Reflection on Night

After our discussion in class today I was thinking about how things can become so much more terrifying at night, especially when you’re trying to sleep. So I don’t know how many people have heard of this but there is a thing called “sleep paralysis” and when you’re trying to wake up sometimes you’re kind of stuck sleeping. I have experienced this a few times and it can get kind of scary. It happens the most when I fall asleep on my back and basically, I wake up but I can’t move, I can’t even open my eyes. It can also get weird because sometimes when someone is stuck in sleep paralysis they can have hallucinations. This has never happened to me, but I know sometimes people hallucinate that there is a demon or creepy creature standing in their room and staring at them which sounds absolutely horrifying. For me, I’ve only experienced hallucinations a couple of times but it is usually just a hallucination of my mom coming into the room asking me if I’m okay (so not scary at all lol). When I wake up, I usually think that actually happened because it seems so real but every time I get up and I’m in the room alone. Typically sleep paralysis is only supposed to last 30 seconds or a minute but for me, I’m usually stuck for a long time. (Although I obviously cannot see the passage of time because my eyes are closed, I once fell asleep while watching TV and when about when I “woke up” Thor 3 came on and I was stuck in sleep paralysis and heard about the first 10 minutes of the movie before I finally was able to get up.) It’s not really scary it’s more frustrating because I want to get up but can’t. I’m glad I’ve never hallucinated a demon or anything because with our discussion on night, I know that seeing something like that in the dark would be beyond terrifying.