Sleep Paralysis: "Old Hag"
A number of people with severe sleep paralysis say they hallucinate while they're frozen, sometimes hearing frightning sounds or the experience of an "old lady" (Hag), sitting on their chest.
Sufferers have horrible nightmare type hallucinations. They see dark, hooded figures as they lie helpless in bed and some women report feelings of being raped. Others see bright lights and swear they were abducted by aliens while other's have reported hearing knocking sounds on walls, voices, footsteps, experience shaking of the body, ringing of the ears, or of being in a dream-like state, yet feeling fully awake.
(Before people claimed of being abducted by aliens, Sleep Paralysis victims would say they were being visited by spirits or dead ancestors).
Sleep Paralysis strikes during the transition between dreaming sleep called REM sleep, (rapid eye movements), and being fully awake. During REM sleep, your body keeps you safe from acting out on your dreams by temporarily paralyzing you. Sometimes, your brain doesn't fully switch off those dreams or the paralysis when you wake up, which explain's the "frozen" feeling and hallucinations associated with sleep paralysis.
The effects last anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes, but it feels like forever to the person who's experiencing it.
The biggest effect is that you're scared to death, and if you add an hallucination, it's even worse.
Try to remain calm, try to move a finger, toe, scream out!
The paralysis will not kill you, or leave you permanently paralyzed, and no, you're not going crazy! Many people suffer of Sleep Paralysis, and medical attention should be sought which may uncover any illness which may be affecting the person. ( To suffer from Sleep Paralysis doesn't mean you're sick, to seek medical attention is just for your well being ). Medications can also be administered for severe cases, and sometimes simple routines can minimize the effects of Sleep Paralysis:
-Excercise, but not before bedtime.
-sleep at a regular schedule (get up and go to bed the same time every day).
-reduce stress.
-get enough sleep.
-don't nap.
-don't drink/eat caffine type products before bedtime. Instead, drink caffine free tea, etc.
-take a hot bath before bed, it will relax you.
Medications, Anxiety and Sleep Paralysis:
People who take medicines and drugs for anti-anxiety such as "Xantax" or "Valium" will have a greater chance of suffering from Sleep Paralysis. For others, the problem is often tied to sleep deprivation, a consequence of being overtired. Sleep paralysis often appears as a secondary problem for people with sleep-robbing mental illnesses like severe anxiety and bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive psychosis.
People who tend to sleep on their backs can also experience sleep paralysis.
The disease is principally characterized by a permanent and overwhelming feeling of sleepiness and fatigue. Other symptoms involve abnormalities of dreaming sleep, such as dream-like hallucinations and finding oneself physically weak or paralyzed for a few seconds.
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"Old Hag"
A nocturnal phenomenon involving nightmares, suffocation, paralysis, and supernatural smells, sounds and apparitions. The Old Hag syndrome is blamed on Vampires, restless ghosts, night terror demons, and witches. The syndrome has similarities to characteristics of poltergeists, and to the MARA, a demon that attacks humans at night and sexually assaults them.
The Old Hag syndrome has been recorded since ancient times. In folklore, hags are sometimes described as supernatural creatures which act on their own volition, or are directed to attack a person through magic. Hags also are described as witches, sorcerers, and practitioners of magic who travel out of their bodies to attack other human beings in spirit form, riding their chests at night. The term 'hag' is often used to refer to a witch, and to be 'hagged' or 'hag ridden' means to be assaulted by a witch in spirit while asleep.
Victims may be sleeping at night or napping during the day. They almost always are sleeping on their backs. They may hear footsteps, feel and see a form, and smell odors, or they may simply wake up suddenly feeling an invisible, crushing weight and paralysis, followed by sudden cessation of pressure and exhaustion. Regardless of the characteristics, the attacks are always terrifying.
In his book 'The Terror That Comes In The Night ( 1982 ),' folklorist David J. Hufford estimates that about 15% of the general population worldwide suffer at least one hag attack during life. Some individuals suffer attacks several times a year. Rarely, individuals suffer attacks over a limited period of time. Even rarer are those who suffer frequent and chronic attacks. Belief in the Old Hag, knowledge of the supernatural in general, and previous supernatural experiences do not seem to be factors in whether or not an individual has a hag attack.
No adequate explanation for the Old Hag has been put forward. Some cases have been attributed to sleep disorders and psychological conditions. The second-century Roman physician, Galen, attributed it to indigestion. Ernest Jones, an influential psychoanalyst of the Freudian school, equates hag attacks with nightmares in his monograph 'On the Nightmare ( 1931 ).' Jones attributed nightmares to sexual repression. He notes that the term nightmare comes from the Anglo-Saxon terms neaht or nicht ( night ) and mara ( Incubus or Succubus, literally "the crusher ). Up until the mid-17th century, the term nightmare was used to describe these types of nocturnal attacks. Jones also considers vampires and werewolves to be expressions of repressed sexuality as well.
Sexual repression may be a factor in some Old Hag cases, but cannot explain all cases. Sleep-related illnesses such as narcolepsy also may be a factor in some cases, but cannot account for all, or even the majority, of them.
Supernatural factors cannot be ruled out. As Hufford finds, the Old Hag syndrome has played a significant role in the development of various supernatural traditions, and the hag's relationship to cultural factors deserves more investigation.
Old Hag characteristics also appear in accounts of modern encounters with Extraterrestrials.
Excerpt | Source: 'The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves and Other Monsters,' By Rosemary Ellen Guiley
Also see:
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Night fright: For some people slumber turns into a horror movie
Wednesday, June 11, 2003 - Page updated at 03:33 P.M. Seattle Times.
Sleep behavior. For some people, slumber turns into a horror movie as they scream, bolt upright and flee their beds for no apparent reason. As scientists penetrate the mysteries of sleep, they have found treatments that can help end these bizarre episodes called 'night terrors.'
Seattle Times staff reporter
Despite going to sleep by 10 p.m., Debbie Quinn-Nance has a bustling night life.
Sometimes she sits up in bed and screams like an actress in a bad horror flick. She may even race around the house, fleeing an imagined threat. Last fall, her violent thrashing in the sheets landed her on the floor with a broken tailbone.
These episodes aren't a sign of missing mental marbles: Quinn-Nance has night terrors, episodes of visceral fear in her sleep. About 6 percent of kids and 1 percent of adults suffer from this parasomnia the word for bizarre sleep behavior which occurs when there's a glitch between sleep cycles, and the sleeper is stuck in a confusing and frightening state between deep sleep and wakefulness. The disorder has long been a sideshow in sleep science, but new research is shedding light on what makes some people go bump in the night and may help curb the disturbing spells.
Quinn-Nance, a 50-year-old nurse coordinator at Swedish Medical Center's pain clinic, has always chalked these episodes up to a family quirk: "I've had them since I can remember, and my two brothers and dad did it, too we'd even bump into each other in the hall so it didn't seem abnormal to me."
But a couple of weeks after she broke her tailbone, Quinn-Nance tripped when hotfooting it from bed and busted her chin and bruised her hip. Seeing a dangerous pattern, she sought the help of Dr. Sarah Stolz, associate medical director of the Swedish Sleep Medicine Institute.
Stolz, who has seen at least 100 night-terror cases, ordered a sleep-lab test to get to the root of Quinn-Nance's nocturnal activities.
More than a bad dream
Night terrors, she explains, are often confused with nightmares, but they are a completely different phenomenon. Night terrors usually occur in the first third of the night. They take place in the deep dreamless cycle before one kicks into REM sleep, the sleep stage characterized by rapid eye movements and vivid dreams as well as nightmares.
A snag can occur when some people are coming up out of very deep non-REM sleep. Instead of moving into REM, they are trapped in a state called confusional arousal. The best-known example of this is sleepwalking. People can get out of bed, navigate a room, even unlock windows and climb out. Their eyes are wide open but seem to see through you.
Sometimes the confusional arousal turns terrifying. No one knows why, but some doctors think it may be underlying anxiety. During a night terror, someone appears to suddenly awaken with a gasp. The person may cower and whimper in fear or scream at the top of his lungs and flee the bed, the room, the house. After a few minutes or as long as a half-hour later, the person will settle down, fall back into normal sleep and remember nothing. Such episodes can occur as often as several times a week particularly in children or as sporadically as a few times a year.
Whereas nightmares are like a David Lynch movie, with complicated, confounding plots, night terrors are like B-horror movies: No plot, just a lot of screaming.
"My heart will be pounding, I'll be sweating, I'll be scared but I don't really know of what," Quinn-Nance says.
While nightmares are very personal starring people and situations from one's real life Stolz suggests night terrors may offer a glimpse into universal human fears. Primordial concerns like snakes, spiders and wolves may have little to do with our current anxieties, but hallucinations of creepy crawly things play a prominent role in night terrors.
"Night terrors have a caveman mentality," Stolz says. "It's not an elaborate plot, but just a vague sense that you are being chased."
Common triggers
Alcoholics and people who have suffered psychological trauma may be more prone to night terrors, according to Dr. Oneil Bains, a sleep specialist at Virginia Mason Sleep Disorders Center, but the most common triggers appear to be more mundane. Anything that deepens sleep can trigger confusional arousals and night terrors.
Sleep deprivation, fever and heavy exercise can zonk certain people out so deeply they have trouble shifting between sleep cycles. Because children sleep very deeply, they are more likely to have night terrors than adults. It's so common in preschoolers it's almost considered a developmental stage; though most kids grow out of it around puberty.
On the flip side, night terrors can also be caused by anything that fragments sleep a snoring bed partner, a few drinks, a noisy room.
New findings suggest that sleep apnea already known to be one of the biggest causes of fragmented sleep may be a major underlying factor in night terrors. About 10 million Americans suffer from this condition, in which breathing is obstructed during sleep, prompting the sleeper to awaken briefly throughout the night.
In a recent study published in the journal Pediatrics, researchers at Stanford University studied 84 children between ages 2 and 11 with severe night terrors and found a surprisingly large number 49 had sleep-disordered breathing.
Children rarely have true sleep apnea, but they may have obstructed nighttime breathing that can sometimes be treated with a tonsillectomy. Surgeons removed the tonsils of 43 of the children in the study, and three months later, another sleep-lab test showed their breathing was normal, and none showed signs of confusional arousals or night terrors.
"Sleep apnea causes brief awakenings and anything that causes arousals during deep sleep can predispose you to having a night terror, so it makes a lot of sense," Bains says.
More studies are needed to draw a conclusive link, he adds, but for now, the finding offers doctors a trigger to look for in the sleep lab and a possible treatment avenue.
In adults, sleep apnea can be treated with weight loss, oral mouth devices, some surgical procedures or, most commonly, a C-PAP, a continuous positive airway pressure machine that blows air into the nose through a mask.
Sleep apnea has been increasing in recent years along with obesity, a main risk factor for the breathing problem. This could in turn fuel an upsurge in scary nights for Americans. Experts already say the true frequency of night terrors is likely much higher than its estimated rate of between 1 percent and 6 percent because few people ever report the problem to their doctors.
Bains urges people who may suffer from recurring night terrors to see a physician, partially to pinpoint sleep apnea a serious condition in its own right and also to rule out other disorders.
"We want to make sure they aren't really having a seizure," he says. "With certain types of seizures you can have confusional behaviors at night." He also wants to rule out another rare, serious sleep condition known as REM behavior disorder, in which people act out their dreams and can hurt themselves or others.
Families suffer, too
What people say and do during confusional arousals can give bystanders a waking version of a night terror.
The first few times Tom Nance shared a bed with his wife, Debbie Quinn-Nance, he was nearly startled out of his skin when she howled and bolted from bed.
Stolz recalls a patient of hers who once sat up in the middle of the first night she spent with a fellow and said, "I've murdered 20 men in my sleep." The poor guy didn't sleep the rest of the night.
Besides petrified partners, the primary concern is safety. "When people start hurting themselves or getting in dangerous situations, you ought to start doing something about it," Stolz says.
That's why Damon Gibson's parents recently took him to see Stolz.
The 18-year-old senior at Bothell High School has been having night terrors since childhood, often yelling "No! No! No!" and running out of his room.
He twisted his ankle on the stairs and bumped and bruised himself a few times, but nothing really scared his parents until a couple of months ago when he fled the house.
"I heard him bumping around, so I got up to look for him, then saw the front door was open," his mother, Tina Gibson, recalls. She found him with bruised legs and a scraped elbow just about 10 feet out the door. "When we realized he could go outside, that really scared us. What if we didn't hear him?"
Damon Gibson is about to graduate from high school and plans to move out on his own this summer. It's a step that worries most parents, but his mother is extra concerned because of his nocturnal roaming.
He doesn't show signs of sleep apnea, so he has a choice of medication or trying to identify and manage his own night-terror triggers.
Benzodiazepines, sleeping pills such as Klonopin often used to treat anxiety disorders, can help halt night terrors, but many doctors and patients are hesitant to use them when night terrors are sporadic because the medication is potentially addictive.
The Gibsons don't want drug treatment, so Stolz has instructed them to keep a detailed sleep log to try to identify triggers for Damon's night terrors. Do they occur when he is overtired, eats late or sleeps at odd hours, for instance? Improved sleep hygiene going to bed at the same time every night and not allowing himself to get over-tired may help reduce their frequency, she says.
A night in a sleep lab
It's rare to catch a night terror in the sleep-lab setting the surest cure for sleep disorder is a night in the clinic, Stolz jokes but she did see some interesting things when Quinn-Nance slept in the lab for two nights last month. Shortly after midnight the first night, she sat up, eyes wide open, and said, "Huh? Yes. Actually, all of those," as she pointed around the empty room. Then her eyes seemed to register confusion and she lay back in bed.
Watching the grainy video later, Quinn-Nance said, "It's pretty unsettling to see yourself sleeping and then startle awake and sit up and talk and not remember anything about it; it would have been really creepy to see myself in a night terror."
The confusional arousal was a strong clue to Stolz that Quinn-Nance does, indeed, suffer from night terrors. The polysomnograph a recording of brain activity, muscle movement and breathing during sleep also uncovered something Stolz hadn't suspected, because this patient isn't overweight and doesn't snore: sleep apnea. Quinn-Nance stops breathing and wakes up 10 to 13 times per hour.
Now Quinn-Nance will try sleeping with the C-PAP machine in hopes it will help curb her nightly activities and prevent future bumps, bruises and broken bones.
"I'm willing to try anything," she says. "After all this time, I really could use some rest."
Coping with night terrors
-If your child or bed partner has night terrors:
-Don't shake them awake, it will only prolong the confusion.
-Gently lead them back to bed and comfort them until they fall back to sleep.
-Free the bedroom of clutter and have them sleep on the ground floor so they don't fall down stairs.
-Put the mattress on the floor to lower the fall and make it harder to get up out of bed.
-Place alarms on windows and doors.
-Don't keep guns or other weapons in the house.
Sources: Dr. Oneil Bains, Virginia Mason Sleep Disorders Center
Night terrors vs. nightmares
The scary sleep experiences are often confused, but they are very different phenomena.
Night terrors
-Occur during first third of the night during deep non-REM sleep.
-Most people have little or no memory of incident.
-Person may go back to sleep without fully awakening.
-Involve primitive fears, like spiders or being chased; there's no story line.
-Compel people to scream, get out of bed and try to escape.
Nightmares
-Usually happen very early in the morning, during REM sleep.
-Leaves vivid memory of a movielike dream.
-Person may wake up afraid and have trouble going back to sleep.
-Often feature a long, convoluted plot line.
-Person may thrash around a bit but doesn't scream or run.
Sources: Dr. Sarah Stolz, Swedish Sleep Medicine Institute; Night Terror Resource Center
Scream scenes
Among the most common night-terror visions:
-Spiders
-Snakes
-Wolves
-Being chased
-Someone standing over you
-Being smothered
Also see:
Night of the Crusher - The waking nightmare of sleep paralysis propels people into a spirit world - July 9, 2005
Would you like to help with a study of a strange sleep phenomenon that may shed light on memory, the contents of our dreams and even alien abduction? - 11/1/05
All Copyrights© are acknowledged. Any material reproduced here is for educational and research purposes only.
*Note, In no time we mean to say here, that alien abductions do or don't happen, just an explanation as to maybe some feelings of 'alien abductions' memories or 'experiences' may be caused by Sleep Paralysis.
