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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/DarkJackWolf on 2026-07-30 05:14:58+00:00.

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Everyone experiences sleep paralysis differently. It usually happens right after a nightmare for me. What happens is the nightmare scares me so badly that part of me wakes up, but the rest of me is still asleep. I'm aware that I just woke up from a dream, and I'm frozen in place in bed. It's usually almost pitch black, but I can slightly see the environment around me. I don't know if I could feel a presence, or if I'm just scared that there could be something hiding in the dark. Nothing ever happens though. I just lie there perfectly still, absolutely petrified with fear. Nothing ever comes out of the shadows however.

After years of experiencing this, I developed a trick to wake myself up. I scream. Of course nothing comes out at first. My jaw is clamped shut, my vocal chords paralyzed. I keep trying harder and harder to scream. My vocal chords start waking up as all my screams come out as just moans. The chords become stronger as the moans become closed mouth screams. Finally, I wake up crying out. Now of course once I'm fully awake I'm not actually screaming. It's just that startled yell people make when they are woken up unexpectedly.

I've come to find that I was dreaming the whole time. When I'm finally fully awake, it's usually bright. I think I have a tendency to experience paralysis only during daylight hours, I'm not sure why. I also notice the room I'm actually in is very different from the room I was just experiencing. In the dreams I'm usually on my childhood bed, the couch from my grandmother's house, or somewhere else that I might have spent a lot of time when I was younger.

I don't experience this nearly as much as I used to. Months, sometimes even years will go by between episodes now. I can't even remember when I had the last one. Well the last one before the recent bout of episodes.

Recently I've started experiencing paralysis again, but the frequency has only just increased. There's something different this time though. I'm fully aware during the episodes now. They're not dreams. It's like I'm not asleep at all, just fully paralyzed. I can pick out all the different sounds around me. I can see all the details of the objects within my field of vision. I can even smell the environment, and when I can finally move, nothing changes. It doesn't feel like I'm waking up. I'm in the exact location I was during the episode. Lying in the exact position.

The first time this new experience happened, I had just woken up from a nap on my couch. My eyes opened up, and I was lying on my side staring in the direction of the TV. It was in the middle of the day and the whole room was drenched in light. Obviously I started freaking out immediately. I couldn't move a single limb on my body. All I could do was blink. My girlfriend walked into my field of vision. I tried to get her attention, but my vocal cords were completely seized up. While walking across the room she arrived in the center directly in front of me, she stopped in place. I was half expecting her to look over at me, but she never did. She just stood there staring forward. I tried my trick of screaming to wake up, but I couldn't get it to work. I just lied there staring at my girlfriend standing completely still with her arms at her side, staring directly in front of her.

I thought maybe I was stuck in a moment in time, similar to what you might experience during a psychedelic trip. However as the minutes turned into hours, the light in the room started to dim. Time was moving forward, and the sun was beginning to set. Eventually the room was bathed in darkness, being lit by nothing but the ambient light from outside. I could do nothing but stare at the silhouette of my girlfriend who continued to just stand perfectly still.

I remembered another trick I used to use to get out of this situation when I was a kid. I would just relax and let myself drift back into another dream. I was terrified, but I had no other choice. It used to work, and it has to now. I concentrated on relaxation techniques I've been collecting throughout a lifetime of living with anxiety. I slowed my breathing, deep breaths, in and out. I focused my mind, trying to empty out all thoughts. I felt my heartbeat slow down, my eyelids get heavy.

I woke up again, it was sometime in the morning the next day. I immediately tried to move and my entire body jolted. I was no longer paralyzed. My girlfriend started walking across the room again, my heart leapt. This time she immediately turned to look at me.

“Did you sleep the entire day away yesterday?”

“Um.”

I was still trying to collect my thoughts, my brain still waking up.

“It's fine,” she continued, “but we really need to try and take care of some chores today.”

She then continued walking by and into the kitchen.

“Were you able to get anything done yesterday?” I spoke with my voice raised so that she could hear me in the kitchen. She didn't respond at first. I thought maybe she didn't hear me.

“Um, I got caught up with my game. It's fine, so we both took the day off, we need that every now and then.”

There was something off about her response. It was almost like she was trying to think of a lie. I brushed it off.

When it happened again, I was in my bed, but she wasn't there. I lied on my side facing the empty side where she was supposed to be. The ambient light spilled over and around the curtains. It wasn't much, but it was enough for me to make out the world around me,I just couldn't see any details, mostly just shapes. The problem was, since I was on my side, there was an entire half of the room I couldn't see. I felt a presence. That shouldn't cause me fear, it's just my girlfriend, but it did for some reason. I could swear she was standing directly behind me. I could almost hear her breathing, almost feel the warmth radiating off of her, and then it slowly faded away. She was backing off. I could even hear the subtle sound of her feet moving across the carpet. I heard her walking around behind me, occasionally moving something, like she was looking for something, or even just something as benign as stretching her legs to relieve some restlessness. There was nothing actually sinister happening, so I practiced my meditation, and fell back into sleep.

In the morning while we were both getting ready for work, I made a mention of it.

“Trouble sleeping last night?”

“Nope, slept like a baby. Why?”

“Just thought I heard you get out of bed.”

“Oh, probably just got up to pee while I was half asleep, okay well I got to go babe.”

She kissed me and was out the door. It was so odd the way it felt like she was dodging my questions.

The next night I woke up on my back. I could see the entire room this time. She wasn't next to me again, but I also didn't see her anywhere else in the room. The bathroom door was wide open, and the light was off, so she wasn't in there. I wanted to go see if maybe she was just grabbing a midnight snack, but of course I couldn't move. I lied there for quite some time waiting for her to come back into our room. I was fairly calm due to the circumstances. It was odd how I was starting to get used to this new version of sleep paralysis. Like, I was still frightened, but I was fully awake and aware, knowing it was eventually going to end. Where was she though? It felt like I had been lying there for an hour, and she still hadn't come back to bed.

That's when something caught my eye. Nothing had moved the entire time save for the blades of the ceiling fan. No, there was something there this whole time that I hadn't noticed yet. Just at the foot of the bed, there was something round barely poking up from behind it. I focused my eyes on it. That's when I was finally able to make out my girlfriend's eyes peeking at me. She didn't move when I noticed her. She just stayed there staring at me. I tried to scream, I wanted to know what she was doing. We just stared into each other's eyes until the first rays of the rising sun started seeping into the room. Eventually her head slowly dropped down out of view. That was it, she didn't go anywhere, she just stayed hidden behind the foot of our bed.

My eyes bolted open as the alarm clock started going off. I looked over to see the light in the bathroom on. I snoozed the alarm.

“Honey?” I called into the bathroom.

“What?” Her mouth clearly full of toothpaste.

“Everything okay?”

I heard her spit into the sink.

She appeared in the bathroom doorway looking confused.

“Yeah, why?”

I dug around my brain to find a response, but came up empty.

“No reason,”

She returned into the bathroom. I heard the shower start.

“I'm just worried about you.” I continued

She returned to the door to look at me.

“Why?”

“You just seem to be getting up more in the middle of the night.”

“What are you talking about? I've actually been getting better sleep than I ever have.”

She turned around taking off her shirt.

“Is there a history of sleepwalking in your family?” I called out

“Can we talk about this later?” I heard the shower door slide open and then closed behind her.

“Sure.” I said defeatedly

When I got home from work she was on the couch with a laptop sitting on her criss-crossed legs. The TV was on, her favorite show playing, probably just filling in the background. I picked up the remote and paused it. She hardly even registered it. She didn't even acknowledge my arrival home.

“So, it's later.”

She looked up at me, ...

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