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An incubus squats atop a dreamer's chest in Henry Fuseli's iconic 1781 painting "The Nightmare."
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| The feet of an incubus from a 1489 woodcut. |
Demons And Sleep Paralysis
Why are demons blamed for sleep paralysis?
BY ROBERT LAMB
In
"The Book of Imaginary Beings," Jorge Luis Borges describes a Chinese
myth in which reality and the world beyond the mirror are separated by an
uneasy truce.
When that
truce inevitably breaks, the strange denizens of the specular world will spill
back into our own -- and a gleaming fish of unnatural color will be the first
to break through the looking glass.
The
experience of sleep paralysis is very much like a glimpse of that portentous
fish. It distorts the line between the world of unconscious dreaming and our
conscious experience of reality.
Because,
indeed, there's a biological truce between sleep and wakefulness. And when it
breaks? That's when the demons creep in.
Our most
vividly remembered dreams occur during the depths of rapid-eye movement (REM)
sleep. Bland re-enactments of daily life, surreal fantasies, erotic trysts and
unspeakable horrors -- it all goes down in this unconscious shadow realm.
And since
dreaming is, in essence, a mental simulation, the brain puts the physical body
on a kind of lockdown. Except for shallow breathing and eye movements, the
dreamer's body persists in a state of safe paralysis.
That's
the plan, anyway: The demons stay in their unconscious cage, safely removed
from our conscious reality.
But
sometimes this safety feature of REM sleep malfunctions. The brain wakes up,
but the body remains paralyzed in "safe mode."
Imagine
waking up in such a state, either shortly after falling asleep (hypnagogic
sleep paralysis) or in the twilight stillness of the morning (hypnopompic sleep
paralysis): You can't move.
You can't
talk. You may feel the weight of some alien body pressing down on your chest --
or even kinesthetic sensations, such as feelings of being dragged from your
bed, vibrating, flying or falling.
And then
there are the hallucinations -- the true, terrifying colors of Borges' mirror
fish ripped from the world of dream into our own.
Because
both the hypnagogic (falling asleep) and hypnopompic (waking) states are highly
susceptible to hallucination.
In the
former, the descending rational mind tries to make sense of nonlinear dream
images.
In the
latter, the emerging dream-mind tries to make sense of real-world sights and
sounds in the surrounding environment.
The
hypnopompic state is often accompanied by vivid, lingering imagery -- and it's
the stuff of dreams, so the dreamer's sexual fantasies, belief system and pop
culture are likely to color the visions and sensations ripped from the dream
world.
Finally,
imagine all of this hallucination and bodily sensation wrapped around a strong
sense of presence -- the unmistakable and primitive sensation that a menacing
being or entity has invaded your space.
Now you
might wonder why such an encounter has to be malevolent.
Why don't
those dreams of Jon Hamm or Scarlett Johansson snuggle fests ever follow us
into the experience of sleep paralysis? It's largely a combination of
situational and individual factors.
The
experience itself is typically one of paralysis, labored breathing and an
inability to speak -- attributes rarely associated with a comforting embrace.
But then
the person's cognitive style, distress sensitivity and supernatural beliefs may
exasperate the experience's negative connotations [source: Cheyne and Pennycook].
But to be
sure, not every sleep paralysis experience is traumatizing.
People
with a more analytical worldview tend to experience less post-episode distress,
and those who repeatedly experience sleep paralysis sometimes come to roll with
the experience, or transcend it into a more lucid, positive encounter.
I've
asked you to imagine these things, but perhaps you don't need to. Depending on
who's serving the stats, between a third and a full half of the general
population has experienced sleep paralysis [source:
Sacks].
The exact
cause and psychological process of sleep paralysis remain somewhat elusive, but
studies confirm that attacks are particularly likely if the sleeper enters REM
sleep quickly after hitting the pillow, bypassing the stages of non-REM sleep
that usually happen first.
Stress
and sleep pattern disruption also can affect the chances of such seemingly
unnatural visitation.
It should
come as no surprise, then, that accounts and mythologies of malevolent sleep
visitations permeate every human culture.
Incubi,
Succubi and Sleep Paralysis
We tend
to think of "nightmares" as mere dreams of a particularly disturbing
or frightening power, but the etymology of the word delivers us directly into
the terror of sleep paralysis.
Mare
stems from mara, the Anglo-Saxon word for "crusher," a stark
reference to that typical sensation of some entity asquat upon the sleeper's
chest.
The maras
of Anglo-Saxon folklore were small imps or goblins, much like the squatter in
Henry Fuseli's iconic 1781 painting "The Nightmare."
Other
cultures, both ancient and modern, adapted differing descriptions.
In Newfoundland,
Canada, the Old Hag suffocates the sleeper with her hideous, hoary bulk, while
the Greek Ephialtes leaps upon its slumbering prey like a great and loathsome
frog.
Each
culture has its own rules and expectations in place for these entities of sleep
paralysis, each drawing on different worldviews, fears and supernatural
beliefs.
Sometimes,
there's even a precautionary system in place, such as placing iron nails under
your mattress to deter the French Cauchemar or employing a dream-eating Baku in
Japan.
While the
cultural particulars vary, we can describe most of these maras as demonic in
nature.
Even the
alien abduction experience, which serves as a frequent modern wrapping for the
experience, involves a frightening, physical assault by an unearthly being.
But one
of the more elaborate and overtly sexual maras comes to us from the world of
Christian demonology: the ghastly and erotic dance of the incubi and succubi.
The
incubus or "that which lies upon" is a masculine, shapeshifting demon
that takes the form of an attractive man to engage sexually with a female
victim.
The
succubus or "that which lies beneath," serves as the feminine
counterpart, preying upon male victims in the guise of a beautiful woman.
In both
cases, however, a pair of bestial feet was present to alert faithful Christians
to the infernal con.
According
to 15th-century Bishop Alonso Tostado, the incubus and succubus were simply two
forms of the same demonic entity.
Tostado
theorized that a succubus lies with a man in order to collect his semen and
then morphs into an incubus to fertilize a female with the ill-gotten seed.
In other
words, it's all an elaborate artificial insemination scheme to produce satanic
children.
Demon-on-human
sex was a subject of surprising complexity in 15th-century Europe.
On one
hand, as much as half of the general public experienced sleep paralysis, confounded
by sexual dreams and nocturnal emissions in both sexes.
Remember,
the terror of the sleep paralysis experience is due to combination of
combination of situational and individual factors.
Throw in
a religious script of sexual impurity and a rich tapestry of witchcraft theory
and you have quite a recipe for a scandalous demonic encounter.
Sleep
paralysis can prove terrifying.
Even a
single experience can resonate throughout a person's lifetime, and humans
throughout history have aimed to give the malevolent, hallucinatory presence at
its heart a name, a cause and a purpose within the fabric of their own
worldview.
And thus
they glimpse their demon in the dark.
Author's
Note: Why are demons blamed for sleep paralysis?
Sleep
paralysis is a key stop in many skeptical examinations of supernatural
experience -- and the "experience" part is key.
There's
no doubting the severity or indeed the subjective reality of a sleep paralysis
"encounter" with a demon, alien, ghost or other presence.
But these
hallucinatory attacks also underline how thin the line really is between our
sensory experience of the reality -- which is itself a kind of hallucination --
and the sort of sensory experience we so easily categorize as magic and
madness.
About Robert Lamb
As a child, Robert Lamb dreamed of becoming a
mad scientist when he grew up. As this profession proved to be largely
fictional, however, he swallowed his heartbreak and turned his attention to the
written word instead. He earned his bachelor's degree in creative writing from
the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, which launched him on a career path
through high school English classrooms, small-town newsrooms and finally into
the offices of HowStuffWorks.
As a senior writer and podcaster for Stuff to
Blow Your Mind, Robert now spends his days sifting through all the scientific
wonders that make the world so mad and amazing. He currently lives in Atlanta
with his lovely wife and their beautiful one-eyed cat. When he's not
researching the apocalypse or the miracle we call a space toilet, he enjoys
listening to electronic music, painting the odd miniature and writing fiction.
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