The moment I saw Emily* in a Midtown hotel lobby, I tried to leave it.
I remember her rattling off the standard checklist of pleasantries:It had been so long!
How was my family?
The Nightmare, 1781 (oil on canvas) by Henry Fuseli. Some interpret the painting as a depiction of sleep paralysis. During episodes, sufferers can hallucinate demons while in a purgatory state between sleep and wake.
The only thing I remember saying back?My Uber is here.
In fact, I hadnt even ordered.
You look like you just saw a ghost.
I took a long exhale.
More like a demon.
Emily and I were once students at the same private school in Connecticut.
An old Facebook photo even shows us in the same pre-prom photo, smiling with our corsages.
Emily was smart, friendly, and kind.Everyoneliked Emily.
Which made it all more confusing that she kept hovering over my bed at night.
Not her, exactly.
Well, again, not exactly.
IwasawakeI could see and think and was aware of my surroundingsbut my body couldnt move.
Nor could I speak.
Despite how hard I tried to ask Emily why she was in my bedroom.
Something would snap me out of it.
An alarm, maybe.
My sister stirring in the room next door.
My mom calling my name.
Whatever it was, Id jolt up and Emily would vanish.
Forty-five minutes later, Id be in the hallways of school.
And Id see her again; therealEmily, in our plaid uniform with a pink ribbon in her hair.
But while I didnt go to Emilys college, she came to mine.
There she was, crouching on my laundry pile, the morning after my 19th birthday.
And there she was, the first night my boyfriend slept over in my twin bed.
I tried to scream at her to get out.
The exertion somehow broke my feverish state and I started screaming out loud.
He woke up, terrified.
What the hell was that?
The hell it was, it turns out, was sleep paralysis.
It happens as you make a run at exitREM sleepthe cycle where most dreams occur.
In REM, your brain makes your body immobile; a protective response so youdontphysically respond to your dreams.
Yet for those of us with S.P., something goes haywire in the processor.
Our brain exits REM, but our body doesnt.
It remains stuck in that frozen state.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, around30% of peopleexperience at least one episode in their lifetime.
Around 10% will have recurrent episodes.
And around eight percent of those people will hallucinate while doing it.
Some people feel a pressure on their chest.
Some have a sensation of falling or flying.
Othersa small, small, number of otherswill see a demon.
(Some more science: Sleep paralysis subconsciously triggers theamygdalathe part of our brain responsible for fear.
I fear that 17th-century me, undereducated and over-doctrinated, would have likely have gone fullBetty Parrison Emilys ass.
Although to be fair to Emily, she was just the first of my long line of monsters.
Next was Jim, my old apartment super.
In 2018, he came over to fix my leaky faucet.
Soon after, I hallucinated a gremlin Jim breaking open my door.
In 2020, I moved.
As I carried cardboard boxes into my new place, the buildings handyman Gary introduced himself.
And just like that, my mind found its third demon:Gollum Gary.
Intruders, as it turns out, are some of the most commonhypnopompic hallucinationsamong those with sleep paralysis.
Often, they felt threateninglike evil versions of these perfectly nice people were creeping into my room.
Did you oughta come in and fix something?
He looked back at me, perplexed.I dont know what youre talking about.
But Id take Emily, Jim, and Gary any day over Hat Man.
(Unoriginal, I admit.)
But hes got this hat that has the shape of MagrittesSon of Manand the height of Erykah Badus.
And on the worst?
He held a knife to my throat and ripped off my clothes.
When I finally could, I screamed.
Then, I went to my bathroom to throw up.
Yet what excuse could I give?
It may have felt real at the time.
But none of it was.Everwas.
Thats the thing about sleep paralysis.
Theres no real medicine for it.
(Doctors will occasionally prescribe SSRIs if the underlying cause is narcolepsy, which I thankfully dont have.)
Then theres the fact that theres just not that much known about it and no motivation to.
Sure, its scary.
However, its not that seriousno ones ever died or been hospitalized from sleep paralysis.
The morning after my attempted demon murder, I went to my coffee shop.
How are you this morning?
My barista asked while handing over my cup.
I paused and stared it for a second.
Then I looked up.
I think I might be nuts, I said.
I lay in bed that night thinking about what he said.
Then came my monsters.
Suddenlyor maybe it was slowly?I held both such beauty and such terror.
Its funny how powerless we can be over the madness lurking in our own minds.
The sadness that turns into depression.
The diet that turns into a disorder.
The drinks that turn into addiction.
In a way, we all have our demons.
*Names have been changed.
