Posthuman Blues

I experienced an unpleasant bout of sleep paralysis last night, accompanied by the often-reported "sense of presence" that accompanies hypnogogic/hypnopompic states. I "awoke" lying on my side with the stark certainty that someone was in the room or elsewhere in the apartment. (My half-dreaming mind provided suggestive sound effects; I seemed to hear human voices and sounds of activity -- always coming from either the side of the room opposite me or from near the foot of the bed.) The paralysis, while it lasted, was horrifying -- even though I knew what it was. The total inability to roll over and see whatever was making the "noise" in question was intolerable, like being seized in an invisible vise.

Of course, this is pretty much exactly the state sometimes mistaken for alien abduction. And frankly, it's hard to blame "abductees" who report sleep paralysis as the onset of ET molestation; it's genuinely frightening and trippy, and especially so if you've never had the experience before and don't realize there's a quaint neurological explanation. (I hadn't experienced sleep paralysis until last year, when I woke up in full daylight and found myself momentarily frozen in place.)