I suffer from sleep paralysis occasionally. Anyone who has experienced it can tell you how surreal it can be. Visual and auditory hallucinations are not uncommon and can often leave you with this indescribable feeling of “offness” for even days after the actual episode.
I had one once where I swore I was awake and saw a person standing at the foot of my bed just watching me. I couldn’t move (obviously, as the term “sleep paralysis” implies), couldn’t call out or warn my wife sleeping next to me and had to just pray nothing bad happened while I lay vulnerable, partially covered by the sheets.
Eventually, I fell into a fitful sleep and that was that. I felt unnerved, but I recognized it for what it was and filed it away in my brain under “huh, weird.” Sometimes, the experiences can be even more vivid and bizarre and you swear even after you wake up that whatever you saw or heard was real and you just have to realize it’s not and that there’s a logical, scientific explanation (or at least theories) as to why this happens.
The worst one I’ve ever had, though, was two nights ago. I wake up (or feel like I’m awake) and laying on my back with my arms down to my sides but above the covers with the rest of my body below that point under the covers.
I sleep kind of propped up using three pillows - I feel like this helps with my snoring, but my wife would probably tell you different.
In this position, when I “woke” in this sleep paralysis state, I could see the doorway to our bedroom (which we keep open so our german shepherd can get out and use the doggy door to get outside and potty if she needs to). Almost as soon as I wake, I feel this dread, try to shift under the covers and kind of half-realize what’s happening. My muddled brain thinks, “crap…not again…” I start imagining shapes in that doorway and, of course, I’m completely terrified because there’s nothing I can do but ride it out till I either wake completely or fall back fully asleep.
Pretty soon, the auditory hallucinations begin. I hear what sounds like a cross between hand-clapping and the slap of bare feet (it sounds like more than just one set of feet if that’s what they are, but they’re kind of synchronized like it’s something quadrupedal) and, to my absolute horror, see what looks to be some hulking-but-oddly-graceful shape on all fours prancing into the bedroom and right up to my side where it just stands right out of my view. No more sounds; no more movement; just me - laying there in a blind panic praying that I wake up and can finally move my head enough to look over, see it’s not real and watch a random, lighthearted episode of Futurama till I relax enough to fall back asleep.
Eventually, that’s exactly what happens.
This happened roughly around 1:15am (or at least that’s when I finally woke up for real and checked my phone), and I finally got back to sleep around 2:45am. The last sound I remember before falling asleep this time is my dog shifting around on the floor on my side of the bed, her collar jingling, and I chuckle a bit to myself about how my brain turned an image of our dog getting up in the middle of the night into this four-legged monstrosity I was so terrified of earlier.
My alarm goes off promptly at 6am and I am dragging due to how little sleep I got. The memory of my sleep paralysis episode is still fresh in my mind along with that noise I couldn’t quite place - the one that sounded like cross between hand-clapping and of slapping feet and the image of that hulking-yet-oddly-graceful creature prancing into our room last night plays itself out in my foggy brain.
I begin going about my normal morning getting-ready-for-work routine and stumble into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee when I notice the potted plant by our back door (the one with the doggy door) is knocked over and soil and broken pottery is spilled all over the floor. Some of the mess was clearly tracked over toward the direction our bedroom but grows less and less until the trail disappears a few feet from the doorway (which must have been how I didn’t notice it immediately in my groggy state).
“Great…our lovable-but-squirelly shepherd knocked over the plant on her way out the doggy door last night to do her business and now I have to add cleaning that up to my morning rush.”
As I approach the spot, I notice what I at first take to be paw prints in the soily mess. But I begin to slowly raise my eyebrows in surprise because they are huge. Like WAY bigger than anything our dog’s paws would have been able to make. But as I step even closer and begin to kneel down for a closer look, my heart misses a beat and I just cannot process what I’m seeing…to my abject horror I see them for what they really are…those aren’t paw prints leading to our bedroom. They’re many sets of large handprints…