We'd Rather Be Passed Out

Fascinating article on sleep paralysis. It's when a person wakes up and feels an evil presence, but he can't move; he is paralyzed and afraid. After a few minutes, the state passes. Link. Excerpts:

Although widely acknowledged among traditional cultures, sleep paralysis is one of the most prevalent yet least recognized mental phenomena for people in industrialized societies, Hufford says. . . .

In the past 10 years, psychologist J. Allan Cheyne of the University of Waterloo in Canada has collected more than 28,000 tales of sleep paralysis. According to one of the chroniclers, "The first time I experienced this, I saw a shadow of a moving figure, arms outstretched, and I was absolutely sure it was supernatural and evil." Another person recalled awakening "to find a half-snake/half-human thing shouting gibberish in my ear." Yet another person reported periodically waking with a start just after falling asleep, sensing an ominous presence nearby. The tale continues: "Then, something comes over me and smothers me, as if with a pillow. I fight but I can't move. I try to scream. I wake up gasping for air." . . .

In surveys that he has conducted with large numbers of college students and other volunteers, about 30 percent report having experienced at least one incident of sleep paralysis. Roughly 1 in 50 people cites repeated episodes, often one or more each week. . . .

Curiously, although the word nightmare originally described sleep paralysis, it now refers to a fearful or disturbing dream, says Hufford, now at the Penn State Medical Center in Hershey, Pa. Several hundred years ago, the English referred to nighttime sensations of chest pressure from witches or other supernatural beings as the "mare," from the Anglo-Saxon merran, meaning to crush. The term eventually morphed into nightmare–the crusher who comes in the night.

It reminds us of the nocturnal sexual predator, Popo Bawa. Link.