Original subtitles

What was that?

Me and my brother,

we'd just got out of the shower,

and he was about two years younger than me.

And while my mom was taking care of him

'cause he's tiny,

- I was in the living room, drying off, watching TV.

- Five, four, three...

In a Miami, Florida, courtroom today,

former Panamanian dictator, Manuel noriega...

- hey, Chris. - Whoever the newscaster was

starts kind of getting my attention...

- Chris. - Saying like, "hey, Chris. Hey, Chris."

Hey, Chris.

- And It's saying, "don't worry." - Don't worry.

Everything's gonna be okay.

And one day, We'll be back.

It terrified me.

I remember screaming to get my mom,

bringing her to the TV,

who now was back to doing normal news casting,

because that's, you know, what it was.

And her basically explaining to me, like,

"tv's don't talk to you. That's ridiculous."

I'm disenchanted, because now I thought

something really cool happened,

and that's not a thing I remember,

I know it was there.

And, you know, I was wide awake.

I had literally just gotten out of the shower,

and it was this very overwhelming experience for me

because now, as a five-year-old,

I didn't know where I belonged.

Okay. Set.

So how did this start, Jeff?

Um, probably about 10 years ago.

My girlfriend at the time and I were talking about

different paranormal stories, and she started telling me

about how sometimes she'd wake up

in the middle of the night,

just, like, unable to move or breathe.

She said it felt like there's, like,

an evil presence in the room with her,

and they would just, like... kind of, like, torment her.

And she would eventually wake up,

and it'd be like it was just a dream.

After she told me that,

I didn't really know what to make of it.

I was like, "okay, I got involved with some crazy girl."

And I just kind of changed the subject,

started talking about something else.

Then about a week later, I laid down to go to sleep.

And just as I started to drift off,

I felt my body just become extremely heavy.

It was like I fell asleep,

but then woke up at the same instant.

And my whole body started tingling.

It just felt like really weighted down,

like something was pulling me.

And I heard this, like, sound.

It wasn't outside of my head,

but it was just inside of my head.

It just sounded like a washing machine

that kind of out of balance or something,

just banging against the wall, and just really terrified me.

I kind of started, like, freaking out,

and, like, started seeing things.

And it was really bizarre.

Well, what did you see?

Um, it was kind of like...

it was kind of like...

All these different colors,

like a laser light show or something,

like, I was like flying through, like, a time warp.

It just had all these colors just, like, shooting at me

in a light show.

And I found that I had zero control over my body.

Like, no matter how hard I tried,

I couldn't move my arms, my legs, nothing.

And so I really started to kind of have a panic attack

because I didn't know what was going on.

I thought I was dead.

I thought it was like a stroke or something.

Nothing worked. I couldn't move.

I had no control over anything.

Finally I decided, well,

I'm just gonna try to build up all the strength

that I have in me just to get myself

to roll over onto my girlfriend

hoping that it wakes her up.

So it was just like this last-ditch effort

of everything I had,

I just, like, wrenched my body.

As soon as I flipped over on top of her, I woke up.

And I was still laying in my original position

like none of it had happened.

I was just completely shocked.

I had no idea what was going on.

I just did not know what to make of it.

After that, it was like, constantly,

night after night after night,

for a couple weeks, maybe even a month or so.

And...

I just did not know how to process it at the time.

And so, finally, I told my girlfriend about it.

I was like, "okay, this is what's happening to me."

"I think I need to go to the doctor."

I think I'm having strokes, like mini-strokes,

or seizures maybe even," and she's like,

"no, that's exactly what happens to me.

That's what I was trying to tell you about."

I was about 29 years old.

Mm-hmm.

And here in this room,

as I would lay down to sleep,

I'd start feeling tingling in my feet,

and then I would feel it rise up my legs...

Up my torso, on my hands,

and I'd also hear buzzing.

You know, like bees buzzing.

That's when these episodes would start.

I would feel tingling and I would get...

I'd feel the energy.

I felt that my mind was awake, but my body was stiff.

I'd try to move my head from side to side.

I just... I couldn't move.

And in that moment,

I would hear tapping on the window.

They would tap here. I would hear tapping.

And I'm thinking, "well, maybe It's just a squirrel"

or a raccoon," but it was like a pattern.

It was definitely a knock.

And I would open my eyes, and I'd look toward the window,

and then it would stop.

But after a while,

I started feeling an actual presence.

And I would feel this presence right next to me

trying to take my soul out.

It would torture me at night, and I would try and fight it,

but I felt I was... my body felt paralyzed.

It was just so strong that I would just let go,

and then I'd feel myself floating in the air.

And I could try and see myself, but I would just see a blur.

And it happened for many years, and...

when I was pregnant with my daughter,

and I felt the baby as well, trying to come out.

But I was trying to fight it, and I was saying, "no, no."

So I would pull back. It's like If I would pull back.

And it would pull, you know, the other way.

When I was in my mid to late 20s,

I had a really awful breakup.

I was miserable because I was so brokenhearted.

And I started my first teaching job around the same time,

so I was super stressed-out from that.

I would just see this, like, dark figure by the bookshelves,

and I could not move, and it was fucking terrifying.

I didn't know what was happening.

I did think that somebody had broken

into my apartment at first, because at that point,

my roommate and I lived... I had a roommate then...

we lived on fourth street,

and we were on the top floor of the building.

And our building was really easy to get into.

Like, the door in from the balcony to our apartment

didn't really lock, so I think I was like,

"Oh, fuck, somebody actually broke in."

To be lying there and know, I want to move,

and I'm trying to move, and I cannot...

absolutely terrifying.

I've always had a problem with states of consciousness.

Slipping in and out

of different states of consciousness.

And I do remember...

When I was very, very young...

two, three, I was still in a crib.

And there was a plug-in night light,

and it was that orange cast color.

And it was all dark except for that orange cast,

and the room turned red,

and I felt like something was coming after me,

and I cuddled down and covered myself.

It was my earliest memory of the scariness

that happened to me and continued to happen.

Laying down to go to sleep, I would feel utterly exhausted,

almost as If I had just been drugged.

I mean, you know, having been in the hospital,

I understand what that's like.

It's just like I had been injected.

And my eyes sealed shut. My mouth sealed shut.

And It's as If everything was shutting down,

except for my awareness, my consciousness.

And then I could feel a vibration.

Sometimes it was so intense,

it felt like being electrocuted,

but it was definitely an electrical vibration.

I began hearing voices and screams

- and crying...

And all of this really emotional drama,

yelling to crying, but all negative emotion,

all of these different voices.

And then that is when the shadow man

would come toward me.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid! Stupid!

And he looked just like a three-dimensional shadow,

outlined, just perfect.

And he would walk... Disjointed.

And he brought the vibration with him.

It's as If it was emanating from him.

And he would come towards me, and I would just feel that.

Hear... hear...

I would hear all the sounds of hell...

I don't know any other way to put it...

and feel his awful vibration.

And I would have a fight/flight response,

and I would completely, you know, freak out,

and try to scream or get away.

And many times, the intensity just continued.

I was very scared, and I was upstairs,

and I didn't feel like anybody was gonna get to me

If I screamed.

It's very dark.

And it scared me forever.

I mean, it really scared me to the end of my wits.

And If anything was gonna drive me insane,

it was gonna be that.

What happens is when you're falling asleep,

You'll get an electrical shock through your body

just as you're falling asleep, and that's the usual indication

that you're gonna have a visit that night.

Then You'll fall asleep,

and then You'll wake up, and you're totally paralyzed,

you can't move.

Um, and... There's static in the room.

And you're being visited. They'll circle your bed,

and now and again, They'll try and touch you.

The first one is a generic shadow person,

which is just basically an outline of me and you

on a sunny day, on the pavement,

on the sidewalk in a 3-d form.

And the second...

the second entity, which is the hat man,

seems to have a direct link to them.

He's... he's a very authoritarian figure.

He's very menacing.

He's very...

he's in charge of them.

His minions, so to speak.

And, um...

They're a team. It's hell.

He's awful, awful, awful.

It all starts with that electrical shock.

I have my two separate lives.

I have my life like we're here talking about it,

and It's cool and I go to work.

Then when I go to bed,

I have this whole other life that I have to deal with.

When it first started, it was pretty intermittent.

It wasn't every day.

Don't know the age. Around this time.

My brother didn't live with us anymore,

and I had my room all to myself.

It's kind of funny 'cause I can remember

my bed had collapsed,

onto a box of beanie babies that my mom collected.

My mom was a big collector.

And so my bed kind of pivots, right?

On top of this thing there's a frame,

the bed pivoting.

And I remember the bed was pivoted,

on this particular night,

with my feet closer to the ground

and my head higher up, like a seesaw.

And I remember the paralysis starts,

and I can see the door frame.

Like I can see... I'm looking directly at...

you know, I'm looking at a wall,

and the door is right here.

So, here's a bed, there's me, then straight forward,

there's the door that exits, right?

And there's the light from the hallway.

And I remember seeing, you know,

your traditional darkness, your, you know,

everything kind of exists in shadows.

I mean, it all looks like It's moving.

All the darkness looks alive.

But I remember seeing...

People, beings, whatever, just coming in.

They just... they look...

they look like a...

If a person were to walk in front of a light,

and their shadow were to follow them,

they looked like an almost...

more shadow-like version of a shadow.

Like... and kind of...

Just... Didn't do anything.

Like, I remember now, um,

that they would... they just... shadows moving in,

like, they would kind of intersect the light.

I actually... I remember this kind of well now,

because I was on this weird tilt,

so it wasn't just me looking up,

or, like, being able to kind of see around.

This was me looking straight at the door.

And just seeing these things.

I remember in the paralysis, I thought that they were real.

I always think they're real.

Even to this day, I think these things are real

in some sense, um...

But when I woke up, they weren't there.

It was definitely the first time

that I saw something that made think

that this was more than just a sleep disorder.

I do remember it happening

as far back as when I was a little girl.

As far back as maybe five or six years old.

And then the same thing happened

when I was about 15.

During that time, I was a rebellious teenager,

so I was really out of control and feeling, like,

unloved and stuff.

I don't know how I got that way,

but it was kind of like a brokenness inside,

like, I was just broken, spiritually broken.

And that time,

I was in a two-story home in torrance,

the city of torrance.

It was in the middle of the night,

but I was wide awake.

I was literally wide awake. My eyes were open.

But I could now feel this presence,

this evil presence behind me.

Lying on my side, like on my left side...

I'm a side sleeper...

and then the door is behind me.

And... and then I could feel the presence

just right behind me.

And I remember just trying to...

wanting to move and turn around,

but I could not lift a finger.

Again, it was... I was just frozen...

Utterly in terror.

And it was the...

If I could describe what death would feel like...

and It's a kind of horror

that is worse than like in the movies.

Um, It's an icy-cold, kind of dark

evil something's in the room,

and It's watching me.

That's the scary part.

That you feel a sense that It's watching you.

And It's... and It's...

and It's making you feel afraid.

And it wants you to feel afraid.

I was a year and a half old, probably.

And I was born and raised in rural Vermont

in an old farmhouse about 100, 100-plus years old,

and I was in the middle of the woods.

Um, so it was very dark and very quiet,

just pitch silence,

which, you know, itself kind of has a sound.

Um, and...

so here I am, I'm a baby.

I wake up and I can't move.

I'm in my crib.

And so I'm surrounded by the bars

of the crib on all sides.

And above me, at the end of the crib,

before the window,

are two anthropomorphic...

Kind of, beings, I guess.

Uh, best word to describe them.

I still remember them vividly

because It's actually my first memory.

So in a way,

It's kind of my awakening into the world.

Dark.

They always just look so cartoony.

I've tried to draw them before, and it just looks so goofy.

It just doesn't have, uh, the same malevolent impact.

And their skin, um,

was like television static.

Um, you know, it had, you know...

like an old TV, when the signal's...

when you're not getting a good signal.

It had that same kind of texture,

that kind of...

they were tall, kind of thin,

these kind of thin limbs and these long fingers.

And they had these very simple faces,

almost cartoonish faces of, you know,

these two inky eyes and this big inky smile

on their face that's kind of...

It's tickling, tickling, tickling fingers,

these, like, long, slender...

they were laughing.

And here's my little feet, you know.

They were tickling me. And, you know, I was paralyzed.

I couldn't move, and I couldn't stop them.

And they were laughing about it.

There was kind of like laughter. Like, ah-ha-ha.

They were, like, there, you know?

And bars,

these two anthropomorphic things, the windows.

You know, according to my parents...

but I kept on repeating the words "zines."

Like, z-I-n-e-s, over and over again

in like kind of a panic.

Kind of like, "zines, zines, zines,"

you know, like, hanging on to them.

And so maybe as a child, you know,

seeing these kind of anthropomorphic

sort of not human but human... uh...

So I wouldn't sleep in my crib again.

My parents tried to put me in my crib,

and I just wouldn't do it.

I would just scream and scream

and scream and scream and scream.

I made this as a Halloween costume

some years ago.

Now you're staring into my childhood right now.

I don't know. Is it scary?

Did you seek any medical help?

No, because I didn't think I was going crazy.

I knew what I was experiencing was real.

I didn't want someone else to come and tell me,

"well, no, that's not real."

Did you seek any kind of help?

Did you try to do anything to keep it from happening?

Did I get an exorcist? No, I did a Google search.

I got on the Internet very early

compared to most people, in about '94 maybe.

I'm totally guessing. '94, '95.

And one of the very first things I looked up,

was "the shadowman" and "nightmare."

And from there, in the search engines,

it wasn't very far down the page... sleep paralysis.

I was like, wait, sleep frozen, sleep paralysis.

And I called my mom up right away.

I said, "Oh, my gosh, mom, It's sleep paralysis."

That's what they call it. It's a thing."

She was very excited, too,

and she wanted to understand more about it because she felt

that maybe something medical could be done

so that we no longer had it.

Because when the scientists figure it out,

they figure out a medicine to go with it, right?

So we felt that we would actually have answers

and medication or something to make it better.

I called a doctor and made an appointment

and came in, and explained to them what was going on,

and my doctor said... she was kind of concerned

that maybe I was having seizures while I was sleeping.

So she set me up for a cat scan, an eeg and all that.

So I went in for those,

and my results for the cat scan were normal,

but the eeg came back with... said I had abnormal results.

That's all she said.

"You have some abnormal readings."

"You have sleep paralysis. It's just caused by stress."

So If you just make some lifestyle changes,

"it'll go away."

Well, you get a cut-and-paste answer from doctors,

"you're stressed. Change your lifestyle,"

without asking what your lifestyle is.

There's no answer.

It's just a dismissal of... basically, they don't know.

And If they don't know,

then they don't... they don't care.

Every time I would talk to a psychiatrist, I'd be like,

"I'm having this sleep problem. This is what happens.

This what it feels like." They'd be like, "okay, okay.

Tell me about, like, you know, how are you doing at home?"

And I would always try to be like, "no, no, no",

let's talk about this hideous sleep problem I have."

She seemed really interested. She sort of leans in.

And she's like, "It's not sleep apnea."

And I was like, "I know that."

And she just said, "that's really messed up."

I remember, like, the following night

after it would happen, I'd lay in bed being so scared

that it was gonna happen again.

And then, most assuredly, it would happen again

'cause I was thinking about it and obsessing about it.

Like, when I'd go through these dry spells,

basically, where I wasn't having it,

If I started telling somebody about it,

then it was, like, almost 100% guaranteed

that I was gonna have it that night.

This is in our college apartment.

Okay. - So, I was here.

I had my bed right here...

And then my roommate was right here.

And the blobs...

I saw these black blobs...

I could see them.

Blobs of black, coming onto my bed.

And I could see my roommate, just in the corner over there,

and I was trying to scream her name

so that she could help me.

And she's sleeping away, and I'm straining to talk.

And nothing can come out.

I'm a diver, and I've experienced...

well, been close to death quite a few times.

I'm a deep diver, but nothing's as terrifying,

as what happens,

and I have it once or twice a week.

When I was about 10 is when it started to happen,

every single solitary day of my life.

Nobody ever really took me entirely seriously, you know,

even though I was a petrified little boy,

you know, terrified to be alone, hated my bedroom,

hated the room below my bedroom, and had sleep paralysis

probably every night.

You know, had voices talking to me

in the sleep paralysis, very abusive experiences.

Hey, forrest.

- Hey, forrest. - Hey, forrest.

You just won the giant insect of the month club.

Insect of the month club.

We're sending your first prize up to your bedroom right now.

You know, and again, it goes back to the fact that,

you know, because it wasn't like a real experience...

If somebody had come into my bedroom,

and some creepy guy was whispering to me every night,

you know, my parents would definitely

have done something about it,

but the farthest they went was kind of being like,

"well, maybe we should take him to a psychologist? No."

I was trying to fall asleep.

I felt this overwhelming pressure come over me.

And my breathing just stopped.

My body was trying to kind of tell me,

"I'm gonna kill myself now.

And you have the option to stop that."

If I want to continue to breathe,

I have to actively override whatever else is going on.

I have two options...

either try to break free of the paralysis

or I breathe.

You know, that was kind of the beginning,

and that was the beginning of me being afraid of,

not going to sleep, but, you know,

I would just pressure myself, to wait till exhaustion

to fall asleep, for the most part,

'cause after that, it just never stopped,

um... kind of ever.

I'll get it just about anywhere.

Some places will be much worse.

And the voice is different by place.

Um... I had an apartment in Boston.

I lived in Jamaica plain in Boston for a while

above a pizza place,

and I would always hear this middle-aged woman

singing in a baby's voice there,

this gradually faded away

until I pretty much almost forgot

I had ever experienced it.

And I... thought I was good, finally over.

It was just a phase I was going through,

and now It's done.

One afternoon, I was up doing housework,

and was kind of tired,

and I figured I'll lay down and take a nap,

because I'm gonna go out with some friends later on tonight.

So I went, laid down,

and set the alarm on my phone, checked, saw the time,

and just kind of threw it on the nightstand next to me,

and just laid down.

And... As I started to fall asleep,

I felt, like, this tingling sensation come over me,

and since I had been dealing with it so long,

it was kind of like a familiar feeling,

it was like the warning sign,

"okay, sleep paralysis is about to happen."

Like, my body would tingle, start to feel heavy.

I'd see, like, all these pixilated colors,

and so I set myself up to wake myself up,

kind of shake it off.

So then... it felt like it went away.

So I just, like, picked up my phone,

looked at the time, okay, laid back down

and started going to sleep.

And just as I fell asleep, my phone rang.

- And so I laid there for a second.

I was like, "do I answer it, don't I answer it?"

Just fell asleep,

and now somebody's waking me up.

So finally, I gave in and I answered it.

I grabbed my phone. "Hello?"

When I did that,

the person on the other end of the line said, "hello,"

they said something else I couldn't really make out

'cause it was all staticky and cutting out.

So I said, "I can't understand you.

You're breaking up. There's a bad connection."

I said, "hello," again, and I was like,

"you're breaking up. I can't, like, hear you."

And so, finally I...

trying to make out what they were saying and whatnot.

And I decided I'm up. I'm gonna go get a cigarette.

So, I got up,

just talking to him, like, "hello, hello?"

And then finally I'd walked out into the living room,

and just as I got out in the living room,

it became... the connection cleared up

and the person on the other end was this very pleasant man.

He was like, "hello."

I was wondering If you could do me a favor."

What kind of favor?

Let me in.

I freaked out.

I was, like, there's a demon on the other end of my phone.

I wanted nothing to do with this.

So I threw my phone across the room

and it broke into pieces,

then everything around me just went into complete chaos.

Then just like... almost like an earthquake hit.

Like, everything was shaking and dark.

My whole body started vibrating.

It felt like something was trying

to rip me out of myself, kind of like pull my soul out.

You know, just trying to process this,

like, what's going on, you know,

just absolutely terrified.

And so the only thing I could think to do

was I just started praying.

I was, like, "God, If you're there, help me."

I don't know what's happening.

Just, please, somebody help me."

And as soon as I said that,

I felt like somebody just grabbed me from behind,

just, like, yanked me back, like, down the hall,

and just, like, slammed me back into my body.

And, like, I hit my body,

and I, like, sat up instantly and, like, looked around,

and was like, "did that just happen?

Was that real?"

And so the first thing I did was grab my phone, you know.

I'm like looking through, "okay, who did I just talk to?"

And, like, no... there was no missed calls

or no answered calls or nothing, and I looked at the time,

and it had only been, like, two minutes

since I initially laid down to go to sleep.

Um, I did tell my mom,

and she just kind of told me I'm nuts.

She's like, "it was a bad dream. It happens all the time."

"No, mom. It wasn't a dream."

I was in seventh or eighth grade,

about '87 or '88.

And I saw "a nightmare on elm street"

with my mother, thank goodness, on cable.

"And she was like, " Oh, my gosh!

This is like our dreams," and I was like, "yeah, I know."

So we definitely agreed on that.

And I kept watching it because I wanted to find some clues,

some answer to what was going on.

And of course, they mention a little bit of myth

in the movie but not enough to really research.

Did you ever read about the balinese way of dreaming?

No.

They got this whole system they call dream skills.

They get all their art and literature from dreams,

just wake up and write it down.

Dream skills.

What If they made a monster in their dreams, then what?

When I was... you know, we had hbo when I was little,

and my dad was very liberal with letting us

watch whatever we wanted to watch on hbo.

Once he was watching a movie, and I just kind of wandered in.

I didn't really know what the movie was.

And then this, uh...

Creature emerges from behind a dresser.

And It's like... It's an alien.

And It's like the... it was the movie "communion,"

with... what's his face?

The guy who was in the dancing video.

I don't know. Christopher walken.

Yeah, exactly. Christopher walken.

And when I saw that face...

My mind immediately drew a parallel

to the things I had experienced as a child,

and I was petrified.

I remember just being petrified.

And... and then, you know...

but I stayed watching as this, like, little kid.

And, you know, these images I remember

as incredibly shocking images to me, as a child.

Because it was the first time

that the kind of things that I had seen

aligned with something that...

that was known about or was explored.

A bunch of people came over, and they're like,

"let's watch this 'insidious' movie."

And I was like, "yeah, sure, why not?

"I don't care," and, like... about 20 minutes into the movie,

I'm like, "this is about sleep paralysis, I'm pretty sure."

I was like, "all right, that's kind of cool."

Somebody made a horror movie about it."

When, you know, the dude's, like, in the chair,

he just goes into this world, and he's searching for the kid.

They're pulling from so many different parts

of sleep paralysis lore.

The shadow man.

I kept leaving my body.

The night hag. The old hag.

I sat there and, like, just kind of getting annoyed.

I mean, I don't even know why.

It wasn't like, "this movie sucks!"

I mean, it was... it was okay.

And then, all of a sudden,

they do, like, the head shaking thing,

like this, like, weird...

it was in "Jacob's ladder," and it freaked me out.

I was like, "that's exactly how it feels."

And that was the first time I ever...

I saw somebody represent what it feels like...

or I guess, not what it feels like...

what it feels like it looks like to be in it,

like when I'm coming out, like, sometimes

my jaw will, like,

just fucking go back and forth real quick,

or, like, my head will shoot from side to side.

And It's what I imagine it looks like.

Even my girlfriend, she was like,

you know, "those weird head movements,"

like, that's kind of what It's like for me to watch,

"you know, except not magically blurry."

That's the sleep paralysis. Hey, It's got to be.

Yeah, I had my own sleep paralysis episode,

and, well, in that one, it was sort of like a classic

three-dimensional, black shadow man,

who came up in the woods behind my house,

leaned over my bed.

And I think maybe a year or two later,

I saw "natural born killers."

And there's a scene, and it goes by just in a flash,

where that guy is, like, in the opening credits,

coming through, like, this strange red tunnel,

cloudy vortex thing.

I think It's over the credit of "producer arnon milchan."

But it went by in a flash,

and it must have been kind of complicated

to call into existence.

So I was like, "why was that there?"

And I still didn't know what sleep paralysis was.

I didn't know that anyone else had had it.

So I saw that and almost kind of took it as a message,

like, "the people who made this film"

had the same experience that I did."

And It's kind of like a signal to me

in some... some strange, scary way.

No, It's true.

It was kind of the same as a child.

It was very validating.

I never thought it was my mind playing tricks on me.

I just knew something bad was always happening to me.

And I didn't... I didn't know what to do about it.

I've prayed my whole life. I still pray.

I'm a very spiritual person.

However, praying never made it go away,

even when I was within the attack.

I would pray within the attack, and still, no help.

I started exercising, started eating better,

cut back on caffeine and doing all that kind of stuff,

and just no matter what I did, though, it was...

it had absolutely no effect on the sleep paralysis,

and it just kept happening night after night after night.

I finally decided to go to one of these ladies

that read cards, and she Says,

"I can't look into your house."

I'm trying to look into your house,

"but I see this black shadow over it."

I thought I was abducted by aliens

for a long time, years, years and years and years.

Before I went to bed every night,

I would lay in my bed and close my eyes

and just pray, "not tonight, not tonight,

not tonight, not tonight, not tonight, not tonight."

And I would just repeat it over and over and over in my head,

as If I had some kind of psychic bond

with my alien abductors

and that I could communicate with them telepathically,

and just plead with them, to make tonight not the night

that they would come back and do that to me.

Over the years, I would find

different mechanisms to avoid sleep paralysis.

I noticed that it wouldn't happen every night

If certain requirements were met,

like, If I would...

like, there would be, like, a TV in my room.

And If I left it on, for some reason

it was easier for me not to get hit by the paralysis.

And, you know, younger me thought it was

maybe that little high-pitched noise,

tv's make when you leave them on,

so I would leave it on overnight on mute

for that little high-pitched noise.

Eventually, that stopped working after about a year.

So I decided, like, "you know what?"

If one TV worked, what about two?"

And I used to collect junk, so tv's, like, were plentiful.

And two worked for a little while.

And I just escalated with that for a while,

'cause I'm pretty smart, apparently.

No, it made me look like a crazy person until one day,

I realized that even If this was a problem,

this was not a functional way of, like, dealing with it.

So I just removed all the tv's at that point from my room,

and, you know, all it did was leave me

with a much stronger and more elaborate sleep paralysis.

And that's kind of the thing that I've realized

is If you have it every day

and you have multiple episodes a day,

it will kind of learn how to adapt to you.

Like, If you try to, like, avoid it, it will find you,

and it will make it happen somehow.

And another time,

I actually felt it go on the bed.

You know, it was as If It's climbing up.

I was laying there, and it came here.

I just closed my eyes.

And it was on top of me,

and it was...

It's like I was having sex with this thing.

And I said, "Oh, my God, this can't be real."

This can't be real."

This demonic thing, and I don't know,

why am I feeling this?

What else is gonna happen next? But it happened.

Did you see anything?

I didn't see anything. It was just the feeling.

And then it was gone again.

A lot of firsts all happened in one night.

When the pain started happening,

the hallucinations got more vivid,

and I started to be able to be interacted with.

And I go directly into this very, you know, lucid dream.

I remember the architecture of this world,

of this dream, it was just very angular,

and I'm just kind of walking on it.

There were, like, stairs that went down to places

that they should have thought out a little bit better.

As I was walking around,

I remember a kid that I was friends with

growing up in elementary school,

my only friend from elementary school

comes up to me, and his name was Danny.

And behind him is this gigantic dude

with really crazy orange hair.

And Danny Says, "this is him. Can I go now?"

And he just leaves the guy with me.

And he repeats, "you know who I am."

I start thinking of like, I don't know you, I don't.

I start listing places. "Do I know you from school?

"Do I know you from McDonald's?"

'Cause I used to work at McDonald's.

"Do I remember you from the comic book depot?"

Which was my comic book store.

And he just keeps on going,

"no. But you know who I am." One last time.

And then the entire world just disappears,

and I'm in the strongest sleep-paralysis episode

I've ever had in my life.

Like, I cannot move.

Like, I can't even try to force myself out of it.

Like, that little wiggle room I get sometimes

just wasn't there.

And it felt like I was completely constrained,

you know, fully,

to the point where I'm just trying to breathe,

because I don't know what else to do.

Immediately after that dream drops,

and everything's gone, he kind of fizzles away.

And this was the first experience with pain.

If I had to describe it,

picture like a claw-machine game.

You know, three... three little things.

And that's when the pain starts coming.

The worst one is when It's around, like,

you know, my fucking dick.

And I still felt the pain after I woke up.

I did not go back to sleep that night,

I remember, and I think I just played

video games until the morning

and kind of questioned my existence.

Like, I just remember being like,

"and this is different now, and now it hurts,

and now there's a dude talking to me."

And, like, I...

that was kind of when I started to feel a little crazy.

Like, I started to feel like something was definitely wrong.

Was it me? Maybe.

Was it something supernatural? Maybe.

I immediately stopped being an atheist.

And sometimes they're very, um... articulate,

like that one was when I was a little boy,

and They'll be like, "Oh, I can talk to you,

and I know your name," and this and that.

And sometimes, they're just, like, gobbledygooking,

just, "blah, blah, blah,"

like they don't have the capability to speak anymore.

When I was older and I went back to the house

and was staying there...

I mean, I hated going back to that house.

You know, I had other bad experiences there,

and so I hated going back there. I hated sleeping there.

I would usually... If I go back there and visit,

I leave the TV on

because It's just such an overwhelming force.

So I fell asleep, and I had this nightmare.

And then I woke up,

and then I woke up in a sleep paralysis.

And I was like, "Oh, hmm," you know?

But I was so put off by the dream

that I wasn't immediately shocked by the state

of sleep paralysis, which normally is what it does.

And I can kind of see it out of the corner of my eyes,

that there was this man

standing down at the end of my bed,

kind of like this schlumpy old man.

That's too young for some reason.

Maybe It's his posture.

And I'm like, "huh," like, "that's weird."

So I'm lying there, and there's this man

down at the end of the bed, and he Says to me,

"he Says, " forrest...

You just came all over your mother's sheets."

You just masturbated all over your mother's bed sheets.

You're disgusting! A pervert.

And I had not masturbated that night, I will say.

But his voice was immediately familiar.

As the voice that talked to me as a child.

The same voice. It was like...

it was like as If, you know,

you get a phone call from a relative

or somebody you haven't talked to in a while,

run into an old friend and hear their voice first,

and you recognize the voice.

You haven't heard it for a long time.

But you know it. It's that person.

And I had that experience, I'm like,

"Oh, It's that voice. That man."

I've seen him two or three more times

in that physical incarnation.

But I've also had, like, times where I've seen people,

that have approached me the same way

and I've felt like, "yes, that's him."

Like, I... it was a different body,

but it was that same entity that was talking to me.

We had a friend staying over.

We had people over that night,

and we had a one-bedroom tiny apartment.

So we're all kind of crammed into my bed.

And I remember I had...

Um, gone to sleep.

You know, the two girls, they were asleep.

You know, they were out like a light.

Almost immediately, the paralysis hits.

Normal paralysis. Completely normal.

You know, situation, like, stereotypical dark room,

but in this, there's a really tall entity,

like, you know, If the room's eight feet tall,

he is an eight-foot-tall dude with a hunch.

Like, he is not fitting in this room.

And they were red eyes. This is what I remember.

And very mothman type shit, actually.

And it starts talking to me.

He repeats, "you know who I am."

You know who I am.

You don't know who I am.

Right now, but I know you.

And you know me.

You... Are going to die.

I just had this horrible experience,

you know, and, you know, I believed it.

I believed that this thing was telling me

it was gonna kill me.

I'm going to die.

And I'm sitting here feeling bad for her

that she's freaking out, and I'm trying to calm her down.

I figure out she has this... I figured she had a sleep terror

or something like that, and she's telling me

that on her chest, she saw something on her chest,

a cat with red eyes, and it was looking at me

and talking in a language that she couldn't understand.

Like, it was on top of her but threatening me.

And the second she said it had red eyes,

I just, liked, freaked out.

Like, I was just... I, like...

I remember this was during a time of my life

where I was like, "maybe I am crazy. It's fine."

And then this happened.

And then it immediately affirmed I thought I was gonna be dead.

Like, I was like, "Oh, I'm going to die."

And, like, shit like that immediately makes me

want to be like, "fuck, like, regular life."

Like... sorry about the language.

When things like that happen,

It's very hard for me to be like,

"yeah, I'm just gonna go get a normal job

and, like, live my life."

Like, I'm like, "I want to figure this out."

Any idea why it happens to you

more than other people?

I have no idea.

I mean, I guess, you know, It's all presumption,

but, you know, you could assume

that maybe it had something to do

with being such a young child,

you know, and having such a profound experience.

You know, It's kind of like when you see something

for the first time, you know what it is.

You know, you go to sea world and see a killer whale,

and you've never seen it before,

and now you know what a killer whale is.

I read the very few websites out there about it,

and I didn't really learn anything new,

except for, there is a chemical,

Melatonin, that goes into your system,

and is released upon sleep

that's supposed to paralyze you.

And I was like, "okay, maybe this could be medical."

But again, there was never an explanation

for the shadow man

except for hypnagogic hallucinations,

which is a nice word

that the doctors like to throw around,

but it really means you just imagined it.

My guess is we conceptualize things in our unconscious,

based on, like, snippets of information

that we picked up along the road somehow.

If I came from an Evangelical community

where they really believed in evil demons,

maybe my immediate association from my unconscious

as I'm rising out of sleep, would've been like,

"Oh, shit, It's the devil!"

Yeah, that's interesting.

Although, I wonder If you look at your own reaction

to your experiences as similar in a way.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. Like, that's true.

Of course. Like, also my unconscious is like,

"what is the scientific explanation for this?

There must be a reason that has to do with logic."

So, yeah, of course I leapt for that, too.

I can see it just as easily there's the commonality

of human experience, like, how our brains and our hearts

and our personalities function, like, we're all people.

Why wouldn't we see similar things?

Like, we're not different species.

Why wouldn't we have similar go-to archetypes in our brain?

So jungian.

But it can't entirely be born from you.

You know, that's to say that everybody has in them

the capability of bringing out these horrible things

before they've even witnessed anything horrible.

It's one of my theories,

that we're actually running our brain,

we're kind of overclocking it, you know, more than we would

when we're just sleeping or just awake.

And that kind of heightened sense of perception,

while we as humans... Can't really...

we can't interpret it.

Like, we're still not, you know, interpreting it right,

but now we're seeing the raw data.

We're seeing, you know, "Oh, that could be a demon."

I don't know how to visualize a demon,

because that's not a thing that my brain can interpret.

And, I mean, I actually kind of believe

that probably a lot of people who do believe

that they have been abducted, were actually victims

of sleep paralysis of varying degrees.

And of course, reading more about sleep paralysis,

and realizing the prevalence of this experience,

you know, exists in every single culture in the world.

There are these common archetypes that keep popping up,

and all over the world.

Like, It's not just in America

people get these red-eyed demons.

And It's not... you know, they're everywhere.

You know, the shadow man...

The cats on the chest.

A giant cat that would come into somebody's house

while they were sleeping, hold them down...

It's like clawed... like teeth and claws.

Sometimes metal or like metal-ish.

Yeah, there are the ones in Turkey.

There's the ancient morse...

the ancient norse one, like, the mare.

And there are just so many. The haint, like "the haunt."

The hmong immigrants.

Subsequently, a lot of them died,

you know, from sleep paralysis.

Right, right, and I know Wes craven

read an article about them,

and that helped inspire "a nightmare on elm street"

and Freddy Krueger, which, you know, then went on

to create a weird feedback loop,

inspiring other people's nightmares

and sleep paralysis experiences.

So I had a dream about Freddy Krueger,

and he obviously wanted to kill me,

wanted to harm me,

wanted to scare the crap out of me,

and I believe that that fear...

Creates a substance,

and I got this black ink scared out of me,

like an ink fish.

And I believe that's what it eats.

The physicist michio kaku said that

maybe that we don't live in just one dimension,

that we live in multiple dimensions.

And If you imagine a block of flats

that as an infinite extension of yourself,

so it keeps adding to itself all the time

and never stops, and in every room

of this block of flats,

is an entire universe like ours.

Now, in every other room,

there must be another universe.

So, If that's true,

maybe some other us

have found our way into the hallway,

and are knocking on our door.

Ready, two.

Right after my mom died, I was very depressed.

And so I'd be crying.

You know, there was this one day I remember

that I had a breakdown, and I was crying a lot, a lot.

And then the next day, since I work night shift,

I came home, slept... you know, to sleep.

And then for some reason that day,

I wanted to sleep on my side.

So I slept on my side facing the door of the bedroom.

And all of a sudden, I felt my body getting numb.

I felt it getting paralyzed.

And I said, "Oh, my God. I'm getting this again."

But then it felt different.

I heard somebody walking.

This presence came around.

And it came behind me. I was like this.

It came behind me, and it hugged me.

And I heard the mattress depress also.

I heard that depress, like someone went in the bed.

And I felt it was my mother, and I heard her voice,

and she Says, "honey, I'm here. I'm here."

And it felt so different from that past presence,

because, you know, this was my mother.

It didn't feel evil.

It felt warm, and I was happy.

And I would talk to her.

It's like... through my mind I said,

"Oh, mommy, It's you. Oh, my God."

And she's hugging me tight saying, "I'm here, I'm here."

And that was just a matter of seconds,

all of a sudden, she was gone.

So I really... you know,

I think It's my mom that comes to visit us.

Does that still happen?

It happened, like, two or three times.

Because even though I feel It's her,

there's a part of me that sometimes Says,

"what If It's this thing?"

Because sometimes when I have felt her,

all of a sudden, then it kind of switches,

and then I do feel, like, If there's another presence.

And then I don't know If It's this thing again

that used to haunt me back then

or If it is still her even though it does feel different.

I can tell the difference in both of them,

and I have said, "who are you?"

But of course, I don't get an answer.

And then it just lasts for a few seconds,

and It's gone.

The one that stands out above all others,

it happened one night

when me and my girlfriend went to bed,

and it was around 10:00, and I wasn't really tired.

So I played on my phone for a bit,

a game on the phone,

and I must have fallen asleep.

When I woke up, I stood at the side of my bed,

in a very oppressive atmosphere.

I can't describe the atmosphere to you,

unless you were there.

I mean, I've never experienced it before

and I've never experienced it again like that.

It's a kind of a very staticky...

Uh, just presence of evil.

And as I turned to my left,

I see my girlfriend in bed, and I see me in bed.

And now I'm confused, but I also see my eyes open,

and then I heard myself labored breathing,

which is what I do when I have a sleep paralysis attack.

I'm shocked, scared, and...

I don't know... I don't know what's going on.

I'm confused more than anything.

I can't... I can't think straight.

I don't know what's going on.

And almost instantly, as I'm thinking that,

I can see three beings over in this corner of the room.

There's no looking me up and down

and seeing who I am and what I'm doing there.

They... the two generic shadow people,

they advance on me straightaway.

A grapple ensued between me and them.

I'd like to say it was a noble fight,

that I had to really put my foot down and win,

but it wasn't.

They just retreated straightaway

when I put resistance up behind the hat man.

And the hat man shielded them.

And I had no intention of going forward

to investigate any more.

All I know is that I have to get back in bed,

that some sort of... some voice in my head saying

and my own voice saying, "get back in bed."

And as I turned, I can see a long silver thread,

for want of a better word, that's going towards my body.

And I decide that now I have gotta get back into bed.

And just as I decide that, I shoot up in bed.

There's no in between,

going back in my body or whatever.

It's just I'm there.

I sit straight up, and I go downstairs

into the kitchen, get a drink,

and I'm instantly hit by the fear and guilt,

that I've left her on her own upstairs.

Because they're still in that room.

I know they're still in that room.

And as I go back upstairs, I sit in bed,

and I stay up all night.

And It's like I'm on watch.

They just wanted me really bad.

I remember I was just sort of laying in my bed,

and then there's now the loud noise,

and, Oh, I hate the sound of the noise.

It's, like, almost like spirits or demons,

like, kind of like screaming at you.

- - So then you hear, like...

It's almost like a buzzing that starts,

and then I can sense a presence,

right... like, standing over me.

Just standing right here next to me

on my bed standing over me.

Then you hear, like, this sound.

It's like... it feels like

somebody's screaming right in your ear,

like they're right here, and they're screaming.

And I can sense the color red,

as If they were wearing something red

or like a dark red robe or something red.

And I tried to look at the face, but I couldn't.

Like, every inch, every centimeter

feels like over a ton.

And so I'm trying to move, and I wanna see it,

and I'm looking, like straining to look up,

straining to look up.

I could... I could barely move my head.

It was almost going like this, like...

and then, like, I think I said something.

I just said, "I remember this guy."

His name is Jesus,

and I'm gonna use his name right now.

And I'm gonna say, 'in Jesus' name,

"you know, get out, " or... I said something to that effect.

Jesus...

Jesus...

In Jesus' name...

In Jesus' name... Get out.

And I suddenly sensed that the demons,

or the thing that was happening to me,

that evil presence just left. Gone.

And it was amazing.

It was like a feeling of victory, yeah.

And they never came back?

They never came back. I wasn't even a Christian then.

I actually abhorred religion.

I didn't want...

some lady a long time ago told me

I should marry a Christian man, and I just laughed in her face.

Anyways, I learned very late in my life

that the name of Jesus has power,

and that's how I became a Christian.

So do you not...

do you believe in the Wikipedia definition

of sleep paralysis?

No.

Um, that would be sort of like the...

I guess, the... the worldly term,

like, what people would deem as something

that's a physiological response,

that It's like a natural thing that happens with the body.

But I don't think that's true.

I do think that It's something to do

with the spiritual realm.

And It's closely tied with possibly demonic activity.

At 33 years old,

I don't think It's gonna get any better for me.

I've experienced it most of my life,

If not all my life.

I know what It's like.

I don't believe that this is just a rare occurrence.

I think It's... I think none of us are special

that have this happen to them.

There's no reason why we should have this happen to us, so...

but I'd like to know how many other people

out there experience this.

I know there are quite a few,

but I think there's a lot more.

Hey, everybody, It's Connie here,

A.K.A. Phoenixrising11.

Thank you for joining me.

I first wanna start out by saying that,

I'm about to tell you a very personal story,

and If you get weirded out easily

or you're not that open-minded...

So you made a pretty powerful YouTube video

about your experience.

Do you watch a lot of other people's

sleep paralysis videos?

I don't really like to listen...

I haven't seen a lot of other people's

sleep paralysis videos.

Although people do send me their stuff,

I just am not in a place

to want to listen to that kind of stuff anymore.

I don't know why.

I feel like It's just...

It's kind of like that's the past,

and I'm not in that space anymore.

You know, I found faith, and I met my husband,

and I never thought I'd get married, and...

So you're actually trying not to think too much

about sleep paralysis anymore.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, why? For what, you know?

Um...

I was, uh...

Dating a girl who was pretty crazy.

She was kind of really into being very nature-y.

Not like a hippie, but kind of like

a crazy wood spirit nymph was kind of her vibe.

A lot of her clothes were, like, stitched together.

She was crazy.

She would do things like, say, start walking out

in the middle of an incredibly busy street,

and I would try and stop her, and she'd be like,

"no, no, the spirits are guiding me,"

with her eyes closed.

I can't believe she survived.

So she was definitely on the cusp of something.

So was I.

We were both really living in the fringes

of sanity at that time.

And we went up to a cabin

that my dad has in the bay of fundy in Canada.

And we were walking out in the woods.

And it was getting dark. It was kind of dusk.

So she said, "let's build a stone circle",

because we'd just gone to a pebble beach.

So we took our pebbles and laid them all down.

And then we decided to be receptive,

If you know what that means.

And so she, like, closed her eyes

and she was, like, standing like this,

and I was just kind of standing there like this.

- And suddenly she goes, "Oh, something's coming."

- She's coming! She's coming!

And she had her eyes closed,

and so she was not... could not see anything,

and I was looking, and it was like

she was listening and I was looking.

And I looked into the forest, and, um...

Out came this blue form.

It started approaching, this very, very blue thing.

Like, it had the same quality as the black things

that we talked about, but blue, peaceful,

just really, like, nice.

And she's like, "Oh, she's blue."

She said, "she's blue."

Eyes closed, you know, like this.

And it came and approached,

and then it just kind of stood still,

and it was maybe, like, six feet over there.

I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about this.

And here's my girlfriend, and she's just laughing a lot,

like, "Oh, she's saying the funniest things."

Like, just crazy. It was really crazy and weird.

"And she goes, " Oh,

she Says not to be worried about the demons behind you."

And I was like, "what?"

And I turned around.

And I saw them.

That same face. The face that people see

when they're abducted by aliens.

The face that I saw as a small child.

And then in that moment,

I suddenly had this, like, kind of realization.

'Cause it wasn't, like, linguistic.

I didn't hear anybody talking to me,

but I felt a thought in my head,

something external, and it was all about how, um...

Fear empowers bad things.

To have fear when you're in a bad environment

or a bad place or around a bad thing

only gives that thing more strength.

What that kind of made me begin to realize

is that, you know, here I'm hearing these voices,

and they're disembodied, confused,

schizophrenic ghosts, you know,

yeah, those are people.

Maybe they're dead. Maybe they're alive.

I don't know.

But then the other things,

the black, cloudy thing, these gray things,

um, those are something more primal,

something more just environmental.

And when I came to that realization, I'm like,

well, does it have to be any one thing?

And shortly thereafter, the blue spirit,

uh, dissipated into the woods.

And then we went back to, you know, the cabin,

and that was that.

You're talking about something that happens

at the absolute edges of dreaming.

Like, you can't explain dreams.

You can't explain them logically.

They're all little bits and pieces

that come up from your unconsciousness,

and from things you've experienced,

and who knows how the sleeping mind puts things together?

And now you're talking about an experience

that happens in that in-between stage.

It's so liminal.

You can't put logic onto liminal situations.

I need you to also understand

that I was in an abusive household.

I believe because I was beaten so much during the day,

that at night, my soul had to heal

to keep me here.

That's why I had to get through the fourth dimension,

and that's why I had to go somewhere else to be healed,

so that I could come back and deal with my life.

I knew absolutely nothing about sleep paralysis

until I was told about it.

And then I, almost instantly, began experiencing it.

I don't believe, like, the medical explanation to it,

the physiological stuff, just a sleep disorder.

There's got to be way more to it.

I told my one friend about it when I was just talking,

I was like, "have you ever heard of sleep paralysis?"

She's like, "no," and so I shared my experience.

And then the next day, she's texting me.

She's like, "I hate you. I hate you."

Whatever you were telling me about happening to you,

now It's starting to happen to me."

Kind of like an std, "sleep-transmitted disease."

There was an experience during this time

that I actually did think I died.

Whole dream's going fine.

I don't really know what we're doing.

It's one of those three-, four-day-feeling type dreams.

I'm just kind of existing in it, sort of enjoying it.

And all of a sudden, like, somebody knocks at the door.

It's, like, two homeless dudes. And they're trying to get in,

and I'm trying to tell them, "listen, we're at capacity.

We're at capacity for homeless people in my weird dream town."

There's a guy on roller blades in the background, very '90s.

And I wasn't thinking, but he, like, turns,

and he starts roller-blading towards me.

And I'm like, "that's awesome. He's gonna come into play here."

This is cool.

I'm probably gonna wake up soon 'cause It's all evaporating."

And as he gets really close, he just pulls out a gun.

And then I'm in the paralysis.

But It's not a paralysis I've ever felt before.

It's just nothing. I don't see anything.

I don't feel anything. I'm just nothing.

So I guess maybe this is an afterlife.

And I was like, "nah, probably not.

Maybe I'm in a coma."

And I'm starting to think sleep paralysis

probably finally fucked me.

Like, I'm probably done.

And I've probably stopped breathing,

and this is what happens when it happens,

like, I'm just nothingness.

And, like, five, ten minutes go by,

and I'm just like... get a little nervous,

but, like, at the same time,

I'm just kind of weirdly serene.

Like, "this sucks."

And... I remember thinking,

like, I'm gonna try to pull out of it.

Like, the same motion I would do

to pull out of sleep paralysis,

I'm gonna just try to emulate that.

And I try over and over and over again,

I mean, hundreds of times.

You know, just... but I'm getting somewhere,

and I remember I come up for, like, half a second.

And I can see my room.

It's like I can open my eyes a little bit,

but nothing's... there's nothing there anymore.

And It's almost like I'm just in bed

and the room is like...

all the details of the room are gone.

There's... I can see my now ex-girlfriend's dresser,

her little vanity, and there's nothing on it.

And I remember I called out her name,

and nobody came,

and then I was back in the paralysis.

And then it was another five,

ten minutes of pulling out, and then eventually I woke up.

And... She wasn't there.

Nobody was around, but... it just...

it was... it was the worst.

I just felt like I died.

You know, it became this kind for turning point for me

in, you know, just...

how I saw all this.

And I definitely didn't want that to happen ever again.

So how did that change your...

the way you saw all this?

It just... it... whereas before,

I felt like I was maybe, you know,

learning and exploring and it was, like, kind of fun,

it stopped being fun.

Like, It's not like I get to...

you know, people talk about astral projection

and all these, like, awesome-sounding things,

like how they get to fly around,

and, you know, I don't know, do cool things.

And I don't get that. I don't get, you know, those.

I just get these weird experiences

where I feel like, for a second,

I can see something that most people can't.

Like, there's what we see in the world...

And right behind it, you know, almost like...

It's like everything's cellophane-wrapped or something.

And for half a second, that... that wrapper's gone,

and I can see or perceive something

a little bit more real... or whatever real is...

and then It's gone.

But I can see it for that half a second.

And so no matter what fear or pain comes along with it,

I always get this experience, where, even If It's in my head,

It's made something interesting.

It's something that I can pull from

that makes my life almost kind of worth it,

which is, you know... for a long time,

is something I don't feel like I've ever had.

And It's gonna probably just keep getting worse,

and I truly believe that one day...

it will be the reason why, like, one day I don't wake up.

And one day I'm just... you know, I don't breathe,

I can't control the breathing, and It's done.

And I feel terrible for whoever I'm dating

or married to when that happens,

um, but I'm kind of ready for that now.

Chris. Hey, Chris.

You know, I'm ready for that to be,

you know, just kind of what happens to me.

But I would like to figure out a lot more about this

before that happens, and It's also made me feel

very comfortable with the idea.

Like, If something's happening,

that's more than... I'm just crazy.

Then something's happening.