I hope that my story reaches someone, anyone, so that you may be spared from my fate. If you are reading this, I have managed to regain some limited control over my body; I can no longer tell which of my actions are real and which are the dream.
Everything began about two months ago, when I finally mustered the courage to follow-through on my New Year’s resolution. I have had infrequent bouts of sleep paralysis throughout my life - if you have also experienced sleep paralysis, you know how terrifying it can be - and I resolved to take action to try and cure myself. I have sought the help of doctors and psychiatrists in the past with mixed results. Changes in my diet and sleep habits only gave me weight and energy issues; medication made my bouts less frequent but more intense, more frightening. So, in mid-2021 I joined some support & discussion groups, spoke with others, did some reading and research. I though I had found a solution in the form of lucid dreaming. Unconventional, I know, but I have long since been aware of the pseudo-dream state of sleep paralysis and thought that any control I could exert over my episodes may grant me solace. Wishful thinking, that.
I had armed myself with knowledge and had even had some mild success with lucid dreaming by the Christmas season. On the nights I was not confronted by my sleep paralysis I even managed to have some amazing dream experiences - dreams of flight, of exploring 3D renditions of my favorite Dahli and Escher paintings, living out some fantasies in my dreams - but I had not managed to exert any control over my paralysis incidents. Baby steps, take the good with the bad, right? Thus my New Year resolution, but that’s where things started to go wrong. Sometime in late January I finally managed to move my dream-self during a paralysis bout. My dream-self was able to pickup my pillow and throw it at the shadowy mist that would always embody my paralysis at the foot of my bed. I woke with a sense of victory, elation even! Real progress! An elevated heartbeat and dry mouth, mind you, but both easily solved by a trip to the kitchen for a glass of water. I went over my experience in my head as I groggily trudged to the kitchen, slowly regaining my composure as I sipped at my water. As I finished my glass the cool, refreshing sensation quickly became an icy chill down my spine. There it was, staring back at me from my reflection in the window, my misty tormentor of a paralysis demon - only I was awake. Wasn’t I?
Panicked, I turned the faucet on again, splashed water on my face. The misty form of the demon settled-in around my reflection as the water ran down my face. I backed away, slowly, watching the demon hover over my reflected self as I moved. I spun around, checking that it hadn’t become a physical entity looming behind me - nothing, thank God. “Breathe. Slowly. Relax,” I told myself. After a small eternity I turned around to check my reflection in the window once more and… nothing. I blink; still nothing. Blink twice more, rub my eyes; still nothing. Relief. I shake my head and head back to my bedroom, now much too worked-up with adrenaline to sleep. I toss and turn for hours, awaiting daylight. I stumble off to work with a double serving of coffee, struggle through my day, and return home to finally collapse into much-needed paralysis-free sleep. But I dream, and that is where my living nightmare began.
After that breakthrough night and subsequent restless day my dream was a semi-lucid acid-trip hell. It began simply enough with a reliving of the previous night, skipping the initial sleep paralysis and starting with me in the kitchen once more. I went through my lucid-dreaming rituals and was immediately set-upon by a sense of dread, as if a heavy and evil presence had settled on my shoulders. No matter where I looked and searched in this dreamscape version of my darkened home, I could not find any visible trace of my misty paralysis demon. The relief I should have felt was ruined by the ominous feeling of a presence about me, and no amount of lucidity exercises could shake the feeling. It didn’t pass until I woke to the screech of my alarm in the morning.
I didn’t bother to attempt lucid dreaming for a while after that. For weeks my sleep was free of both dreams and sleep paralysis. I was feeling good and, besides the odd lack of my once-frequent dreams, in control of my life; once enough time had passed I attempted lucid dreaming again. Big mistake. I was immediately beset by my misty demon, swirling about me in my dreamscape, stifling me, smothering me. I tried to stay calm, to use my lucidity rituals - nothing worked. The sense of weight and dread settled on my shoulders, filled my heart, growing deeper and darker with every second. I screamed for what seemed an eternity and then, suddenly, I awoke, on hands and knees in my bed, sweating and panting as sunlight poured over me from my window. I stayed like that, breathing, composing myself as I tried to slow my heart rate. Something didn’t feel right. The sun was bright, but I felt no warmth; I was breathing, but I could not feel the air fill my lungs, pass over my lips, or blow across my sweat-slicked forearms. I stood up, stumbled to my bathroom, turned on the cold water and splashed my face over and over and over again to the slow, horrific realization that I felt NOTHING. Trembling, I slowly raised my head to look in the mirror. My face was not my own; my eyes replaced with bottomless, sunken holes of deepest black, my lips entirely absent upon a face that swirled horrendously with a mix of what I can only describe as gunmetal-gray mist and TV static, my mouth a lightless void filled with tiny needle-like teeth of pure charcoal black that twisted into a menacing smile contrary to the movements of my facial muscles which wanted only to scream.
I don’t know how long I stayed screaming at the horror in the mirror. I only know that I awoke again, the first of what feels like hundreds of times, trapped in an endless cycle of trying to wake myself, being crushed under the dread and horror of my paralysis demon, screaming at the futility of my struggle only to “wake” again. Only now have I thought to reach for my phone in my dreamscape, hoping that my body is reacting on some level in the real world. If it is, and you see this story, heed my words:
DO NOT try to confront your sleep paralysis with lucid dreaming. The dreamscape is their world, not ours.