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http://www.stanford.edu/~dement/paralysis.html

Who here has experienced sleep paralysis? What are your thoughts on it? What happened in your experience(s)?

I think everyone has had an episode of it. There are many legends attributing it to foul spirits, like the nighthag, who would come and sit on your chest while you slept, hence the complaints people have on weight on the chest, not being able to move or breathe, ect.

Sleep paralysis has also been offered as an explaination for alien abduction, however, it is an inadequate explaination. While some suspected vague cases of abduction are most likely sleep paralysis, there are too many other factors with the whole phenomenon to write it off as simply that.

I've experienced sleep paralysis quite often. I researched it the first few times it happened, because I didn't know what was going on. It can be really scary sometimes, especially when you've suddenly awoken from an extremely deep sleep and find that you are fully conscious, but can't move at all and it's never happened to you before. Most scientists say that sleep paralysis occurs BECAUSE of that reason. Majority of the time the person is awoken (for whatever reason) very suddenly from a deep (or semi-deep, I guess) sleep, where the mind reacts quicker than the rest of the body. Your mind is fully conscious of what's going on, but the body hasn't received the command to wake up yet. It can last a few seconds to a few minutes from what I've read, and usually the subject ends up falling back asleep, has a "lost time" period where the body fully wakes up, or begins moving again like normal after a short period of time (giving the body time to fully function again).
For myself, sleep paralysis usually occurred when I was having very intense and deep dreams where I couldn't distinguish my dream surroundings from my real ones when I woke up (also a common sign of sleep paralysis and probably where the usual myths of spirits surrounding it come from, because people sometimes hallucinate. I've never had a full blown hallucination, though).
People all over the world have believed that sleep paralysis was a visitation from a demon or spirit, sitting on your chest, keeping you from movement and "paralyzing" you, sometimes even trying to kill you.
Incubi and Succubi are also believed to have gotten their popularity from sleep paralysis (from what I've read, at least). They were said to "lay" or "sit" on a person (the pressure felt on the chest during sleep paralysis, which sometimes causes heavy breathing or sighing), either gathering seed or impregnating people to reproduce (and were sometimes said to cause the death of said person being visited by the incubus/succubus).
That's about all that I know on them, though.

I've experienced it a few times in my life. I remember one time I felt someone was lying next to me, breathing down my neck. Then another time I've heard strange noises. The thing I can't stand is when you know your surroundings, but your brain/body has yet to respond and so you have to move the smallest thing such as your pinky which at times can take a pretty long time. It can be very frustrating.

Ugh, I've had this happen to me before. The one I can remember the best happened, probably, about 10 years ago, give or take. I was having a rather bad nightmare (which happens more often than not) and I became aware of this. I felt myself wake up, but the dream was still going. I felt myself trying to open my eyes. I tried for quite a while...I couldn't move. I eventually gave up and, if I'm not mistaken, the nightmare started all over again. That really sucked. I have a strange feeling that it was probably for the best that I couldn't open my eyes. *shudders*

I had episodes several times a week when I was in junior high. When I got into high school, it happened less. By the time I was in college, they stopped almost completely.

In the beginning, I'd try so hard to get my body to move that the SP episode would turn into an out of body experience. This was before I knew anything about either of those things, so it was pretty scary and confusing at the time. sweatdrop

The best way to get out of an episode is to concentrate on shaking your head. for some reason that works for me and a lot of other people.

I've experienced it before, in an odd way. I used to have periods where I'd wake up and hallucinate that I was being choked by old women and couldn't move...