Speaker 1: Tonight's episode is brought to you by my newest supporters,
jo Anne, Mickayla and Alexander. Thank you so very much
for making the show possible. Thank you all for joining me,
and welcome. I'm your host, Nick Ryan. On September seventeenth
of twenty seventeen, I published my very first episode regarding
sleep paralysis, and I talked about the many facets of
this highly debated phenomenon. Many people, including doctors, will tell
you that this bizarre and unsettling affliction is grounded in science,
but many folks have had such horrific experiences during an
episode that they swear there is something much more sinister
taking place, something that science cannot explain. Now. As I
said in my first episode, I too, am no stranger
to sleep paralysis, and if you were to ask me
what I believe is taking place during these episodes, I
would typically give you a scientific explanation. However, I've heard
so many reports that don't seem to align with a
rational explanation that I have to admit that, in my opinion,
something truly unnatural may be taking place. As always, though,
I'll let you be the judge. Our first experience of
the night comes to us from my good friend Sarah Now.
Sarah asked me if I would do another episode that
focused on sleep paralysis as well as other connected fish
noma and I agreed that it was about time. Sarah.
I appreciate your recommendation. This is what Sarah had to say.
Good evening, sir Nick, I hope you and your family
are doing well. If you read this on the podcast
to all listening, I hope you're doing well yourself. With
all the stories sent in about sleep paralysis, I wanted
to send in a few episodes that I've had with it.
I was a teenager when I first experienced sleep paralysis.
I am thirty four now and I haven't had an
issue with sleep paralysis since that time period, so it's
been a while, but the few times that I did
have the experience with them, they have stuck with me.
The first experience that I remember having it was on
a Saturday morning. I woke up pretty early that morning
with a headache, so I decided to go and eat
some crackers and take a tile in all before going
back to sleep. I did all that and I laid
back down. I am a side and stomach sleeper, and
I was real bad about sleeping on my stomach before
I was diagnosed with severe sleep apnea and I was
eventually put on a sea pap machine. So at this time,
I was on my stomach in the process of trying
to fall back asleep when I felt a pressure on
my back like someone was laying on me, and I
felt heavy breathing in my left ear. It stayed there
for a few minutes. The only thing I could do
was repeat Psalms twenty three over and over until I
fell asleep. I wasn't able to move, so falling asleep
was the only thing that I could really do at
that time. Later, I thought that it maybe could have
been my brain making up that scenario when it was
in that phase between consciousness and unconscious sleep. Or it
could have been the fact that I didn't have much
to eat when I took my tile in all, but
that only makes me nauseous, so that is definitely out
of the question. It could still be reasoned that it
was just in my mind, but it certainly doesn't feel
like it was. Later I told my dad, who is
a firm believer in God and is a born again Christian,
and he said that it was a demon that was
trying to enter my body. I've never had an ex
experience like that prior or since. My second story happened
around the same time, and I was on the couch
sleeping instead of in my bed. This time. I never
felt someone laying on me or breathing in my ear.
Yet I did feel some entity standing behind me and
behind the couch just staring at me. When I think
about it now, I think of a creepy man in
black suit and a top hat, maybe like what you'd
call a man in black. He just stood there looming
over me, and I knew that he wanted to do
me harm. Luckily he didn't and it didn't last very long,
but it was the scariest episode. I've had a few
others that weren't really on the same level as these two,
But during those times, I remember trying to call out
to my mom to help me wake up. Before actually
waking up. I did find that if I made some
sort of hissing type noise when sleep paralysis happens, it
doesn't last as long. But like I said, I haven't
had any experiences with it for years. Well, those are
my paralysis stories, but I do want to share one
more brief story of a detailed dream that I had
in my early twenties. This may be graphic for some,
so please listeners be advised. At this time I was
really active in a local church and considered myself a Christian.
I have since deconstructed and left organized religion, though I
still believe in a creator God, but I have also
adopted the path of druidry. As for Christianity, it goes
pretty far back in my family ancestry, all the way
to my parents, who are firm believing Christians. Anyway, on
to my dream. In the dream, I was in my
parents house, and during the dream I saw myself wake
up and go downstairs to the main floor to use
the bathroom. I walked into a pitch black living room,
where to my left all I could see was a
beaten Jesus hanging on the cross. We all know in
Christianity he is divine because he was the son of God,
but he was also human the human form his body
was in such agony that it was convulsing on the cross,
and all I could hear was the slap of his
body against the wood. It was very graphic, but all
I could do was stand there and observe. While I
was dreaming this, the hymnal there is a Fountain Filled
with Blood started playing in my mind. Many people have
dreams that confirm or deny their beliefs, and to this day,
I really can't say how I feel about the dream.
Like I mentioned, I've deconstructed from organized religion and I'm
still working on a lot of what it is that
I believe and what I don't. Thank you for all
that you do, and keep up the amazing work. This
podcast keeps getting better and better every season, your friend Sarah.
Our next Experience of the Night comes to us from
Lira and Lera's story is called Sleep Paralysis and Mother's Instinct.
Lera's experience contains details that may be inappropriate for younger listeners,
and discretion is advised. Leras says he Nick. Throughout my life,
I have experienced things I would classify as paranormal. For
just a bit of history and context. I ma a
RN and had started working night shift for the first time,
and I thought that a change in my sleep and
wake schedule was the cause of what I experienced. I
will never forget waking up and not being able to
move a muscle. I was completely paralyzed and only being
able to dart my eyes. My entire room was bathed
in a deep red light. I was horrified when my
eyes landed on what looked like an exact replica of
the demon in one of Tom Cruise's first movies Legend.
It was huge, tall, solid red horns and all I
wanted to scream, and I tried to yell for my husband,
but the only thing I could do was stare at
this demon and be terrified. This demon appeared to be
having sex with something or someone that I couldn't see
at the foot of my bed. I can't begin to
explain the abject terror that gripped me. And it was
at that moment that I heard what sounded like fingernails
scratching on the other side of the door. It was
like nails going down a chalkboard. I was able to
wake myself up fully at that moment, and I got
out of my bed as quickly as I could. I
certainly didn't sleep for the rest of the day. I
had other experiences with sleep paralysis, but never anything like that.
I am a forty eight year old female and I
still have night terrors, and I sleep walk. When my
now teenage daughter was just a toddler, she slept with me,
and I swear that she was a conduit to have
out of body experiences. I have two experiences that I
will never forget, and they were so completely vivid and
real to me. I would roll out of my body
with great ease, it seemed, and I would zip up
at tremendous speed. The first time I remember this happening,
I was flying back to my home from where we
attended mass, about forty minutes away. I was flying over
the fields and seeing the tops of houses and barns
which I had seen for years. I remember coming to
the signs over the exits on the interstate and turning
at my exit. It was quite fun and I will
never forget that one. The second experience that I will
share is one that seemed incredible to me. I felt
what I can only describe as an understanding of what
infinity truly is. I woke up on my daughter's bed
in a plain bathed in blue light. It was a
perfect sky blue, and the floor was clouds as far
as I could see. Somehow I knew this expanded for infinity,
and I understood that I could go anywhere at any
time in the universe. Words cannot adequately describe how that
exactly felt. When I had gotten off the bed, I
immediately felt two spirits. These were possibly spirit guides, but
I wouldn't even begin to guess who or what they
were beside me. One of them was close to me
on my right, and the other was to my left,
a little further away. I knew they were there to
help me, and I could sense their very gentle energy.
I also knew that I could just think about it,
and I could be absolutely anywhere in the universe that
I wanted to go. I wanted so badly to find
my ex husband, who was deceased, and I thought that
I could find him since I was in a different plane,
but I never could. I always looked for him, but
I could never find him. After a moment, I got
scared of not being able to get home, and I
crawled back to the safety of the bed. Being on
a different plane of existence was utterly amazing. Although I
sometimes discounted as a very vivid dream, the understanding of
infinity and being terrified that I couldn't go home or
that I'd get lost, will always stick with me. My
next experience, I'm going to call mother's instinct. My son
had enlisted in the Navy and it was his first
time out on a sub. He was in navigation. One
particular night, I was terror stricken with worry. My stomach
clenched and I became nauseous, and at one time point
I vomited. I was so anxious and worried. I worried
about him all night long, but my anxiety lessened the
next day. Two days later, I had received a call
that he had fallen from the very top of one
of those spiral staircases and landed on the palm of
his hand. He was hurt badly enough that they had
to go to the next port so that he could
have surgery on his hand. I will never forget it,
and no one can convince me that it wasn't my
mother's intuition. Thank you for this space to share. Just
a few days ago, I had told somebody that I
had never experienced anything related to the paranormal, But as
I write my experiences, I realized that might not be
the case. I would be interested if anyone has an
idea about what I experienced during my sleep paralysis with
the room turning red and the demon having sex with
something that was indeed a horrific experience. I am sending
positive energy your way. Our next experience of the night
comes to us from William, and William's experience is called
sleep paralysis. William says, good afternoon, Nick. I hope you
are doing well. I have been enjoying listening to your
podcast for the last few months. I appreciate being able
to talk about this as I try to sometimes but
people don't get it or they think I'm crazy. Anyway,
here's my story. I have had bouts of sleep paralysis
since I was a kid. My first memory is from
when I was around thirteen. He used to happen frequently
and would usually manifest from a nightmare. I would try
hard to wake up and then would open my eyes
to see my room, and for a second I was
relieved until I realized that I couldn't move and I
felt the presence of someone or something else in my room,
a dream within a dream. Back then, it was always shadows,
lots of them, no noises, no one talking to me.
They were just there. It was just as scary as
the dream that I just tried so hard to get
out of and now I was trying to scream or move,
but I couldn't. I would do everything I could to
wake up, and back then they were pretty much all
like this. I never got a clear view of any
being or entity, just ominous shadows closing in on me.
I was always amazed at how perfect my room looked.
It wasn't like a dream at all. When I was
a freshman in college, I had an incident during a
nap in the daytime. It was the only time I
ever experienced sleep paralysis during the daytime hours. I was
sleeping on a futon in my dorm room and listening
to Pantera extremely loud. Somehow I was able to sleep
through that. I used to sleep with my right arm
over my eyes, I guessed to block out the light,
although I sometimes slept like that at night as well well.
I opened my eyes and I couldn't move. I could
hear Pantera crystal clear, and I had a dreadful feeling
that something was sitting on my chest. I had my
arm over my eyes, so I could only see a
little light coming in from under my elbow. Whatever was
sitting on me started to get heavier and heavier. I
was having a hard time breathing, and that is what
woke me up. I woke up gasping for air. My
roommate didn't seem to notice anything odd with me, so
I assumed that to him, I was just asleep again.
The detail of the song and what little I could
see in my room was quite different than a normal dream.
More recently, I had an experience that was much more
lucid and quite a bit clearer. It must have been
around seven years ago. Now I was in my bed
and I woke up, but I couldn't move again. There
was a vague feeling of dread. I looked to my
left and I could see my wife sleeping next to me.
I was trying to look over her to see the
digital clock that was on the end table, but I
could not lift my head. Then I looked to my right,
and there it was clear as day. There was some
light coming into my room from outside, so it was
not pitch dark in my room. There were red eyes.
As soon as we made eye contact, it quickly moved
toward me and it poked me in my right side.
That woke me up instantly, and I got out of bed.
It hurt not horribly, but it was noticeable. My wife
is a light sleeper, and she did not wake up.
I walked around the room for about five minutes rubbing
my side. The pain lasted about five or ten minutes,
and then I went back to sleep. I didn't think
much about this. I'm not sure why I didn't look
into sleep paralysis, but I guess I didn't know that
it was as common as it is. I was listening
to a podcast one day and I heard a comedian
talking about sleep paralysis. He was affected by it. He
talked about what people see, and he said that everyone
sees the same thing. Just google it. It's the first
image that pops up. So I did, and there it
was exactly what I saw, a black, hooded being with
red eyes and no discerning features. Now I really thought
a lot about this, and I started wondering if this
being was malevolent, or maybe it was trying to help
me in some way. I kept thinking about the way
it moved. It didn't float or glide. There was no smoke.
He or she walked over to me like a person.
I wondered if maybe it was a person underneath that cloak, interdimensional.
Maybe I started thinking that maybe he rushed me as
soon as he made eye contact, because he knew I
would be scared and try to wake up as soon
as possible. I also wondered if I could communicate with him.
I then found a book on Amazon titled Sleep Paralysis,
A Guide to Hypnagogic Visions and Visitors of the Night
by Ryan Hurd. In it, the author starts with scientific
data a chemical that your brain naturally produces to keep
people from acting out in their dreams. People with sleep
paralysis are in between wake and sleep, and they wake
up when the chemical is kicking in. Apparently people with
night terrors don't get enough of this, and to me,
this makes sense. He then spoke about the dream aspect
of this and how the mind can manifest these scary visions.
I have an issue with this because why would people
report the same vision? And I can think of much
scarier things than a black shadow with red eyes. That
aspect of it just didn't sit well with me. He
also talked about how to parley this event into a
lucid dream. He advised to practice focusing on your belly bottom,
which feels like going downhill on a roller coaster. It's
that drop feeling. It wants to pull you into a dream,
so let it. He also mentions what I was thinking
about confronting the entity or being. He advised though, that
he himself has done this and he cautions against it
as it can be very scary. Since then, my incidents
of sleep paralysis have ramped up a lot. I have
been obsessed with seeing him again. I also want to
mention that I have had some trauma that has been
ongoing for the last seven years. I don't want to
get into that, but I do think it has something
to do with why the frequency has kicked up. I
also want to mention that I have a large mirror
in front of my bed, which is where I saw him.
I think that is important as well. The first time
I felt sleep paralysis coming on after I read the book,
I was able to focus on my stomach and I
let it pull me down into a lucid dream. It
was pretty awesome. I fell onto a street at night.
There was an office building or an old school or something.
I felt compelled to go in. Once inside, there were others.
I asked if they would help me on a quest,
as I was searching for something that had to do
with my trauma. They said that they would help, but
they too were in the middle of their own battle
and asked if I would help them. I looked up
and there was a giant snake with a dragon head.
It looked metallic and organic at the same time. It
was a dark gray color, and they were all fighting it.
I wished myself into a ninja suit and was practicing
throwing stars when and this happened so fast. The serpent
turned into a woman and seduced me, and I woke up.
I felt like they had kicked me out and that
I had failed. I have not been able to do
that since then. It's strange. Now I anticipate the sleep
paralysis and I can feel it coming on. Usually i
wake up it's like electricity and a vibration. It's pretty strong.
But now there is usually no entity, and I have
not been able to get back into a dream. A
couple of nights ago, I was in my bed and
it happened again. I had the blankets pulled up snug
and I felt the paralysis and I opened my eyes.
A small shadowy head peeked over the edge of the blanket,
then another one. I was not scared. It seemed like
they were just checking me out. I tried really hard
to get up, and I was able to eventually, and
there was a shadowy figure pointing to my bedroom door,
as if to say, go that way. I started to
walk out of my room, but then I suddenly woke up.
I was still laying in my bed, and it was
not like sleepwalking. I think that it's important to note
that the sleep paralysis dreams are different, and that they
are so vivid and not really dream like. I think
that we have all had dreams of being in our
houses or familiar places, and there is always something off
or something exaggerated. The house is bigger, or the room
is in a different location, the hallway is longer, et cetera. However,
in the sleep paralysis dreams, everything is exactly as it
is in real waking life. The light, the walls, anything
that would be there is there. This is where the
mystery lies for me, What is this realm? I have
been listening to your podcast for a few months, and
I'm always drawn to the sleep paralysis or shadow people's stories.
I hope this helps anyone who is struggling with it.
Thank you for listening, William. I have added a link
to the book that William mentioned in the show notes
before I continue, Please consider showing your support by subscribing, sharing,
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show is the best support of all and I'm grateful
to have you here. Now, Please stay tuned and I'll
be right back. After these brief messages, our next experience
of the night comes to us from C and Sees.
Experience is called Paranormal Experiences and sleep paralysis se says
he Nick First and foremost, I appreciate your podcast and
listener's submissions. Thank you for an outlet for us to
compare and share our experience, says I have been pondering
telling my story since I started listening about two years ago,
and it was after hearing about Italia's story that I
thought it was probably time to do so. My experience
started when I was about five years old. My family
and I were living in a Victorian style home and
for the first year or so, it was quiet. Then
it seems suddenly I started hearing an old rocking chair
in the attic rocking every night, or I would hear
footsteps pacing from one end to the other. When I
asked my parents about it, they would tell me that
it was just my imagination. Soon enough, though, I started
hearing the same pacing on the balcony outside my bedroom.
I knew that it was not my imagination because the
footsteps were unmistakable on the tin overlay of the balcony.
Being young, though I was too afraid to get up
and investigate, I had experienced other things, and so did
my siblings. I would hear scratching under my bed and
seeing things being pulled under my bed. My brother would
hear odd sounds, and also, once my brother's room was
torn apart after we had moved from there, my mother
confessed that she used to hear the same thing, and
she would also hear children playing in our bedrooms when
we were all at school. We had moved into an
old bank building when I was thirteen. The building had
a lot of history. It was chartered as a bank
in nineteen eleven, and then a mining company which was
owned by long ago relatives of my family. My mom
also had a doll store in the bank part of
the building, all sorts of dolls, from new to the
very old. I knew people say that dolls are vessels
for souls, but at that time I had never given
it much thought. It was just my normal. There was
activity there as well, but nothing too startling, except for
the creepy man at the bottom of the stairs. I'm
not sure how to describe him other than ashy in
color and long, white, scraggly hair. This will be important later.
I had moved away from home when I was nineteen
years old. I moved into an old school building about
three hours away from home. There really wasn't anything outstanding
in the way of paranormal activity, but it was peaceful. However,
one night we decided to play with the Ouiji board,
both of us being inexperienced. We read the instructions, yet
we didn't follow them. I was inappropriate with it, and
I paid for it later. That night was my first
experience with sleep paralysis. I remember not being able to breathe.
My eyes were fully open, and I could hear different
voices talking and laughing at me. I felt like I
was a side show in a circus. Although I can't
quite remember what the voices were saying, the laughs are
still a noise that rings in my ears as being
sadistic in nature. This happened for the next two nights.
After that first night, the TV would also change channels
by itself to the ominous six sixty six constantly. After
moving from there, life was quiet for a bit, just
faint noises of my name and the overwhelming smells of
perfume from time to time. Fast forward a few years later,
I was married and my husband was deployed to Iraq.
I was living with my mom and dad in their
old bank building. It was around two thirty on a
Saturday afternoon and I decided to take a nap. My
parents were leaving and I could hear them as they
were walking down their stairs. I turned the radio on
to a local country station for some background noise. Just
as I could feel myself drifting off to sleep, the
radio instantly went to a white noise with a high
pitched squeal. My eyes shot open, but I could not move.
I felt something standing on the bed by my feet,
and I then proceeded to feel every footstep as it
walked up to my head and then back down to
my feet. Once again, I was trying to scream, but
nothing would come out. Once this being got back down
to my feet, I felt it lay down next to
me in a spooning position, and it was trying to
get in between my legs. As I felt the pressure,
the presence I felt was that of the creepy man
at the bottom of the stairs that I had mentioned previously.
I felt like I was fighting for my life. Soon though,
the radio went back to normal and I was finally
able to move. I grabbed my phone and I ran
out of the building, only to return when my parents
returned from their outing. I had explained to my mom
what had happened, and I told her who I thought
that it was. She looked at me puzzled, and then
she told me that she had had that happen before
with the same creepy man. However, it was years ago
in our previous home. This type of assault would happen
a handful of other times between then and now. In
two thousand and eighteen, my husband and I divorced and
I moved back home. Although my parents still had the
old building, they were now living in a town twenty
miles away. The building had been vacant for about twenty years.
I needed somewhere to live, and with housings so expensive,
I talked my parents into selling me their building. My
best friend and I decided that it would make for
an awesome shop for us to go into business together.
We just weren't sure what though, the coolest part about
it was that the old vault was still intact and
my parents had the combination. To be honest, the building
wasn't empty, and my mom's doll shop was still fully intact,
along with various other things. We were tasked with clearing
all of it, and boy, did we have our work
cut out for us. My dad came over to see
the progress that was made and he opened the vault.
I had my camera out and was taking pictures of
the opening. I'm not sure why, but I'm glad I did.
As soon as the vault opened, I caught two orbs
flying out. I was in amazement, and I showed them
to all of my believing friends. One night, we were
there pretty late, as we were both night owls. We
had the music streaming from a big Bluetooth speaker, and
my friend decided that she was going to start pulling
stuff from a blocked off hallway where my mom displayed
vintage clothes for sale. In the same hallway was the
rocking chair that my parents took from the attic from
our old home, the same one that would rock by itself.
In that rocking chair was a defective composition doll from
the nineteen forties. The doll was a factory defective doll
with two left hands. I told her to be careful,
and I gave her the history of it. She didn't
much care, though, and she started pulling it out. She
got it to the end of the hallway and the
lights went out and the bluetooth speaker stopped. It was
a good fifteen seconds that we sat there in the
silent dark when the lights were restored by my own hand.
You see, it wasn't a power outage. The lights had
been physically turned off. The speaker had been manually turned
off as well. We left shortly thereafter. A couple days
later we were back at it. My friend went back
to the rocking chair and grabbed the doll from the chair,
and a piece of the composition popped off and struck
her hard right below her eye. She placed it in
a box and that is where it stayed. We ended
up having a big sale to get rid of everything.
It was disclosed with both the rocking chair and the
doll that they may be haunted, but I think that
it only added to the lower Eventually the building was
sold because there was just too much work for me
to do on my own with my own means. I
have since remarried and have moved out west. Since then,
my sleep paralysis has picked up, each time seeing a
shadow man at the foot of my bed, motioning me
to follow him or to come to him. Sometimes though
he would be up by my head and staring down
at me. I have woken up abruptly with flashing lights
coming from my living room and seeing a full apparition
of a man staring out my bedroom window. And I
have also seen a stained glass window being projected on
the wall by my side of the bed. This could
not be explained, but then again, none of it can be.
My last straw was while I was washing my face
before bed. I was wearing a sleeveless shirt and had
a soapy washrag in my hand scrubbing away at my face.
And this is when my inner own arms started to sting,
burn and hurt. I couldn't believe how much it hurt,
but there was nothing that I could do about it.
When I finished washing, I touched and looked at my arm.
There were two visible scratched red lines. Now, I will
say and I do believe this was the reason for
the uptick in activity in the past two years. That
it's because I have come back to the Lord after
stepping away for a while. I've been reading the Bible daily,
listening to sermons, and going to church. With that being said,
I had asked one of my sisters in Christ about
what I should do. I even contacted a church. They
both asked if I had played with a ouiji board,
been to or consulted a psychic, or other things like that,
which I had. They had mentioned familiar spirits and how
they feel like I have invited the men and they
feel that they have a right to me. They also
told me to get rid of them by praying to
God and Jesus to remove the familiar spirits from my
life and that they have no right to me or
my life. The night before this past Thanksgiving, I prayed
just that, and I am happy to say that I
have been sleep paralysis free. There has been no visit
from the shadow Man, mysterious flashing lights, or apparitions in
my bedroom. It has been peaceful for the first time
in a long while. Some of the stories that I
hear on this wonderful podcast seem to be out of fear.
If you are exhausted with your own experiences and just
want to find peace, pray to God to remove these
familiar spirits from your life and have faith that He will.
Thank you for reading my story and keep up the
good work. As I bring tonight's episode to an end,
I'd like to thank Sarah Lera William and c for
coming forward with their experiences, and if you'd like to
share your paranormal encounter or learn more about supporting the show,
you can find all my contact and support information in
the show notes and of course, at Paranormal Mysteries podcast
dot com. Until next time, thank you again for being here,
and I hope you'll join me for my next episode
as we continue our journey into the unexplained right here
on Paranormal Mysteries