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Night Terrors & Boogey Men

18:52 / 15.08.07

I used to have a serious problem with night terrors, like waking up paralyzed frequently with the distinct impression of something on me or near me which emanated a feeling of sheer horror. I never saw it physically, but I Knew beyond doubt it was there, trying to get at me. It still gives me shivers.
Imagine being as frozen as stone while every fiber of your being wants to run and scream, possessed by a Lovecraftian feeling of nameless dread. Multiple times a night, night after night. There were two incidents where something turned up before I even went to sleep. A few times I managed to fully wake up, flailing and screaming. My girlfriend was a little perturbed, as you might expect.

I finally fought back with a garbled LBRP/Gnostic thunderbolt, or as close as my sleep befuddle mind could, and it disapeared.
I had been basically quit magic due to a long term infatuation with psychedelics which ate my life, and had been half-assedly trying to get back into it. This pretty much sealed the deal and set me back on the path, with a new respect for the Western mysteries.

Fast Forward 6 months to a new city and something else starts appearing during the moments before sleep. Fortunately I knew how to drive it off, before the paralysis started again.

Anyone else ever have such an encounter? Any thoughts on what these bastard things are?

19:12 / 15.08.07

You've already identified the likely culprit: sleep paralysis.

Not necessarily tied to any beasties with a material or metaphysical existence.

19:15 / 15.08.07

the night hag/ night mare/ hypnagogic sleep paralysis is a fairly common event.

check the Wiki on it

my family has had good luck using iron and copper jewelry worn to bed to overt the experiences. the hypnagogic state can be used magically if one so desires.

19:17 / 15.08.07

hahah x-post!

My kith and kin believe the state of sleep paralysis does allow for us to fuck with ourselves AND/OR get useful or non useful visits. It's a liminal state.

19:28 / 15.08.07

The reason of stuff nagging you at sleep varies. It depends on what sort of practice you do. For example: when I did doing purification rituals for a long time straight, especially related to the Moon, I had all sorts of annoying stuff making me jump out of my ass, but nowhere near the magnitude you describe. Those were mostly like angry/frightened creatures running away from the beaten bushes which made alot of noise. Afterwards you learn to expect such results.

It all depends on the context of the stuff you do.

But I remember having this experience you describe (waking up paralyzed, supreme evil hovering above my head) when I was a little one but I've never had it again.

But if a garbled sleepy LBRP/Gnostic Thunderbolt (yeah I know, I've been there) drove it off then I presume it wasn't anything serious?
Maybe a normal sleep paralysis.

Do you have a frequent if not daily practice? Since you mentioned LBRP and such: practising ceremonial magic rituals that are used by a specific Order or current generally causes you to slowly tap that current and if all works nicely, become "admitted" in the Order's egregore protection, growth and spiritual direction. Even if you don't ever join them physically.

Of course, all this is extremely relative but in general, sorting out your practice tends to sort these random "incidents" moving you along an balanced orbit.

19:28 / 15.08.07

I Sorry this is a really brief post, halfway out the door, but I've had this loads, for years and can still induce it by basically sleeping too much. It's not a beastie, though the fact we tend to hallucinate one is interesting. I've imagined (but never seen it) as all sorts - my Dad, my partner etc.

Two strategies:

1) I've found that I can modulate my breathing to get my partner to wake me up. I just do a weird, heavy and alarming breath pattern till she shakes me awake.

2) Use it as a springboard for astral exploration. Imagine a dreambody, get it out of bed, start exploring the environment. Pick a tattva or symbol before hand and have it in your mind constantly over a few days. If you can get lucid and exploring your environment, draw/project/imagine it onto a door and enter same.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

19:53 / 15.08.07

1) Don't sleep on your back.

2) Try moving your eyes rapidly--this seems to unfreeze the rest of you.

20:57 / 15.08.07

I had little practice going on when all of this occurred; I had just started learning Chaos Magick to try and get back into a serious path. The use of the LBRP/thunderbolt seems to have pulled me into that current pretty much fully since then. My practice is still erratic, though frequent.
I've always assumed that it was more than a weird sleeping disorder, being that the being was always present, and that a magical operation pulled out of my astral ass put an end to it.
Its hard to dismiss lurking evil as imaginary when its breathing down your neck.
Or maybe theres a little more to Sleep Paralysis than the rational scientific explanation?
I can't truly say, I just know what happened and what worked. Since it stopped I read up on hypnagogic states and astral projection and kind of wish I'd had the knowledge then to explore it more.

08:06 / 16.08.07

Hmmm, my experiences aren't quite this, but I have two or three things that may be related.

1: When I was younger, I had a very vivid repeating dream about a certain kind of hungry darkness that ate little girls like me (only it never got to eat me). I was also inclined to sleep terrors, halucinations, and sleepwalking as a child. In the long run, that particular haunt so affected me that a few years ago I had to do some inward journey-style meditation to go take care of it. I ultimately met up with Mr. Dark, stabbed him with a spear, and ran him up a flagpole. He's still there as far as I know (which reminds me, I really should go back there sometime and see what's what).

2: At various times I have been half awake, in that liminal state, or woken up in the middle of the night, and percieved one or more nasties nearby. If I'm scared enough, or feel vulnerable enough, I reach out for help and protection.

I remember one time when I was particularly scared, Freya did indeed show up. She was trying not to laugh as She assured me that, while nothing was actually wrong, She would keep an eye out for me just in case, until I was finished transitioning and could go back to handling it myself. I'm used to the gods laughing at me when I'm being silly.

3: I have noticed in recent years that if somebody comes to me while I'm almost asleep, and tells me about a practical problem they are having in a very immediate sense ("Our passports are missing!" "The power keeps going out!") I will go to sleep with a strong impression of needing to talk to the local wights about it, dream about explaining the problem to somebody who looks kind of strange, and the problem is solved by the time I wake up. So yeah, I think some fairly strong magic can be done from that in-between state.

--Ember--

08:32 / 16.08.07

The trouble with sleep paralysis is the fear is very very real and trying to just reassure yourself against what your feeling as that presence is just a feeling and not "real" is... tough

After it occuring several times in one night you can atelast take the edge off of it and ive found that from there, conversation with my spiritual guide(s) and guardian angel very easy and much more intelligiably audible from that state.

If you can get past the lighthearted pisstaking at your expense for being such a scaredy cat.

16:28 / 16.08.07

The pisstaking would be more than called for, I'm sure. I always had the distinct impression that the thing to conquer wasn't actually the supposed beasty, but the fear itself. I wanted to communicate with whatever was there but after the banishing it never really came back like it did before, so the opportunity vanished.

My Mom Thinks I'm Cool

17:51 / 16.08.07

Yeah, when I was a kid I was pretty freaked out by this kind of thing.

Then I read about sleep paralysis and figured it was no big deal.

Then one time my sister and I were staying at my dad's house together and it happened to both of us at the exact same time, and we both had the impression that someone important was at the front door, ringing the doorbell and trying to get in, and we couldn't answer the door due to the paralysis. That kind of shared experience kind of made the purely physiological explanation seem a little thin.

Anyway - second and third to other's posts - don't fear the state, use it to wander around. To recreate it, I usually have better luck in a slightly warmer-than-comfortable environment, and with naps rather than late night stuff. that might be different for everyone though...look for general tips on lucid dreaming I suppose, it's not unrelated.

I tend to eat bad guys who show up in my dreams these days, and my lucid dreaming's taken on a whole different aspect too...coincidentally or not, I haven't experienced sleep paralysis in years.

21:13 / 16.08.07

I've been having a lot of problems sleeping lately (I've been totally manic, so it's not out of character), but I've been doing visualizations to help me sleep. Three nights ago I was lying in bed trying to visualize a calm, comfortable bubble around me when I felt this thing behind me. I was on my side, with my back to a wall in my room and I could totally visualize this black, sticky thing sitting next to me. The room's atmosphere got very dense and gross feeling and I felt sick to my stomach. I focused and turned my "bubble" into a more solid structure and thought of it as protection from anything negative. After that, I "watched" this thing climb out my window. It was very strange. I've had sleep paralysis and woken up with "ghosts" and "spirits" in my room (and one time I had something sitting on my chest). But never anything like this while I was still awake, it was bizzare. I couldn't believe that the bubble worked, haha. (I haven't had a lot of experience with visualization up until a few times recently.

21:41 / 16.08.07

I always had the distinct impression that the thing to conquer wasn't actually the supposed beasty, but the fear itself.

That's been my perception as well, except that I've interpreted the "beasty" as the personification (and slight dissociation) of my Fear, which means conquering the beastie IS conquering the fear, metaphorically.

That philosophy has worked very well for me.

--Ember--

09:25 / 17.08.07

My actual experiences with sleep paralysis arent so much that something is there in the room with me, i get a loud white noise/humming which gains in intensity with the real feeling that accompanying the noise is something trying to push its way into reality/my perception and whatever it is is bad news.

the best coutner i found was controlling the the noise to quiet through will followed by then not thinking/focussing on it tends to remove it and the fear, whereabouts i can then start conversation with whatver is around.