Up to 50% of the population has experienced sleep paralysis. They wake up in their beds to discover they can't move, not a muscle, sometimes not even their eyes. If they manage to open their mouths to scream, nothing comes out. And for many of them, the terror doesn't end there-some see something in their bedroom darkness...something moving.
A human-shaped shadow-sometimes more than one-blacker than the darkest places in their bedrooms, creeps away from a corner, out of a closet, through a doorway into the bedroom...
to watch them...
to move closer to them...
to touch them.
Doctors and sleep specialists explain that sleep paralysis is natural, and our brain creates frightening sights when the body can't move. But there are three things they haven't explained to those of us who have experienced it. In fact, they ignore the questions.
Why do so many of us see the same things-the so-called shadow man, shadow animals, and other shadow-like entities?
Why do so many of us see these things when we wake up, but we aren't experiencing sleep paralysis?
Why do some of us see these things when we are awake in other parts of our homes?
In other structures? In the nighttime streets? In forests? In graveyards?
Some people call their petrifying experiences Night Screams.
Loren W. Christensen, author of 60 books, takes an impartial look at this phenomenon that many observers say is increasing worldwide. To do so, he interviewed "experiencers" from every walk of life to learn what they see, hear, feel, and smell.
What he found was disturbing.