[Applause] [Music] has anyone ever had sleep paralysis before i tell you it's one of the strangest most fascinating yet horrifying things that you could experience it's the feeling of being unable to move upon awakening your senses and awareness are intact but you still feel as though you're in this half asleep half awake state i'd heard stories of this long before it happened to me i've only experienced it once i was in college i was going through an incredibly tough time in my life i was insanely stressed during finals week i wasn't getting much sleep it
must have been the night before my last final i went to bed late because i stayed up all night studying for bio i don't remember at what point i decided to finally call it i just remember it all becoming a blur then blackness next thing i remember i was in my room in my bed but there was this weird haziness in my awareness like i was awake but i felt weaker when i tried to move i couldn't i could only move my eyes to look around the dark room at one point when i guessed i
was looking to one side of the room i looked back to the center and there was this woman standing dead center in the room facing the bed she was wearing this black dress and holding some long objects i wanted to call out mom but my paralysis prevented it i couldn't say anything the woman came closer to me until she knelt down and touched my forehead and i could feel it she got eye to eye with me and i could see my mother's face i tried to say mom again desperately but i was stuck in my
own body she stood back up and walked to the doorway before disappearing into the house i lay there unable to move maybe another 10 to 20 seconds before my vision suddenly became more clear i was able to think more clearly as well i was able to sit up i jumped out of the bed screaming mom over and over i ran to the bedroom hallway yelling her name a door opened down the hall and someone came to hug me but it wasn't my mom it was my dad telling me he misses her too my mom died
three weeks before this [Music] happened you know what i love about dreams how vague and how bizarre they can be you feel like you're in this separate world where things can just make no sense now what about when that unearthiness transcends into the quote-unquote real world you'll see what i mean in a minute i was in rem sleep having this bizarre nightmare about being followed by some weird creature in the middle of the woods the dream became fuzzy though and i kind of woke up from it i say kind of because while i was out
of the dream and back in my bed i couldn't move a muscle on my body i started hearing this faint weird noise it was this indescribable robotic yet alive type sound it started light and soft but it repeated every three seconds i noticed it was getting slightly louder every time i felt like the sound was getting closer it got so unbearably loud in my head i just wanted to scream but i couldn't then my eyes locked onto the closet door specifically the crack in the closet door which i never leave open ever there was this
distorted face of a man looking between the crack with this unhumanly large open mouth smile and every time i heard the noise it seemed as if the closet and the face were getting closer until the closet door slammed shut and everything went silent i regained control of my body shortly after that and the first thing i did even though i was 24 years old was run to my parents room to get my dad to check the closet with me there was nothing in the closet though or the rest of my room my dad seemed pretty
confident that what i just experienced was sleep paralysis and that he had experienced it once as well didn't make me feel any less disturbed about what i just went through [Music] many years ago i had to sleep paralysis experience i knew there was a thing in my closet something really evil but i also knew i was dreaming and i should face my fear i tried not to look directly at the closet door but if i moved my eyes my head would turn away no matter how hard i tried i couldn't look directly at it then
i woke up in a cold sweat at first i felt really relieved that it was over but very shortly i realized it wasn't a dream and there was really something in the closet i was laying on my back and couldn't move i didn't really hear it but i could kind of feel the sickening laughter wash over me in waves emanating from the closet all of a sudden the thing throws a human head at me and it lands on my chest face up it was this girl i knew in high school up to this point i
was kind of holding it together terrified but not panicked well i lose it now i can't even scream all i could do is make these grunting sounds and moaning noises i'm wriggling and straining trying to rock from side to side to get it off me but i can't move this seemed to last maybe another minute or two and then i really woke up it was so traumatic that for weeks i would be scared when i woke up that i wasn't actually awake and something horrible could happen at any second it still makes my skin crawl
when i think about that laugh the thing is i never heard of sleep paralysis or night terrors at that point in my life i thought i was losing my mind i've suffered sleep paralysis a total of three times in my life the first two times it just consisted of me waking up not being able to move my body the third time was much different though i had woken up very early morning probably like between five and six am when the sun was just starting to come up there was light in the room but barely any
i tried to move but i had that unfortunately familiar feeling of paralysis helplessness my eyes fixated on the wall there was nothing i could do then suddenly i heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs of my bedroom it was my brother followed by my sister dad and mom they were all sobbing hysterically and they all seemed to be at least a foot taller it was unnerving the four of them approached my bed then stopped at the bedside towering over me all four of them crying i couldn't move i wanted to cry for help or just
yell at them to stop because they were scaring me their heights they looked like they were near to hitting the ceiling then just as quickly as they entered all four of them turned and walked back down the stairs i could move again and so i ran down the stairs to follow them but they weren't in the outside area i went to each of their rooms one at a time all four of them were fast asleep my heart was racing because the most surreal unnerving thing just happened to me i had to lean on the wall
to gather my thoughts for a second breathing heavily falling back asleep was futile the rest of the night i lay awake until the sun was fully up a few days later i was struck by a speeding car when crossing the road with friends and ended up with three broken bones and a fractured thigh bone i was hospitalized for a week and at one point all four of my family members stood next to my hospital bed looking down at me my mom being emotional and crying it was almost the same image from my sleep paralysis i'm
not superstitious at all but if i were i would 100 believe that dream was some kind of sign or some kind of prediction of the future in fact i just got chills writing that last sentence thinking about it [Music] there was this one time i was out late drinking with friends it was some point in the summer of 2016. we were kind of just walking around town and then around the neighborhood when one of my friends spotted someone hiding in a bush he pointed and said look and we all walked a little closer to get
a better look we could see what he was talking about but just barely it was bizarre like someone hiding in this bush in front of this house when we got too close apparently this weird off-putting sound started coming from the bush so we all screamed and laughed and ran away we screamed because it was scary but left because at the same time it was bizarrely funny and there were a lot of us so anyway we walked back to our houses respectively assuming whoever was in that bush was just messing with people i fell asleep pretty
easily that night since i was drunk but next thing i remember was waking up to the near pitch blackness of my room i couldn't look at the clock to see what time it was because i literally couldn't move i was in a sleep paralysis state i looked around the room with my eyes only and started to hear a familiar noise the noise we heard coming from that bush then i looked straight in front of me at the foot of my bed and what i saw was pure nightmare fuel it was what appeared to be this
floating grotesque horrific head of a demonic ghost-like thing as it got closer to me i realized it wasn't floating there was a body but its body blended in with the blackness of the room its mouth hung open and it just kept making the familiar noise from the bush it got mere inches from my face before it suddenly just faded away i was able to let out a scream and move my body i sat in my bed panting and heart racing i flicked on the lamp and checked around my bed but that demonic thing was gone
what i just experienced seemed so real like i was awake for it it wasn't a dream i told my parents about it the next day and they agreed with me that it was sleep paralysis though they had never heard of anyone seeing freaky like that before [Music] you
