Are your dreams really frightening or just weird? I’ve had a lot of loss in my life and hate the dreams which involve losing my bag with everything important in it, or worse, frantically searching for a missing child. Unpleasant and frightening but not the kind of terrifying dream this artist sufferer of sleep paralysis depicts.
Luckily this doesn’t happen very often to me. But one night last week I had a dream I was swimming and being chased by a mutant crocodile. I was trying to climb on a boat when I “woke” up in paralysis state and I could not get my legs on the boat because I couldn’t move. It was very scary lol. So when this happens are we awake or asleep?
I wonder how my doctor would answer that question?
As a kid I had a dream someone with a knife was in my room. I couldn’t move and I was terrified. When I finally did, I noticed a little scratch on my arm and for a long time I thought the experience could have been real. Now I know what’s up, and I forget the dreams quickly. They happen when I’m stressed, I think? I had reputation in my immediate family of telling strange stories; there wasn’t much patience for that. 
Nobody guessed “sleep disorder”.
The photos are really strange. The blindfolds remind me that the people in my hypnopompic or hypnagogic hallucinations, or sleep paralysis episodes, have no identity 98% of the time. In regular dreams I know people or can at least see their faces. Thanks for sharing the artists work. Kinda creepy to see photos reminiscent of a brain experience.
How horrible to have dreams like that as a child!
Carol said:
I wonder how my doctor would answer that question?
As a kid I had a dream someone with a knife was in my room. I couldn't move and I was terrified. When I finally did, I noticed a little scratch on my arm and for a long time I thought the experience could have been real. Now I know what's up, and I forget the dreams quickly. They happen when I'm stressed, I think? I had reputation in my immediate family of telling strange stories; there wasn't much patience for that. :) Nobody guessed "sleep disorder".
The photos are really strange. The blindfolds remind me that the people in my hypnopompic or hypnagogic hallucinations, or sleep paralysis episodes, have no identity 98% of the time. In regular dreams I know people or can at least see their faces. Thanks for sharing the artists work. Kinda creepy to see photos reminiscent of a brain experience.
I had what I have always thought of as night terrors as a child but would now call sleep paralysis but can’t be sure. I have always believed I was awake with a terrible ‘thing’ pinning me to the bed. Brought up in a very religious household where I was often told how bad I was I was convinced it was the devil and would desperately try to make the sign of the cross to stop it but couldn’t move an inch. It happened regularly enough to make me afraid of going to sleep.
I also had a recurring dream that I know was a dream because I would wake up and think “Thank God that wasn’t real”. At my convent school we were in two houses and each house had to line up in height order. At 11 I was my full height, 5ft9in, tallest in the school and had to lead in to the chapel which I found terrifying with the nuns in their stalls all round the chapel watching us coming in. In my dream I would get to the doors of the chapel and be unable to move a muscle with the girls pushing forward from behind. It doesn’t sound that dreadful but I found it very distressing.
I found this
http://sleepdisorders.about.com/od/commonsleepdisorders/a/Sleep_Paralysis.htm
which is interesting.