You wake up. You can’t breathe anymore. Don’t move anymore. You have a bad feeling that there is an evil entity in the room. You hear sounds. Strange noises. Footsteps. Wailing. And then you see it… The shadow. He wanders around your room. He sits on your chest and suffocates you. Does this scene look familiar? Then you may have suffered from sleep paralysis. Or is there a supernatural cause for this phenomenon?
Global panic
According to recent research, twenty percent of the population would sooner or later be confronted with this frightening experience. Some people experience it only once in their lives, others suffer from it every week. The exact cause of sleep paralysis is still far from clear. Is it an alien? An evil demon? Or just a biological reaction of our body? Everyone has their theory.
The only thing that is known for sure is that it is a phenomenon known all over the world. In English they call this being The Old Hag or shadow people. In German it was given the name Mare, an old Germanic word meaning nocturnal tormentor. In Zanzibar they call this entity Popobawa and in Japan Kanashibari.
Incubus
The legend of the incubus may also have arisen from this. The incubus is a male demon that sits on women’s chests at night, often to rape them. The female variant is called the succubus. The legend of the incubus can be found in various cultures. Those who have observed him describe him as a large, dark spirit.
Age-old problem
Sleep paralysis is also not a recent phenomenon. Already in the Middle Ages, experiences were recorded by people who had come into contact with The Old Hag . The eighteenth century Romantic painter Henri Fuseli made a series of paintings that had this entity as their subject. The Nightmare in his best-known work.
Other artists, mainly writers, also used The Old Hag as a source of inspiration. Well-known writers such as Maupassant (Le Horla), Kingsley Amis (The Green Man), Ernest Hemingway (The Snows of Kilimanjaro), Herman Melville (Moby Dick) and Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet) incorporated their experiences of sleep paralysis into their oeuvre.
Scientific explanation
The most obvious explanation is biological in nature. During REM sleep (when we dream) our body is completely paralyzed. Only the eye muscles and the heart are active. The muscles are so relaxed that they can no longer respond to what is going on in our minds. That has to be the case, otherwise we would literally perform the movements in our dreams.
Sometimes we feel this paralysis coming when we fall asleep or wake up. Then we can no longer move, talk or scream. Sometimes hallucinations also occur during this sleep paralysis. These may involve visual, auditory, tactile and emotional sensations: strange sounds, ghostly figures, difficulty breathing. They usually appear very realistic and are accompanied by extreme fear.
Preventing stress, getting enough exercise and ensuring a regular night’s sleep would be enough to help prevent sleep paralysis. If it still happens, scientists recommend moving your eyelids to initiate the waking process faster.
Alien abductions
It does indeed seem to be a very plausible explanation for Old Hag syndrome. Alleged abductions by aliens are also debunked by this theory. Victims of alien abductions say they are completely paralyzed when it happens. Moreover, the kidnappings almost always take place at night. Many researchers are convinced that the stories of alien abductions are nothing more than experiences of paralysis during sleep.
Mystery
According to paranormal researchers, they are malevolent entities, earthbound spirits, demons and witches that attack us during sleep. Too far fetched? Then remember that the sleep paralysis theory cannot explain everything. Did you know, for example, that sometimes entire places (for example villages) are simultaneously affected by the
Old Hag syndrome? There may be a natural explanation for this bizarre phenomenon. But perhaps one day it will turn out that the entities come from another world, to which the subconscious has access, and which is just as real as the world outside us. For example, some paranormal researchers claim that the biological phenomenon of sleep paralysis scares the person so much that it makes them more receptive to low, negative astral dimensions and spirits in the cosmos.