Sleep Paralysis: Petrifying Hallucinations, Waking Nightmares, Silent Screams

EYES WIDE SHUT
“Sleep paralysis” is generally tossed around under the umbrella term of “sleep disorder” along with insomnia, narcolepsy, restless legs syndrome, sleep apnea, snoring and teeth grinding, all of which are commonly treated at sleep disorder clinics. But unlike these other disorders that often come with nightly symptoms, and can substantially impact a person’s daily life, many people, including doctors and psychologists, have never heard of SP or merely dismiss it as nightmares, or a natural occurrence brought about by stress that can be easily explained away by science—because it can be.

Although SP, which has a prevalence of 20-40 percent, is more common than more well-known sleep disorders such as narcolepsy, which has a prevalence of .03-.16 percent, according to the International Classification of Sleep Disorders, it receives little attention by those who don’t have a taste for the supernatural.

For the most part, the medical community attributes SP to anxiety, because this has been proven. Studies show 35 percent of subjects with SP also reported a history of panic attacks during the day. Sixteen percent of those people who suffered from SP met the criteria for panic disorder, according to psychologist James Allan Cheyne of the University of Waterloo in Canada.

But for many who have SP, once they understand what is happening to them, they aren’t satisfied with a medical explanation. They don’t want or seek treatment, but continue their search for information on this condition that seems to teeter on the border of science and the supernatural.

So what exactly is sleep paralysis?