"Terror" in the Night

The day after the 5-year anniversary of September 11th, I am suddenly reminded of my strange, frightening, and thankfully, over, experience with sleep paralysis after reading Brit blogger Holly Finch's post relating how she realized that the moment in which she finally broke down with severe PTSD, several months after surviving the terrorist bombing of the London subway last year, had coincided with the 4th anniversary of 9/11.

Since finding out that I had a real sleeping disorder that is more common than most people realize, I became interested in the subject and have read many personal accounts and articles about it. Sleep paralysis has been often referenced by psychologists and general myth-debunkers who theorize that reports of alien abduction, ghost sightings, out-of-body experiences, contact with the occult, not to mention virtually all ancient myths and legends of occult phenomena passed down through the ages, could be explained by the visual and auditory hallucinations commonly reported by people who have suffered from sleep paralysis. A brief explanation: when we fall into REM sleep, our bodies produce natural compounds that paralyze our muscles to keep us from moving our bodies in response to dreams (i.e., preventing you from actually running when dreaming about running.) Most people remain unaware throughout their lives that our bodies are paralyzed during sleep, because we're asleep when it happens! In normal people, the "lock" on our muscles wears off simultaneously as our mind awakens from sleep. Sleep paralysis is the condition in which a person can partially wake from sleep but the body is still paralyzed. Although you are aware that you are awake in bed and unable to move, you are still not fully conscious and may lie paralyzed in a hallucinatory or dream-like state for a minute or even several minutes before the natural paralysis wears off. My experience was one of suddenly being awake but frozen stiff, or bound tightly, unable to cry for help or even open my eyes, and there was a strong sense that I was in the presence of something evil, which had taken grip of my entire body and was attempting to drag me into a dark, cold, terrifying place from which I would never be able to return. Often I would hear the sound of footsteps and whispering in my room, and a man and a woman laughing cruelly while I struggled to will my body to move. During one particular episode my eyes may or may not have been open, though I was still paralyzed, and I saw and felt what I thought were demons crawling up the bed, reaching for my throat to strangle me. Only by willing myself to push away the overwhelming fear and concentrate as hard as I could on one small movement-- to flutter my eyelashes, to wiggle my finger or my little toe, could I shake off the last vestiges of sleep and finally wake up-- breathless, sweating, terrified, but awake.

All of these hallucinations-- the sensing of an "evil" presence, the intense feelings of uncontrollable fear or dread, seeing demons or monsters and hearing footsteps, voices, and laughter are all commonly reported by people who suffer from this sleeping disorder. One common vision is of "The Night Crusher" -- a demon or monster that crouches on the sleeper's chest, pushing downward with its weight and attempting to slowly suffocate the sleeper (or so the sleeper thinks) to death. The vision of the Night Crusher, also sometimes known in literature and art as the Hag, or the Incubus, was even the inspiration for the famous 18th century painting "The Nightmare" by Henry Fuseli. It was a great relief to me, when I finally thought to research my problem, to find out that what I was experiencing a real and common medical problem. In fact, simply self-diagnosing myself was apparently enough to (hopefully) cure me forever of my nightly terrors-- the sleep paralysis stopped soon after I became aware of the disorder and has not happened since.

I suffered on and off from these strange episodes during what I thought lasted throughout the sleep-challenged years of college, when I went through a extreme period where I would wake paralyzed and panic-stricken almost every night-- a period of time I had thought started and then stopped just a few years ago, but what I am now beginning to think probably started exactly 5 years ago.

After September 11th.

I clearly remember being startled awake from a deep sleep by my friend Rebecca Kelly (now Rebecca O'Connor) calling my cell phone just before 7am on September 11th, 2001. I answered the call and I heard her voice speaking rapidly, tensely, but I was still disoriented from my deep sleep and only managed to pick out the phrase "Turn on your tv" out of the stream of words pouring into my ear. I went into the living room, turned on the tv, and in the cold light streaming through the slats of the blinds I crouched on the rug and watched what I now know was the inadvertent live broadcast of the second plane hitting the north tower of the World Trade Center.

I'm no psychologist. But now that I've realized that my sleep paralysis apparently began directly after the events of September 11th-- I am forced to wonder if, subconciously, I was, indeed, traumatized and very afraid. I was startled out of a very deep sleep that crisp fall morning; within minutes of my awakening, the most shocking and violent images I'd ever seen in my life were played in front of my eyes. It would make sense that for months after the worst terrorist attack in history, my sleep would be haunted by a terror of the night-- equal in imagined malevolence and indifference to suffering as the real enemy which had inflicted such devastation that our country would be "changed forever," as they say so often now.

During my waking hours in days and then months following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, I felt deep sadness, for all the victims and survivors, and then anger as the direction that the Bush Adminstration would choose to take our country became more and more clear. But fear-- no. I was not afraid. I knew, logically, that the chances of me or someone I know dying in a terrorist attack are pretty much non-existent. So I was not afraid in the way that many other Americans were afraid; fear was being dangled in front of us and many, foolishly, took the bait.

And that's why I say now, be it sleep paralysis, political paralysis, ignorant fear and endless war-mongering-- we must force ourselves awake from all of it! I know from experience that all you have to do is make one small movement... a flutter, a wiggle, whatever you can muster, and, yes, you can fight off the whispers and demons and manifestations of evil... and wake up to a bright, new morning.