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Sleep paralysis happens when people become conscious while their muscles remain in the ultra-relaxed state that prevents them from acting out their dreams. The experience can be quite terrifying, with many people hallucinating a malevolent presence nearby, or even an attacker suffocating them. Surveys put the number of sleep paralysis sufferers between about 5 percent and 60 percent of the population. [Say what?] One man told her about his frequent sleep paralysis episodes, during which he'd experience extremely realistic hallucinations of a young child, skipping around the bed and singing nursery rhymes. Sometimes, the child would sit on his pillow...

Well, now I'm a believer. What I saw this evening tells me that there IS something out there that isn't a star, isn't an airplane and definitively isn't a normal fluctuation in the atmosphere. I noted a "star"? in the SSW at about 30 degrees from the horizon. At first I thought it was just a star jumping around due to atmospheric fluctuation. After a few minutes I noted that it "jumped" from time to time. About every 3rd or 4th jump I noted a second light jump with it and then immediately return to blend with the brighter object...

Q: What causes sleep paralysis? Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I can’t move or speak. It feels like someone is holding me down. Finally I just go back to sleep. A: Sleep paralysis is caused by a timing delay between our brain and body. It leads to an awareness of being awake, yet is accompanied by a frightening inability to move our arms or legs, utter a single word or cry out for help. It may be accompanied by unexplained sights and sounds, or even a feeling that someone else is in the room....

Sleep holds the key to understanding these mystical events, reports Roger HighfieldPeople who have out-of-body experiences near death, such as flying along a tunnel towards a heavenly light, are more likely to suffer a strange effect called sleep paralysis, according to a survey that adds to mounting evidence for a biological explanation for this mystical experience. During sleep paralysis, people experience a kind of breakdown between states of consciousness which takes place on the fringe of slumber, either when falling asleep or awakening. Because the brain turns off the body's ability to move during dreaming, muscles can lose their tone,...

LONDON (Reuters) - Do you have memories of being abducted by aliens and whisked away in a spaceship?You wouldn't be alone. Several thousand people worldwide claim to have had such close encounters, researchers say. But in a new study, a psychology expert at London's Goldsmiths College says these experiences are proof of the frailty of the human memory, rather than evidence of life in other galaxies. "Maybe what we're dealing with here is false memories, and not that people are actually being abducted and taken aboard spaceships," says Professor Chris French, who surveyed 19 self-proclaimed alien abductees. Several of the...