Sleep Paralysis and Spirits

Are spirits real, or are they just irrational stories meant to explain things that science now explains better” This is the way the question of spirits is framed by many. According to many recent polls, belief in ghosts in the West hovers around 60%, and one British poll found that more people believe in ghosts than God. These statistics are then typically melded to reinforce the idea that “we hold irrational belief despite all the math we”ve done,” such as this statement from Live Science:

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Halloween Dreams and the Celtic Otherworld

Through Halloween, the castrated remnants of the Celtic influence on Western culture play out through communal rituals: of giving gifts to strangers, protecting the house with carved gourds that resemble spirits, and dressing in costumes to disguise ourselves after nightfall as a wandering ghost.

But we are also culturally predisposed to dream darkly, or at least confrontationally, during this holiday.

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Night terrors aka Sleep Paralysis

Gyrus from Dreamflesh made this connection between false awakenings and sleep paralysis: in both of these altered states, we feel like we are “awake” and aware of our surroundings. In a false awakening, this certainty of “awakeness” turns out to be a lucid dream about where we are actually sleeping. In sleep paralysis, we also feel awake but the situation is a little more complicated. Here our self-awareness is active and we may even have eyes open, but our bodies are still under the paralysis of REM sleep. The more we struggle, the more it feel like we are being “held down.”

I wrote about the creepiness of night terrors about a year ago on my culture shock blog, so I won’t go on at length here. Even though the REM paralysis is probably what is happening on the “exterior” levels of our reality, we really can’t reduce the entire experience of night terrors to biomechanics. After all, many people throughout history have described intense visitation dreams that follow from the initial feeling that “someone else is in the room.” These night visitors have ranged from dead relatives to benign ghostly apparitions to scary demonic entities to figures of light and peace.

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Visitation dreams study

A study on “dreams of the deceased” is being conducted by researcher Kevin Kovelant. He is currently looking for stories by the public on their personal experiences.

Here is Kovelant’s explanation:

I am currently working on my Master’s Thesis at John F. Kennedy
University, in Pleasant Hill, California. I am collecting stories of
people’s experiences of dreams of the deceased. Have you ever had a
dream of a dead friend or relative that felt like it was “real Have
you dreamed of someone, only to find out the next day that they had died
during the night? If so, I would love to hear your story. Right now, I
am soliciting dream reports of these types. Based on the reports I
receive, I may be interested in talking further with you in a series of
interviews.

If you are interested in participating in this research, have a dream to
share, or have any questions, I can be reached at
study@visitationdreams.net.

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