“It was 2006 and my now ex-husband and I were living in an 1880’s house we had bought in 1997. Our son was two years old, asleep in his cot. I was nodding off in the bed beside him when I felt something step onto my bed.

I was on my back and was paralysed. I tried to yell out but nothing came out. All I could think was ‘get off me!’ It seemed to last for a few minutes then I ran into my husband and told him what had happened. He shrugged it off and said it’s just a nightmare.”

From then on, Annette’s story took a frightening turn. It was no longer the odd strange creepy feeling at night as she and generations of her family had been experiencing (read the previous blog: ‘The Family Curse’). This was something so much more terrifying that Annette had ever imagined possible: sleep paralysis.

 

What Exactly is Sleep Paralysis?

Sleep paralysis is when a person is temporarily unable to move, occurring right after falling asleep or waking up. Episodes can involve hallucinations, sensing a presence, feeling like someone or something is pressing down uncomfortably, even painfully, on their chest or trying to choke them.

Whether you believe there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for sleep paralysis or not, one thing is clear: sleep paralysis is petrifying!

Annette’s experience is typical of sleep paralysis: Annette woke in the dark of night, convinced that someone or something was in the room with her. She tried to move, but her body was frozen to the spot. She felt someone or something on top of her, a weight on her chest.

Annette tried to speak but nothing came out. Minutes felt like hours. Finally, her body returned to normal. She rolled over and turned on her bedside light with shaking fingers. What was that? Had she imagined the whole thing?

According to science, recurrent isolated sleep paralysis is a mysterious sleep disorder, or parasomnia. Parasomnia is a group of sleep disorders involving unwanted behaviours that accompany sleep. The main symptom is being awake and unable to move your body. It might also be accompanied by hallucinations, dreams or nightmares while you’re still awake. This can last anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes before movement is regained.

But what happens when others are experiencing the same thing with you, simultaneously? How does that make sense scientifically?

“The next night it happened again but I was in the double bed with my now ex-husband. It kept happening all that week, then my now ex-husband told me that he didn’t want to scare me but he was having it too!…

It became a nightly occurrence for us both and we thought we were going mad.”

 

A Dark Figure, Short with Long Arms

Annette always tried to sleep on her stomach, too frightened to sleep on her back or side for fear it would climb onto her back. One night Annette must have rolled onto her back. As she became paralysed, she felt long fingers near her neck. It felt like her etheric body bit the fingers, making the entity jump off her, over her partner and run through the wall!

This time Annette saw a form. She described seeing a dark figure, short with long arms. Annette woke her ex-husband and told him. Her ex-husband admitted he had also seen the same thing, again expressing he didn’t want to scare her by telling her.

One night their son woke up screaming, saying “black crow up there”, pointing up towards the ceiling. Annette sought the help of a spiritual healer. The spiritual healer told Annette she had a lizard alien attached to her and that this attachment was passed down the female side of her family. The spiritual healer did a cleansing of some sort and it went away but the spirit returned a week later.

 

Calling in a Priest

Annette decided it was time to get a priest. Annette was terrified of what a priest would think of her. Would he refuse to believe her? Would he think she was crazy? Would he deny her story, deny spirits existed?

Annette called a priest she trusted. This priest had baptised their son and had held her father’s funeral so Annette felt she knew him well enough to risk reaching out to him for help. To her surprise, this priest reassured Annette that he had helped others with similar circumstances and assured her he would do his best to get rid of it by blessing the house. And he did…

Until about four years later, when Annette had sleep paralysis worse than ever before. The first encounter was when Annette was running a caravan park and living in a unit surrounded by bushland on her own:

“I felt a presence of more than one spirit and a sound of rustling paper. I felt prodding in my left side. l felt like I was writhing in pain but in my (etheric) outer body. This lasted for what seemed like ages. Finally, it left me and I jumped out of bed, completely petrified all lights on yelling, ‘Leave me alone! What do you want from me!’ I looked in the mirror to see if I had marks from the prodding. There were two circular red marks on my side. I took a photo, which is on a flip phone, I can’t access now…

This was the most frightened I had been in my life.”

After this, Annette has continued to experience sleep paralysis on and off for the past sixteen years. The last time happened only a couple of weeks ago. Annette was at the caravan park on her own and I had sleep paralysis. It always happens around 3am.

At 3.30am that same night, Annette’s phone rang. It was her now eighteen year old son living miles away. He was too frightened to go back to sleep after he had been paralysed. He also heard knocking on the front door, only when he checked no one was there. Annette was thinking, “Is this really happening? Who do I tell? What do we do?”

What made this most disturbing was Annette was miles from home. Receiving that call from her son, petrified to go back to sleep, was enough for Annette to be convinced that she would have to confront this spirit once and for all.

 

Reaching Out for Help

I have known Annette for almost twenty years. We were in the same Mother’s Group with our first-born babies, eighteen years ago. I remembered the stories of sleep paralysis and her frightening story of having physical marks on her body. Annette sent me the photo at the time so I saw exactly what she described. Over the years we had lost contact for about five years, so I hadn’t heard her recent experiences of sleep paralysis.

Experience meant I was confident I had the spiritual tools and skills to take on something like this. So, when Annette reached out for help, I rubbed my hands together in glee! It’s not every day you get to work with a spirit like this!

Don’t get me wrong – I had no idea what I was getting myself in for! After all, this was one scary spirit hellbent on terrorising and controlling people with some impressive abilities!

If you’ve read my Blog: ‘Is this Paranormal Activity or am I Going Crazy?’ you’ll know this wasn’t my first rodeo. Still, I entered into this session with a lot of humility, aware that this spirit was really a force to be reckoned with and not to be trifled with.

I was going to need all of my abilities to ensure this didn’t just upset or antagonise the spirit. I needed to be sure I was going to be able to remove this spirit so it could no longer terrorise Annette or her son…or me and my family!

In the next and final Blog in the series, ‘Confronting the Spirit Face to Face’, Annette will describe how we helped her clear this spirit and help him go to his next right place of expression.

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