I’ve seen some wild shit during sleep paralysis. One of the tamer fits I had was seeing a really tall human-shaped apparition that was made of the shadow in the corner of my room. It felt like he cursed me to not be able to move. I was scared of that corner for a few nights.

One of the crazier ones: One night I was going to sleep with my curtains open, but the blinds were down so lines of orange light were spilling in from the street light onto the ceiling. I had the window open, so the occasional breeze pushed and pulled the lines like waves on a beach. It was hypnotizing. I was watching them half asleep, and eventually they slowly started morphing into what looked like pretty glowing runes dancing around my ceiling.

Then I start hearing voices outside my apartment. In reality, I’m sure it was a few teenagers walking home while having an unreasonably loud conversation for the time of night, but what I heard was 3 of them, multiplying into maybe 6, then tens of them, hundreds, thousands… Eventually it felt like an ocean of people was outside my apartment. Playful voices that were utterly unconcerned with me, not even aware I existed, but I was terrified they might spill into my room and kill me. The juxtaposition between the threat of being overrun by whoever those voices were coming from and the complete lack of visual evidence that there was anyone there at all was surreal.

At this point I know it’s sleep paralysis because I can’t move, but I try my best to drag myself off the bed with what little motor functions I still have to hopefully wake me up on impact. Eventually I succeed, and I wake up in my bed. The orange lines are spilling onto my ceiling just like before. Everything is quiet again, with just the soft sound of my fan whirring, slowly turning left and right.

And then I think about what just happened… If I woke up by falling onto the floor, how am I still in my bed?

Now the fan has morphed into a monster with a head of violently spinning blades, twisting and looming over me while making intimidating metallic sounds.