Anomaly1999-01-16
It happened when my friend and I were 13. When I found out about this website, about 5 years later, I tried to post it on here but something must have gone wrong with the connection or something. Anyway, It was late winter and sto…
Counted by measurement, not by keyword. That is the point.
The old hag
Waking unable to move, with a weight on your chest
You are awake. You cannot move, you cannot make a sound, and there is a weight on your chest. Sometimes there is a figure, and often enough that it got a name, the figure is an old woman. It is one of the most terrifying things a human being can experience and one of the most common, and almost nobody who has had it tells anybody.
Everyone has a name for this
The strongest argument that this is one phenomenon rather than many is that it has been independently named everywhere, by people with no way to compare notes. The English word nightmare carries the evidence in it: the mare was a being that sat on the chest of a sleeper, and the word is older than any modern account of it.
| where | what they call it |
|---|---|
| Newfoundland and the Maritimes | the Old Hag |
| Japan | kanashibari, bound in metal |
| Egypt | a jinn holding the sleeper down |
| Italy | the Pandafeche |
| Hmong communities | dab tsog, the crushing spirit |
| Turkey | karabasan, the dark presser |
| Scandinavia | the mara, the root of nightmare |
| Germany | the Alp |
| Philippines | bangungot and the batibat |
What is explained, and what is not
Sleep paralysis explains a great deal of this and it should be said first. The body wakes before the switch that keeps you still during dreaming flips back. The immobility is real and it has a mechanism. The sense of pressure on the chest has a plausible mechanism too, in how breathing feels when the muscles you would normally use are still switched off.
What the label does not settle is why the room is so often occupied, and occupied by something so specific. The research suggests the intruder takes a shape the sleeper's culture already supplies, which explains the jinn in Egypt and the Pandafeche in Italy rather neatly. It explains less well why the shape is so often an old woman, or a figure standing rather than lying, in places with no such story to draw on.
It is worth knowing that the medical explanation exists and that it is good. It is also worth knowing that it was never designed to answer the question most people actually have, which is why the thing in the room keeps being the same thing.
What this record actually holds
40
accounts out of 52,378 touch on this. Measured, not guessed: 40 accounts carry this signature under the record's classifier, 36 of them in the dream record and 4 written by people awake. The waking sliver is the founding gap of this record; the dream side is the archive nobody had until now. If it has happened to you, this page is where your account belongs.
Read them
2014-07-16
A large group of people, including me and my family, are going to battle. We are on a cliff, and far below us is a rapidly flowing river. Across the river on a cliff opposite us is the enemy. I have several wooden spears which I t…
2015-02-28
2/27/2015 I saw myself appear on the bed i was sleeping on and was thinking about how I wanted to enter a dream lucid during my nap time. I could not move and slowly started to fall a sleep.I saw black darkness than sudennlly ligh…
1978-06-24
Gulfport, MS
Orb of light enters body, awake temporarily paralyzed, followed by prophetic visions and drawings…
2014-08-15
13 May 2014 Method: WBTB with MILD Time: 07:00-08:55 I awakened to the darkness of my bedroom.A flash of lucidity struck me, and as it did I immediately felt an invisible force which pinned me down in my bed at the shoulders and b…
2012-07-07
i have had sleep paralysis a handful of times, but there are two instances that really stand out: the first time it happened to me was (i think) eight years ago... i thought i had died. I woke up on my back in the early morning an…
2010-07-13
In reality, my radio keeps going off for no reason, and i have took into the consideration that it may be some sort of spirit or something trying to tell me something.. In my next lucid dream i was going to ask who keeps turning m…
2018-05-25
I am in the backseat of a car. My dad is driving, his mom in the passenger seat, my brother in the seat to my right. We drive for about 5 or 6 hours and the roads are annoyingly windy and I mention I wished we were on a highway, a…
2012-06-23
In short this dream, I was in outer space alone and deaf. I was outside above my square spaceship climbing a rope straight up and up, until I went into a straight full circle because I found myself climbing up towards my spaceship…
2017-03-01
Last dream I had before getting up at 6 am. 3 days old As far as I remember the dream "started" at this point. I am waiting to get inside a restaurant with a couple of people. I know some of them but not all of them. I was looking…
The nearest thing the record does have
being unable to move 640waking to something in the room 369a dark figure 263the feeling of being watched 231sudden dread 38being touched 16
Written by people describing something else entirely, which is what makes the overlap worth looking at rather than circular
Did this happen to you?
40 accounts in the record already carry it, found by measurement rather than a keyword search. Add yours and it is checked against every one of them. Two minutes, and you can stay anonymous.
Tell us what happenedKnow someone this happened to?
This is the page that did not exist when the person who built this site needed it. If somebody you know has been carrying one of these around, send it to them.
Nothing is tracked back to you and nothing is sent on your behalf. The link is just the page you are reading.
Other kinds of experience
21
The same dream, the same place, or the thing before it happened.
2,673
The moment the forest goes quiet.
43
Hours that cannot be accounted for.
9,396
The oldest phenomenon in the record, and the most often explained.