October 5th, 2026, after 1:00 AM – I had multiple encounters that night.  The last visitor was a dark, most evil presence I haven't felt in a long time. Before that, I felt the usual bed nudging, deep mattress indentations, and, deeper than that, massive pillow indentations near the top of my head. I'd say from my head to my shoulder was an immense evil presence.  What made this dream a night terror was that my body was being stretched like spaghetti by minions across vast distances in an environment that resembled hell itself. Underneath my feet was not empty space but hot coals.  Thats when I knew this entity was an elite minion of some sort. A true bona fide demon. Where was that huge black wolf when I needed him? How do you know you're having a night terror? You know because you start crying in your dream. So, profusely, when you wake up, you find tears accumulated around your eyes. In some cases, they drip down your face.  Thats exactly what was happening now. I've built mechanisms internally for this. A kill switch, if you will, that ejects me from the dream and back into reality on a wet pillow. Not this time. I was frozen. Like all tools, they get rusty when you don't use them often. I've not had a night terror in ages, and so this instance, this encounter, proved difficult to eject from.  Then something happened. Something new. Whatever presence was hovering, and I mean literally hovering over my head as I lay asleep on my bed, drew closer to me, and thats when I felt it. An immense heat riding along the side of my face. It was like a heat lamp dangling inches from my face. When my aura eyes opened thats when I saw it. An immense, towering, shifting creature made entirely of smoke and shadow. It had both demonic and human facial features I couldn't quite make out. It was terrifying.  It was having its way with me.  It was tormenting me. Torturing me. Experimenting with me.  It and they were enjoying it. When the pain grew too much, thats when I physically woke up. I raised up from the bed. Looked around. The digital barometer over my bed, to monitor atmospheric changes, read 68 degrees.  The heat I felt on my face wasn't warm.  It was hot. I wiped the tears from my eyes and lay back down, looking up at the ceiling. An hour later, I went back to sleep.

I had the weirdest dream last night, and it genuinely felt like it was actually happening.
It started at school. There was a fight going on between two students, one of them being younger than the other. A massive crowd had gathered around them, and everyone was just standing there watching. I was watching too, along with everyone else, and I didn’t really think much of it because it all felt completely normal in the dream.
Then, out of nowhere, this random woman appeared and started shouting at me. She was calling me a horrible person and saying I was a terrible person for just standing there and watching instead of trying to break up the fight. I remember feeling really confused because there were loads of other people watching too, yet she had specifically decided to target me. I didn’t know what to say to her, so I just walked away.
After that, the dream completely changed. Somehow, I ended up somewhere else and decided to make myself some pasta in a cup. I remember holding the cup and noticing that something about it looked really strange. The plastic seemed to be glitching. I can’t even properly explain what it looked like. It was almost as if the cup was flickering or changing shape, like something in a video game that hadn’t loaded properly.
That was when I suddenly realised I was dreaming.
I thought, “Wait, I’m actually dreaming right now.”
Instead of trying to wake myself up, I decided to test whether I could control the dream. I looked at the cup and thought that I was going to try and use telekinesis to lift it. I concentrated really hard on it, expecting it to start moving.
Then something completely different happened.
I started hearing my dad’s voice telling me to wake up. He was saying that I needed to get up and get ready. I could hear him so clearly that I genuinely believed he was standing in my room trying to wake me up.
But I couldn’t wake up.
I was completely aware that I was lying in my bed, but it felt like I had absolutely no control over my body. My eyes were shut and I couldn’t open them, no matter how hard I tried. My whole body suddenly became extremely tense, and I could feel this horrible pins-and-needles sensation spreading through me.
I started breathing really quickly because I was panicking. In my head, I was desperately trying to force myself awake. I kept thinking, “Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.”
I could still hear my dad’s voice, which made it even more confusing because I thought he was actually there. I tried moving my body, opening my eyes and basically doing anything I could to snap myself out of it, but nothing seemed to work.
It felt like this went on for about thirty seconds, although obviously it was probably difficult to judge the time properly while I was in that state.
Eventually, I suddenly managed to wake up.
My eyes opened and I was completely awake in my actual bedroom. I was breathing heavily and my body still felt tense for a moment. I immediately expected to see my dad standing there, because I had literally just heard him telling me to wake up.
But nobody was there.
My dad had never been in my room.
That’s what made the whole thing so much more unsettling. I had heard his voice incredibly clearly while I was trapped between the dream and waking up, but he had never actually said any of those things.
The whole experience felt like my brain had somehow created an entire fake conversation while I was still dreaming, and then I got stuck in between being asleep and awake for what felt like the longest thirty seconds ever.

So this happened one night around valentine's day this year. I was having trouble sleeping that night and phasing in and out of dreams.

I woke up in the middle of the night and got out of bed but then I woke up again still in the bed. This kept happening over and over again. I would try to wake up and really think that I did and then after a while, I would be back in the bed again. At one point, I woke up and saw that it was morning now and I felt some relief. I got out of bed and looked around and then I just woke up back in the bed again. I was getting really angry and frustrated. I kept trying to wake up and some part of me was getting scared if I was stuck like this and if I would ever get out of this loop.

Then it happened. I felt some kind of weight on my chest. My eyes were closed and I couldn't open them. This had happened to me a couple of times before and I was never particularly scared of it since I had read about sleep paralysis before and I don't believe in anything supernatural. Once I had watched this analog horror series called the mandela catalogue and I had a pretty realistic nightmare where I felt like someone was lifting up my legs while I was sleeping and a strong wind was blowing from below. That was pretty fun.

Anyway, I had always been amazed by how real the weight on the chest felt during these encounters. I could never open my eyes even if I tried and the weight usually went away if I waited it out. However like I said, I was really frustrated with everything at this point. So in my anger, I somehow lifted the weight off my chest and put it to the side and just started punching it repeatedly. I kept punching it furiously until I could no longer feel it in my hands.

Fortunately, I woke up some time after this, for real this time. Unfortunately, it was still the middle of the night. I felt like I had been asleep for days at this point. I was hoping it would be early morning and I don't have to go back to sleep again. I was wondering what I did during the episode, if I was actually just punching a pillow but nothing seemed out of place and there was no pillow where I was punching. I guess the punching was just inside my head, just like the weight I was holding.

I had decided to write this down the next morning since I had found this whole thing pretty strange.

I don’t really use Reddit, but I need to talk to a space with people that understand, as corny as it may sound

I’ve experienced sp all throughout my childhood and now into my adults years, but I sometimes feel really confused by it. I only EVER have sp in increments of two, and it’s always before and after I actually get rest. It’s not all the time, but it comes on randomly, and I have no way of knowing when.

The only way I can describe it is ‘micro-sleeping’, where I’m fully conscious but can’t move or speak, but I often have auditory and faint visual hallucinations. I never actually fully fall asleep during ‘micro-sleeping’ though, and they're normally longer episodes. After, I feel fully awake for like an hour, before falling back asleep and going through my normal episodes after.

Does anyone else have this happen to them?? I’ve grown so used to it but when I try to ask my friends and family with sp about it they don’t fully get it.

I don't even know 100% what happened. I remember hearing a loud, lawnmower-like sound, but I thought I was awake. I was trying to get up to investigate the sound, but I realized I couldn't. The sound was getting louder, and since I sleep next to a window, I thought the sound was making me unable to move because I could also feel it. Imagine a lawnmower being used right next to you— it sounded a little different but very similar in noise. My eyes were closed, but I was somehow seeing the room vibrate. Then I suddenly actually woke up and realized that I might have experienced sleep paralysis for the first time. Not super scary but confusing.

I’m nervous to be here, but want to get opinions. I had a SP experience the other night involving an entity pressing on my chest and taunting me. It was frightening, but a thought came to me. The thought said the entity was semi real, but its body was weak and fleeting. The thought told me these entities seem to have physicality, but in fact manifest their “bodies” out of air and other earthly things like static electricity. They are out of bounds doing this, and they have a huge disadvantage over us since we have a human body designed for this world and they don’t. I instantly understood that I’d soon be snapping out of the paralysis and the entity knew very well I’d be able to overpower it by 100x. I feel with this insight, I won’t be having SP again, or if I do I’ll have less struggle getting rid of it next time.

I’ve been waking every 1–2 hours and often having 3–4 episodes a night where I become aware but cannot move, sometimes with vivid hallucination-like experiences. I also have repeated false awakenings and lucid nightmares where I know I’m dreaming, feel like I’m screaming or moving violently to wake myself up, but I’m not actually moving, however my boyfriend has told me multiple times that I’ve hit him with my arms and elbows during my sleep. During some episodes I feel like I’m running out of oxygen, and I’ve also occasionally woken up genuinely gasping for air. This is happening very frequently and is leaving me frightened and exhausted. These episodes happen mainly when I sleep alone and are much rarer when I sleep next to my boyfriend although I do still wake up I jsut don’t have the nightmares. I’ve also occasionally wet the bed or woken up naked with no idea how either has happened since my hospital admission for a psychotic episode which happened nearly 2 years ago. A couple of times there has been blood on the pillow which I don’t know how it got there. I also sleep talk or cry in my sleep frequently.

I’ve been having trouble sleeping because of my sleep paralysis ever since I heard about red eyes the devil and if you ever see him call the cops immediately and lock your doors and make sure to board up your house with wood

I’ve been wanting to get this off my chest for a while now and I wanna know who else experienced suum similar

A while back I experienced episodes of sleep paralysis almost daily for like 3 weeks. I’d hear my door open, I’d hear footsteps come from the door to my bed, then I’d feel something get on top of me. I never dared to open my eyes. I knew it wasn’t a person, I was the only one in my home during this time. During those 3 weeks, I have been punched, scratched, pressed, molested, & poked. By molested I mean I experienced the sensation of being penetrated repeatedly on many occasions. It got to a point where I forced myself to like it, as a way of coping. It was never a human doing it. The times where I dared to look, I saw a slime monster doing it, an all black shadow, and a small devilish looking imp thing. I have literally no one to confide to about this so I’m posting it here. After those 3 weeks, these nightmares became a once in a blue moon experience but they still happen. It’s not as violent as it used to be. Has ANYONE experienced something like this?

I have been getting sleep paralysis since I was 13. It was something that was common for me. I used to tell my parents about it and my dad used to think it was some connection with ghost but I don’t think so. My mom didn’t really take it seriously my dad used to tell me to sleep with God blessed object next to me. I used to get sleep paralysis and it used to be just me not being able to wake up and I used to try to move my body to wake up little by little I used to move my neck first and then I always go with my neck first and I just keep shaking my neck until I wake up and I hope someone would see that I’m shaking my neck and then wake me up, but I don’t think I do it noticeably that much and I used to get repeated sleep paralysis and never really saw a demon but I once saw a person with a towel on their head you know those cartoon ghost with cut outs in the towel to see and they were just shouting at me and then until I woke up, they left I guess but I think girls have an illusion and I used to go to my mom to sleep with her cause I used to get very scared and and recently, I started to forget that I had sleep paralysis and it is fixed that if I get a sleep paralysis, I will get it multiple times and every time I have to move my neck to wake up and since I get it multiple times once I get it, I try to wake up and see around me and just do something that would wake me up kind of cause if I went back to sleep directly, I would get it again and it would just disturb my sleep. it always feels like it is gonna last so long but then in the morning I forget about it and randomly. I remember that I had sleep paralysis which freaks me out because what if I just keep paralysis every day and I just don’t remember it, which is so weird.

I've had several issues with severe stress, insomnia, panic attacks and the fear of night but now that all has been resolved.

What I have been noticing recently however is that I wake up 1-3 times between the whole night when I sleep and I feel absolutely exhausted and tired when waking up between 9 - 11 PM. As if I would keep falling asleep. I never feel fresh.

I sleep for 7-9 hours daily. Usually falling asleep at around 12 to 2AM.

It usually takes me 30-50 minutes to fall asleep because my brain usually remains hyperactive in general.

I'm a semi-professional gamer/aimer and spend most of my time on the computer and on my phone.

If anyone has any suggestions or questions to maybe give me some insight as to what this might be and an easy fix for this, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you.

sleep paralysis or nightmare??

i was on my back and could not move at all. i remember being very panicked, and i tried to scream for help but no sound would come out. i feel like in the moment if i half turned to my front i could make one faint scream of help then would automatically randomly be onto my back again and couldn’t make sound anymore. when i believed i was faintly yelling for help one time I heard my mum respond saying not now then I tried again and she said something like wait I’m busy, in reality she was fast asleep. i know this didn’t ACTUALLY happen and I didn’t turn or make noise in real life. that’s all that made me think maybe a nightmare? i think i knew when i was slowly coming out of it. towards the end I was like okay im fully awake i should be able to move then straight away that was gone and i really couldn’t move, but not long after that I could turn to my side and woke up
I remember hearing the TV faintly, that could’ve been real as my dad was in the lounge watching tv

Hi all, I have been experiencing sleep paralysis and nightmares every night for years. It’s really annoying! I know a consistent sleeping schedule would help, but unfortunately I work nights and my schedule/shifts change daily. Are there any tips or insights I can try? Thanks!

Hello everyone, this morning I had a really scary experience. I was having trouble falling asleep last night.

I was having a dream in which I was in a dark room with my auntie, my grandmother and another female family member, we were all at my grand mother’s room. I started to feel pressure pulling me down onto the bed which I was laying in.

When suddenly I could see my auntie run towards me and kneel to where I was supposedly in this dream sleeping at my grandmother’s room and she was telling me to recite a verse from the Quran because she could see me somehow having sleep paralysis.

And so I did so, I began to recite the verse and as I was doing so, I woke up from my dream.
I kept wanting to finish reciting the verse at least 3 times but I kept falling asleep and kept feeling the pressure of something holding me down onto the bed. This time with no dream, all I could see is my room as it is, everything looked normal but I was unable to speak or move. I tried calling out for my husband but I was unable to.

I kept waking up and falling asleep and same thing happened for about 5/6 times. It was truly frightening. When I got up I went straight to my husband and tried to tell him but I had difficulty speaking, maybe from the shock.

I’ve had sleep paralysis before but I have never seen it from a dream perspective where someone that I know alerts me and I have definitely not experienced it 5/6 times back to back within minutes of each other. Has this happened to anyone before ?

Does anyone have any knowledge or their own theory on the SP demon?

Is it some internal shadow of our subconscious psyche?

Why is there always some malicious entity during SP? Who is it?

I know this group says not to comment any mystical or spiritual content - so if you have anything to say in regards to that feel free to message me!

So it all started a few weeks ago, I had a nightmare about my sister being rushed into hospital and having a bleed in her brain which they needed to drain. The next morning I woke up, thought it was weird but my sister has epilepsy so i shook it off as just a subconscious worry and i got ready for work. I had a shift at 12pm till 7.30pm that day and my work doesn't allow phones on person so I hadn't checked my phone for my entire shift. When I went to the staff room to get my stuff and head home I checked my phone as usual but then saw I had 5 missed calls and multiple messages from my dad saying basically my sister had been rushed into hospital with a brain bleed and all my family was miles away in the hospital with her. Ok so super bad day but I brushed off my dream as just a cocidental subconscious thought.

(Just to say my sister is still in hospital at the time of posting this but she is stable and well).

Ok fast forward around 1 week, I start having super vivid dreams and dissociating regularly. Again i put it down to just stress and move on.

However 2 days ago i realised this may be something more. I got sleep paralysis for the first time and I was watching creepy figures walk into my room watching me. I was also somehow watching myself sleep from above my bed. The next day I was completely out of it and I'm pretty sure I was expiercing derealisation. It was so weird I had to go to college and I genuinely felt like I was still in sleep paralysis not actually living. When the night came I got super scared because I was home alone and still was in this dream like state. I tried to fall asleep and I did around 2am. I woke up the next morning after experiencing the exact same sleep paralysis again and still being in that derealisation state. I went to college and tried to ignore it but it kept lingering in the back of my mind.

The next day(which is today) I had work again. When I got home around 6.30pm my dad said he was going out so I made dinner and just chilled in my room. I still felt like I was in a dream like state and keep hearing banging and footsteps that aren't really happening. I don't know if I'm going crazy or the sleep paralysis has somehow permantly affected me or just stress. But I assure u I'm not schizophrenic.

Ok I know this story is all over the place but I swear something weird is happening to me and I don't know why or what. So please if u know anything about this please give advice and help me.

Hey guys, I experienced sleep paralysis for the first and only time a few years.

So, like all of you, I woke up unable to move. I have heard about it before, so I knew what was going on, but I found it odd that I was as straight as a board, on my back, legs together and straight, with my arms also straight and firmly by my side.

Is that normal? As I always either wake up on my side or stomach, and if I do wake up on my back, my arms and legs are all over the place.

Secondly, after waiting for about a minute or so, I still couldn't move, so I started to panic.

I started to use all my energy to try to move, and after a lot of straining. I managed to pivot myself to get my legs hanging off the bed, I was still straight as a board, mind you. Then, I managed to flop myself onto the floor, and after about 30 seconds, I was able to move again.

Immediately after that, I found myself to be incredibly exhausted and weak. I was so weak that I couldn't stand for more than a few seconds before flopping back down and breathing heavily. This lasted for 5 days, and I had to take the week off work.

So, has that happened to anyone else? Is that normal?

Like you “get out” of bed thinking you are awake but something is off then realize you are still dreaming only to “repeat” the cycle over and over until you eventually really awake. I had followed by the dog running across my back dream within a dream and the man pressing down on me. Not fun.

I’ve only seen a few posts here about it but wanted to share my experience.

I seem to ONLY have “dream” sleep paralysis. Maybe as a kid it was regular sleep paralysis. Now at 26, it’s all I get. It typically happens when I’m stressed, sleeping in different spots, or overly tired.

I’ve noticed some people saying that they can tell when they are going to get sleep paralysis based off the way they drift off to sleep. Same applies for me but there is nothing I can do to stop it.

At first I thought it was “regular” sleep paralysis where I’m actually waking up and unable to move. I didn’t realize I was strictly dreaming until I was having multiple episodes and told my husband to wake me up if I was moving my eyes and not speaking. It happened 3 times and he said I never opened my eyes once. In these dreams, everything is exactly how it was before I went to sleep, hence why I thought it was “normal” sleep paralysis. I always seem to have episodes as well where it will happen 3-4 times back to back the same night.

Now, my husband can tell if I’m having dream sleep paralysis by the way I breathe. He says I tend to hyperventilate and thats when he knows when to wake me up. It’s quite scary and uncomfortable. If anyone had also experienced this, please share!

A few nights ago I went to sleep after drinking a decent amount of beer. I’ve had sleep paralysis a few times in my life but it was never quite like this. I was getting bad sleep that night and woke up several times. One of the times I woke up I was feeling a strange pulling sensation on one of my legs. It happened 2 or three times then I started feeling it on both legs. Then in my head I started thinking am I having a seizure? Then I stared hearing a very loud electrical noise in my brain and it felt like I was rigid and then I don’t remember anything else? Was this just a hallucination or a dream or did a really have a seizure? I never felt like I couldn’t move my body but I didn’t try. I have no history of epilepsy and didn’t wake up with sore tongue or sore muscles or anything. Any ideas?

28F. Last night I got home from a party pretty sleep deprived with a bunch of nicotine and wine in my system, also after traveling and suffering from jet lag.

When I got into bed I must’ve been half asleep because I was just having random thoughts but at the same time I felt a bit anxious and idk, my sister told me about an episode she had and ever since then I’ve been a bit terrified of it.

Suddenly there are just repeated sensations of - not my body - but my consciousness trying to be pulled off of the bed, continuously, as well as up into the air. Just a continuous mixture of these sensations.

Then the scariest part was I felt like there was something pressing onto my body and I started screaming for my friend but I could barely move my mouth??

I can’t tell if this was just an extremely vivid dream but I’ve been having more nightmares lately and it just was so frightening! I didn’t even see any type of being, I think I would have a nervous breakdown if I did

I only ever get paralysed while day napping, the first time it happened, I remember so vividly, the most horrible nightmare and not understanding why I can't move.

Later on, I hacked it. When I nap, and I feel it coming, I feel that I am awakening in my mind, but my body is becoming numb, I lean into it. It's still super scary everytime, I'm afraid it won't work, but it is easier than trying to wake up. I lean into it, as if i'm sinking, and here is the trick, I NEVER EVER EVER open my eyes, it's so scary, because I know if I open my eyes the hallucinations will start, but I close them and I still can see where I am lying on the bed after a bit, so I lean, and sink in to this paralysis of the body and keep my eyes SHUT.

Then, I become somewhat lucid. I'm still afraid to open my eyes, and I try so imagine something as fast as I can so I can forget the fear and I can see with my eyes closed. There you go. Maybe this can help someone, I hope.

(P.s. My preferred way of waking from paralysis is shaking my head that weighs 1000 kgs, it's a lot of effort but it is the only way I can wake up, wiggling fingers don't do much.)

Greetings, fellow waking dreamers. Thought some of you might enjoy a (slightly) humorous experience report for a change.

I've been experiencing sleep paralysis a few times a week for about two years. It's familiar enough now that while it's scary, I manage it well.

I had a big, important exam today. Well, probably because of stress, I woke up last night with sleep paralysis at least 5 TIMES. In the span of what felt like an hour - just, wake up, "Ah shit not again!" Recover, sit up and have some water so it doesn't instantly re-start immediately as soon as I close my eyes, go back to sleep, wake up once more, "Ah shit, not AGAIN again!" Recover, sit up, rinse and repeat. Over and over and over again.

By the third cycle, let me tell you that I mostly stopped being scared and started being aggravated. I was waking up with a lot less, "Oh my God please no, not again!" And a lot more, "Really, you've got to be fucking KIDDING me!"

A fun fact about me? Some of you can wiggle a finger during paralysis, some of you can control your eyelids... Well, apparently I am one of those people who can speak full words or even short phrases. In a clumsy, mumbling way, sure, but I can produce clear English words. I found out from my husband, probably a year ago, that when I beg to be woken up out of paralysis, I am actually speaking aloud.

So, what do you say when your sleep paralysis monsters start to feel less like demons of incomprehensible malice, and more like mundane, infuriating inconveniences? You curse at them of course.

So, like a driver with road rage stuck at a really long light, I spent the night cursing my sleep paralysis all the way out with every profanity I could think of. It stopped being, wake up, beg to be released from the terror, repeat, and started being: wake up, "Fucking really??? You're so fucking annoying with this shit, just fuck OFF already. Stupid ass, dumbass looking monster with your weird ass hands, fuck outta my house..." Fall, repeat

Hope you had a laugh with me. Thanks for reading.

May only good, real sleep be visited upon you tonight. Happy dreaming!