Dreams of Demons
When I was in my later years of high school, I remember teetering on the brink of sleep after getting back from a long day. I hadn't bothered to brush my teeth or even change out of my jeans as I bee-lined for my big squishy bed. I had left the hallway light on, my bedroom door ajar, and shut my eyes for what I thought to be the beginnings of a long night's rest.
That was the first night I was "pressed by a ghost."
I vividly recall groaning a bit and trying to reopen my eyes, my head pointed towards the bright doorway. But my lids wouldn't open more than a few millimeters. They spasmed as I couldn't fully open nor close them. I tried to get up but my arms, legs, and torso wouldn't budge. As I lay there fighting for control of my body and head stuck in one direction, I saw a short pitch-black silhouette sliding very slowly towards me from the door. Its body sliced out a distinct form against the bright backdrop and moved at a pace no human would. I struggled for a few moments longer, feeling pretty certain that I might not fully wake again, and blacked out until the next morning.
Needless to say, I was pretty spooked after that. Over breakfast I told my parents what had happened and they looked at me sideways, chuckled a little bit, and said I had experienced being "pressed by a ghost" for the first time.
The weirdest friggen analogies
Source: Medical News Today
In Korean, people use this colloquialism to describe sleep paralysis. For those who haven't had the great pleasure of experiencing this yet, sleep paralysis is being stuck in an unconscious state of awareness between sleep and being awake. It's the disruption of a person's REM cycle and can be brought on due to a number of reasons including fatigue, stress, anxiety, and host of other reasons including genetic ones. Treatments haven't been well researched as it is very rarely a chronic experience.
It turns out that many cultures describe this same phenomenon in wildly different vernacular ways. Some attribute it to voodooism, some as bouts of insanity. These demons have even served as muses for artistic representation in the past.
John Henry Fuseli's "The Nightmare"
The understanding of this is hilariously little as well, Wikipedia even 'stating' that between "8 and 50% of all people experience this at some point in their lifetimes." Regardless of this useless 'fact' (at least I know that less than 51% of people experience this) it does seem true that this is biological, not cultural. But what makes it interesting is how specific cultures interpret and integrate this condition into their social beliefs.
Koreans specifically have carried with them the historical influences of Buddhist spiritual beliefs. We believe in ghosts and that spirituality weaves its way through historical stories and even our day-to-day language today. As a side note, these types of beliefs and practices have been in deep conflict with the wave of Christianity and Western thinking since of course, no spirits can exist in the bible other than the son of God. I'll go into this more in another post as it's an interesting time to be a young Korean as structural norms of society are being challenged since most people would rather believe in one spirit rather than a bunch of ghosts.
Fun fact, the phrase in Korean is "가위눌였다" which more accurately is structured as "(the) ghost pressed." What's quite funny and distorted in the modern day is that the very word for ghost is the same Korean word for "scissors." As such, when foreigners or even many young Koreans learn and use this phrase, they assume it actually means "being pressed my scissors."
Source: 싸인펜
Whether or not you speak Korean, this video is a pretty humorous but also terrifying attempt to socially describe the experience and offer suggestions of how to avoid the demons altogether.
Source:호형제TV
Don't want to be poked by these freaky spirits? Drink less coffee at night and do a little yoga.
Anyway, have you ever been pressed by scissors? What did you do when you found yourself paralyzed? Let me know your experiences in the comments below!
I had this happen before.....so weird!!!
We can commiserate haha =)
Impressive, very good story, since I was little I have similar experiences and I did not know that others also had them. Thanks for explaining.
My pleasure @madnadei
nice story ! is that really less scary? the bedroom isn't haunted, just the brainare haunted. the feeling is known as “being pressed down by a scissor.
Scary!!! But very interesting... I have to admit I couldn’t watch the video 😬
I definitely encourage you to try ;)
@hansikhouse I had a similar experience years ago and not just once. It was the scariest experience! I woke up in my dream, unable to move, unable to scream. I tried to scream out of fear but nothing comes out. The weirdest thing was I was aware of what was happening. I know that I was in a dream and even see the bedroom. One time, I even saw my roommate walking around the room. She woke me up because she noticed that I was groaning a little (when in fact I was forcing myself to scream so she'd wake me up). I did not see any ghost but the feeling of helplessness and paralysis was frightening!
Pretty freaky! Another good reason to keeping good company... Thanks for sharing @wanderlass!
It indeed freaked me out :o
국적을 가리지 않고, '가위'에 눌리나 보군요. 흥미로운 이야기, 아주 재미있어요. ^ ^
I think is that the soul is not still plugged into the body (or Pineal Gland) - I use to practice Astral Projections and swear it explains everything.
And about the Paralysis:
100% Spleen Phrase @hansikhouse!
Cheers!
:)
Hahahahha awesome, thanks for the insight @leotrap!
This has never happened to me, though one of my roommates used to get sleep paralysis a lot when he was younger! I on the other hand had night terrors.
I also died in my dream pretty recently, and it was the weirdest dream from that moment onward.
Intense! Thanks for sharing @extremedistaste =)
OMG, the video you've attached was quite spooky for me, cuz I'm a chicken haha. There's lots of homonym in Korean actually, Maybe I should write some interesting homonyms in Korean someday. Like '배' or '눈' or.. that kind of things. Thank you for offering such an interesting topic.
The very first '가위 눌림' I've experienced was, I think when I was about 21 years or so. After staying up all night for work, I fell onto the bed, and after about 1-2 hours or so, I felt like, my whole body was paralyzed. And the '가위눌림' continued day day. Fortunately, a ghost never didn't come up, but it was really scary to me, so I quit my all-night work job. After quitting the job, the '가위눌림'had gone, and I felt really relieved.
오늘도 정말 재미있는 이야기였어요 ㅎㅎㅎ 감사합니다!
:-)
Hahahaha it was definitely the aliens.
Happened to me so many times, I am not afraid of it anymore.
When it does happen and I see something appear, I just act as normal as I can do. We just exchange looks until I manage to wake up.
I've lived with this phenomenon for many years. The worst was when I lived in a duplex where a murder had occurred years earlier. My daughter had seen a tall shadowy figure in our hallway and I never told her about my experience of seeing it also. I didn't want to scare her. I was asleep and suddenly awoke because I felt a heavy pressure pushing down on me, opening my eyes slightly, I can make out a very tall shadow figure bent over, looking down on me. It was so close, I could actually see small energy particles moving around within it. Then it stands erect and glides out the bedroom door into the hallway. This happened twice. I also would feel my blankets tighten down on me accompiened with these strange undulating chills running up my and down my body. Also I experienced small gremlin like cretures harrasing me in my sleep, all very creepy.