Stephen – Bibliograthy

‘Sleep paralysis’ Shelly R. Adler

Shelly’s journal explains two sides of sleep paralysis one which is the myth of an evil nocturnal being come to visit you in your dreams and press the life out of you, and another todays beliefs that it is just a state of consciousness between sleep and wakefulness in which you may experience vivid of freighting nightmares.

Shelly R. Adler’s research focuses on how nightmare attacks have been experienced and defined throughout history.

I understand this book commits to reason within the subject of ‘sleep paralysis’ but it also investigates the chances of an unnatural element that can’t be explained realistically, This idea intrigues me because there is so much unexplained occurrences in the world that seem to have no apparent reason for happening but I think it all comes down to the way in which we interpret the world and whether you believe that there is a higher reason to all these sort of catastrophes.

I personally find the theory of a paranormal entity with an evil presences quite engaging, because it is so unknown to me and what we don’t understand we seek to learn more about if we can, ideas come into my mind about what this evil phenomenon and where it comes from. I like to think that when we dream we fall into another space of existence not bound to earth or anywhere else, that being said wherever this existence may be within it’s space this unknown phenomenon roams talking from personal experience I myself sometimes fall into sleep paralysis where I a not awake but I know I’m not dreaming just somewhere in the middle and in this state it is said that the evil phenomenon spawns staring you dead in the eye while it hovers over you and lays over chest sucking the life from you as it does.

Then again this theory is unlikely and abnormal, there is always an explanation for anything sleep paralysis could just be biology of the body acting out due to sleep deprivation. Sleep paralysis does cause you to hallucinate and even sometimes experience nightmares, my theory before about how dreaming is a state in which you fall into another plain of existence where the world around you is vivid and incredibly unrealistic and waking up abruptly from this dream can cause sleep paralysis in which I would say your stuck between two plain of existence being awake but also paralyzed in your sleep and in this state you still see and feel things that don’t entirely make sense or can even remotely be real.

What I took back from the journal was the mere fact that also this reason and evidence to the contrary fall upon those of us who to choose to believe this particular side of the argument between real and not real, we will never truly know what it is that takes hold of us when we experience such moments in our life or whether it is simple chucked up to a natural cause of the body.

 

The terror that comes in the night ‘David J. Hufford

The terror that comes in the night Hufford writes about the ‘mare’ short for nightmare that comes in the night in the form of a witch invading bedrooms and presses the vital force out of it’s scared victims.

The book talks of an absolute creature of the night a ‘witch’ that frightens men and women in their dreams ‘hufford’ always seems to be pointing at witches in the book revealing them as they main culprit for inducing sleep paralysis in it’s victims though this dates back to early modern times and I agree with that in a sense that during such times when man was not as advanced in intellect back then as we are witches were very popular among town people and almost everyone one was accused of being a witch.

Though ‘hufford’ reiterates that such experiences are still happening now in our modern society across the world a percentage of people are still having nightmares that share an equal experience in Germany and the Philippines, though all sorts of reasons and beliefs are being put into perspective though were are so far in time no clear explanations seems to be presented, which is quite funny seeing as early modern societies seemed to have been putting all there fingers and what they believed to be the reason and it makes me wonder if they were correct or not seeing as no case was fully proven in that time so who we do we blame or what reason do we fall upon now.

Reading more the book does to fully emphasize whether or not witches were to blame for the nightmares towns people suffered back then, though it was thought witches tormented both men and women it was men who often imagined a witch to be his tormentor. I’ve only known sleep paralysis to be a state in which I could not move or speak and my vision of my surrounding was always where I laid my head to sleep most times it would be a bit burry and still as if I was still in a dream and at this point I felt something unexplainable but almost as if it was a presence but then I would just wake up from it as if I would just shake it off and break through to the real world. However this is only my experience and ‘hufford’ explains that whether it was in early modern times or now the experience of going through sleep paralysis or a ‘mare’ would start of with a disturbing rustling sound as the victim would open his or her eyes to see the familiar surroundings of the world around them, but then perceives an evil presence trying to sit up but they cannot realizing they are paralyzed and in this moment he experiences the visual perception of a witch hovering down on him pressing down on his chest whether this is a hallucination or not cannot be told.