NOVA: You and others have said that there is no other psychological explanation. But that there is some reality to it. What do you think of the work of people like Michael Persinger and Robert Baker who have these complicated theories about neurology or they charge that hypnogogic hallucinations being at the root of these perceived—these experiences?
MACK: These experiences often occur in literal consciousness. Not in a hypnogogic or dreamlike state. The person may be in their bedroom quite wide awake. The beings show up. And there they are and the experience begins. That they're not occurring in any dreamlike state. Now sometimes they do occur when a person is dozing off or in a hypnogogic state. But very frequently not.
Sleep paralysis is neither dreamlike nor hypnagogic. The hypnagogic state occurs when a person is drifting off to sleep; it feels different than sleep paralysis, in my experience.
All people enter a state of paralysis when they sleep. Sleep paralysis occurs when a person becomes conscious after sleep, but they remain in the paralyzed state.
Typically, I will wake up. I can see the room around me; I am perfectly aware. I should point out that I do not know whether I really see the room, or if I hallucinate it, since I don’t know if my eyes open or not. It takes only an instant to realize that I cannot move, and then I start to panic. I know that if I could only move a tiny bit, I could break the paralysis, but I can’t, and the panic deepens.
The last time I had this happen, my husband heard me whimpering and woke me up... wrong words, because I was already awake, in a fashion.
Without outside interference, however, things that should not be there begin to appear. In my case, it’s ghosts and phantoms. Once, I actually broke the paralysis, got out of bed, and started walking down the hall before the ghosts and phantoms started appearing. And they frightened me so badly that I snapped back into bed (for lack of better description). It was then that I realized that the paralysis still had me in its grip.
Sleep paralysis hallucinations tend to take a form consistent with the culture of the sufferer. Ghost stories were a bigger part of my life than alien abduction stories; no doubt, if I had been raised with stories of UFOs and such, I would have had hallucinations consistent with alien abduction. Let me point out that the hallucinations seem absolutely real. I *did* see ghosts and phantoms. I *did* leave my body completely once, and partially on other occasions. Those were real experiences that I only know were the products of a particular genetic condition because I am a rational person.
Everything I’ve read about alien abduction experiences tells me that I’m reading the experiences of other people with this condition.
Other than sleep paralysis, we’re completely normal. This is not a mental illness.
There is quite a bit of information about sleep paralysis on the internet.