the doctor's office and he seemed perfectly content with the fact I was still alive. After some close inspecting, the doctor said to me, "I think you have a chest infection."

(Suspected Origin: The dream felt like I was in a Robert Sheckley short story and I have read nearly a hundred of his stories, so they may be the basis. It’s what I call “humor of the horrible”. My lung surgery and hospital stay had no influence, since I had this dream several years before the surgery.)

9.

            I was in class and the teacher walked in and asked if we had our remixes ready. I didn't know what the hell was going on, but the other students had prepared elaborate arrangements of songs from video games. I wanted to slowly disappear into the back of the room, because I had prepared nothing. So I thought. I knew the Dr. Wily theme from Mega Man 2 pretty well, and figured I could whistle it. When my turn came up, my mouth was too dry and it sounded wrong. I knew how the song was supposed to go, so I got pretty frustrated. But I didn't give up. I stood there and whistled the whole thing. I could see a lot of confused faces after whistling, and I had to explain it was Dr. Wily's theme from MM2. One student snapped and said, "Yeah! I remember that!"

(Suspected Origin: My unconscious desire to remix game music coupled with my fear of failing before a crowd.)

10.

Every human on the planet (not necessarily Earth) lived inside a giant covered building. The building was technologically asymmetrical, as one end was more advanced than the other end. When construction started, they used wood. But nothing was ever torn down. If one was really inspired, they could walk back to the oldest wood sections. The building was hundreds of miles in length and the newest sections were made of material we do not have; something more advanced than our metals, concrete and synthetic materials.

Very few people wanted to live in the older sections, so in order to cope with the bursting population, new sections were always being added. The population density was so high that groups of 4 people were required to occupy a single bedroom. I was in a room with another man and two women, both of which were attractive. I could have had either woman, but there was some other woman I wanted. Unfortunately, she had committed suicide.

I had hired a guide to take me back to the old wood sections and we found her hanging from a crossbeam. It was possible to bring the dead back to life, but with a caveat. They could not be rejuvenated into a biological body; it had to be plastic. I really wanted her, so I decided to go with the plastic.

(Suspected Origin: I’ve read so much science fiction, that I’m not entirely sure. I remember reading a story about a structure that was never demolished. Workers just kept adding new sections. It is probably a Robert Sheckley story.)

11.

            Unusual looking crickets were getting stuck in the glue traps in my parent’s house on Pinecone Trails. Warm shafts of sunlight penetrated the curtains in the front room, as I noticed the little critters eating the glue and becoming larger. However, as they increased in size, they did not become more insect-like in appearance, but feline. A full grown cat/insect hybrid began walking around the house, in the usual way that cats stalk their territory, so it seemed completely normal. However, when I petted the creature, I could clearly feel the exoskeleton. It had an ersatz fur covering. This didn’t seem all that strange, so I went outside for a walk and noticed tall weeds between my parent’s house and the Glasper’s house. Amongst those weeds were many dead people that were clearly quite dead, as is typical of dead people. They died in the oddest of positions, choosing to bend their arms and legs at uncomfortable looking angles.

            I called the police and told them about the dead people. Within minutes, a coroner’s truck and several police cars drove down Pinecone Trails, carefully going around the island, rather than driving directly to my house. The coroners started to unload the black body bags and gurneys, when the dead people began stirring. As it turned out, they were quite OK, and began talking amiably amongst themselves. The coroners were rather upset and started to put away the black bags. A police officer exited his car and slammed the door. He walked towards me, shaking his finger in the direction of the people in the weeds, while giving me a venomous glare. He shouted in my face, “THOSE PEOPLE AREN’T DEAD!”

(Suspected Origin: The novel The Right Hand of Dextra, by David J. Lake. This was probably the most humorous dream I’ve ever had. One would expect the police to be relieved that the people weren’t dead, but in my dream they expected to see some dead people and were quite upset to find them alive. My dream came from the novel because it happened shortly after reading it and I suspect that the insect/cat hybrids were meant to imitate cats and infiltrate our households, while the people in the weeds were newly formed imitations of humans.)

12.

            I was standing outside of Hazelwood West, my high school. Someone had painted the exterior in a chaotic striped pattern of solid white and black. Nothing stirred, no one was visible. There were no sounds outside and the only weather seemed to be sunlight. I slowly approached the building and used the entrance that led to the junior high math rooms and main office. No lights were on inside; the electricity had apparently been disconnected. However, there was a deep humming noise, indicating heavy machinery. I entered the hallway and saw a person being skinned by a machine resembling a printing press. But it was far more sophisticated. The machine ran the length of the hallway and was designed to deorganize humans, starting with the skin. Morbidly intrigued, I followed the hapless individual as he passed through the machine, watching his intestines collect onto a spool and his other organs collect onto appropriately shaped surfaces. I didn’t quite make it to the end of the process, since by that time I had noticed what was operating the machine. It was a group of those creatures from the movie “Alien”.

(Suspected Origin: The operators of the machine clearly came from that classic movie. However, my unconscious generated the machine. This is an old, old dream. I had this one probably before age 15. I’m able to write about it because I remember it vividly. I invented the word “deorganize”, which has a double meaning. It’s an interesting and appropriate pun.)

13.

A physics experiment had gone awry; we had somehow screwed up the Fine Structure constant. It no longer approximated 1/137. This caused perturbations in the quantum foam that pervades the seething, completely full, ill-named “vacuum” of space. It became thicker because virtual particles (electron-positron pairs) were no longer annihilating. This halted the orbits of stars around the cores of galaxies, halted the orbits of planets around stars, etc. It halted everything. We never saw it coming, since space itself became thicker. The entire Universe had come to a full stop.

(Suspected Origin: Simply having knowledge of quantum foam and the fine structure constant. It also behooves me to point out I had this dream before reading Schild’s Ladder by Greg Egan. Those of you that have read Schild’s Ladder will understand why it behooved me to mention that.)