Sleep Paralysis

Exploring the area of sleep paralysis is an interesting concept for my hyper-reality project. Everyone wants to know what people see in these episodes of pure panic and fear. Sleep paralysis is an experience when your body wakes up before your mind and you have a moment when you cant move, speak, or react. It is a transitional state between being awake and being asleep. In the phase of paralysis your eyes can look around the room you are situated and are susceptible to seeing terrifying hallucinations, to which you can do nothing about due to the phase of paralysis.

These hallucinations often involve a person or some form of supernatural being that suffocates of terrifies the individual. Most of the time the hallucination involves the being entering the room you are in, lurking and accompanied by the feeling of dread. There are no videos to illustrate the occurrence of sleep paralysis, only pictures. It may be an interesting direction to take my project to explore the hyper reality of sleep paralysis.

I myself, have once experienced sleep paralysis. I know why I got is also. It was a week of sleepless nights due to my horrible cold I could not get rid of. One night, I continuously was woken up by the inability to breathe through my nose, because of my cold. Then one time I woke up because of this, my body woke up before my mind and the sleep paralysis took place. I initially heard a voice saying something, so I tried to look around and found myself in an inability to move. I could move my eyes around the room to look as far as I could, then suddenly a streak of light that appeared through my bathroom door had morphed into the outline of a ghostly figure. At this point, I was trying to call for help, but no sound was coming out. It was scary. Eventually, my mind woke up and went back to sleep. It would be an interesting route to go down and explore for my hyper-reality project.