CHAPTER 3 | SLEEP PARALYSIS
" nightmares " by Joe Thorn is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 . Have you ever woken up, but found yourself unable to move? Maybe it lasted a long time, maybe it was only a few minutes. Maybe you felt like somebody was sitting on your chest, or hovering over your head. Maybe you found yourself afraid you'd never really wake up, or that your soul would be stolen by a demon. This is an experience known as sleep paralysis. There appears to be a perfectly mundane explanation to this phenomenon. It includes losing control of your muscles, and can sometimes include hallucinations . Apparently, 8% of people have experienced sleep paralysis in some form, with some studies estimating that 60% of people have experienced this. Some people report seeing an entity of sorts, sometimes referred to as a " sleep paralysis demon ". Oftentimes this entity is described as a hag : a scary looking old woman, or a monster sitting on your