HALLOWEEK-END SPECIAL: Sleep Paralysis Cinematic Universe

Halloweekend is a state of mind... and with that we bring you EVEN more creepy stories as we delve deep into the dark, mysterious and unnerving world of sleep paralysis. Not unlike doppelgangers and mimics, sleep paralysis has been documented for hundreds of years, with communities across the globe having folklore associated with the strangely similar beings that people encounter in this liminal space. From the origins of the word nightmare to the fashion of the hat man -- in the second part of our Halloween special, we're covering the science, lore and stories behind a common but terrifying phenomenon. 

Happy Halloween from Unpacking the Eerie! 

Sources:

• https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21974-sleep-paralysis
• https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18691361/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLTGu3Y404M
• https://neurolaunch.com/sleep-paralysis-out-of-body/
• https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/sleep-paralysis-names-around-the-world
• https://yokai.com/kanashibari/
• Documentary: Sleep Paralysis and the Phenomenon of the Shadow People
• Podcast: Monsters Among Us 
• Podcast: Sleep Paralysis News

Theme Song Title: Creepy Mood | Artist Name: Oleg Fedak

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 1:56

So my topic, which is tangentially related to Akshi's topic, because we heard about the dockballganger and sleep paralysis story. I'm covering sleep paralysis. So we're gonna learn a little bit more about that. And here's some stories tied. Yeah, it was really fucking creepy. It was really creepy to look into. Had to do like a couple hours in the evening. Uh not too close to going to bed because I don't want that shit. So enjoy. And if you're someone who experiences this, maybe, you know, be careful. I don't I don't know what triggers it, but I assume that it being in your consciousness doesn't help. Okay. So for folks who don't know, sleep paralysis is a condition that happens usually in between wakefulness. Usually people experience it right as they're going to sleep. Most often they're experiencing it right before waking up. It's this in-between place. And it can last a few seconds or up to 20 minutes, but a lot of people who experience it have a distorted sense of time. They describe it as like lasting forever. You can't move your body at all. And you feel like you're awake, but you're actually in this middle place. I kind of watched this documentary called Sleep Paralysis and the Phenomenon of the Shadow People, and I got some basic info about it. It's estimated about 3 million people report experiencing sleep paralysis annually. And the estimate for the percentage of people around the world who experience it at least once in their lifetime is around 30%. This is a loose statistic because I don't know, you know, who's reporting. Probably more people actually experience that at least once in their life. And as I was reading about it, I was like, oh, I think I've experienced sleep paralysis. Most people interviewed say that their first experience was in childhood. Usually it happens to people who fall asleep very easily. And it happens to people who have normal REM sleep. So it's not like you have to have like a disordered sleep cycle to experience sleep paralysis. Common experiences include an overwhelming fear or dread. You know, you're paralyzed, you can move your eyes, you can see your whole room, but you cannot move at all. Feeling like there's someone else in the room, the feeling of falling or floating, time distortion. So may last feel like it lasts for hours and hours and hours, which is consistent with dreaming. I think that when we dream, sometimes the dreams feel like they last forever. And it's usually only about like a max 20 minutes, right?

SPEAKER_03: 4:31

Yeah, I feel like time is very distorted in dreams.

SPEAKER_02: 4:34

And a lot of people who talk about sleep paralysis, they'll talk about like their dreams kind of being this intermediary between that. And yeah, I was thinking about a night that I was I had just moved into this new apartment. And yeah, I was trying to go to sleep. I drank mugwort tea that night, which I think makes your dreams kind of wild.

SPEAKER_03: 5:00

It does, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 5:01

Which you know, that's my bad. But I remember going to sleep and then having a dream that felt kind of creepy. I don't remember the details of that. Felt like mischievous and creepy and woke back up and then tried to go back to sleep, and so I did. And then in the dream, I'm sitting in the like at nighttime in a car parked, and to I'm in the driver's seat, and to the right of me is my friend, but like not my friend. It felt like an NPC of my friend in the dream because I was trying to talk to her and she wasn't responding like normally she would. Oh, I'm getting chills just thinking about it, it was so creepy. And then I felt like there was something in the car behind me, and I remember saying, Hey, I think there's something in the car, and then something grabbed my arm.

SPEAKER_03: 5:57

Wow, that's actually to my my doble ganger sleep paralysis. Okay, yeah. Weird, weird, yeah. That is really weird, and then I woke up, but I wasn't awake.

SPEAKER_02: 6:13

My eyes were closed, but I could see the whole room. Yeah. I mean, I was awake, but not awake, I was in my room. My eyes were closed though, but I could see my whole room. It felt like a muted, yeah, but I could not move. And then I remember thinking, oh fuck no, oh fuck no. If whatever it was that was in my dream, if I start seeing shit in this apartment, I just moved here, I can won't be able to sleep here. I was stressed out. And I remember thinking, I remember thinking, like, I was really trying to shake my body, and I was like, get the fuck up, get up, you know, talking to myself, and then trying not to look around because I didn't want to see any shadow people or whatever the fuck people see in sleep paralysis. And then I did shake, I woke up shaking and then got in. Did your eyes feel really heavy? I could tell my eyes were closed, but I could see the whole room. People describe this when they talk about astral projection.

SPEAKER_03: 7:08

Oh, yeah, that kind of makes sense. There's actually so many connections between the doppelgangers and mimics and sleep paralysis. Actually, I used to have a lot of sleep paralysis, mostly when I was a freshman in college and I had like a horrible sleep schedule. And I would come back from my 8 a.m. class and take a nap. And I would have these very mundane sleep paralysis where the same thing where I would wake up in my room, I would not be able to move. I would think I was awake. But so weird, I would sometimes think that like my sweetmates were in my room or other people in my room, and we would be having a conversation, and then I would wake up and know these things.

unknown: 7:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 7:47

So it wasn't scary. I've definitely had some scarier, obviously, but yeah, it's just interesting that some of them were just like weirdly mundane.

SPEAKER_02: 7:55

I think that's why I wasn't clocking that I was experiencing sleep paralysis because they weren't they didn't stand out to me as experiences that were scary, except this one did because it was I felt connected to the dream. It felt like I was like in a half place and I couldn't move. But yeah, people do describe what I'm describing when they're like, Oh, I think I astral projected or had an outer body experience, which people talked about, you know, astral projection, very woo-woo way of describing it, but outer body experiences, you know, how I guess had like a is more the umbrella.

SPEAKER_03: 8:32

It feels like we're astral projecting when we're dreaming, like maybe not always, but I feel like maybe sometimes we are, but not intentionally.

SPEAKER_02: 8:41

There's a lot of cultures across the globe that believe that. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, who knows? But all I know was that that was crazy, it was scary. And I remember being so mad, and I got up and I said, No, out loud. I said, Yes, and then I went and lit my incense, you know? Yeah, just in case your boundaries, yeah, and I was just like, I don't know what the fuck that was, but you're not welcome here. I don't want to have dreams about you, I don't want to be in sleep paralysis, I don't want you to be a sleep paralysis demon in my in my house. And if this is my brain stuff, my brain needs to behave because I need to be able to sleep in my apartment.

SPEAKER_03: 9:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 9:28

So I was talking to the I was talking to everything. I was talking to me. I was walking around the room. I looked, I looked, I looked funny, I'm sure. And I had not have not had an experience like that since, and I've not had creepy dreams like that since I was having creepy dreams like that for the whole week, kind of little bits. That was the same And that was the peak. That was the peak. Within the same six months, I had that dream that was like very creepy, that I think was like hold old hag-like. Yeah, so it was very odd that people have these like shared experiences. I don't I don't know what to make of it.

SPEAKER_03: 10:06

I don't know why, I'm just thinking like collective conscious something, collective consciousness tapping in.

SPEAKER_02: 10:13

Yeah, very young yin. Yeah, yeah. I was thinking back in when I was younger, I don't know that I ever had really sleep paralysis. No, one time I had woken up very briefly and turned on the light, and I think noticed that I my body was like on the like laying down still, and I had sat up and turned on the light. I don't know why I was doing that. I was like an automatic reaction. I think when I wake up in the morning, that was always what I did was turn on the light because it was close to my bed, but that didn't feel scary, it just felt odd, it felt like I was sleeping. Yeah, you know, could could have been anything, could have been a dream because that's what it felt like. And then I think I used to also wake up with this like feeling like a bunch of people were standing around my bed staring at me. Yeah, like on a like on a regular basis, would wake up kind of like stressed about it, and then try to tell myself, like, there's nobody here, you can't see anybody here. This is very silly, you're just sleepy, you're just tired. But it happened regularly until I was like 20. And then at that point, I was so tired of it that I was like, you know, maybe if I just try to talk it out, it'll go away. So I said, I don't know who you are, but this is my bed, and I'm trying to sleep, and this is really rude, and I don't want you here. You're not welcome in my room, you're not welcome in my bed. This is so creepy, go away, and then it stopped, and it stopped.

SPEAKER_03: 11:41

Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 11:42

So, you know, whether whether I was talking to myself or I was talking to the spirits, it worked. So, you know, now that's always my go-to that when things are really creepy, I'm just like, no, get out, yeah, it works.

SPEAKER_03: 11:59

It does work. Well, what I've learned is that they are very respectful of boundaries in the spirit world, unlike in the material world. So if you say like go away or very specific with instructions like that, most of the time they will go away.

SPEAKER_02: 12:16

Yeah, unless they're sinister as fuck, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I always feel like I'm falling before I fall asleep. I used to feel feel that a lot as a young person, like I was falling in like a half middle place, and now I take GABA pentin to sleep, and sometimes I get the same sensation. Which makes sense because I learned about when you enter REM sleep, it releases a bunch of GABA and GABA works together with the motor neurons, and the your muscles stop you stop getting access to your muscles. So it makes sense that like the taking GABA pentin, you know, induced that feeling.

SPEAKER_03: 12:55

Yeah. I used to feel that when I was younger too, but I don't feel it as much anymore. Like I would feel like I'm about to fall off of the bed.

SPEAKER_02: 13:04

Yeah, I used to feel that all the time, and now it's come back with the gabapentin.

SPEAKER_03: 13:08

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_02: 13:10

So I'm just like flirting with sleep paralysis all the time.

unknown: 13:13

Oh no.

SPEAKER_02: 13:14

Okay. Time distortion, out-of-body experiences, feelings of suffocation, pressure on the chest. Sometimes a company was seeing someone or something crawling onto them or sitting on their chest, hearing strange noises, seeing shadowy figures. Most common is this like kind of no face, glowing eyes, kind of like humanoid shape.

SPEAKER_03: 13:36

I think one of the things that happened during the Annabelle story was like one of them had sleep paralysis, and the Annabelle doll was like crawling on his body. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02: 13:50

Yeah. Yeah, people do describe that a lot. That's really common. The sitting on the chest is really common.

SPEAKER_03: 13:58

I got chills.

SPEAKER_02: 13:59

Yeah. Yeah. The first time I heard about sleep paralysis, I was in college, and I remember I was paying extra attention to it because I was in psych classes where naturally these things do come up. And one of my friends, she said she has she was meditating a lot. And during that time in her life, she experienced sleep paralysis like all the time, and also outer body experiences all the time. And she described seeing a man with a hat look looking over her looking while she was laying standing over her bed, watching, staring at her. Yeah, and I said, Oh, that's scary. And she said, I didn't feel scared. I don't know, and didn't ever feel malevolent, but it would happen all the time. And then I was in a site class where they were talking about sleep paralysis and people were sharing their experiences, and someone described the same thing, pretty much variation of it, but the same thing. And then I thought, that's very now, yeah. And then I heard about the hat man like years later, and I learned that oh, a lot of people are seeing the hat man. But what's interesting is like all these people I'm hearing from, talking to, like they had to learn what sleep paralysis was. They thought they had were having a unique experience that was just them, you know? Yeah, and that's how a lot of people share their experiences. And I'm gonna talk about this later, but I found a website called the Hat Man Project to collect stories of everyone who's ever experienced sleep paralysis and saw Hat Man.

unknown: 15:30

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02: 15:32

So yeah, creepy. I have a really creepy story that is also my I'll ask him if I can use his name in here, but I am gonna share the story because it's very creepy. Did I tell you about this? Wilson?

SPEAKER_03: 15:46

He I think so, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 15:48

Yeah, he lived in this, he moved into this, yeah, in LA, and it was an incredible deal, it was a huge house.

SPEAKER_03: 15:55

And I remember being like always be suspicious.

SPEAKER_02: 16:00

Why is it so cheap? Is it haunted or something? Oh, is it a joke, you know? And he was like, ew, Shana, don't say that. I said, Okay, my bad. My bad. It's not haunted. You got a great deal in LA, it's not haunted. Like LA's notorious for haunting stories. I don't know what that's about, but it's notorious for that. And then we go up to his room, and I remember looking at the closet, going, I really don't like the vibe of this closet. But I remember looking at the closet being like, This closet gives me bad vibes. And he goes, Ew, Shana, don't say that. There's like an entrance to the attic in there.

SPEAKER_01: 16:41

Ew.

SPEAKER_02: 16:42

And I said, Ew, why is that in your closet? And he goes, I don't know, but stop saying stuff that's creeping out. You know? Later he told me that he had a sleep paralysis experience. I think that week.

SPEAKER_03: 17:03

Like before you came.

SPEAKER_02: 17:05

Either it was like right after I left, or he waited to tell me until I left. But I feel like it was the former because I don't know if he would have spared me from that. Yeah. And then he said that he woke up, he had a few experiences. He woke up one night, he couldn't move. He saw a woman sitting at the edge of the bed, staring at the closet. And then the next thing he knew, she was laying on top of him.

SPEAKER_03: 17:33

Wow, that escalated very fast.

SPEAKER_02: 17:35

Yeah, she yeah. And then he said that he was struggling to breathe and he felt a lot of pressure on his chest. And then when he woke up, he was so scared. And then a few days later, or a week later, very close to it, he woke up, sleep paralysis couldn't move. And to the left of him was hearing this deep breathing in his ear, like this masculine deep breathing. And he's really, really trying to look to see what it is. And this voice keeps saying, Don't look at me, don't look at me. And as he continues to try to shake his head, he like gets angry and is yelling at him, I told you not to fucking look at me, don't look at me. Screaming. Yeah, I have chills. It's such a creepy fucking story.

SPEAKER_03: 18:22

So creepy.

SPEAKER_02: 18:22

And then finally, when he wakes up, he's like crying. He calls his mom.

unknown: 18:27

Oh no.

SPEAKER_02: 18:29

Yeah. He calls his mom because I don't know what to do. And then he was like, My roommates, they they got saged. And he told me that the sleep paralysis stopped when those girls left. And he had had a lot of conflict with them. I forget what the conflicts were about, but the vibes were not good. So I wonder if there's some kind of connection to like being in conflict or you know. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 18:54

Just the I mean, usually hauntings are connect, yeah, connected to some kind of something happening. Like people don't really experience hauntings when everything's like chill.

SPEAKER_02: 19:10

It's true. Things are happening. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But that that story creeped me the fuck out. I said, oh my god, how do you still sleep in that room? He was like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_03: 19:23

Yeah, that's really scary.

SPEAKER_02: 19:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 19:26

Yikes.

SPEAKER_02: 19:27

Yeah. But it was uh also creepy to hear about the closet door, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 19:33

Right, yeah. Scary.

SPEAKER_02: 19:35

So I was looking at just like really briefly the history of sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis has been documented all over the world for really long time. And in every most cultures, they have a word for sleep paralysis or or something like it. And you can also see like versions of it in in paintings of old paintings all over the place. So I'm gonna start with like the etymology of nightmare. This is from mentalfloss.com. So this article written by Carrie Xander says before time and hyperbole watered down the term nightmare, once referred to the nocturnal torture sleepers experience at the hands of malicious spirit called Mare. According to Etymology Online, it likely derives from the Proto-Indo-European root mere, meaning to harm, and refers to a typically a female demon who paralyzes sleepers and suffocates them. This suffocation is one of the hallmarks of sleep paralysis across cultures. It's often believed to be the mare riding or sitting on people for sinister pleasure. Mare and it's in its many linguistic variants, Mara in Old Norse, Mare in Old Dutch, Mora in many Slavic languages, has given way to other modern words for nightmare, like French Kauchmar and the Dutch Nacht Marie. Given that sleep paralysis describes the liminal space between waking and dreams, the word mare may also relate to the Old Norse Marie, which is meant which means borderland. So, like, you know, there's like remnants of this all over the place. And because we're speaking English, I think, you know, starting with the relevance of nightmare. And also, I didn't know nightmares used to be used in a more specific way. Now we talk about nightmares really broadly, but I guess that it they think that the origins are kind of from the specific experience of sleep paralysis and sleep paralysis adjacent experiences.

SPEAKER_03: 21:45

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02: 21:47

And all of these places also have like a spiritual explanation for them, too. It'll that's how they conceptualize it. It's less talked about as a like scientific phenomenon, usually talked about as like a spiritual one, which is consistent with pretty much everything else. Like we talked about in you know, the asylums episode and the witch hunt episode, right? That like things like schizophrenia and things like that were usually deemed a like spiritual thing. In Germany, the word for it is hexendruken. I just thought it was kind of funny.

SPEAKER_04: 22:26

Interesting.

SPEAKER_02: 22:27

Hexendruken. I might be saying uh I might be saying a lot of these incorrectly because I don't know, but I think that's what it is. And in Germany, they blame the witches.

SPEAKER_03: 22:39

Classic.

SPEAKER_02: 22:40

It means witches pressing and it's pin blame on evil enchantresses for the suffering of sleepers. And this tradition continued through the Salem Witch trials, which led to multiple deaths because people felt physically oppressed by the in by the night by people who were accused as witches. And I was just thinking, like, were men being really horrible and haunted by their own actions and having nightmares and experiencing sleep paralysis and are blaming the people that they victimized for that and would rather see them dead than have to live with that.

SPEAKER_03: 23:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 23:22

That's what I was thinking.

SPEAKER_03: 23:30

Oh, okay. What does that stand for? It seems like paralysis is a different word.

SPEAKER_02: 23:38

Okay. Thank you for sharing that. Among the Yaruba of southwest Nigeria, they call them ogan uru, which means nocturnal warfare. And they believe that it can only be fixed through exorcisms. In Japan, the word for sleep paralysis translates into bounded metal. It's kanashibari. They talk about it similarly, similarly. The eyes are open, the mind is half awake, real and dream worlds, they mix together. And stories about this go back to like ancient stories when they feel like it's a supernatural force that's enacted upon the body. The most common one, they feel like it comes from possession, and that's why sleep paralysis happens.

SPEAKER_03: 24:28

And they talk about paralysisms.

SPEAKER_02: 24:31

Uh-huh. They talk about reading Buddha Sutras to drive out the possessing animal spirit. They've there's animal spirits specifically that they are feeling like are taking over. Yeah. And then there are other kinds of spirits, yokai, that can inflict sleep paralysis. Also, sometimes they talk about people or things haunting rooms at night, flipping over pillows, flipping over the pillows of people who are sleeping. They also talk about a crushing weight on their chest. Sometimes they find the ghosts of a small child sitting on them.

SPEAKER_03: 25:05

You uh huh.

SPEAKER_02: 25:08

Yeah. Similarly, talk about this.

SPEAKER_03: 25:10

Like scary.

SPEAKER_02: 25:12

It's true. I have a story about that.

SPEAKER_03: 25:15

Oh my god. Yeah. Excited but scared.

SPEAKER_02: 25:18

Yeah. Some people describe a like powerful arms gripping, gripping tight, keeping, keeping them immobile. Yeah, there's a story about like this invisible force tugging on this dude's legs and dragging him out from under his futon. Oh my gosh, that's so scary.

SPEAKER_03: 25:34

That's like a horror movie.

SPEAKER_02: 25:36

Uh-huh. Yeah. And they also talk about seeing a ghost of a middle-aged woman rising up above the ceiling. Yeah, so these are all consistent with these other experiences from all over the world. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 25:50

Yeah, it's definitely really weird how it's like people seeing similar people from like different cultures seeing similar things.

SPEAKER_02: 25:59

Yeah, not just the same bodily experience, or not just like scary things, but yeah, same things. The same thing. Yeah. Yeah. In Mexico, there's se me cibió el muerto, and it means a dead body climbed on me.

SPEAKER_03: 26:17

Literal.

SPEAKER_02: 26:18

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. There's like we, as we know, old hag, which is found across Britain and all the places that they colonize. Colonized. And I'll tell you some stories about the old hag, sometimes called the night hag, but people they they talk about it as like a witch, you know, a withered crone perches on top of the sleeper's chest and holds them down. In Turkey, there's the Karabasan, which means the dark assailor or the dark presser. There's the pen of fialtes in Greece, which is translates to jumping on you. They think it's the dirty work of a the trickster pen, the god of the wild.

SPEAKER_03: 27:00

I was wondering if it was connected to that.

SPEAKER_02: 27:03

Uh-huh. Companion of nymphs, player of annoying pampipes. Pan was believed to terrorize humans for laughs, hence the origin of the word panic.

SPEAKER_03: 27:13

Oh wow, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_02: 27:15

Uh-huh. I didn't know that either. Till today.

SPEAKER_03: 27:18

So sometimes etymology is fun.

SPEAKER_02: 27:21

It's true. It's true. Like it's interesting.

SPEAKER_00: 27:26

Oh yeah, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Bathory. That is a wild as fuck.

SPEAKER_02: 27:32

That's truly so wild. But it's interesting to hear about like the terrorizing for laughs because in my dream, it felt mischievous. It felt like I was scared, and I felt like they were having a laugh. Whatever was in my dream, the vibe. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 27:50

So people are picking up on similar like the person in your or like the thing in your car, you mean?

SPEAKER_02: 27:54

Yeah, the thing that grabbed my arm. I could tell they felt it was funny. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 27:58

Scary.

SPEAKER_02: 27:58

Or that was the energy. So it's interesting to see like these stories of like not just sinister, not just like dark, but like dark, and also they think is funny. Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_03: 28:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 28:10

There's also the Popubawa in Tanzania. And this one's really dark. It's it's in the Zanzibar area and it's said to be a spirit that sexually assaults its victims. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It means Batwing in Swahili, and apparently it's a reference to the shadow cast by a spirit, which is a shapeshifter that can take on any form. It first appeared in like was first popularized, I guess, when people were like reporting seeing it in the mid-60s on the island of Pemba after a political revolution. Widespread belief in the nocturnal phantom led to collective panic in 1995 that culminated in a murder. And then they talk a little bit about how Zanzibar was like full of like colonizers and traders at the time. So they argue that this particular entity is like something that was born out of the horrors committed during slavery and blends together multiple multiple cultural mythologies and folklore that then was like shared in people's experiences. And people, it says that victims are urged to talk about the Popobawas assaults or suffer repeat visits. So there's something about like you need to talk about it, otherwise it comes back to haunt you. So interesting. Violence. Yeah, patriarchal violence, trauma. Yeah. There's also the Gawi Nulim in Korea, and it's it literally means like nightmare and to be pressed down. There's the Inuit version, which is the Uku Mangyun, and it refers to an attack by shamans or malevolent spirits when a person is sleeping. They believe that your soul is vulnerable when you sleep.

SPEAKER_04: 30:09

And so right.

SPEAKER_02: 30:12

Yeah. There's the Pisadera in Brazil, and they're talking about a long-fingernailed crone. Yeah. And it translates to she who steps. It says that she lurks on rooftops and attacks those who go to sleep belly up after particularly indulgent meals.

SPEAKER_03: 30:34

On your back.

SPEAKER_02: 30:35

Uh-huh. It's consistent, right? Yeah. She's believed to have evolved from a Portuguese myth of this. This says a red cape friar who entered homes through in through a keyhole, placed his hand on the sleeper's chest, tortured his victims. And then the rest of her story, they think that they're pulling it from the Tupi people about a malevolent old woman who wouldn't let people sleep. So this old hag vibe is everywhere too. There's also the Pasanta, which is an enormous demon dog from Catalan.

SPEAKER_03: 31:05

Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 31:07

Who occasionally appears as a cat, once in a while. But they say that has legs of iron and black fur, as thick as lead, and likes to lie down on you when it isn't supposed to. Yeah. Can walk through the your the walls. And I do have a story about this as well. They don't call it that, but they there are I have stories that echo all of these things. And then also in Islamic tradition, there's jinn, which are entities that they, you know, feel like they can interact with the living in their sleep, can possess people, can haunt people, not quite ghosts or spirits entities, but similar vibe.

SPEAKER_03: 31:46

So many connections to doppelgangers and mimic. It's funny that we chose these kind of separately, but there's so much actually. Overlap between them.

SPEAKER_02: 31:56

I mean, to be fair, you recommended this.

SPEAKER_03: 32:00

Oh, I don't remember doing that, but yeah, use it. I didn't know that there are so many parallels between sleep paralysis and mimics.

SPEAKER_02: 32:13

Yeah, it makes sense. All the creepy things.

SPEAKER_03: 32:17

Yeah, they're all related. Yeah. When you did your research, did you learn about the nightmare deaths? There's I think I told you about it. There's this phenomenon that happened with Southeast Asian refugees mostly, who they were seeing the night hag. It was men. They were seeing the night hag in their sleep paralysis dreams for like weeks. And then they had just random deaths that were unexplained after that. And then it just stopped happening. Like it was happening for like a period of time right after they immigrated to wherever they did after the war. And then it just stopped happening after a little while. And yeah. Interesting.

SPEAKER_02: 33:02

Yeah, all the stories that I heard that included the night hag or whatever version of that, they were always men.

SPEAKER_03: 33:10

Yeah, interesting.

unknown: 33:12

Interesting.

SPEAKER_03: 33:13

So it's a very Pontianic vibe. I think. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally. Kind of similar to, I guess, that like character in Insidious that that woman always sees. She's like a creepy lady. I don't know if you remember.

SPEAKER_01: 33:27

Oh. There was a lot of creepy people in Insidious.

SPEAKER_03: 33:30

I know, I know. Yeah. Sounds like that. The movie's just like creepy music. And I guess it's like kind of like about astral projection. Totally. Beyond or yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 33:41

It's a good it's good. It's like one of those horror movies where I'm like, oh yeah, creep me the fuck out. Yeah. I some a friend of mine had like a VR headset that like you could use with your phone.

SPEAKER_04: 33:54

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02: 33:54

And then you put you put the phone in there and it projects things. And there was like an insidious promotion where you could go in there. It was very creepy. I was very creeped out. Your brain's not trained to do VR.

SPEAKER_03: 34:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 34:12

You know, like I knew cognitively, like, this is very fake. I was feeling like I was in there. It was very creepy.

SPEAKER_03: 34:20

That's scary. That is very scary. They have that song in it. It's like tip toe. By the way, you know. It's like really weird.

SPEAKER_02: 34:32

These poor people, you know, like these people who sang that song are probably dead. But you know, on the other side, they're like, what the fuck?

SPEAKER_03: 34:40

I was you know, it wasn't meant to be scary.

SPEAKER_02: 34:43

Yeah, they're just like a couple, they're just like a couple of dweeb guys, you know, like having a good time together.

SPEAKER_03: 34:51

Yeah. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02: 34:53

And then they're like, now they made it into this horror movie. This is so sad. That's not what we meant. That's funny. So now I have a collection of stories that I felt like kind of echoed all of these common experiences. So try to remember, you know. I'll try to bring them back also, but you're gonna hear little remnants of all of these pieces of folklore throughout these stories. All these stories are from, I think, American people who submitted their stories into podcasts, like they would call and leave message. There were a few people who were on like documentary, uh listen to another podcast. Yeah, they creep me out. So starting slow. The first person, when her name's Patricia, she said that she's experienced sleep paralysis for most of her life, started when she was a kid. And I'll tell you more about like the stuff she experiences later, later, mostly because I feel like it it goes better in the later sections, you know. And also she finds a way to like manage them. So I'll leave that at the end so it's not leaving you with like all of this inconclusive, creepy vibes. But she said that the first experience she had, she woke up in the middle of the night, couldn't move, and heard chain beat chains beating a metal barrel. It's what she said that it sounded like. She said it was really loud, and she heard this regularly, would wake up often to hear these noises. And she said that it was a really ominous feeling. It was really scary for her. And there was a spiritual lady who was on this documentary who, you know, don't know anything about the spiritual lady, but she seems to think that Patricia was tapping into a past, a time in the past. Like, as if that, you know, that had happened, like something was happening there at the house she was in, like long, long time ago. And she was like in this middle place, able to like hear things that were happening at that time.

SPEAKER_03: 36:55

Like when there's something that happened that like has a lot of energy associated with it, so it's like kind of repeats. Oh, on a loop.

SPEAKER_02: 37:04

Yeah, it's kind of consistent. Yeah, it's consistent with that kind of thing. There's also Titus. Titus said that it started when he was nine years old, and his very first experience was him laying in bed, waking up frozen, and he's looking at his pile of clothes. It's interesting because like a lot of these people also describe being very poor. And it makes sense because later we learn about like people who are more prone when they're really stressed, or yeah, that kind of thing. But there are a lot of people who described their first experiences being a kid, and they always had these backstories that they included in the narrative about being poor. Because he was describing why he had a big pile of clothes on his floor, and the the reason for that was that he couldn't really afford to do laundry regularly, so he would reuse his clothes often. So he always had this big pile of clothes, and he looked at it one night and he felt like it was growing bigger than it was. And he said that he saw red eyes appear in the pile that grew, and he saw it step out of the laundry basket and just stood there staring at him. And he said that it felt like hours and hours and hours of this thing staring at him until the like sun came up and he was ready to go to school. And when the sun came up, he could move again and then it disappeared. Yeah. And so he had been experiencing that kind of thing ever since. There's Killian, who said that he's his first experience was in college, which apparently it's really common for students specifically to experience sleep paralysis as well. Probably has a lot to do with the stress and the, you know, your sleep schedules off. Yeah. And he said that he woke up and it was eerily silent. And he was living in a dorm, so he had a dormate at that time. And he heard this like deep, slow breathing crouching next to his bed in his ear. For about an hour, he's experiencing this and he cannot move, or at least it feels like that. And he said, I don't think I've ever tried to use my voice harder than in that moment. I felt like my mouth was forced shut. It was painful to try to open it.

SPEAKER_04: 39:11

Whoa.

SPEAKER_02: 39:12

He was trying to scream really badly and he couldn't. Yeah. And he there was a point where he thought he was screaming, but his roommate didn't hear him. So I guess he wasn't. And people describe this too. They think they're yelling, but they're actually whispering if they're saying anything at all. And he woke up and he was just like completely sweaty and terrified.

SPEAKER_03: 39:31

So that was one of like your friends.

SPEAKER_02: 39:33

There's a lot of paramels, man. Telling you.

SPEAKER_03: 39:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 39:36

All right. I'm eating oranges. Paramours. Yeah. So those are just like, you know, little amouse bouge of sleep paralysis to get you started. The rest of the stories are gonna escalate. So I also listen to this, yeah. I also listen to this podcast called Monsters Among Us. And from what I gathered, it's this guy who puts on a creepy voice and has listeners submit stories of paranormal experiences and stuff. Yeah. These are all calls from his listeners. The first person that I listened to was Michelle. She said that, you know, she would struggle to sleep sometimes. But the first time that she experienced this, she was having this, like, you know, insomnia moment. And she doesn't recall ever falling asleep. She felt like her eyes were open the entire time, but all of a sudden she felt like something pull her hair. And then she felt pressure all over her body. She said that she was felt like she was falling into the couch, so consistent with other experiences. She said I was screaming and screaming and no sound came out. I was paralyzed with fear. And then she was like, never slept on my couch ever again after that. So some people experience sleep paralysis as like a full body sensation. They're not seeing or hearing anything, it's just a stuckness and a dread, and like something is pressing them down, like they can't get up. And this feeling that like something else is there, but they can't confirm. Other people experience a lot of other things. David, whose story was on the sleep paralysis news podcast, definitely experienced more. This is kind of a long story. He's been experiencing sleep paralysis for 22 years. So it started in college in the Philippines, 1992. And he said he started experiencing sleep paralysis when he became Christian. So he attributes this to, I think sleep paralysis experiences really strengthens his faith throughout the story. So it's interesting to hear. But I think I would be curious because I think when people turn to religion, something happened to them, you know. So I'm curious about like, is there a big grief, is there a big trauma or something that's making him more vulnerable to these kinds of experiences? That was just my thought. But he said it happened multiple times a night, every night, when he first started in 1992. And he said before this he had no interest or focus on paranormal things. They like didn't face him. And he said that like the feeling when you're in sleep paralysis is like all the goodness is stripped out of the room. The first thing that happens is that fear envelops you even before you see anything. The first time he experienced it, he said that he saw what looked like a witch's hand pressing down on him, long fingers, long nails, grabbing his neck. The old hag. Other nights he says he saw shadows at the edge of his room coming through the door. Some look like claws. He said that he would pray and it would stop. Yeah, you know, so he's really like, Oh, it's they're trying to get me because I'm becoming Christian now. That was his thing. That was his whole thing.

SPEAKER_03: 42:38

That was his theory.

SPEAKER_02: 42:40

That was his theory, yeah. And he's like, it prayed and it's he prayed and it stopped. Oh, of course. He's they're trying to get me. I'm a man of God, they can't get me. Sometimes he would hear noises. Sometimes he heard someone calling his name. Yeah. And I've heard an I heard another story where this dude was talking about I heard my mom call my name and I knew she wasn't home, which is a connection to the mimic. Mimic. Uh-huh. He said it was so creepy. He said that the hairs went up on the back of his neck because he knew nobody was home, but it sounded just like his mom. Yeah.

unknown: 43:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 43:13

That guy had a lot of paranormal stories, which were a little less sleep paralysis, so I didn't include them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this guy lived in the Philippines, he moves to the US. Right when he moves, he experiences sleep paralysis bout again. This time he sees two hooded beings at the side of his bed, eyes lit, faces void, shadow figures.

SPEAKER_03: 43:31

Whoa. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 43:32

The next time he saw two at the bottom of his bed, one hovering over him. He prayed and it stopped for a while. The second peak happened in 2005 when he was really getting into the end times.

SPEAKER_03: 43:42

Like he was like, he's like prepper, kind of.

SPEAKER_02: 43:46

I don't know if he's a prepper, but there's this whole section in the Bible that's about the end times.

SPEAKER_03: 43:51

Oh, okay. So he like was believing that that was gonna happen and thinking about it. I guess so.

SPEAKER_02: 43:57

I guess. So now he's really like they're trying to get me every time I'm trying to deepen my faith. When I'm really like, why are you into the end times, David? What's happened to you? He didn't share anything about that. But, anyways, this time he hears it's a different experience. He wakes up, can't move. He's hearing weird, sharp noises in his ears like a machine. And he's married at this point now, and he's like wanting his wife to wake him up, and she's not doing that. And he thinks that he's making a fuss, but he's not, he's asleep. And one time he said he was able to wake himself up and quotes he turned around, he saw his body, and then he said, I got scared, so I just laid back down.

SPEAKER_03: 44:42

Which you know is kind of like he was fully awake, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 44:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said that I scared. Why is my body right there? I'm just gonna lay it back down, yeah, which is consistent with these outer body experiences or what other people would call astral projecting, which Aksha shared a little earlier, but it's described as like an experience, a sensation of floating or flying, with the ability to observe one's physical body from an external perspective and travel to other locations or dimensions. And astral projection is also one of those things that's been documented and like cultural folklore and you know, religions and that kind of thing for thousands of years. Also, there's some CIA documents about astral projecting.

SPEAKER_03: 45:25

So yeah, totally. Maybe we should look into that. The gateway, something or the other. I don't I don't remember.

SPEAKER_02: 45:31

Yeah, something like that. He learned it's not until this time, 2005, he's been experiencing sleep paralysis for this entire time that he learns that sleep paralysis is a thing. He thought he was just solo experiencing all of this stuff, he thought he was having a own time, like a whole time by himself. Yeah, and he wasn't really telling anyone because it sounds crazy, yeah. You know, yeah, or that's what he was feeling. And he said that his the of course these experiences reinforce his faith. He said he told his friend who introduced Christianity to him, and this guy's freaked out. He said, just pray about it, and then he's like, I could tell it was freaking him out, so I stopped talking to him. You know, this guy's like, Oh no, my friend's possessed, I don't know what to do, I can't help him. That's what I'm assuming. I don't know, I don't know this guy. Yeah, yeah. Um, I'm making up stories, and so he said, You know, so I'm on this podcast because no one in my life wants to hear about it. Scares them. Oh yeah, he said he talks to try to talk to his friend kids about it, his kids don't want to hear it, his wife doesn't want to hear it, his BF doesn't want to hear it. So he's like, I'm just here on this podcast.

SPEAKER_03: 46:37

Damn, yeah. Well, he has like a different community than than us.

SPEAKER_02: 46:42

That's true, yeah. Well, they're all pretty Christian, so I think they're like, you know, it's the devil.

SPEAKER_03: 46:49

Yeah, scary. I don't know. Anytime anyone says they have a story that's creepy, I'm like, oh my gosh, I want to hear it right now.

SPEAKER_02: 46:59

Well, maybe after this podcast, David will be able to get his little maybe he'll get a little support group. There are a bunch of people on the internet wanting camaraderie around this experience.

SPEAKER_03: 47:08

Yeah, I'm sure there should be a sleep paralysis support group, honestly. I'm sure someone out there has started a sleep paralysis support group.

SPEAKER_02: 47:15

It sounds very terrifying.

SPEAKER_03: 47:17

Support group, so I'm sure there's sleep paralysis.

SPEAKER_02: 47:20

Yeah, and people are really unhelpful. They're you they're like, This happened to me, and they're like, I'm sure it's just a bad dream. And I'm just like, bad dream, schmadd dream. It's terrifying. What's wrong with you? Yeah, like even if we don't, you know, believe in this other stuff, like that's very scary experience. Okay, his third peak was when he was getting into messianic Judaism. This is what I'm saying. This guy is going through stuff and he's leaning into religion every time, but he's not telling us what he's going through.

SPEAKER_03: 47:47

What's going on in the back?

SPEAKER_02: 47:49

Why is he doing that? No one just uh catapults really deeply into religion for no reason. Anyways, it's not my business. You don't have to share it with us, David. It's okay. So he gets the paralysis and he stands up. He's like, I got this. I stood up this time. He said he saw two dark orbs coming from his stomach that bounced out of the room. He went to the other room, tell his friend what has happened had happened, because I guess his friend was staying there. And he was saying, Hey, hey, you know, this was the friend that introduced him to Christianity. And the friend was responding, like kind of like, uh-huh, but in deep sleep. So he was like, I'm just gonna leave him alone. And then when he comes back to his room, he sees his body laying there. And then he said, I thought about walking around, but then I got scared and I laid down. So he's having out-of-body experiences, he's having this whole checklist, he's experienced all of it. I guess makes sense 22 years of sleep paralysis. And he says to this day, it still happens to him like once a year.

SPEAKER_03: 48:52

Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 48:53

So that's David. Damn, Brian moving on to another person. So Brian, this is from the Monsters Among Us podcast. This is one of the people who called. I love to just think that people out there in the world are just listening to these podcasts and calling to leave their stories. I don't know, it was just kind of a cute. They they're like, I'm an avid listener, I listen all the time. It's made me feel less alone in my experiences. I experience a lot of weird stuff that's like I would consider paranormal, but everyone says I'm like kind of crazy and you know, or like they don't get it, but it's really affirming, yeah. And I said, Wow, they got a support group with the podcasts.

SPEAKER_03: 49:35

I mean, people are like super gaslighty towards people who have paranormal experiences, and I'm just like, what's that about? Just like relax, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 49:48

Relax. We're on a floating rocket in the middle of nothing. Relax. Like, are you serious? Oh my god. Like, money is fake. Relax, you know, like there's a lot, there's a lot of stuff that you believe in just because, yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_03: 50:06

It's the nature of even your belief that the paranormal doesn't exist is a belief at the end of the day, it's not something that is provable. So there you go.

SPEAKER_02: 50:17

People are having an experience, just you know, you don't need to be rude about it. Anyways, people live. Ah, anyways. Okay, so Brian. Brian experiences sleep paralysis occasionally. He has an agreement with his wife to wake him up if they like there's certain signs like they were tracking, you know. And he said, like, a lot of people experience sound, but it's dead silent for me. I wake up and it's like too silent. And one of his first experiences was when he was in high school. Yeah. He said he saw an old woman standing in his room. He said it just she disappeared and then reappeared at the side of his bed, looking over him, clutching the bed frame. And she's looking at her and saw like the top half of her head from the nose up. She said her eyes are super wide. And when he and then when he woke up in the morning, he said the shape of her was imprinted in his retina. That's what he said. It was like seared into his retina for several seconds. He's like and was talking about, you know, when you look at a really bright light and there's like the shape of it for a while after it was like that, but it was of her.

SPEAKER_03: 51:29

That's so scary.

SPEAKER_02: 51:31

And then he said five years ago, which is more recent, like I think the podcast was posted in 2024. He said that after a recent death, he experienced sleep paralysis and was the first time he saw shadow people, a smooth form. He said it felt like a woman again, staring at him. And he said that there was like a headpiece or something would look like on their head. He was like, I'm not really sure. But then this part creeped me out. But then he said she power walked and ran on top of him. He said, like, she, you know, power walk, walk ran on top of him, and then disappeared into the headboard. The idea of the power walking stressed me out.

SPEAKER_03: 52:16

Yeah, yeah. That sounds really stressful.

SPEAKER_02: 52:20

Yeah, it gets worse. Okay, it gets worse with Lance. Yeah, Lance from California, also old hag. When he was 13 years old, he was, I think his family's also, you know, like struggling. He said that like his brother, him and his brother slept in the garage, and then his sisters and mom slept in the house. So I think there was a pretty big family and not a lot of space. But he was emphasizing that like in the garage, when it's cold, it's really cold. But when it's hot, it's really hot, and there's nothing you can do about it. So this was summertime. He said it was really hot. But one night he felt super cold. And so he was like, I'm putting he put on sweats, he put on multiple blankets before he went to sleep. Abnormal because they had no air conditioning. It was fucking hot actually. And he said he fell asleep right away and he gets sleep paralysis for the first time. He said this time, you know, he can't open his eyes, but he hears children laughing all around. And he tries to move and he can't. And he said it felt like forever. And then moments later, he feels and can hear a lady breathing on him while the kids are laughing. And then he said in the creepiest voice ever, she angrily says, I want to be a somebody. And then he said that he's yeah, and then he saw these hands grab onto his shoulder and he she slammed him up and down, up and down, up and down on the bed. He said it happened at least three times. And he wakes up, he's drenched in sweat, he could not move his legs, but he doesn't have any blankets on him anymore for some reason. And he wants to wake his brother up because he's so scared, but he can't move. So he rolls off the bed and is like crawling to his brother and like wraps his brother's hand and passes out. And then his brother, like some you know, in the middle of the night, helps him get back to his bed and was like, What are you doing? And he tried to share his experience, and his brother was like, Oh, it's probably just a bad dream, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 54:21

Yeah, bad dream. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 54:23

He mentioned that his brother never believed in paranormal stuff, but then more recently had, but we didn't get the story on what changed for him. Yeah, yeah. So those are the old hag stories. So we got shadow people, we got the breathing, we got the old hag, we got the hat man a little bit. I'll share more about the hat man a little bit later.

SPEAKER_03: 54:45

You know how it's like conjuring cinematic universe, it's like sleep processes, exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 54:53

It is a sleep that's so true. We're definitely entering a different world. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03: 55:00

Yeah, it would be a fun group Halloween costume to dress up as all the sleep world. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02: 55:08

Wait, I want to do that. It only works all together, right?

SPEAKER_03: 55:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 55:16

Anyway, so another story just kind of connects to like the evil dog, or what was it called? Which none of the other ones really touched on that. But this one connected for me to the Pisanta, the Catalan folklore, the demon dog. This also has some like ghosty vibes, but this caller Danny says, I live on a reservation in a rural area, so behind the house, there's like a large field and trees, not a lot of houses nearby. There wouldn't be reasons for people to really be coming about. And she said that shortly after moving in, both her and her fiance would hear footsteps up her back wooden steps. And every time they looked out the kitchen window, the lights would be on, but they'd go look and there'd be nothing there. And a week later, they both turned to look towards a noise that they heard in the living room. And there's this leather recliner, and it has an imprint on it as though someone is sitting there. And soon after it slowly disappears. Like this is while they're awake? While they're awake. Yeah, this is like leading up to the sleep paralysis story. There were all of these things happening when they first moved into this house. They were like staring at the imprint on the chair, and they said that it slowly disappears, you know, as if someone had gotten up and walked away. And so these things would happen regularly. And she was describing like, I've had experiences like this throughout my life. I was just assuming like maybe someone, you know, passed in the house and they're just still around, you know, wasn't worried about it. But yeah, so she she wasn't thinking anything of this house and whatever. But one time she's alone there, and it's always when they're alone, you know, and she's she falls into sleep paralysis, and which is also familiar to her. She's experienced it before, but it's never been like that scary. But she said this time felt different. She said that coming from the floor on the side that her husband sleeps on, she hears a deep growling sound that moves down towards the foot of her bed, and it sounds like animal footsteps, kind of like what a cat or dog, what you would hear on the carpet. Yeah. Walking, deep growling all the way around to the bed to her side. And she was like getting emotional about it on the call. She was like, I was thinking if I could just get the energy to kick the pillow, I might scare it away. And she was able to do that, and everything stopped, but she was like trembling on the phone or on this call, and she was like, she was like, Clearly, I still get emotional about it. Like, I feel like I'm about to cry. She said it felt really hostile. She said it felt demonic, and she had never been scared of a paranormal experience before that time.

SPEAKER_03: 58:17

I mean, kind of reminds me of Wendigo a little bit, somewhat reminiscent to that. Uh-huh. Creepy, creepy vibes.

SPEAKER_02: 58:29

For some reason, demonic dog isn't as scary as like not conceptualizing something. When I first listened to the story and didn't connect it to the demon dog, it sounded felt scarier, the story. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 58:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can see that.

SPEAKER_02: 58:42

Crawling, deep growling. Like the idea of like a human-like feet creature doing that is way scarier.

SPEAKER_03: 58:50

Yeah, totally. 100%.

SPEAKER_02: 58:53

So nope, no thank you either way. And then, of course, there's the Hat Man. That's where I'll end with the stories. But there's a website called the Hat Man Project. This dude, Timothy M. Brown Jr., is he says, I'm the site owner, administrator, and researcher for the Hat Man Project. And he collects stories. Since 2001, he's been collecting stories of the Hat Man. And he's writing a book called The Hat Man Revealed. So if you're interested in the Hat Man, you know, I guess check it out. But here's his story. He said that his experience with the Hat Man came in '94 when he was about 14 years old. He was living with his great-grandmother at the time in Nashville, Tennessee. And he'd been staying up really late that night. It was about 2 a.m. in the morning. He was, you know, watching TV, falling asleep. All the lights were off. The only light that was coming from the room was the TV set. And when he was lying, looking down at his feet, he had a clear view all the way to his great-grandmother's room, which was parallel. And there was no room door between the room. He'd also see the side of the room and just inside the hallway of going into the grandmother's room. So full, full view. And he said that when he was lying there, his eyes would open, fall, open, fall. And then at some point he heard the TV make a noise that caused him to like open his eyes a little wider. But this time he saw there was something in the corner of his eye. And at first he's like scared because he thinks that intruders are going to come in. And he's like, Oh, somebody's in my house. And he thought that the movement was like, and then he was like, Oh, maybe the movement was my grandma getting up to go to the bathroom. But as he looked closer, looking down into the great-grandmother's room, into the hallway, he was like, That's not my grandmother. And he immediately experiences all this fear and dread. He saw a tall, human-like figure, that of a man. The man had no distinguishable features whatsoever. So, like consistent with these other experiences of like no face, no eyes, no nose, no mouth, just shadow, a really, really dark shadow, like a void almost. He had a wide brimmed hat and a long trench coat that flowed as he moved. So he's I'm just like, he's got a style.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:17

Yeah, I was gonna say stylish.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:19

Yeah, he's got a vibe. He's got a flowing cape. Maybe he's just coming to people's houses for compliments, you know, and nobody's giving it to him. He's trying to show up, he's like, it's me, Anastasia.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:32

Yeah, it's giving a fruity vibe.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:44

So you know, like, and he's like, I come and like everyone's just scared of me. I'm just trying to show off my face.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:53

Yeah, I'm just trying. I came to sleigh, you know.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:01

Oh my gosh. Sad. Sorry, man. Maybe if I see the hat man sometime, I can say, hey man, nice fit. And he'll be like, no one's ever said that to me before. Yeah. But I heard somebody else say that he was wearing a fedora, and I hate to say it, but fedoras are not in. So I can't say that with honesty.

SPEAKER_03: 1:02:21

Jason Moraz.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:26

I forgot about that guy.

SPEAKER_03: 1:02:28

Oh I forgot about him to use so like someone that people talked about often. That's true.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:33

He was like randomly this, like very popular.

SPEAKER_03: 1:02:37

Yeah. What the fuck? Soft guitar playing guy. The fedora.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:42

Right. His popularity was only made possible by that time era. You know, anytime before or after, he would have been kind of a dweeb.

SPEAKER_03: 1:02:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:52

Yeah. This dude, he's uh terrified. His heart is racing. And at that moment, he was like, I have an intruder in my house. There is a man in my house, you know, somebody.

SPEAKER_03: 1:03:05

So he's not thinking like paranormal. He was thinking like someone broke into the house.

SPEAKER_02: 1:03:10

Yeah, because it was kind of far away. So we thought it could be a shadow or something. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And he was like thinking, like, what would I do? Am I gonna yell? Should I like fight him? You know, he kept looking at the hallway. He stood there at the threshold between his great-grandmother's room and his grandmother's room. His he leaned his head and body into the great-grandmother's room, looking in, and then he turned his head toward her, and then he said, and then she he turned towards me. And he said that he had his eyes closed as much as he could, so he could still see him. So he's like kind of scared looking at him, and he wanted to look like he was still sleeping. And he said that he stood there what's for what seemed like the eternity or an eternity, just staring. And then he moved very slowly without sound back into the hallway out of view. And he kept watching and saw this like figure move to his grandma's room just like before, leaning his body in, looking in the doorway, looking at her, not making a sound, and then leaning back, moved out of view. So he's he's just scoping. And then he said, At this point, I didn't know what to do. I was convinced that there was a burglar. So I summed as much courage as I could. I jumped out of bed, yelling, charged in the hallway, ready to fight. And I turned the hallway and he was gone. And he said that his screaming and yelling woke up his grandma and great-grandmother, told them like what had happened. He scared the shit out of everyone in the house, and so they couldn't go back to sleep. Um and then the grandmother relayed to him a few nights prior. She woke up in the middle of the night and saw, too, a dark figure walk past her doorway in the dim light of the hallway. And since it looked like it was wearing some flowing robe, she thought it was her mother going to the bathroom wearing her evening robe, which is what he thought at first. Right, right. Then, too, he said, My great-grandmother told me she also saw on a separate occasion the same dark shadow lurking at how in the house and didn't know what to make of it. Yeah. So there's keeping this to themselves, wild. And he said, as time passed, he said, I had grown very antagonistic against the whole thing. I brushed it off as mere happenstance, a figment of my imagination, or perhaps a result of mine nodding off and being in that in-between place, half awake, half asleep. I thought about it every now and then, but regul relegated it back to the back part of my mind, paying little attention to it. I would continue to feel this way about the experience until 2001. That's when everything changed. And then he talks about how he was driving one night, he was hitting the scan button to see if he could find something on the radio to pass the time. And then he landed on a show at like 2 a.m. or 3 a.m. He's on a nighttime drive, I guess. And they were doing a show called Shadow Beings. It was the first time he had ever heard anything like that. And as he listened to the show, he was like, nothing could prepare me for what I heard next. George Nori, who was the host, and the guest went to describe people's experiences with one particular shadow being, a dark man-like figure with a large, wide-brimmed hat and cape. So he's like, Oh my god. I'm not, I'm not losing it. It's not a figment of my imagination. People are seeing the hat man too. He said that he experienced he felt chills down his spine. And he said, I knew in that moment what had happened to me as a teenager was not a figment of my imagination, was not a result of me nodding off. I had seen what these people were describing exactly. And then he really gets into it. He's hyperfixed cities, going to the library, he's on the internet, he's looking about stuff about the hat man, and he can't find anything. So he built the first website ever dedicated to the research of shadow people and specifically the hat man. The hat man since 2001, he's collected hundreds of stories from others who had similar experiences. He says that he receives two to three stories every single day. He feels like these encounters are on the rise.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:14

And he says, I believe there's a reason, a very good reason. He's very serious.

SPEAKER_02: 1:07:22

He's researching the hat man, he's been doing this for 20 years. He's writing a book about it, and I'm curious about what he feels like the connections. This is his purpose in life, he says. And he's like, I'm no longer gonna fear these entities.

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:36

Cool.

SPEAKER_02: 1:07:37

Yeah, so Hatman Project, check it out. You can email him, you know, if you have a story. If you yeah, it's yeah, brown tm1 at gmail.com. Yeah, check it out. So that's that. It is interesting. Yeah, I'm curious why the same. They're like famous, you know, they're like celebrity ghosts or celebrity entities.

SPEAKER_03: 1:08:00

The night hag and the hat man.

SPEAKER_02: 1:08:03

Yeah, they you know, I'm sure like the what if like the people on the other side are like, you bet the hat man, you know? Old hag, yeah. She wasn't very nice, she was sad, but I was starstruck. Yeah, yeah. So those are the stories. I'm not gonna leave you, I'm gonna, there's the lore, but I'm gonna leave you with some science too, because people have done research on sleep paralysis, and actually the sleep paralysis studies date back a far, like a long time ago. There was like a Dutch physician, oh my god, Eastbrand van Diemerbruck, who was alive between 1609, 1674. In 16, I know, in 1664, he had a bunch of case studies on sleep paralysis. And in one of the cases, he talks about how the devil lay upon her and held her down. Yeah, all of his cases were kind of like that. And the way that the West in particular made sense of it was that it was the devil. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:09:08

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:09

So, you know, all this time studying, and we still actually don't have clear reasons for why sleep paralysis happens. There's some, you know, factors that are make it more likely or less likely, you know, but there's no consensus on why this happens. There's some theories on like brain function and all of this, but there's no sense to be made about like why the experiences are they what they are, and like, you know. So they say that like sleep paralysis happens specifically during REM sleep. And for folks who don't know, it's rapid eye movement sleep. REM sleep follows like three non-REM stages of the sleep cycle. So we have like a four-stage sleep cycle. There's light sleep stage one, light sleep stage two, deep sleep, and then rem sleep. And REM sleep, we typically have about two hours of REM sleep every night. And we spend most of our time, I think in light sleep, actually. A few hours in deep sleep. And REM sleep is where our emotional processing is happening, our memory consolidation, cellular restoration, prepping for wakefulness. It's also when vivid dreaming occurs. During this time, our appetite are they call it this because our eyes are moving under your eyeballs rapidly, and our heart rate is up, our breathing is up, blood pressure increases. And so most sleep paralysis happens during this time. I'll go more deeply into that part, but want to talk a little bit about the category that it's under. So sleep paralysis is a type of parasomnia. Other examples of parasomnia, there are three main groupings of parasomnias based on the stage of sleep when they happen. So there's non-rapid eye movement, sleep, which is your first, you know, half. And non-REM sleep parasomnias usually involve physical or verbal activity. So non-REM sleep parasomnias can include sleep terrors. When you wake up suddenly scared, you might scream or cry. You know, you might have a heart, like your heart's beating, your pupils are dilated, you're sweating. Sleepwalking is a kind of non-rem sleep parasomnia. People do all kinds of wild shit when they're sleepwalking. They can even play musical instruments or like, and sometimes unfortunately, you know, like pee in an area that you're not supposed to because they think there's a toilet there, you know. So you're like half sleeping. So you're not like in your REM dream sleep, you're in different sleep. Confusional arousals. So like you wake up confused and disoriented, you might be crying, and it can last for a few minutes to a few hours. It's most common in children, usually decreases with age, but I don't know, trauma might change that for you. And then REM sleep parasomnias can include things like nightmare disorder, like really vivid, scary dreams, rem sleep behavior disorder when you act out, vocalize, or make aggressive movements in a reaction to a violent dream, people who are like, you know, talking, swearing, shouting, punching, kicking, grabbing. It's most common among adults and with people who have neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's or Lewy body dementia and multiple system atrophy. Reoccurrent isolated sleep paralysis falls under this type of parasomnia. There's also parasomnias that don't fit into either category, like bedwetting or sleep-related groaning, catothrenia, where you just like moan and groan in the night. There's exploding head syndrome. Yeah, people do a lot of shit in their sleep.

SPEAKER_03: 1:12:46

Wow. Wow. I used to talk in my sleep a lot. You did? I don't know if I still do because nobody sleeps with me anymore. So yeah. Like sometimes mostly in like gibberish, like I would be like having a conversation, but like none of the words make sense. I see. But then every now and then I would say things that make sense. Like when I used to sleep with my sister, like she used to annoy me a lot where she would like poke me and breathe loudly. And so then sometimes when my parents were out and we had gone to sleep, like they would come home to and check on us, and then I would be like, Don't touch me, because I'm like thinking it's my sister. But I'm like fully asleep while while that's happening. Yeah, I see. Yeah, I don't know if I did anymore. No one's told me that I talk in my sleep for a long time now. But my roommates in college were like, Yeah, you do talk in your sleep.

SPEAKER_02: 1:13:35

I see. I don't think I talk in my sleep, but I think I have, especially like if I've been drinking, I've definitely done that before.

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:45

Right, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:13:46

Yeah, I was on vacation with my friend Wilson, who you know, we were saving money, so we were like staying in the same bed at these like Airbnbs for like two weeks or something like that. It's a long time to be sharing a bed with your friend, and he got sick pretty immediately when the trip started, and so like sleep was hard. He was making all these noises in his sleep, you know, he was like having a hard time breathing, and it's not his fault, you know. It's you don't know, it's not his fault, nothing he could do about that. But I guess on the very last night we were there, we had gone out and then had some couple glasses of wine, and I fell asleep first. And I don't remember doing this, so I must be sleeping, you know. He said he sneezed, and I said, Shut the fuck up.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:42

Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Yeah, and then apparently he said, rude ass bitch.

SPEAKER_02: 1:14:52

That's so funny. I said, I'm sorry. Yeah when people are just standing there, that's honestly the creep one of the creepiest things somebody can do is be in the dark, okay, just standing there.

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:05

I used to do that, like in the middle of the night, and I would get scared. So I would go to my parents' room, but I wouldn't wake them up. I would just stand there until they woke up.

SPEAKER_02: 1:15:16

You're really scary. I think that we had this conversation on the podcast at some point in time, but it's still yeah. Yeah, you're scared.

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:26

Like sometimes they would get us scared, but like most of the time I would just be like, Oh, okay, like you, yeah, I would be like, I'm scared, so I would just go in the bed and sleep with them. Yeah, I don't know why I never said anything. I would just be like, I do have memories of doing that. Yes, very creepy. It's very creepy. A child? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:15:52

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:56

Yeah, it's like in paranormal activity where where they all they're like possessed and they stand up and then the video goes like really fast. They're just standing there for so many hours staring at the other person.

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:07

Yeah, that's terrifying. I actually just hate that so much. It's just something about that, something about the visual of somebody just standing there or like being outside of a window and someone just standing there. Yeah, I don't like it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:21

Creepy, unsettling.

SPEAKER_02: 1:16:24

Yeah. So, you know, I'm glad I didn't have to deal with that. No sleepwalkers in my family like that. That would really creep me out. Well, okay. So there's also exploding head syndrome causes you to hear a loud noise or explosive clap crashing sound in your head as you're falling asleep or waking up. You may also see an imaginary flash of light or have a sudden muscle jerk. I experienced that. I had no idea that was a thing. Exploding head syndrome, I don't know why it's called that.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:55

I weirdly have started recently having this thing, which I was just wondering whether it's like some kind of somatic processing happening, which I won't have it at all during the day, but when I'm trying to go to sleep at night, I'll have random muscle spasms, usually in my leg, sometimes in my arm. And but it's like new. I didn't used to have it before.

SPEAKER_02: 1:17:15

Oh yeah, I don't have it all the time, but occasionally I'll like jolt awake. But sometimes it's accompanied by feeling like I'm falling. But so I'll just, you know.

SPEAKER_03: 1:17:28

It's usually not when I'm like asleep yet. It's usually when I'm reading before I go to sleep. So I'm like in a restful state, but not totally asleep. I've never woken up from it. It's like something that happens when I'm lying down but not asleep.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:42

I see. Interesting.

SPEAKER_02: 1:17:44

I definitely it's kind of like comforting to see the loud noise or explosive crashing sound like uh has a hallucination because it would scare me because I would be like, What's what I thought, yeah. I thought that something isn't happening in my house. Or like, you know, yeah, like why it's so loud? But yeah, exploding head syndrome. I don't know. Sleep-related hallucinations, so it causes you to feel like you are falling like a waking up or falling asleep, but you hear or see or feel things that don't really exist. And I think most people are putting sleep paralysis in this category as well, you know, or they there's an interplay here, but I definitely sometimes like hear voices before I go to sleep. Not always, it's it's actually more rare, but throughout my life, yeah, would hear like I couldn't really tell what the conversations were, but it sounded like many people were having kind of quiet conversations in my ears before going to sleep sometimes.

SPEAKER_03: 1:18:50

I have heard voices when I was asleep also, and I thought someone was talking next day. I asked my roommates. I said, Were you guys talking outside of my room? Yeah. Yeah. When I lived in the Biltmore, this used to happen when I was awake. That through whenever I used my wired headphones and I would be in sessions, it would feel like there was like a radio playing in the background. I could hear talking, but it wouldn't happen when it was Bluetooth. And I was like, oh, it just must be something weird. So I asked the tech person at my job who basically convinced me that it was ghost because he was like explaining how it would work, but and he was like, Well, but if it's not happening when you're here, but it's happening when you're there, it's like something about the place. And I was like, Well, you know, I live in a haunted building, so yeah, I was like picking up on something. So I just started not using it as wired, I just started using it as Bluetooth.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:46

Interesting.

SPEAKER_03: 1:19:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:19:48

What's with the wired? Interesting.

SPEAKER_03: 1:19:51

He was explaining something of how it could pick up on signals in a way that Bluetooth doesn't. Yeah. Interesting way the technology works, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:02

Weird. The other ones, there's sleep-related eating disorders. People sometimes cook and eat sleep eat.

SPEAKER_03: 1:20:11

Whoa, that's kind of scary.

SPEAKER_02: 1:20:13

Like I think the part of your brain that like does complex functions is actually pretty active when you're in this in middle place, like when you're sleepwalking and stuff. Or that's why they say like people who have Alzheimer's, if they knew how to play piano, they can remember complex compositions, but not like people's names. It's like lives in your like deep memory, long-term memory. And then there's something about like where you store like neuro neuromotor stuff. Yeah, yeah, probably the same reason people can like drive drunk home and like remember how to get there. Not that they're doing it safely, but like there's like a body memory or whatever.

SPEAKER_03: 1:20:57

I mean, people also space out while they're driving and are able to like even when they're sober, like the kind of sleepy experience.

SPEAKER_02: 1:21:07

That's true. Although I used to experience that a lot as a teenager, and I don't so much anymore. I think it's just because I was a dissociated person.

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:14

Yes, that's fair.

SPEAKER_02: 1:21:16

I would just like be like, How did I get here? I don't remember the last 10 minutes in the car. There's also sex somnia. We can people carry out sexual behaviors in their sleep. People masturbate in their sleep, initiate sex in their sleep. Uh-huh. Vocalize things in their sleep. So lots of parasomnia. These ones are the ones that don't fit into either category. They're kind of in this weird in-between place. Going back to sleep paralysis, the science behind it, or as far as they've gotten, is that when you're in REM sleep, your body releases GABA and glycine and the neurons in the pons, which is the part of your, it's a part of your brain stem. It's a structure that links your brain to your spinal cord. It handles like all your unconscious stuff, like your sleep-wake cycle, your breathing. It also contains like several junctions for nerves that control muscles and it carries information to sensations, senses in your head and face. And it also, which means that you can't really use your muscles at all. Like during REM sleep, we just lose our muscle function, which speaks to the whole, like, I can't move. And they think that it's because people's neurons are either inhibiting like the process too much, or they think that the the process is hyperactive. So it's like either too much or not enough. It's hypothesized to happen when neurons that inhibit REM sleep fail to activate or are hyperactive, causing elements of REM sleep to be there when it shouldn't be. Like you actually should not be awake.

SPEAKER_04: 1:23:00

Right, right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 1:23:01

Or like you should not be frozen when your eyes are open, but something is malfunctioning there. And like we said earlier, you're closer to wakefulness at that time. And so sleep paralysis is most likely to occur during this part of sleep. Not always, but that's typically the case. Yeah. And, you know, mentioned earlier, no consensus on why this happens or how to treat it or how to stop it or how to get rid of them. But they say that lifestyle changes can help, like sleep hygiene and reduction of medication that can make it harder to reach REM sleep. It's more likely to happen if you're sleeping on your back, three to four times more likely, like you were saying. Really common with students, high stress environments, people who have particular psychological conditions, definitely people with sleep disorders, and also alcohol and weed supposed to interesting, maybe increase the likelihood of that. There's also some science around the out-of-body experiences, specifically. One hypothesis suggests that the intense fear and anxiety experienced during the sleep paralysis might trigger a dissociative state. So it gives the person the perception of leaving your body as a coping mechanism. Another theory proposes that hallucinations associated with sleep paralysis, particularly like when your people are feeling like there's a presence in the room, may evolve into a more elaborate out-of-body experience as the person's mind is trying to make sense of what's happening. And research into sleep paralysis-induced out-of-body experiences, has actually come up with like multiple different findings. People are really into this, I guess. People are studying out-of-body experiences. Studies suggest that individuals who frequently experience sleep paralysis are more likely to report out-of-body experience than those who do not, which makes sense. And then also research suggests that the transition between sleep paralysis and an outer body experience might be facilitated by particular techniques, such as focusing on moving a body part or visualizing oneself floating away from the body. So I think there's something about people get distressed and they're trying to move their body. And when they figure out that doesn't work, they try to come up with other ways to trigger movement. And so what happens is like, you know, yeah, that's the science. And you know, some people make peace with their sleep paralysis. David, who had all those experiences, the Christian guy, he the one that's experienced it for 22 years and it happens like all the time. He, you know, he notes that it happens when he's more sleep deprived, and then when he was doing track and field because his body needed more rest. So he's tried to tries to keep his sleep schedule on on track. And then he says it happens one to two times a year now, but he doesn't feel afraid of them anymore. Okay. Yeah. And Patricia, who started with the metal chains, you know, the bang, bang, banging when she was little. She said that she she's seeing stuff. She says she sees shadow figures over her bed, but that when you stare at them, they get lighter and lighter and then they disappear. And one day she said, I'm sick of you, I'm not scared of you, and then they disappear. What see? Boundary setting. Yeah. Yeah. Boundary setting. She also said, like now the visions have changed into a big spider crawling across the wash. Yeah, but as she stares at it, it gets smaller and smaller and then it disappears.

SPEAKER_03: 1:26:30

Wow.

SPEAKER_02: 1:26:30

And she talked to a neurologist about it, and he said it's not an uncommon experience at all, but he doesn't know why that's happening. But basically, I'm leaving with those stories because it does seem like, you know, there's something about like when people are like, I can't change it, but here I am. Yeah, acceptance. Or I'm not afraid of you, or yeah, there's an acceptance piece, or like I'm gonna stare at you, I'm not scared to look at you.

SPEAKER_03: 1:26:55

Well, I think it goes away. I think that also connects more in the supernatural aspect to like more malevolent entities do feed off of your fear. So if you're like, I'm not scared of you, or like whatever, like you're not feeding into whatever it is that they're they're looking for. That's what the spirits were saying. That makes yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, yeah. Lots of connections, lots of connections.

SPEAKER_02: 1:27:23

Yeah, well, thanks for sharing. Does seem like, yeah, the yeah, for sure. Bigger the fear, bigger the problem. Smaller the fear, they're like, I'm bored, you know. They're like, fuck you, you know, and they left. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03: 1:27:36

Just don't give it energy as much as you can. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02: 1:27:42

And then maybe try to compliment the hat man, see how that goes.

SPEAKER_03: 1:27:46

I would I would like to know your outfit is like slaying your outfit. He's got a vibe, you know.

SPEAKER_00: 1:27:53

Oh my gosh.