I am writing this part, still shaking in my bed, head heavy and sweating profusely. My mother’s hand is on my head because I have screamed her name in order to wake up from my paralysis. This is a real story, one I have carried my whole life, I am frightened and wanted to keep a part of it written for life.
I have suffered from sleep paralysis demons and lucid dreams for as long as I can remember. My most haunting era when it happened every single night and would end at sunrise was between the ages of 6 and 10. After that, it only came back in periods of my life I vividly remember and will talk about next.
I was raised by a strong believing muslim family, who were and still are convinced that I am linked to some sort of devil who tortures me whenever I start to forget he exists. I am agnostic and have stopped believing for years, but tonight might just make me run back.
My sleep demon is what even psychiatrists describe as an incubus. Faceless, nameless, voiceless, but somehow for me, I can recognise that cruel thing every single time because of how he makes the hairs behind my neck stand up. When I was younger, I was terrified of it, I would run and run asking people for help but it would just incubate in them and make them hurt me, until I shift to the paralysis state where it would choke me until I woke up promising that we will see each other again. It is worth mentioning that as a child I was heavily religious, I knew the holy quran like the back of my hand and never missed a prayer. But those hellish sleep nights as I prayed until I collapsed only got worse the harder I called out god, and so one day I stopped. I no longer believed and the terrors disappeared.
I cannot describe the bliss I felt my teen years sleeping and only having the most beautiful calming dreams and waking g up happy with no sweat. Even during my freshman and sophomore years in college when I was living with an abusive man, my dreams were blissful. But January 2022, one night I will never forget, it came back.
I had broken from my ex and Covid restrictions were finally less strict. My Dorm mate, Maria, was back and she was the most catholic young girl. My dorm had a cross, a virgin mary idol and all the testaments. Curious and taken by her sweet adorable personality, I went to church with her Sunday at night, and I prayed to god genuinely for the first time in almost a decade. That night I felt amazing, the tears I shed healed something and so when it was time to sleep, I drifted off no thoughts in my head.
3 Am: I opened my eyes seeing everything blurry, my head felt heavy and my limbs were a burden to move, I needed the bathroom so I tried to fight the drowsiness and get up when this sinking feeling in the back of my heart rose up, and oh how familiar it felt. I glanced to the room corner and saw nothing, but it was there, I felt it. I shut my eyes and shifted in my bed hoping to ignore it and wake up but I could now feel it on me. “Really? You know better than that, did you miss me?” Its voice echoed in my ears and chest, God I could recognise it everywhere. I ignored it because I felt not fear, but the adrenaline of meeting my kryptonite, a sort of surrender. Then the shocking began and all I could do was bite until I woke up again.
3:30 Am: My heart was racing but I started to down as I could finally see my roommate. I gently called her name but she did not respond, so I went to raise my arm to wake her and then the feeling came back, o no no no I started sobbing, I was not yet awake. Then Mary suddenly turned and said with that same voice energy: “You really forgot all we learned huh? it’s me, always me, wherever you look, It will always be me” Before she pounced on me, Chocking me until I finally woke up for real this time.
I managed to calm down and get through that month, but deep down swore to never pray in Church or mosque ever again. And that is exactly what I did. I graduated with a physics BA that same summer and got into grad school, life was sailing and I could finally afford my own teeny tiny studio in the city as life was going well. My incubus came back precisely two time during that time period, each and every time was after I forget my deal, and pray (on a rug or a church) it barely mattered.
May 2023, I went back to my home country for my sister’s wedding, and the whole time my chest was tight, something was pulling me to go walk in the ancient medina, until I stopped in front of a mausoleum. My whole family was buried there because of some thousand year old lineage, and so I decided to visit my granny’s grave, as she had died the latest and I loved her to bits. And when I stood by her grave and sat by it, something in the grass was peaking that looked unfamiliar, I picked it up and there looking at me was a bag full of what looked like ashes, immediately I realised the tombstone was not dirty but that brownish tint on the marble was dried up blood and so I ran away as fast as I can to my house where I found my father and sat him down, and spilled everything.
My father, a theology and law professor, was always one to handle matters rationally, calmly and only resort to jinns and demons when no other explanation was sufficient. He then finally admitted to me the origin (according to him) of my suffering.
“I was raised in an old riad not far from the mausoleum, and where a fountain exists in most houses, ours had a very deep well. I could always see figures around the well but I ignored them, until one day as a child I fell inside of it. Then, they never stopped tormenting me in my sleep, promising they will kill me. But my faith has always been strong, the cannot harm me to this day. I have dreamt of that well and it’s demons everyday for 65 years.” He paused for a second and took his glasses off. “When you were born, before i even held you, I knew you were special, I knew you had in you a light that burned bright, so I knew they will get to me through you.”
We talked some more, and his advice was to never fear it, it eats and grows from my fear, that is why it hates when I ignore it and fx my faith with god, it angers it so it strikes back.
Tonight, I almost lost the battle, the stronger it choke me the louderI prayed for god, it was the longest and most draining one yet, I was brave but I am terrified of sleeping now, it almost got me this time, I felt my face go numb and death engulfed me so terrifyingly. I still do not know what to do, but I believe studying it scientifically and in the occult will save my life.
Sleep demon will not stop so neither should I…