About a year or so ago, I had a horrible dream (or so I thought) and I didn't know what to think of it. I had this nightmare where I was in my room sleeping--in the exact same position that I was ACTUALLY sleeping--and this horrifying apparition of a deceased girl was settled atop my chest. Now I've conditioned myself to know when I am in a nightmare and I just tell myself that whilst dreaming and subsequently wake up; however, this time I wasn't able to do so at all. I kept waking up to the exact same apparition on my chest and kept trying to rid myself of it. It wouldn't go away and I felt like the pressure was mounting. Eventually, I woke up--after a dozen or so tries at trying--and it was morning and then fine. I never really told anyone. I remember telling Jane that I had some awful nightmare and then she had told me that in chinese culture, it's usually an apparition of someone on your chest that prevents you from getting up. This fucked my mind up since I hadn't even told her what my nightmare was about.

So for the past year or two, I've lived with that notion that something was beyond me without any explanation of it. It happened a little while back as well, but this time the apparition was just at the doorway and not my chest (good thing).

I finally went to work today and my co-worker, Ian, and I got to talking. We were getting into a pretty heavy discussion, so I decided to let him know of it. He, being a psychology major, then explained to me that it was all bullshit and purely psychological.

Apparently, everything I've experienced has been documented in wikipedia and scientifically proven to be a Sleep Paralysis.

When you check out the site, which you will undoubtedly do, the symptom section explains it:

* Hallucinations: Images or speaking that appear during the paralysis. The person may think that someone is standing beside them or they may hear strange sounds. These may be dreamlike, possibly causing the person to think that they are still dreaming. Often it is reported as feeling a weight on one's chest, as if being underneath a person or heavy object.

These symptoms can last from mere seconds to several minutes (although they can feel like much longer) and can be frightening to the person. There may be some body movement, but it is very unlikely and hard for a person to accomplish.

There's a lot more to it, actually. The thing is, I used to be a heavy taker of sleeping pills to render myself asleep. I used to take melatonin, which is a natural chemical in the body which regulates the sleep/wake cycle. I began getting horrible nightmares and the drug started having adverse effects. The problem is, when you take a supplement of any kind that is already produced by the body, the body gets the indication to stop producing that chemical because it's being obtained from an outside source. Subsequently, when I stopped taking those pills, I was producing low levels of melatonin in my body which fucked up my sleep/wake cycle. The low levels of melatonin also played a part in what happened, though I am not entirely sure how.

The page also leads to links about lucid dreams; where dreams seem very real and the person can snap out of the dream whenever they want to.

The thing is, after all that I've been through, I can actually control many of my dreams. I almost always know when I am in a dream and can snap myself out. I can also control my actions in the dream the majority of the time (I can NOT control other people's actions, however). Infact, at times, I can actually wake up and go back to sleep and reenter the dream (sometimes in a different position of the dream) and continue it.

There are, however, times where I cannot control my dreams and sometimes those nightmares have been excruciatingly scary that I have forcibly blocked most of it out that I never want to imagine that shit ever again.

My co-worker buddy was telling me about the sleep paralysis that he's been having (apparently 10 times in the past month) as well and told me that he also takes a lot of melatonin to help him with his sleep. I know very well that it's a shit thing to keep on doing, so I gave him my advice to stop. We'll see if he actually does. It's a strong relief to know what I experienced wasn't something totally ridiculous and has happened to others.