Looking for a good conversation's blog: "Old hag syndrome"

Brains in Dreamland Scientists hope to raise the neural curtain on sleep's virtual theater Bruce Bower After his father's death in 1896, Viennese neurologist Sigmund Freud made a momentous career change. He decided to study the mind instead of the brain. Freud began by probing his own mind. Intrigued by his conflicted feelings toward his late father, the scientist analyzed his own dreams, slips of the tongue, childhood memories, and episodes of forgetfulness. Freud's efforts culminated in the 1900 publication of The Interpretation of Dreams. In that book, he depicted dreams as symbolic stories in which sleepers' unconscious sexual and aggressive desires play out in disguised forms. Later in his life, Freud acknowledged that dreams don't always gratify wishes. For instance, he noted that some dreams represent attempts to master a past traumatic experience. Yet the father of psychoanalysis always held that dreams contain both surface events and subterranean themes of great personal importance. For that reason, he wrote, "the interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind." Freud's theory of how dreams work has had a huge cultural impact over the past century, even as it attracted intense criticism. Now, brain scientists?members of the discipline that Freud left behind?have stepped to the forefront of this passionate dream dispute. One prominent group of scientists asserts that Freud profoundly misunderstood dreams. In their view, the act of dreaming yields a guileless collage of strange but heartfelt images that carry no hidden meanings. These scientists say that dreaming occurs when a primitive structure called the brain stem stirs up strong emotions, especially anxiety, elation, and anger. At the same time, neural gateways to the external world shut down, as do centers of memory and rational thought. The brain then creates bizarre, internal visions that strongly resonate for the dreamer. An opposing view corresponds in many ways to Freud's ideas. Its supporters portray dreams as products of a complex frontal-brain system that seeks out objects of intense interest or desire. When provoked during sleep, this brain system depicts deep-seated goals in veiled ways so as not to rouse the dreamer. A third group of investigators regards the brain data as intriguing but inconclusive. Dreams may serve any of a variety of functions, they argue. Depending on the society, these uses include simulating potential threats, grappling with personal and community problems, sparking artistic creativity, and diagnosing and healing physical illnesses. "It is striking that 100 years after Freud [published The Interpretation of Dreams], there is absolutely no agreement as to the nature of, function of, or brain mechanism underlying dreaming," says neuroscientist Robert Stickgold of Harvard Medical School in Boston. A broad consensus exists on one point, though. If neuroscientists hope to understand the vexing relationship of brain and mind, they need to get a handle on dreams. Dreams as an afterthought Freud's royal road to the unconscious looks like a scientific dead-end to psychiatrist J. Allan Hobson. Neuroscientific evidence indicates that the sleeping brain churns out dreams as an afterthought to its other duties, argue Hobson, Stickgold, and Edward F. Pace-Schott, also of Harvard Medical School. "Unconscious wishes play little or no part in dream instigation, dream emotion is uncensored and undisguised, sleep is not protected by dreaming, and dream interpretation has no scientific status," Hobson says. Hobson's assault on Freudian dream theory began more than a decade ago. At that time, he proposed that dreams result from random bursts of activity in a brain stem area that regulates breathing and other basic bodily functions. These brain stem blasts zip to the frontal brain during periods of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, when the entire brain becomes nearly as active as when a person is awake. Dreams most often occur during REM sleep. A slumbering individual enters REM sleep about every 90 minutes. Hobson's group published a revision of this theory in the December 2000 Behavioral and Brain Sciences. Their new approach grants that dreams harbor emotional significance, but not in the way Freud posited. Brain imaging and sleep-laboratory data clearly delineate among wakefulness, REM sleep, and non-REM sleep, the Harvard scientists note. Three essential processes during REM sleep make it the prime time for dreaming, they say. First, brain stem activity surges and sets off responses in emotional and visual parts of the brain. Second, brain regions that handle sensations from the outside world, control movement, and carry out logical analysis shut down. Third, brain stem cells pump out acetylcholine, a chemical messenger that jacks up activity in emotional centers. At the same time, two neurotransmitters essential for waking activity?noradrenaline and serotonin?take a snooze. The result, in Hobson's view: a vivid hallucination, informed by strong emotions, that takes bizarre twists and turns. REM sleep's biological makeup fosters the mistaken belief that one is awake while dreaming, saps the ability to reflect on the weirdness of dreams as they occur, and makes it difficult to recall dreams after waking up. REM sleep conducts far more important business than dreaming, Hobson argues. Its central functions may include supporting brain development, regulating body temperature, fortifying the immune system, and fostering memories of recently learned information. The last possibility evokes heated scientific debate (SN: 7/22/00, p. 55). Wishful state of mind Hobson's theoretical focus on brain stems and REMs doesn't do dreams justice, argues neuropsychologist Mark Solms of St. Bartholomew's and Royal London (England) School of Medicine. "Dreaming is generated under the direction of a highly motivated, wishful state of mind," Solms holds. "I won't be at all surprised if we find that Freud's understanding of [dream] mechanisms was basically on the right track." To dream, the brain?both in and out of REM sleep?stimulates a frontal-lobe system that orchestrates motivation and the pursuit of goals and cravings, the British scientist proposes. A neurotransmitter called dopamine ferries messages in the brain's motivation system. The crux of Solms' argument rests on studies of brain-damaged patients. In rare instances where people incur injuries only to their brain stem, dreaming continues despite severe disruptions of REM sleep. In contrast, people who suffer damage to frontal-brain regions involved in motivation report that they no longer dream but still have nightly REM sleep. These individuals also become apathetic and lose much of their initiative, imagination, and ability to plan. This group includes several hundred mental patients who decades ago, as a therapy, had some of their frontal-brain nerve fibers surgically cut. Additional support for Solms' view comes from brain-imaging studies indicating that frontal areas involved in motivation, emotion, and memory exhibit elevated activity during REM sleep. Various forms of cerebral activation can trigger the motivation system and lead to dreaming, Solms suggests. This explains why vivid dreams occur shortly after falling asleep and in the morning, not just in the depths of REM sleep, he says. Brain data can't yet confirm or disprove Freud's idea that dreams play a symbolic game of hide-and-seek with unconscious desires, Solms adds. For now, a standoff For now, something of a standoff exists between the dreaming-brain theories of Hobson and Solms. Hobson and his coworkers welcome the possibility, raised by neuroscientist Tore A. Nielsen of the University of Montreal, that crucial elements of REM sleep operate in non-REM states as well. For instance, as people fall asleep they display slow eye movements and electrical activity in the brain and muscles that may constitute a kind of "covert REM activity," Nielsen says. If the REM state in one form or another saturates much of sleep, then the brain stem and related emotional centers create dreams throughout the night, Hobson asserts. Solms regards "covert REM" as a hazy concept. REM sleep consists of diverse physiological changes in the brain and body. This sleep stage can't be equated with a few of its biological components that may appear at other times during the night, he contends. Haziness also afflicts attempts to decipher dreams with recordings of brain activity, remarks neuroscientist Allen Braun of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md. These images of neural tissue show where the brain is stirring during specific sleep stages, Braun says, but not how those areas operate or whether they play a direct role in dreaming. Brain-imaging reports generally support Solms' theory that dreams derive from a frontal-brain motivation system, Braun notes (SN: 1/17/98, p. 44). However, a frontal-brain area considered pivotal for self-monitoring and abstract thought naps throughout sleep. Braun considers this finding to clash with the Freudian notion of dreams as hotbeds of disguised meaning. Simulating threatening events Freud's emphasis on wish fulfillment in dreams needs revision too, according to neuroscientist Antti Revonsuo of the University of Turku in Finland. Dreaming instead enables people to simulate threatening events so that they can rehearse ways to either deal with or avoid them, Revonsuo theorizes. Threatening incidents of various kinds and degrees frequently appear in the dream reports of adults and children around the world, the Finnish scientist says. They also show up in descriptions of recurrent dreams, nightmares, and post-traumatic dreams. Hunter-gatherer populations, such as the Mehinaku Indians in Brazil, report many dreams about threatening events, he adds. Mehinaku men's dreams range from fending off an attacking jaguar to dealing with an angry wife. Revensuo's theory faces threats of its own, though. Evidence from contemporary hunter-gatherers indicates that dreaming functions in a variety of ways, argues psychologist Harry T. Hunt of Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. Members of these groups generally view dreams as real events in which a person's soul carries out activities while the person sleeps. Hunter-gatherers' dreams sometimes depict encounters with supernatural beings who provide guidance in pressing community matters, aid in healing physical illnesses, or give information about the future, Hunt says. Individuals who are adept at manipulating their own conscious states may engage in lucid dreaming, in which the dreamer reasons clearly, remembers the conditions of waking life, and acts according to a predetermined plan. Dreaming represents a basic orienting response of the brain to novel information, ideas, and situations, Hunt proposes. It occurs at varying intensities in different conscious states, including REM sleep, bouts of reverie or daydreaming, and episodes of spirit possession that individuals in some cultures enter while awake (SN: 2/17/01, p. 104: http://www.sciencenews.org/20010217/bob7.asp). Scientists, musicians, inventors, artists, and writers often use dreaming of one kind or another to solve problems and spark creativity, Hunt notes. Whatever purposes dreaming serves, Hobson's group and many other researchers underestimate the extent to which the brain tunes in to the external world during sleep, says neuroscientist Chiara M. Portas of University College London. Several studies indicate that sensory areas of the brain respond to relevant sounds and other sensations during REM and non-REM sleep. No conclusive results support any theory of dreaming or sleep, in her view. Dreams lose their allure Ironically, dreams are attracting growing scientific interest as they fade into the background of modern life. Artificial lighting and society's focus on daytime achievements have fueled this trend (SN: 9/25/99, p. 205: http://www.sciencenews.org/sn_arc99/9_25_99/bob2.htm.). Sleep now typically occurs in single chunks of 7 hours or less. Yet as recently as 200 years ago in Europe, people slept in two nightly phases of 4 to 5 hours each. Shortly after midnight, individuals awoke for 1 to 2 hours and frequently reflected on their dreams or talked about them with others. Well before Freud's time, Europeans prized dreams for their personal insights, and particularly for what they revealed about a dreamer's relationship with God, says historian A. Roger Ekirch of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg. Organizing sleep into two segments encouraged people to remember dreams and to use them as paths to self-discovery, Ekirch contended in the April American Historical Review. Dreams have lost their allure even for the psychoanalytic theorists and clinicians who are the heirs to Freud's ideas, remarks Paul Lippmann of the William Alanson White Psychoanalytic Institute in Stockbridge, Mass. These days, psychoanalysts show far more interest in dissecting the emotional nature of their dealings with patients than in eliciting and interpreting dreams, according to Lippmann, himself a psychoanalytic clinician. Like Ekirch, Lippmann suspects that modern culture has eroded interest in dreaming. "The American Dream has little room for the nighttime variety," he said in the Fall 2000 Psychoanalytic Psychology. Yet many neuroscientists seem determined to swim against that cultural tide. Even the researchers who see little psychological significance in sleep's visions want to explain how and why the brain produces them. They can dream, can't they?

The waking nightmare of sleep paralysis propels people into a spirit world Bruce Bower As a college student in 1964, David J. Hufford met the dreaded Night Crusher. Exhausted from a bout of mononucleosis and studying for finals, Hufford retreated one December day to his rented, off-campus room and fell into a deep sleep. An hour later, he awoke with a start to the sound of the bedroom door creaking openthe same door he had locked and bolted before going to bed. Hufford then heard footsteps moving toward his bed and felt an evil presence. Terror gripped the young man, who couldn't move a muscle, his eyes plastered open in fright. The Nightmare, 1781, Henry Fuseli. Founders Society purchase, with funds from Mr. and Mrs. Bert L. Smokler and Mrs. Lawrence A. Fleischman. Photograph 1997 The Detroit Institute of Arts Without warning, the malevolent entity, whatever it was, jumped onto Hufford's chest. An oppressive weight compressed his rib cage. Breathing became difficult, and Hufford felt a pair of hands encircle his neck and start to squeeze. "I thought I was going to die," he says. At that point, the lock on Hufford's muscles gave way. He bolted up and sprinted several blocks to take shelter in the student union. "It was very puzzling," he recalls with a strained chuckle, "but I told nobody about what happened." Hufford's perspective on his strange encounter was transformed in 1971. He was at that time a young anthropologist studying folklore in Newfoundland, and he heard from some of the region's inhabitants about their eerily similar nighttime encounters. Locals called the threatening entity the "old hag." Most cases unfold as follows: A person wakes up paralyzed and perceives an evil presence. A hag or witch then climbs on top of the petrified victim, creating a crushing sensation on his or her chest. It took Hufford another year to establish that what he and these people of Newfoundland had experienced corresponds to the event, lasting seconds or minutes, that sleep researchers call sleep paralysis. Although widely acknowledged among traditional cultures, sleep paralysis is one of the most prevalent yet least recognized mental phenomena for people in industrialized societies, Hufford says. Now, more than 30 years after Hufford's discovery, sleep paralysis is beginning to attract intensive scientific attention. The March Transcultural Psychiatry included a series of papers on the condition's widespread prevalence, regional varieties, and mental-health implications. Sleep paralysis differs from nocturnal panic, in which a person awakens in terror with no memory of a dream. Neither does sleep paralysis resemble a night terror, in which a person suddenly emerges from slumber in apparent fear, flailing and shouting, but then falls back asleep and doesn't recall the incident in the morning. A detail from The Nightmare, 1781, Henry Fuseli (see full credit, above) Curiously, although the word nightmare originally described sleep paralysis, it now refers to a fearful or disturbing dream, says Hufford, now at the Penn State Medical Center in Hershey, Pa. Several hundred years ago, the English referred to nighttime sensations of chest pressure from witches or other supernatural beings as the "mare," from the Anglo-Saxon merran, meaning to crush. The term eventually morphed into nightmarethe crusher who comes in the night. Sleep paralysis embodies a universal, biologically based explanation for pervasive beliefs in spirits and supernatural beings, even in the United States, Hufford argues. The experience thrusts mentally healthy people into a bizarre, alternative world that they frequently find difficult to chalk up to a temporary brain glitch. Hufford doesn't believe that an invisible force attacked him in his college room or during several sleep paralysis episodes that have occurred since then, but he sees the appeal of such an interpretation. "We need to deeply question 2 centuries of assumptions about the nonempirical and nonrational nature of spirit belief," he says. Ominous presence In the past 10 years, psychologist J. Allan Cheyne of the University of Waterloo in Canada has collected more than 28,000 tales of sleep paralysis. According to one of the chroniclers, "The first time I experienced this, I saw a shadow of a moving figure, arms outstretched, and I was absolutely sure it was supernatural and evil." Another person recalled awakening "to find a half-snake/half-human thing shouting gibberish in my ear." Yet another person reported periodically waking with a start just after falling asleep, sensing an ominous presence nearby. The tale continues: "Then, something comes over me and smothers me, as if with a pillow. I fight but I can't move. I try to scream. I wake up gasping for air." Many who experience sleep paralysis also report sensations of floating, flying, falling, or leaving one's body. The condition's primary emotion, terror, sometimes yields to feelings of excitement, exhilaration, rapture, or ecstasy. "A small number of people, while acknowledging fear during initial episodes of sleep paralysis, come to enjoy the experience," Cheyne says. Cheyne runs a Web site (http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~acheyne/S_P.html) where visitors fill out surveys about their experiences during sleep paralysis. Several thousand individuals also provide online updates about recurring episodes. A detail from The Nightmare, 1781, Henry Fuseli (see full credit, above) It doesn't surprise Cheyne that those who contact him seem to be average, emotionally stable folk. In surveys that he has conducted with large numbers of college students and other volunteers, about 30 percent report having experienced at least one incident of sleep paralysis. Roughly 1 in 50 people cites repeated episodes, often one or more each week. Cheyne regards the sights, sounds, and other sensations of sleep paralysis as hallucinations that share a biological kinship with dreaming. Cheyne notes work by Japanese researcher Kazuhiko Fukuda of Fukushima University. Fukuda enlisted volunteers who had experienced many incidents of sleep paralysis. In a sleep laboratory, the Japanese team monitored the volunteers, whom they roused at various times during the night to trigger the phenomenon. The researchers found that during sleep paralysis, the brain, suddenly awake, nonetheless displays electrical responses typical of sleep characterized by rapid eye movement (REM). Two brain systems contribute to sleep paralysis, Cheyne proposes. The most prominent one consists of inner-brain structures that monitor one's surroundings for threats and launches responses to perceived dangers. As Cheyne sees it, REM-based activation of this system, in the absence of any real threat, triggers a sense of an ominous entity lurking nearby. Other neural areas that contribute to REM-dream imagery could draw on personal and cultural knowledge to flesh out the evil presence. A second brain system, which includes sensory and motor parts of the brain's outer layer, distinguishes one's own body and self from those of other creatures. When REM activity prods this system, a person experiences sensations of floating, flying, falling, leaving one's body, and other types of movement, Cheyne says. Hufford, however, regards the intrusion of REM activity into awake moments as inadequate to explain sleep paralysis. Dream content during REM sleep varies greatly from one person to another, but descriptions of sleep paralysis are remarkably consistent. "I don't have a good explanation for these experiences," he says. Pushy ghosts Psychiatrist Devon E. Hinton has heard his share of terrifying stories. While sitting in Hinton's office in Lowell, Mass., a 48-year-old Cambodian woman recounted two such tales from her own life. The first detailed nearly weekly nocturnal events of a type known among her fellow Cambodians as "the ghost pushes you down." At these times, the woman said, she awakens from sleep unable to move. Three ghastly demons stalk into her room, each covered in fur and displaying long fangs. One of the creatures then leans close to her head; the second holds down her legs; and the third pins down her arms. She told Hinton that when these terrors befall her, she knows that the demons want to scare her to death and she feels that they might succeed. Her second tale was even more dreadful. She told Hinton that the ghost terrors usually trigger a flashback to an actual incident that occurred more than 20 years ago. Before reaching the United States, she survived the genocidal reign of Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, who directed the slaughter of roughly 2 million Cambodians. On one occasion, the young woman witnessed soldiers escorting into a nearby clump of trees three blindfolded persons, whom she recognized as friends from her village. Soon, she heard the sickening sounds of her friends being clubbed to death. In his therapy, Hinton, who speaks the woman's Khmer language, asked the woman to establish a connection between the two sets of stories. She told him that the three demons are the spirits of her three executed friends, who return to haunt her so that she won't forget them. She also related her worries that a sorcerer would make the spirits enter her body, causing insanity, or will instruct the spirits to place objects inside her, causing anxiety and physical illness. Each ensuing episode of sleep paralysis over the years has intensified the woman's flashbacks, sleep difficulties, and other symptoms of what psychiatrists call post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Hinton says that many Cambodian refugees relive past horrors through sleep paralysis. He notes that few people discuss these incidents with their physicians. "Unless you specifically ask about sleep paralysis, you don't know that a patient has it," Hinton says. So, Hinton surveyed people at his outpatient clinic in Lowell, which has the second-largest Cambodian population in the country. Of 100 consecutive Cambodian refugees whom Hinton saw as patients at the clinic in 2003, he notes, 42 reported currently experiencing at least one sleep-paralysis episode each year. Most reported seeing an approaching demon or other entity that created pressure on their chests and typically triggered panic attacks. Among the refugees questioned, 45 had been diagnosed with PTSD. Of those, 35 reported being afflicted by sleep paralysis, usually with at least one episode a month. The Cambodians told Hinton that sleep paralysis permits people who suffer unjust deaths to haunt the living and creates "bad luck." These cultural ideas foster panic attacks, Hinton asserts. Panic attacks, PTSD, and other mental disorders may indirectly promote sleep paralysis by disrupting the sleep cycle and yanking people out of REM sleep during the night, he adds. Other factors that disturb sleep, such as jet lag and shift work, have also been linked to sleep paralysis. Psychological treatment that delves into the personal meaning of bouts of sleep paralysis reassures sufferers that these encounters aren't signs of physical illness or supernatural visits, Hinton says. Evidence from Shanghai also supports a connection between sleep paralysis, PTSD, and panic attacks. Albert S. Yeung of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and his team interviewed 150 psychiatric outpatients in Shanghai. About one-quarter of these patients had experienced sleep paralysis at least once, and more than half of those with PTSD or panic attacks described incidents of sleep paralysis, according to Yeung. However, unlike the Cambodian immigrants whom Hinton studied, nearly all of Yeung's Chinese study participants in retrospect regarded the incidents as innocuous. Most had experienced feelings of dread but didn't encounter supernatural creatures. For African Americans who experience panic attacks, sleep paralysis is also especially common, according to community surveys conducted by psychologist Cheryl M. Paradis of Marymount Manhattan College in New York City. Although 25 percent of the African-American participants reported having experienced sleep paralysis, nearly 60 percent of blacks who had panic attacks said that they regularly experienced sleep paralysis. In contrast, sleep paralysis turned up among only 7 percent of whites who have panic attacks, Paradis says. High stress levels in African Americans, at least partly the result of poverty and racism, contribute to anxiety, sleep problems, and sleep paralysis, she suggests. Sexual abuse may also make a person susceptible to sleep paralysis. Harvard University psychologists Richard J. McNally and Susan A. Clancy have found that, among adults who report having been sexually abused during childhood, nearly half describe at least one past episode of sleep paralysis. In their study, only 13 percent of participants who hadn't been sexually abused reported sleep paralysis. Long-standing sleep disturbances in those who have been sexually abused may foster the phenomenon, McNally suggests. Alien invaders There is a kinship between waking nightmares starring Night Crushers and reports of alien abductions, McNally and Clancy find. For more than a decade, they have been studying people who claim to have been abducted by aliens from outer space. McNally and Clancy are convinced that these claims derive from sleep-paralysis hallucinations. A detail from The Nightmare, 1781, Henry Fuseli (see full credit, above) Accounts of space-alien encounters typically begin with the abductee waking in the night while lying face up, McNally says. The person can't move but senses electric vibrations. A feeling of terror makes breathing difficult. Alien beings advance to the foot of the bed or climb on top of the person, who then experiences a sense of floating or of being transported to an alien craft. Days or weeks later, in response to a therapist's hypnotic suggestions, the abductee may generate details of being sexually probed or otherwise assaulted by the aliens, McNally notes. Claims of abductions by space aliens trigger much controversy, media attention, and ridicule. The late Harvard psychiatrist John Mack fueled the hubbub by defending the accounts as descriptions of actual encounters with visitors from other planets. There's another, far more likely, explanation for the reported experiences of the "abductees," says McNally. Traumatic encounters that a person seems to experience during sleep paralysis feel as vividly real as anything that happens during the day does, he notes. Despite their fantastic claims, these people are mentally healthy, says McNally. "Sleep paralysis is an entirely natural phenomenon," he remarks. "In isolated cases, it's no more pathological than a case of the hiccups." McNally and Clancy linked the claims of 10 alien abductees to episodes of sleep paralysis. Memories of the scary incidents sparked heart-rate increases and other physiological stress reactions that exceeded those previously reported for Vietnam veterans with PTSD as they recalled distressing combat events. Even the most rational people who experience sleep paralysis often find it difficult to write off their nighttime ordeals as unreal, Hufford notes. He has interviewed many U.S. medical students who, even after hearing about REM sleep and the brain's threat-detection system, insist that their frightening meetings with the Night Crusher were real. Until sharing their stories with Hufford, most of the students had never told them to anyone. "I suspect that millions of people in the United States are walking around never having told anybody about having these terrifying experiences," Hufford says. That's unlikely to change anytime soon, he adds. Scientists and physicians treat reports of mingling with supernatural creatures and spirits as evidence of mental imbalance. And mainstream religions condemn connections with ghosts, demons, and evil presences. But the world of sleep works according to its own rules. Whether shunned or embraced, Hufford says, the Night Crusher returns with frightening regularity. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Letters: I have experienced sleep paralysis in almost all of its forms, from terrors to vibrations and auditory hallucinations to out-of-body experiences. Most often it is completely terrifying, but I did have one episode that was elating. Sweet dreams. Kathleen Milroy Ontario, Canada The manifestations reported by sufferers of sleep paralysis are eerily similar to the visitation of death in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," written by Ernest Hemingway and first published in Esquire in 1936: It moved up closer to him still and now he could not speak to it, and when it saw he could not speak it came a little closer, and now he tried to send it away without speaking, but it moved in on him so its weight was all upon his chest, and while it crouched there and he could not move, or speak, he heard the woman say, "Bwana is asleep now. Take the cot up very gently and carry it into the tent." He could not speak to tell her to make it go away and it crouched now, heavier, so he could not breathe. And then, while they lifted the cot, suddenly it was all right and the weight went from his chest. History doesn't tell us if sleep paralysis was Papa's inspiration, but no better description could be offered. Robert Perry Fisher Raleigh, N.C. Might this same phenomenon also explain the common childhood fear of "monsters under the bed"? I don't know how common this is across cultures, but it would be interesting to look. Rolf Taylor Cleveland Heights, Ohio If the condition is so severe as to paralyze the lungs and cause asphyxiation, has any study reported deaths due to sleep paralysis? Vytas Misiulis Chicago, Ill. I didn't run across any reports of deaths due to sleep paralysis.B. Bower

Old Hag Syndrom In the dark depths of the middle of the night you are woken suddenly with a feeling of evil surrounding you, you can't breathe and your chest is heavy, is someone pressing down on you or trying to suffocate you? To your horror you can't move, something is holding you down! You think you can hear voices and see a dark shadowy figure swooping around your bed...are you being visited by Demons or are you merely suffering an episode of Sleep Paralysis? S L E E P P A R A L Y S I S O L D H A G S Y N D R O M E Sleep Paralysis (SP) is a common medical condition and usually tagged nowdays as a Sleeping Disorder. The symptoms can sometimes include complete to partial paralysis of arms, legs and upper torso, a tight or heavy pressure on your chest sometimes with a choking sensation and almost always experienced as you are about to fall into sleep or just come out of sleep. The most remarkable symptoms of SP are the accompanying audio and/or visual hallucinations often causing extreme terror and panic in it's sufferers, who more often than not mistakenly believe they are being visited by aliens, malevolent beings and other evil presences. Research shows that SP is linked with REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. When in REM sleep you are usually dreaming, your body does not act out your dreams as you will hurt either yourself, or someone else, so evolution has worked its merry little way of getting your brain to switch off your muscles (so to speak) and relax you while dreaming, essentially paralyzing you to a degree. The cause for a state of SP is when your mind wakes up, usually still in a semi-REM state, but your body is still relaxed and semi paralyzed, bringing on a the sometimes horrifying sensation of being paralyzed while still in a semi-dream state yet awake. The consequences of this state are usually nothing short of terrifying to individuals with their dreams suddenly becoming reality as they are trapped in an inbetween sate of consciousness. The usual result is panic to try to release oneself while sleep creeps around your brain like a slow fog trying to drag you back down to it's depths again. I know what it's like, I've suffered this myself. Of a recent survey it is suggested that between 25-30f the general population has suffered some form of SP with 95f these experiencing a perceived horrifying event. It is now considered to be a common disorder among the population, but not many people admit to suffering SP. Yes, it does run in the family, if you have suffered an episode, chances are there's a member within your close family who has also experienced this. People often feel they are experiencing something paranormal with SP due to the bizarre symptoms and don't realise that they are in fact suffering from something many others have experienced with a perfectly reasonable explanation. At Castle of Spirits, by my calculations, over 15f ghost stories submitted to us are mistakenly describing an obvious case of SP as a ghostly account or sometimes Demon possession, this is further evidence that even though it is classified as "common" it is in fact still a widely unrecognised condition among the general public. Of course there are many other symptoms besides the paralysis and hallucinations, sometimes including shooting pains in the arms, back, neck or head, paralysis of only one limb (partial paralysis), choking and suffocating feeling, pressure on other parts of the body such as back, neck, arms or legs the feeling of someone touching you, feelings of an evil presence behind or beside you, and sometimes squeezing or hugging around your body. The term "perception" needs to be used in the case of SP, as the feelings of a presence are usually only perceived and not actually sighted in the majority of cases reported. The presences are in fact not real and only hallucinations induced by our brains in this dream state, you could say they are in fact a waking dream. An interesting fact is that in most cases nothing is actually ever seen, and only felt. A feeling of someone watching over, lurking about, walking around, but never actually sighted, and within these cases the feeling being of a dark humanoid figure or figures. More commonly than the visual perceptions are the reports of audio hallucinations. These include scratching, laughing, scraping, buzzing, ringing, voices, radio music and other noises all seemingly very real. We now believe that many alien abduction cases have been merely suffering an episode of SP, let alone the amazing amount of cases reporting Evil presences and ghosts. Old Hag Syndrome "Old Hag Syndrome" sometimes referred to as "Night Hag" is another commonly used term for SP among many different cultures mainly in the western world. The term Old Hag is probably derived from a couple of sources, one being the word for Nightmare; Night -of course, we know this already, Mare being derived from the old English term Maere meaning demon or incubus (an incubus is believed to be a demon that visits during the night). Other sources as listed by Dr. J. A. Cheyne, University of Waterloo Psych. Dept include German mar/mare, nachtmahr, Hexendrcken (witch pressing), Alpdruck (efl pressure), Czech muera, Polish zmora, Russian Kikimora, French cauchmar (trampling ogre), Greek ephialtes (one who leaps upon) and mora (the night "mare" or monster, ogre, spirit, etc.), Roman incubus (one who presses or crushes) ge, (evil spirit or the night-mare--also hegge, haegtesse, haehtisse, haegte); Old Norse mara, Old Irish mar/more. I S T H I S C O N D I T I O N H A R M F U L ? General medical research shows SP is not generally harmful and will only ever last from a few seconds, to maybe a few minutes. Of course reality is severely altered in this state and sufferers can have a feeling of being trapped in a state of SP for what seems like hours, when in fact it is merely minutes. Further research does indicate that a predisposition to something more traumatic, such as social problems due to lack of sleep and a disruption to normal daily life, may be a result of many episodes of SP. We do strongly suggest you seek out further medical help with a licensed practitioner if you feel you need more help or more information about any health issue including SP. C A U S E S The most commonly reported cause of SP episodes is in fact stress. It's believed that stress can seriously alter sleep patterns, causing episodes of sleep paralysis. Another cause can be your sleeping position. Reports and research by Dr. J. A. Cheyne show that sufferers sleeping in the face up position are five times more likely to suffer an episode of sleep paralysis than others who attempt to sleep in a different position during normal sleep. Avoidance of sleeping on your back and attempting to not roll over into this position during the night is strongly advised. The use of a small squash or tennis ball placed behind your back can sometimes help with this. P R E V E N T I O N & R E S C U E Prevention is all about sleeping in the correct position (not face up), not eating large amounts of food, drinking caffeine or excessive smoking before sleep. Reducing stress levels in your life is also another key factor to preventing SP as mentioned before, stress can severely alter sleep patterns inducing SP episodes. A good way of trying to release yourself when caught in a state of SP is attempting to concentrate on moving a body part, whether it be your finger, toe or even blinking your eyes, this works quite well and is a common remedy for most SP sufferers as the instant a body part moves, the SP episode should cease. You can also do this in your mind if you cannot move any body part, merely trying to imagine shaking your head or moving a body part can keep your mind active enough for your body to catch up and be able to move for real, essentially fully waking yourself up and again ending the SP episode. But why aren't people visited by Angels instead of Demons? The reality is that SP causes a situation where fear and terror are induced by the very condition you wake up in. Being immobilized with a sudden choking feeling plus hallucinations, of course the brain's natural reaction to this is to panic, however slow your reactions may be due to sleep you will feel a sense of danger. This reaction leaves little room for vivid imaginations of good things such as angels and with the introduction of horror movies and ghost stories into our lives, of course we immediately jump to conclusions from what our surroundings dictate; darkness, paralysed......must be EVIL!!. However, I have personally had many tales of Angels reported to me, in fact some people have found religion by believing they have in fact had a visitation from the Holy Spirit, when it may have been an episode of SP. It is not for us to say whether SP is in fact the case in every situation, each individual has their own experience and needs to interpret it the way they want by using deduction and intelligence. We cannot also say that every reported case of paranormal activity while sleeping is in fact mistaken and merely SP. As with any reported case of a haunting, it requires much Investigation and sometimes medical review to rule out things such as SP, but we do offer it up as an explanation for you to consider your options and be aware of what you may or may not be experiencing