You wake up, or at least, you think you do. The room looks exactly as it should… But you cannot move. Your body is completely frozen, your chest feels as though something heavy is pressing down on it, and at the edge of your vision there is a presence, something emerging in the form of a shadow.
If this has happened to you, you are in very ancient company. Across thousands of years and every continent on Earth, human beings have woken in exactly this state and tried to make sense of it, and what they came up with tells us something very interesting about the human mind at the edge of sleep.
What Is Sleep Paralysis and Where Did the Word “Nightmare” Come From?
Sleep paralysis occurs at the boundary between sleeping and waking. During REM sleep, the mind temporarily disconnects the body’s muscles to prevent us from acting out our dreams. Occasionally, a person becomes conscious before that paralysis has ended, resulting in waking awareness trapped inside a body that cannot respond.
