Nocturnal Assaults: Aliens in the Dark
Alien abductions and Old Hags - things that go bump in the night.
Filed under Aliens & UFOs, Paranormal
| Skeptoid #08 November 21, 2006 Podcast transcript | Listen | Subscribe Also available in Japanese |
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I was five years old when my single mother was attacked by a ghost in her bed in the middle of the night. She awoke suddenly under the pressure of two unseen hands pushing her down flat against the bed and holding her there. For several minutes she struggled, unable to speak or move. Finally she broke free and scrambled out of the room, and spent the rest of the night on the floor of the room that my brother and I shared. She never went back into her own bedroom alone again. And so I grew up with this history, hearing ghost stories from time to time that other people told, but knowing that we had actually had a real ghost in our home when I was young.
I was an inveterate reader of books about monsters and ghosts — everything from Bigfoot to Dracula, from banshees to fairies, from zombies to werewolves — and one subject that particularly piqued my interest was that of nocturnal assaults. Noctural assaults are attacks just like that suffered by my mother, though often more graphic: the attacker can sometimes be a visible apparition. I was highly intrigued to learn that the physical descriptions of the attackers have been eerily similar over the ages, varying by country and sometimes by century. In Anglo cultures the most common attacker is called the Old Hag, a terrifying old woman dressed in black rags who holds her victims down in their beds or even sits on their chests with her full weight. References to the Old Hag and her nocturnal attacks go back as far as the Middle Ages. She's been part of our history for so long that if you haven't slept well, you're said to look "haggard". In India she is the Mohini, a beautiful but deadly enchantress. As often as the Anglo attacker is decribed to look like an old hag, attackers in India are just as frequently described as a beautiful young woman with terrible powers. In Slavic cultures, the most frequent description is of an elf-like gypsy man with wild glowing eyes who sits on your chest, riding you like a horse. The more I researched it, the more cultural groups I found to have their own unique noctural assault perpetrators.
As a budding young scholar of the supernatural, I was fascinated by these cultural commonalities. Similar attacks, throughout history, made by specific attackers who stayed within their own cultural communities. And then I had a breakthrough. Beginning in the late 1960's, a new attacker began muscling in on the Old Hag's territory, and quickly took over responsibility for most of the attacks reported in the United States. Do you know who I'm referring to yet? In 1965, Betty and Barney Hill went public with an episode they said happened to them in 1961, when they were abducted from their car by aliens, and suffered terrible medical experiments aboard a spacecraft. Curiously, the attack they described bore no resemblance to a classical nocturnal assault; however the creature they described — an alien of the type we commonly call a "gray" — became America's new supernatural superstar. Nocturnal assaults continued to happen at the same frequency that they always had, but now the reported attacker was, more often than not, a gray alien. The gray alien burst upon the scene of America's consciousness just as the Old Hag was beginning to seem a little outdated and, well, haggard. Just as children in India grew up with stories of the Mohini as the evil specter who might paralyze you in the middle of the night, we're now in a generation of Americans who have heard that gray aliens are those little beings who are going to come into your bedroom at night and attack you.
Is it really as simple as that? Is the attacker that your scared brain visualizes based solely on what your cultural experience tells you to expect?
It was about 25 years after my mom's attack that I first heard of sleep paralysis, which, as you probably know, is the clinical name of these nocturnal assaults. Sleep paralysis can be characterized by an inability to speak or move, a feeling of intense crushing weight on the chest, and/or hallucinations which can be visual, auditory, tactile, or even strange smells. It happens only during REM sleep, often just as it's beginning or ending. Sleep paralysis is five times more likely to happen to people sleeping on their backs, facing up. Drugs such as Prozac have been found effective in controlling sleep paralysis attacks. Although most sleep paralysis episodes do not include the visual apparition, more than enough do include it to account for all reported nocturnal assaults. Sleep paralysis is well understood, well documented, and is an accepted psychological phenomenon among almost all medical professionals.
So why, then, did it take me a further several years before I made the connection between my mom's attack and sleep paralysis? I had spent so many years fully believing that my mom had been attacked by a ghost that it never even occurred to me to seek more reasonable explanations elsewhere, even when the obvious answer was staring me in the face, literally, as I was reading books about it. Perhaps this is the same reason that even in an age where most people have at least heard of sleep paralysis, believers in alien abductions and noctural ghost attacks firmly stick to paranormal explanations for their own sleep paralysis experiences.
Many believers, when confronted with this explanation for their experience, will point out differences between their experience and the known symptoms of sleep paralysis. Of course, visual, audible, and tactile hallucinations are part of the known symptoms of sleep paralysis, so it's kind of hard for them to come up with details that can't be attributed to known sleep paralysis effects. And that's an uncomfortable position to be in as a skeptic: no matter what the believer reports, we can explain it with "It's a hallucination." That's just like creationists being able to explain anything with "God did it," no further evidence needed. The difference is that we can actually test nocturnal assault sufferers, and whenever we do, we end up with video of them lying in their bed looking paralyzed, with a conspicuous absence of gray aliens in the room.
So it took over thirty years, but I finally did explain my mom's noctural assault, at least to my own satisfaction. You might wonder what her own assessment is, in light of this explanation. She went to medical school, spent her whole career in biotech, has a very scientific mind, and is convinced to this day that she was attacked by a ghost. She never read the Betty and Barney Hill story.
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© 2006 Skeptoid Media, Inc. Copyright information
References & Further Reading
Hoffman, Matthew. "Sleep Paralysis." WebMD Sleep disorders. WebMD, 1 Jul. 2008. Web. 21 Dec. 2009. <http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/sleep-paralysis>
Hufford, David J. The terror that comes in the night: an experience-centered study of supernatural assault traditions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.
Sagan, Carl. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. New York: Random House, 1996. 61-77.
Schenck, Carlos H. Sleep: the mysteries, the problems and the solutions. New York: Penguin Group, 2007. 160-177.
Tavris, C., Aronson, E. Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me). San Diego: Harcourt Books, 2007. 88-93.
Wynn, Charles M., Wiggins, Arthur W. Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction: Where real science ends...and Pseudoscience Begins. Washington, DC: Joseph Henry Press, 2001. 49-68.
Reference this article:
Dunning, Brian.
"Nocturnal Assaults: Aliens in the Dark." Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, Inc.,
21 Nov 2006. Web.
10 Sep 2010. <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4008>
Discuss!
Remember, you should always read with skepticism the comments of anyone too lame to put their real name & city.
See how it all links together...and if you unlink it, it becomes SUPERnatural!
The link here is to evolution.
Imagine a people, who for safety, live up trees or high up on a hill top, with cliffs around them, for protection against attack from other animals or competitors for food etc.
Now ask yourself:'What would happen if a person in that scenario were to sleep, BUT during sleep they 'sleep-walk' or 'roll-over'? The simple answer is that they would walk over the cliff or fall out of the tree; to their doom.
And to the doom of their GENES. If they die so do their genes. So you're left with people who survived because they had genes that made them IMOBILE in sleep. I myself have been woken by a noise in the night [dark] and have laid there willing myself to move and being unable to do so. I never ascribed these events [it's happened lots of times] to any paranormal influence - there is no such thing - [if it existed it would be NORMAL...c.f. alternative medicine and supernatural].
So sleep paralysis is more likely due to natural selection than anything else.
It is certain that we are almost preprogrammed to believe.
I recently purchased a magic trick in Florida : Universal Studios, after being so impressed with the guys there. I couldn't wait to unwrap the c.d. and learn the MAGIC. I wasn't disappointed either, because it was ingeniously done! But I can't be bothered to practice...and a good magician never reveals their secrets. This bit I plan to live up to!
But the point is that if I [ME] can be so easily persuaded to think - YES they are marvelous...With my doubting Thomas background...Imagine the effect on the naive mind and will!
These peo
Neil Griffiths, cardiff,uk
December 14, 2006 5:38pm
All bullshit aside, this actually happened to me one night.I woke with the feeling of a malevolent presence in the room with me. It was a very intense feeling, as though I could reach out and touch it.This was to say the least, a little alarming at first. I then was aware of being unable to move.Thats when I realised what was going on.Sleep paralysis.I then experienced what felt like an enormous weight pressing down on my whole body.Again potentially quite alarming,but by this stage I was quite lucid though still obviously in a sleep state. I remember saying to myself "Is that the best you can do?" to the presence in the room (which by then,I was on to it's true nature as a creation of my subconscious). I was then able to repeat the sensation of a huge weight myself. I did this several times till I can only assume I entered an awake state and all the sleep paralysis manifestations had vanished. Pretty much text book material.Whadda ya think of that Griff?
Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabor Plain, Australia
June 06, 2007 3:03am
Bluddy marvellous debunking! And a bit of on the post, off the cuff scientific investigation by testing the hallucination while it was happening; rather than being totally in awe of it and pretending it was "a presence" of a supernatural type!
I find Aussie's are always blunt-honest, and that's good! Mind you I sense a Danish origin...even better!
I watched a fantastic prog recently about sleeping disorders and the "old hag" featured...every one's 'symptoms' were the same, or so exceedingly similar as to be identical!
It's all in the mind....
I remember being talked to repeatedly, over & over again, by a total stranger who appeared to be making lite conversation; but I had a feeling of "drifting", and this experience has stayed with me!
What I'm getting at is are there people in our society who ABDUCT others using methods of hypnosis??
Was I nearly an abductee???
I let myself drift but while 'under' asked some questions...so maybe my skepticism saved me...
I wonder if this experience explains some abduction/kidnappings. I got my ability to repel hypnosis from "Kim". (Kippling). Spies the lot of them! Shhh. Who said that?
Anyone else had that?
Griff...
neil griffiths, Cardiff uk
June 08, 2007 11:36pm
I had a similar experience at a cocktail party (being talked to repeatedly, over and over again). Nice tautology, by the way.. However I played along as the talker was a fetching young nubile.Certainly no 'old hag'. I was hypnotised, but in a nice way. I'm not a Dane. In fact I'm often confused with the patsy the nazis blamed for the Arson of the Reichstag in 1933. As he is dead,I'm probably not him.
Marius vanderLubbe, Nullabor Plain, Australia
June 22, 2007 4:30am
I've had a sleep paralysis experience which I'd like an explanation for, as I am a bit at a loss.
My wife and I were sleeping, and I awoke to her screaming, felt the tale-tell weight, paralysis, etc. My "vision" was of an old man all in white in a long ratty robe. All of this is easily explained by sleep paralysis, which I knew as it was happening. The sequence of events probably played out something like my wife had a bad dream, woke up screaming, which in turn woke me up and triggered the sleep paralysis experience. What I can't figure out is when I started to tell her what I saw, she described it exactly before I could give her any details.
I am a serious skeptic and believe there is a rational explanation for this. However, for the life of me I can't figure out how we would have seen the same thing. Any ideas?
Steve Moore, Fairbanks, AK
January 15, 2008 10:00am
Was a sleepwalker for much of my young childhood. In my teens I began to suffer from this paralysis instead. The first time I was absolutely terrified. Sometimes I saw a shadowy figure, sometimes just a feeling of doom. For two years I wondered what was going on but soon came to the conclusion that it was simply the opposite of my sleepwalking problem (which had mysteriously stopped). At 16 I began to do some reading on sleep dysfunctions in the school and public library. The 'Old hag' stories et. al. popped up right away and viola, I knew what was wrong. never went to a doctor for it since it didn't cause me any harm. Just began sleeping on my side or stomach and also warned my wife when we started sleeping together that it might happen from time to time so she wouldn't freak out. hasn't bothered me in years though.
I also told my kids about it. Some of these things have been tied to the hypothalamus and pituitary glands working funny in kids and teens and I didn't want them to go through the kind of worry that I did.
Good post.
Eric, Regina, Sask. Canada
July 04, 2008 2:39pm
I think sleep paralysis is not what people thinks it just happened when weight comes on ur heart like ur own hand or any others mate.Due to which u cannot beathe properly and feel suffocation.At that time our subconsious mind comes into power as our consious mind is also sleeping.Our this mind make us dream so that we can wake up and lift that hand from our heart and we can breathe properly.I have noticed that whenever I am sleep paralysed I found my hand on my heart.
Bawli Gand, India
July 29, 2008 5:31am
Up until I was 17, I was visited by not aliens, but vampires. Before each encounter, I had this weird dream where I was attacked by them. The dreams were very weird, but they all had a vampire in them
After each dream, I would I would then wake up in the middle of the night and I realized that my legs did not work. It took like an eternity before I could move. I got used to sleeping in the light.
I took a psychology class where one of the lectures was on sleep paralysis. Iit took me about a week to realize that I was sleep paralyzed.
After that, no more sleep paralysis, and no more vampires.
Joseph Furguson, Brawley Ca
September 26, 2008 11:08pm
I don't know if what happens to me from time to time is sleep paralysis, night terrors or a combination of both. I've suffered from debilitating insomnia for most of my adult life, without medication to make me sleep then I'm usually awake for 2-3 days at a time with anywhere from 2-8 hours of sleep in between each sleep/wake cycle.
My doctor switches me between different medication due to tolerence forming and some of them seem to cause it more often than others (I can't take barbituates or benzo's due to interactions with meds for chronic pain.)
When it happens I overcome by fear and it seems to me that I get up and try to run only "awake" again back in bed a few seconds later with the same sense of fear. This happens over and over and any attempt to scream or cry for help doesn't produce any sound. The whole time it's happening I am aware that it's not real and can usually pull myself out after awhile, but once awake I feel as if I'm being dragged back into that state and if I don't get up and fully awaken myself then I get dragged back again.
I never feel any pressure on my chests or trouble breathing, no vision either, just an overwhelming sense of fear and a desire to run away from it, but any attempt to run and I wake up into the same state again.
Jim Hudson, Salisbury, Maryland
December 23, 2008 7:59pm
This is a great post, as I think the phenomenon of perceived "nocturnal assaults" is quite common, but can really mess with the heads of people prone to worry.
I can remember my first sleep paralysis episode at a very early age, around the same time when my older sister forced me to watch horror movies with her because she was too scared to watch them alone! The theme of the perceived threat, which inevitably accompanied the feeling of being awake yet paralyzed, was usually an invincible slasher/murderer (akin to the horror films forced on me at the time), and occasionally the "gray" aliens that were becoming popular in sci-fi during the early 80’s. Finally waking up from these events was terrifying at a young age, and for years I was certain that some of the dreams were actually true.
I continue to experience episodes, but over time the subject of the "threat" changed. Now, as a married adult, I subconsciously fear a home intruder and not being able to protect my wife. But as I have become educated on the nature of sleep paralysis, and as I have accepted the phenomena as a simple physiological quirk, a harmless but annoying bug in my code, I find that the amount of stress induced by each episode has diminished to nearly zero – I recover in seconds, and forget about it easily. When it comes to battling nocturnal assaults, apparently "knowing is (more than) half the battle."
Reed, Arlington, Virginia
January 14, 2009 10:25am
Sleep paralysis gave me one the best friends of my childhood - Witchie!
I couldn't have been more than five or six (because I know 'she' was firmly part of my world by the time I was eight)years old when I 'woke up' to see a cloaked dark figure standing in the bedroom doorway and laughing. Scared the crap out of me at the time. But after a fairly short while I decided that as 'she' hadn't hurt me, she must be friendly. And as I couldn't see her anywhere in the apartment she must have lived in the closet under the stairs where I wasn't allowed to go, hence 'she' could hide there from me. I don't remember telling my parents though I must have because I talked about 'her' as one of the family very openly with my friends and cousins.
Long after I no longer believed in Santa Claus I still believed in Witchie. Not that 'she' made any sense to me - heck I was an agnostic by high school - but I KNEW I had seen and heard 'her' so I had to believe in her.
It was a couple more decades before I heard of sleep paralysis and understood what had really happened. Down inside though there is still a part of me that KNOWS that it did happen, however I can rationally explain it now and I can't erase that part.
Part 2 coming up.
Robert Jase, New Britain, CT
January 29, 2009 1:53pm
A couple times, I had the same vivid nightmare where I was assaulted, unable to fight back or shout.I could just feel a powerless rage. Very unpleasant, until I woke up and blamed the nightmare on tangled bed-sheets.
Now, I know it was sleep paralysis.
No hallucinations, no malevolent hag though.
I must have a dull subconscious :-(
Brigitte, Paris
May 16, 2009 3:04am
I've had the dark, demonic figure moving around the end of the bed a couple of times. At the time I put the inability to move down to sheer terror. These days (as an adult) the weird crap that happens in my sleep is freaky...but that's all. Dr Steven Novella (a neurologist) on the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe podcast has also explained this very well.
Adrian, Brisbane, Australia
August 11, 2009 4:56am
This is a really fascinating subject to me because it's one on which I can actually relate to believers. It feels incredibly, terrifyingly real when it happens to me (which is rarely). I can understand why the believer won't accept that it's just a hallucination.
I wish it would be the Mohini that visits me instead of the old hag I get. It might not be so bad if it was a sexy woman.
This is a case where unless you've experienced it and know what it's like, you can't convince a believer that it's just a hallucination. Anyone who hasn't ever had such an experience should count himself lucky.
I'm usually able to get myself out of it pretty quickly by wiggling my finger. Knowing it's not real doesn't make it any less scary, though - at least not in the moment it occurs. For the mind experiencing it, it's very real. It might be somewhat like water boarding - try as you might, you can't reason yourself out of the fear.
I'd imagine if the government found a way to induce these feelings in people, it would be very devastating to their mental states.
Belief in ghosts, demons, and alien abductions are probably all heavily based on experiences like these.
Jarek, Ohio
August 24, 2009 3:14am
I get Judge Fear from the 2000AD comics... one of Judge Death's henchmen and enemy of Judge Dredd. The first time it happened I knew something was amiss, since although everything felt so tangibly real, what are the chances a pop culture character would come visit me? Took me about 5 minutes to do the research and realise it must have been the same thing the alien abductees describe, only they were watching different TV shows. Thank Tharg it goes away as you get older.
Marius, South Africa
November 24, 2009 3:47am
New Cure for Night Hallucinations: Eat Crackers!
Of course I'm being sarcastic, but only half joking. I can personally attest to this remedy. My 'sleep paralysis' and 'night hallucinations' coincide with low blood sugar. If I eat crackers just before going to bed, I don't have them. If I am hungry prior to bed, I am more likely to have an episode, especially hallucinations, which are usuall red or green glowing objects/dragons/spiders above my bed. I did some research an learned that the body has a response to low blood sugar of suddenly bolting awake with an adrenaline surge because it thinks it is dying. If you are in the middle of REM sleep when this happens, your mind may wake up before your body, leaving you paralyzed and experiencing after images and sounds from your dreams. Even if you're not in the middle of a full blown dream, your closed eyes are focussed on 'floaties' that can become animated ghosts or creatures when your eyes suddenly pop open. Your feeble efforts to regain control of your body can give a sensation like your bed shaking or a weight on your chest. You'll also be in a cold sweat with rapid heart beat from the adrenaline, which feels a lot like panic and can evoke a powerful fear of death and might explain why you never see fuzzy bunnies at the foot of your bed, only scary apparitions trying to kill you. Just saying. After learning about this, I find myself going to bed hungry on purpose in the hopes of waking up to colorful hallucinations!
Bertha, Salt Lake City
February 11, 2010 2:49pm
Even though this is an old podcast, I found it interesting to see you reached the same conclusions I did when I researched this on my own a couple of months ago. I have been suffering nocturnal assaults since I was a kid, and they are starting to happen more often lately.
Strangely enough, I was really scared of aliens or "grays" when I was a kid, but they never seemed to appear whenever I had an assault. I guess that's why I was capable of remaining skeptic and passing it off as just a "nightmare" (which originally was the name of this kind of experience) for all my life.
I don't know if my experiences are unique, but when that happens, it is never in an environment that could be perceived as "real". It is clearly a dream, but as in with most non-lucid dreams you're not aware of the absurdity until you wake up.
In any case, maybe I was lucky. If aliens had shown up in the assaults I had as a child, I probably wouldn't have developed the more scientific and skeptic mindset I have today.
Bruno, Kashiwa, Japan
March 11, 2010 2:40am
For the past few years I have had contact with invisible beings and out of body experiences; all in bed. I've also had many experiences with lucid dreaming. I don’t know why it happens -- it just happens. A typical occurrence is me waking up, completely paralyzed (yet fully conscious), able to feel and hear things happening in the room. I believe the first time I actually encountered a being was my third semester in college when I was lying on my belly in my room with all of the lights on, taking a nap. No one else was in the room, and I woke up paralyzed, unable to move. I heard (what sounded like) many whispers, all in different (possibly the same, but definitely foreign) languages. I could not make out exactly what any of the whispers were, but I did get this: “veng-eance” with a long draw on the “g.” It was a sad and moppy tone, but I heard it clearly, in my right ear specifically … In other attacks I’ve heard angry voices yelling at me and ending with “you’re going to burn in hell.”
Anyway I started a forum for people who have similar experiences: http://www.sleep-paralysis-forum.com/index.php
Come check it out sometime.
chris, NY
April 24, 2010 1:37pm
Hmm. From what I've heard, chris, it just sounds like drowsiness, sleep paralysis, and odd dreams. At least you acknowledge that it's sleep paralysis.
Caleigh, Maine
July 23, 2010 4:38pm
Marius, just remember to use the immortal lines:
"Gaze into the face of fear!"
"Gaze into the Fist of Dredd, Punk!"
Tom H, Kent, UK
September 10, 2010 7:17am
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Consider the stage magician who tells his audience that has no supernatural powers.
If he is good at his profession, some of his audience will believe that his tricks are 'real magic' anyway, because they cannot work out how they are done.
We are much too inclined to attribute impressive events which we do not understand, or which go counter to our present limited understanding, to supernatural agencies.
The true sceptic says:
"I don't understand this. Perhaps I shall some day."
The average punter says:
"I don't understand this. I am a bit frightened by powerful stuff I don't understand. There must be some malign entity behind it."
Hence: gods, demons, ghosts, fairies, angels, leprechauns et al.
James McCartney, Belfast, Northern Ireland
December 03, 2006 5:09am