Ghost Stories & Paranormal Encounters

I have been having sleep paralysis now for about 6 years; I started to get it when I was in my final year of university and was holding down 2 jobs, working all hours and partying all night. I would get it about 3 times a week, but only get it now a few times a month as finished uni and started my career. I don’t party much any more and spend most of my time at the gym and doing sports which helped a lot.

I found what triggered mine was lack of sleep, shift in sleeping pattern, drinking too much booze on a heavy session and the worst thing, having afternoon naps. The first few times it really scared me, the first time I tried calling for my mum and I was 20 so that shows how much it freaked me out. But now I know what’s going to happen and it doesn’t scare any where near as much as it did. I guess I’m lucky as it only lasts about 20-30 seconds where as with some people I know it lasts a lot longer. The worst bit is the more you try to move, the harder it is to move, you just have to lie there and ride it out. I have to walk around the house for 5 minutes afterwards, otherwise if I just lie there, I instantly go back into sleep paralysis, and have an even stronger sense of an evil presence.

The thing that freaked me out the most is I told my current girlfriend at the time about it, I explained to her what I saw and what it looked like in great detail. She Googled it when she was at work and printed of a few images. When showed me the ‘old hag’ I was shocked that that was exactly what I saw and described to her. I started to read up on it and found that most people saw the same image, I thought this cant be coincidence that people see the same things.

I have never experienced the hands on throat, and have never really heard the footsteps like a few people have. I have only heard noise with my sleep paralysis a few times and every time it just sounds like the old hag is snorting or quietly growling, interestingly though when I have heard him I have never seen him at the same time.

The most common symptoms I get are split into two different experiences of sleep paralysis I get. The first is I will sense him or something in the room that fills me with total fear; I will then experience something walking up my bed. It feels like when my cat jumps up on my bed and I can feel him walking up to my head. I know it’s not my cat as I lock him in the kitchen and shut my door. The thing then just sits on my chest and weighs a ton. Note that when this happens I always have my head to the side, so I never see what it is as I can’t move to look.

The second common experience I encounter is waking when the back of my head is against my pillow so I’m looking forward. I see the old hag sitting in the top corner of my room between the two walls and ceilings. He just stares at me with his eyes, which sounds really stupid and cheesy, but its like he’s looking into my soul or something, it feels as if he’s reading my mind or something. He also will sometimes sit at the bottom of my bed just staring at me. Sometimes at the same time I will have a faint figure in the other corner of my room that just has really piercing white eyes, but this doesn’t feel any where near as evil as the old hag. With both experiences as soon as I can start to move they start to disappear.

A few times I have encountered things I can’t explain. One time I was dreaming that I was in my back garden having sleep paralysis. I could hear and sense something in the dark bushes at the bottom of my garden. A figure then came chasing towards me making the horrible growling, snorting noise, and as it pounced on me I woke in my bedroom that overlooks my garden, still In a sleep paralysis state, but no longer dreaming, and could hear the thing still snorting and growling, I could sense it climbing up my wall and approaching the window, it then opened my window that was only a jar which is really stiff and impossible to open widely and came through the curtains that were completely shut, leaving them open in the middle.

It then walked behind me and sat by my shoulders, as I was paralyzed on my side I couldn’t see what it was doing, as I started to be able to move and turned around it was gone, but my curtains were open and the window open fully. There was no wind and nothing else could have used the amount of force it takes to open that window. I know that there is probably a logical reason why, like maybe I was sleep walking (even though I have never sleep walked before). But when stuff like that happens it does make me think, maybe there are paranormal things out there?

Sent in by Stuart, Copyright 2011 TrueGhostTales.com