The beginnings of strangeness before Out of Body Experiences

From the age of five or so on, I remember having strange experiences I thought of like dreams. Sometimes it does not seem like these are dreams to me at all, but that I am awake during the occurrence. Maybe it is a state that is related to dreams on a certain level. The first strange thing I ever remember happening at a time I should have been sleeping, or dreaming about childhood things that everyone else probably dreamed about at the age of five, happened when I was not asleep at all. At least I remember thinking I was awake at the time. I was lying there, trying to sleep. I could hear the television on in the next room. I was the youngest, so I had to go to bed while everyone else was still up and watching TV. As I was trying to not hear the TV, I started to hear a very loud siren-type sound in my head, similar to the “attention” alarm that phones used to make when they were left off the hook. This used to freak me out when it happened. I would turn over, and it would stop. Eventually, I would sleep for real, and dream. Sometimes I had standard scary dreams. Sometimes the dreams I had were terrifying, but more than the usual nightmares, because it seemed to me I was awake during them.

Sometimes my “dreams,” or what happened in them, seemed to be beneficial. Once, when I had had a very loud and obnoxious cough that would not go away, I had an experience that to me seemed like it happened while I was awake. I had been asleep at night and woke up with a severe coughing spell. It would not stop. I became aware that someone had come to help me. I assumed when thinking of it later, that it had been one of my parents. Whoever it was, helped me out of bed, and guided me down our long, dark hallway, to the bathroom. I had been tending to cough so much that I would get spasms that made me choke, and cough up small amounts of liquid- or maybe it was the choking that made me cough. I had choked a few times in my sleep due to this earlier in my illness. I was now in the bathroom, coughing, and leaning over to the toilet bowl, just in case. Suddenly, the light went on, and one of my parents was there. I do not remember which at this point. I thought that they had been with me all along. How else would I have gotten there in a dark house? The spell gradually subsided, and I went back to bed. The next day, after talking to my parents about this, they informed me that they had not gotten up until they heard me in the bathroom. I remember being guided, with whoever it was holding me by my shoulders, from behind. Many years later, this experience came up in conversation with my brother. We had shared a bedroom at this point but had not talked about this at the time it happened. He told me that from his perspective, he had been awakened by my coughing, which had been a frequent occurrence. This time, he said that I was talking (in between coughs) to someone. He could not tell for sure what I was saying, or at that point, it was long gone from his memory. Did I dream that someone came to help me to the bathroom, and ended up there? I know I did not truly wake up until the light came on, but I thought I was awake the entire time up to that point. I write that about being sure I was awake then, but you know, I am still not convinced I was not awake at that point. The thing that changed was that the light came on. It exploded in my head when it came on, and that jolt I think made me more aware of where I was. But, I still feel I was awake the entire time. I have not ever been a sleepwalker, but I guess this one instance could be close to that.

I remember one dream from around the age of five. How many my age remember a dream from when you were five? In this dream, I was in our backyard. Suddenly, I saw a ghost floating towards me. I realized I must be dreaming, and tried to wake up, but I could not. This thing kept coming closer and eventually got to me. It touched me, and immediately, the dream scene vanished, and I was enveloped by shrill sounds, and wind, and vibrations all over my body. I struggled to wake up, and even though I know this was only a dream, and should not be able to hurt me, I really was afraid I was going to die before I could wake up. I could not move. I tried my hardest to move, and finally, I jerked my head to the side and woke up. Even though I was awake, and looking around in the room, I could still hear that sound and felt slightly like I was floating. Images blurred in the darkness and floated around me. Gradually, the sound faded, and I could see a bit more clearly. I used to think that if I could think about a scary dream enough, it would lose its control of me. In the case of these dreams, that did not always work. I would think about it, and finally, settle back into bed to try to sleep. Immediately I would hear that same shrill sound in my head and realize that I could not move again. I would once again struggle to move until I could force myself to wake up. But how could I have gone to sleep and started dreaming again in just a relative few seconds that this all took? Again, I was only five or maybe going on six at this time. Maybe, I thought, just maybe everyone goes through this, and it does not mean there is something wrong with me. Thinking back on my childhood, this is probably among the top issues that impacted me at that time, aside from school or dealing with parents. And it was a major impact.

The night would start like any other night. I would be in a dream as stated above, and suddenly, I would just know that something out there in the dream was different. After a while, I knew that the noises and vibrations would start soon if I could not wake up first. I had a dream once that I was in a large house, and suddenly I knew it was about to start. I was terrified. Then I had a dream that I was walking across a bridge where we vacationed at the Russian River, and a large truck went by. The wind from the truck passing started it. The dream may vary, but the result was always the same. I would struggle to get out of the sensations. I would wake up, and the sensations would sometimes still be going on as I struggled to fully wake up. Once it all stopped, I would lay there for hours, afraid to sleep again. I would allow myself to sleep, and it would happen again. I would again struggle to get out of it, and the cycle would repeat. Sometimes it would happen three or four times in a night. It definitely impacted my sleep for several years. But, it was not an every night thing. I would go for a few months with nothing happening, and then one night- boom. It was back. Maybe it would happen for a few nights consecutively, and then it would be gone again for a few months.

Sure, I had typical nightmares too, but they were common, dull dreams, and I knew they were not the same thing. But, I still used to think of these experiences I would struggle with at night as nightmares, if it happened to me in a dream. Sometimes things happened to me when I thought I was still awake too. It is hard to think of an experience as a dream if you are convinced you are awake when it happens.

In these instances, I would be awake. I might have just gotten into bed. Maybe a minute has passed, and suddenly I would have that “knowing” feeling I described having had in a dream. I just would know that something was going to happen. And the same sensations, the same noises, and the same struggle to get it to stop would follow. And all through this, I would hear the same sounds in the room that I had been aware of before laying down. It is this continuity of full consciousness that started to make me wonder what was happening to me in this experience. Since then, I have seen that experiences like this are generically referred to as being caused by sleep paralysis, or SP. SP, I later learned, is a process that everyone goes through in the natural course of falling asleep. It is the mind’s way of protecting you from physically acting out any dream that you may experience. Of course, the majority of people usually are asleep before the process happens or are usually unaware of it when it is happening. One common occurrence in SP episodes, for those of us who are aware of them, is for the person to experience auditory or visual hallucinations. Of course, I did not know any of this when I was younger, and if I had, it still would not have helped to stop the experience. If I had mentioned this to any doctors at the time, I am sure if they knew anything at all about it at all, or thought that they did, they would have prescribed some sort of pill to attempt to get me to sleep better. What I know now from others who have the same experience, and have had doctors try to fix it with medication, is that it does not work. The pills dull you out and you may sleep better for a while, but the experiences still happen.

Back then, I did not feel I could talk to anyone about any of this. Either it was common for it to happen or people would think I was weak because I was having a problem with what to them would be trivial, or no one would know what I was talking about, and I would be labeled as “crazy.” Neither one seemed to be a good choice. It was clear to me when talking very carefully to friends about the things they experienced in dreams, that they either did not have similar things happen to them or if they did have them, they did not feel comfortable talking about it with me. I did eventually bring it up to a good friend, just after high school. But I still had several years to go before anyone else knew what happened to me at night.

The SP experience has some constants and other things that can vary. One constant is a very loud grating noise in the center of your head. People have described it as being similar to what you might have heard if the amplifier speaker for Jimi Hendrix’s guitar was inside your head, or what it might feel and sound like if someone started a gas-powered chainsaw while you had your head against it. I am not sure I would say my experiences were exactly like what these, but it will give you an idea of what it can be like. I remember thinking that I was afraid my hearing would be damaged by this and wondering why no one else could hear it and come help me. My own experiences were closer to the guitar in general, but with the overtones of the chainsaw in the mix. Imagine hearing a sound that you could not identify, that was loud enough for you to be sure you were going to go deaf from being exposed to it, and then realizing you can not move and no one else was going to help you. This is how some of my nights went when I was between five, and around fifteen years old. Then one night, all of this changed.