Countless people around the world report attacks from psychic entities. But what is the origin of these assaults - the spirit world or the uncharted realms of the sleeping mind?

It was 4.20am when Ronald Seigel was awoken by the noise of his bedroom door creaking open. He heard footsteps approach the bed, and the sound of heavy breathing filled the room. Paralysed with fear, Seigel could only lay back, smelling the musty odour of the approaching entity.

‘There seemed to be a murky presence in the room,’ Seigel recalls. ‘I tried to throw off the covers and get up, but I was pinned to the bed. Their was a weight on my chest. My heart was pounding. I strained to breath.’

Next, the creature touched his neck and arm, and whispered in his ear. ‘Each word was expelled from a foul mouth of tobacco,’ Seigel remembers. ‘The language seemed strange, almost like English spoken backwards.’ Seigel, still unable to move, looked at the clock on his bedside table. ‘This is no dream,’ he thought.

Shared Experience

Suddenly, the entity shifted its weight and straddled Siegel's body. The bed started to creak. ‘There was a texture of sexual intoxication. I started to lose consciousness. Suddenly the voice stopped. I sensed the intruder was moving slowly out the room. Gradually the pressure on my chest eased.’ by now it was 4.30am, and Ronald Seigel - an eminent professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles - had just been subject to an attack from what many would call a psychic entity.

For centuries, people from cultures spanning the globe have described similar attacks. Usually occurring at night, just before falling asleep of waking up, these attacks invariably subject their terrified victims t complete paralysis, a pressure on the chest and heightened sensual awareness. Like so many other ‘supernatural’ episodes, the universal similarity of the experiences would suggest a genuine phenomenon, but where do these ‘presences’ come from?

If folklore and many of today’s psychic investigators are to be believed, these entities are malevolent earth-bound spirits - demons and witches who attack us in our sleep. One of the most widespread folkloric traditions involves the ‘Old Hag’, a term coined in Newfoundland, Canada, for the terrifying figure often encountered during night-time attacks. The same Old Hag appears throughout the world. Germans call it ‘Mare’ from which the word nightmare comes from. Scandinavians use the word ‘Mara’ and the Greeks use ‘Mora’.

Dream Lover

Another popular variation on the Old Hag tradition is the incubus - the ‘demon lover’ or spirit that indulges in sexual intercourse with the living. Derived from the Latin incubare meaning ‘to lie down on’, the incubus is often blamed for the crushing weight on the chest and the feeling of sexual arousal that occurs during these attacks.

However, by looking elsewhere for explanations for these universal experiences, psychologists, including Ronald Seigel, are concentrating on the common, but rarely talked about, phenomenon of sleep paralysis.

Sleep Patterns

Every night, whether we remember it or not, each of us dreams. We may forget the dreams in the morning, but while the fantastic scenes are going on, our brain is extremely active and our body completely paralysed. This paralysis is essential as otherwise we would act out the dreams with disastrous consequences. Normally the muscles are relaxed, and are not responsive to what the brain tells them to do. Only the muscles controlling the eyes and breathing are unaffected.

When we wake up in the morning, this paralysis is usually gone.

But just occasionally something goes wrong with the mechanism that keeps the dreaming and waking worlds apart. In such cases, we can feel the paralysis coming on just as we fall asleep or wake up, and we can not move, speak or cry out.

This is sleep paralysis, and is nearly always accompanied by a rapid heart rate, difficulty in breathing and a feeling of terror. The ordeal is all the more frightening because the sufferer is conscious of his or her surroundings but is trapped in what scientists call a hypnogogic hallucination. This is a twilight state between sleep and wakefulness in which our dreams are so vivid, they seem alarmingly real.

For many sufferers, the first sign of sleep paralysis is a strange noise. Sometimes described as a whining or humming, it can also sound like footsteps, the thrum of a motor, or even ‘loud screaming and high pitched laughter’. Vibrations of the body can follow, and people describe shaking or juddering, rippling and contorting.

Strange lights can flicker around the room. These can be flashing lights, little stars, or glowing shapes. Occasionally, the whole room seems to be lit by a eerie glow and objects are surrounded by coloured haloes or strange sparkles.

But the most frightening aspect of sleep paralysis is the feeling of a nearby presence. Yu may see nothing - and have no reason for your conviction - but you know there is something in the room with you. In many cases, the presence is actually visible (the eyes are often open during sleep paralysis) and can take n any number of forms - human, animal, demonic, even ‘alien’ - and can apparently change shape at will.

Alien Dreams

The ‘visitor’ experience has led a number of researchers to conclude that the classic alien abduction scenario is in fact, nothing more than sleep paralysis. In his paper entitled Alien Dreamtime, retired psychologist Robert Baker recounts the tale of well known abductee, Whitley Strieber.

‘In the wee hours of the night,’ Strieber explains, ‘I abruptly woke up. There was somebody quite close to my bed. I could see by the huge, dark eyes who it was... I couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out, couldn’t get away... Every muscle in my body was stiff to the point of breaking. I could hardly breath.’

As Baker points out, if one compares Strieber’s account with Ronald Seigel’s, there is not a lot of difference between the two. ‘The accounts are, for all practical purposes, identical,’ Baker states.

Baker’s sceptical view of alien abductions is that they are nothing more than modern sleep paralysis myths. The humming noises and eerie vibrations become the alien craft, the Old Hag’s caressing becomes the alien’s probe, and the floating sensation becomes the journey to the stars.

The only problem with this theory is that it does not account for all abduction experiences, of which some occur during the day and in front of witnesses. And the same objections can be levelled at the ‘supernatural’ encounters claim that they are the result of sleep paralysis.

Consistent Content

A more objective and level assessment of the sleep paralysis phenomenon is provided by the behavioural scientist David J. Hufford. In his book The Terror That Comes in the Night, he argues that there appears to be more to sleep paralysis than the brain playing tricks with the would-be sleeper.

Hufford has been struck by the remarkably consistent content of the hallucinations and, in particular, the Old Hag attacks. What he finds most curious is that these attacks have been reported from countries all over the world, by normal and healthy people. Many of these people even claim to have no knowledge of folklore or an interest in the paranormal.

In contrast to ordinary bad dreams, which vary enormously in content, ‘Why,’ asks Hufford, ‘is the content so consistently the same without apparent regard for culture?’ Hufford concludes that scientific research in this area has not even begun to address the question, but concerns itself solely with analysing sleep patterns, and the psychological process involved with sleep paralysis.

Alternative Reality

It may be that there is a perfectly ‘normal’ explanation for these experiences. But until the specific contents of the sleep paralysis hallucinations have been thoroughly investigated, our understanding of this phenomenon will remain incomplete.

Source: www.thesupernaturalworld.co.uk

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