Hi all. I'm a registered sleep technician and sleep paralysis can be sign of narcolepsy, especially if you are also having hallucinations while falling asleep/ waking up. Narcoleptic episodes can be triggered by strong emotions and stress. Other symptoms include excessive daytime sleepiness, cataplexy (which is a muscle weakenss), micro-sleeps, and easily going into rem sleep ( such as taking a short nap but remembering a dream during it).

Narcolepsy can be serious especially when you are driving. If you feel like any of your symptoms are affecting you, your doc can send you for a sleep study followed by an MSLT, which is done during the day. That is how narcolepsy is diagnosed.

Hope this helps!

I used to have this often when I was young. It's the most frightening experience I've ever had. I'd see dark figures at the edge of my vision and I knew one was above my head trying to smother me and the others were waiting for me to die, urging me to go back to sleep so they could finish. I'd finally regain mobility, but I'd be too tired to fight sleep for long. I think I was sensitive to something where we lived back then because I always felt like I was being watched when I was at home. The sleep paralysis only seems to happen when I'm utterly exhausted. It happened again in the last year, but since I knew what it was and didn't feel like stressing myself out, I gave in to the urge to fall asleep. I woke up just fine. I still have these hypnagogic experiences where I'm fighting sleep but not paralyzed, but they aren't scary, just annoying

Waking up helpless inspires this sort of fight or flight response in me, but I'm paralyzed, so I can't do either. Combined with the hallucination that I'm being murdered by otherworldly beings...well, it wasn't fun. I can see why people would think it was aliens/demons/ghosts if they had some similar to mine.

There was this site with a lot of research and feedback from people who'd had the experience. I took the survey a while back. Not sure if it's still up. I remember one of the recommendations being "sleep on your stomach." No way!

Erm, this doesn't happen often when people nap? I can fall asleep for anywhere from twenty seconds to five minutes and have little dreams. I don't think I have narcolepsy, though. :?: