(September 4, 2013 at 8:44 pm)apophenia Wrote: I believe you are thinking of sleep paralysis, not night terrors. (Apparently there's another parasomnial disorder known as confusional arousal ["Confusional arousal is a condition when an individual awakens from sleep and remains in a confused state. It is characterized by the individual's partial awakening and sitting up to look around. They usually remain in bed and then return back to sleep."])
No. I've experienced sleep paralysis. There were several times when I was a teenager where I would be trying to go to sleep and I would become unable to move but I could hear everything and was conscious. I would concentrate on trying to move my fingers and slowly be able to come out of it.
Turning on a TV or radio would prevent it from happening.
A Night Terror might occur during sleep paralysis. But sleep paralysis alone would not cause a hallucination of alien abduction or demonic attack.
I have hallucinated the feeling of a human hand being placed on my back as I was drifting off to sleep. It felt so real I would jerk spasmodically awake and adrenaline would surge through my body causing my heart to beat furiously. But no one was in the room with me.
That is not all that uncommon I've read.
But for it to be a Night Terror you'd have to experience some kind of interaction with a terrifying entity.
Everything I needed to know about life I learned on Dagobah.
