Entirely random information, but I know some people aren’t comfortable with using the word skinwalker so in case you’re ever looking for a similar alternative word for werewolf, there’s the old Danish word skinrunner (skindløber). The name comes from the belief that the cursed person would suddenly get en uncontrollable desire to run as fast as they could, and as they cut their skin on rocks and branches it would fall off and reveal the wolf within.
Another old Danish word is marewolf (marulv) which is a specific type of werewolf and a play on the usual word varulv. These types of werewolves were the side effect of their mother crawling thought the uterus of a slaughtered horse during a full moon as a magic ritual to make the birth painless (horses were believed to have the most painless birth of all). If she had a boy he’d become a murderous werewolf and if she had a daughter she’d become a mare, one of the nightmare demons who sit on sleeping people’s chests and cause sleep paralysis and bad dreams (the Danish word for nightmare is mareridt, which literally means “mare riding”). Both werewolves and mares were normal people during the day and monsters during the night. Marewolf is of course the to words put together.
Skinrunner is probably the more attractive word but I thought I’d give you both just in case.
The offspring of Lilith, the first wife of Adam, are known as lilin. They assume male and female form, as incubus and succubus respectively. Lilin are portrayed as both intoxicatingly attractive figures with ghastly deformations and ape-like demonic fiends - in all depictions, though, they possess unnaturally large and cold genitalia.
Manifesting at night, they seduce their sleeping victims within their dreams. In medieval European folklore, repeated bouts of unholy fornication with demons caused degraded physical and mental health, or ultimately death.
Recall back around 4th or 5th grade getting a Precious Moments bible from a family member who was a Southern minister, n me grams lending me Stephen Kings ‘It’ since I loved, & still love reading. In her defense, she never actually read the book.
Switched back n forth reading them. When 'It’ got too scary would switch to the Bible hoping it was less so, and it was totally boringly, zen during those many begets, until the stories sometimes seemed more horrifying than Kings.
Oh the interesting ways my brain made sense of all that! Such vivid, memorable dreams, night wanderings (or oft was so told) n feelings, n experiences!
Not sure if having a night-light made it better or worse?
Lying on your stomach, only able to open your eyes n look around. Feeling this weird buzzy, vibration in your noggin, n then you notice the sensations of being grabbed by the ankles, and slowly dragged towards the end of your bed, and you can just lie there, heart thumping, wondering what’ll happen when you reach the end. N what does the thing that’s holding you looks like?
Or feeling helpless whilst feeling like you’re being lifted up in the air, and then feeling yourself crash back onto the bed.
Trying to escape a dream by sitting up and feeling arms grab you from behind and pull you back into it, and then you actually sit up in a panic finally wide awake n realizing it was a dream in a dream.
The creepy whispering n occasional words heard.
Feeling the scream trapped in your throat n remembering the dream that caused it.
Scaring the crap outta yourself cuz you woke yourself up with your own screams, but the dream is gone.
Dream control therapy classes would’ve been nice to take as a younger human. Would’ve been like the dream master from earlier on.
At least now in the older years learned some skills to avoid, get out of, or to change the course of a dream.
It’s strange the things that stick in your mind, no matter how long the passing of time.
My dreams have been everything from repetitive, vivid n blurry, nightmares or night delights, sleep walking, day or lucid dreaming, even a combination of things….
Recall in a dream having to close my ‘dream eyes’ so I could squint thru to read the words in the dream book. So very hard n frustrating to do!
Yet, what really are dreams? Just head noodle nonsense, your brains way of organizing?, enlightenment? blips?
Some humans sadly (luckily?) don’t even recall their nightly wanderings! So, then do dreams really mean nothing?
So far, dreams have been everything from amazing, to horrifying, confusing, predictive, n making me feel so many conflicting n confusing emotions, n even caused me to doubt reality, cuz sometimes the dreams are so real, they’ve been confused with memory at times, n so many feelings of deja vu.
I can still recall the recurring nightmares that took my grandparents away from me. Over, and over again….
Being trapped inside my own body watching or even experiencing horrid things happening around or to me that I couldn’t control. People have told me about conversations, n things I’ve done, all when I thought I was asleep, n oft have no memory of happening.
Rarely, had some recollection of what happened during a 'sleep-walking episode’, but if remembered, it always felt/feels surreal, or even hyper real, if that makes sense?
Growing up n being advised by a religious family member, I thought I was tainted. Vile. Evil. The thing to be avoided. Cuz you know Wilson Phillips is the devil’s music n no one has ever heard of sleep paralysis!
Tho, even the horrors of dreams are worth it, methinks. When one can rewind a dream to make it better, yet stay fully in the dream, or to spend time making new memories with those long lost, sitting up laughing from a happy dream that’s already faded from your mind, but the overall feeling left from the dream n the belly laugh pain is real n comforting….
The rare, but wonderful feeling of being one with everything, n wondering if you ever actually sleep n 'shut down’ or, the experience of connecting with that 'one’ feeling is so overwhelming, it causes a forgetfulness akin to a drunkards blackout?…
Before I begin, you ought to know what sleep paralysis is. When you sleep you go through two cycles, REM and NREM. REM stands for “rapid eye movement” and during this phase your body is completely paralyzed but your eyes are moving around under the lids. NREM is “non rapid eye movement” and during this time your body moves about but your eyes are still. You need to go through both cycles numerous times for a proper nights sleep. Sleep paralysis occurs when you wake up during REM and can be alarming to someone who isn’t used to it. But don’t worry, as someone who has gotten it chronically since I was a young child, I am going to teach you how to get through it.
First of all, you might feel like you’re suffocating, but don’t panic. You don’t have control of your body right now, and that includes your lungs. When you sleep, your breathing is heavily decreased. So just calm down, it’s ok, you can breathe.
Don’t be idle! So many people just lay there and expect sleep paralysis to go away. But that isn’t how this works. You MUST wake yourself up and yes it will be uncomfortable. It feels like reactivating your nerves, so it isn’t pleasant, but it isn’t really painful either. Just get through it, and try to move, you could be stuck for HOURS if you don’t.
On that note, there are ways to make the waking up process easier. Try to move one part of the body at a time. Maybe start just trying to move your finger then slowly progess to “waking up” the rest of your body. Also if you simply can’t get whatever part to move try somewhere else. I have had times where I tried to move my arms but they wouldn’t budge, only to find out that moving my head was much easier and woke up my entire body.
Don’t immediately go back to sleep! There is a very high chance that doing so will make you return to sleep paralysis. I have made this mistake more times than I’d like to admit, so it’s ok, but still, get up. You don’t have to do anything big, maybe just go grab some water or read a little bit (or whatever else you feel like) before attempting to return to sleep.
For the love of god DON’T OPEN YOUR EYES!! You’ll hallucinate.I’ve seen some weird shit when my eyes are open, and although I’m usually too preoccupied to be scared about the surreal demonic shit I see at the foot of my bed, for lots of people it’s terrifying, so I recommend that you keep your eyes shut.
Sorry it took so long for me to make this post! I’ve been kinda busy. But I sincerely hope this helps. Don’t stress over sleep paralysis, you’re going to be fine and once you have it for a while it becomes more of an inconvenience than an emergency. Sweet dreams!
This is an animated depiction of my last bout of sleep paralysis, right when the quarantine first started. Apparently, I’m not alone in having some messed up sleep experiences, people have been dealing with strange dreams throughout the whole pandemic.
Pretty late that night, I woke up to find my body more or less locked in place. At the foot of my bed, there was a man in a hoodie, with his face completely in shadow. Of course, thinking I had some sort of home intruder, I tried to speak. With some difficulty, I was only able to manage a small hum.
As I kept trying to speak, the man would keep saying something to the effect of “be quiet”, over and over. Eventually, I managed to force a gasp of air, after which the man instantly disappeared in a puff of shadows, and I was able to move again.
So basically a pretty textbook case of sleep paralysis.
when i woke up a few days ago, the first thing i saw was a pair of bloodshot eyes staring back at me. my guess is my sleep paralysis demon finally decided to make eye contact, and i wanted to put the mental image to a drawing before i lost it foever.
I had my second ever event of sleep paralysis for a moment, and what I’ve noticed is that both times the solution seemed to be:
recognize what’s happening and take comfort in knowing that it’ll resolve itself soon,
stop trying to do the movement I was trying to do,
kinda like… do a mental movement similar to trying to go back to sleep for a moment, and
try looking for a different physical movement that seems different enough to be less blocked - like if you were trying to sit up, move your fingers or a foot or an arm.
I also find it useful to remind myself: what if I was still asleep or dreaming right now instead? Would the external situation be any different? No. Do I freak out knowing that right before I wake up when my body was locking down movement? No. So what if my conscious mind gets there a few seconds early, and witnesses that moment? Cool.
Yaaaaaaaay, a part two to this, since I had some people seem pretty interested in it. I may have written more than intended and also gotten way more into this than expected, but it’s fiiiiiiiiiiine, I’m not even worried about it
Small trigger warning for brief descriptions of drowning and sleep paralysis, since I know those can be upsetting for some people. The sleep paralysis bit probably isn’t a huge deal, but the drowning bits have significance, and I really wanna see who’s been paying attention to the lore I’ve been dropping for my guy Lyzer
Yaaaaaaaay, a part two to this, since I had some people seem pretty interested in it. I may have written more than intended and also gotten way more into this than expected, but it’s fiiiiiiiiiiine, I’m not even worried about it
Small trigger warning for brief descriptions of drowning and sleep paralysis, since I know those can be upsetting for some people. The sleep paralysis bit probably isn’t a huge deal, but the drowning bits have significance, and I really wanna see who’s been paying attention to the lore I’ve been dropping for my guy Lyzer
Your first week dragged on, eventually turning into two, and eventually turning into three. You chugged coffee and soda like water, you had all of your alarms set to go off every twenty minutes, and they would all be at their loudest possible volume. Your lights never dimmed, and you’d switched from working daytime hours to working nighttime hours at your job. You were desperate not to sleep, and you’d committed to this. You’d do whatever it took to stay awake, because the next time you fell asleep, you were sure that you would die.
You’d begun to hear voices when you were home alone, but you never found anyone when you went to investigate, so you chalked it up to your sleep deprived mind playing tricks on you. You were jumpy, you were forgetful, you were hearing things that weren’t there, and your basic ability to communicate was gradually fizzling away. Your exhaustion had gotten so bad that you’d developed some complications with speaking, so if you could help it, you opted to stay quiet.
It was your night off, and you’d curled up on your couch to watch a movie, content with a bowl of popcorn and a blanket. If you got cozy and accidentally dozed off, you had countless alarms to wake you. It’d be fine, you’d be fine, you could do this. As your movie started, you absentmindedly rubbed your eyes, trying to rub away whatever traces of sleepiness lurked there. It wasn’t long before you’d gotten completely sucked into your movie, quietly spacing out at the screen and mindlessly picking at your popcorn. Your eyelids began to feel heavy, and you glanced at the clock on your wall. Twenty minutes wouldn’t hurt, right? You’d get a little shut-eye, and it wasn’t enough time to allow you to slip into the REM cycle. As long as you weren’t in a deep enough sleep that allowed for dreams, you’d be safe, and you had the alarms ready to go to guarantee that.
With much hesitation, you got up and wandered over to the entertainment center, pausing your movie and flinching as the first of the alarms began to go off for that night. Well, at least you knew that one was working. You then went back over to the sofa and nestled into the corner seat again, letting out a deep sigh and pulling your blanket up over yourself. This was fine. You needed this, you really did. Twenty minutes was alright, it wasn’t enough time for anything to happen. You would be safe, you’d done this plenty of times already, so you knew exactly what to do.
Despite not feeling completely comfortable with the situation, you closed your eyes and proceeded to pass out almost immediately. Unfortunately for you, there were a pair of unwelcomed guests in your home, and they’d taken the time to observe and memorize your routine. The one with mismatched eyes fled to your basement, while the one with a floating target lingered in the shadowy corner of your living room, keeping a close eye on you.
As soon as the one with mismatched eyes reached your basement and spotted the breaker box, it was all over.
Darkness flooded your house, and at the flip of a switch, all of your electronics were silenced. The entity with the floating target emerged from his corner gleefully, eager to roam freely without worry of suddenly being bathed in light. It was only a moment before your eyes snapped open and you began to panic. Your limbs felt as heavy as cement, and your chest heaved; you knew what this meant, and tears welled up in your eyes. No, not again. Not right now. What happened to the power? You checked it every few hours. There shouldn’t be any reason for it to suddenly quit on you like this. The air grew cold, and something slithered over the back of your couch.
Unable to turn and look at it, you squeezed your eyes shut. If you really tried hard enough, maybe you’d wake up. Maybe this was nothing more than just another bad dream. Deep, rumbling chuckles could be heard beside you, and then there was weight suddenly pinning you in place. Opening your eyes instinctively in response, your gaze flicked down to both of your arms, and the faintest whimper escaped you as you took notice of the goopy tendrils that were holding them in place. As if that was really necessary; you couldn’t move anyway to begin with. A dark figure was leaning over you, using the lower half of his body and another set of tendrils to cage you on your sofa.
Peering at you with one glowing cyan eye, a whisper could be heard in your mind, “I told you I’d see you again soon.” Tears began to drip down your face and you whimpered, completely helpless beneath him. There was another chuckle, and just as before, a tendril suddenly pierced your chest, seeming to phase right through you. The wind was knocked out of you and you were breathless, only able to watch quietly as some heart-shaped object was withdrawn from your chest. Before, it had been glowing brightly, but now it was dim and barely cast any light at all. Your chest began to feel tight, and the figure tilted his head. In your mind, the voice could be heard again, “Do you want to know why it feels like drowning?”
He lifted a hand and placed it over your eyes, and it was as if you were abruptly plunged straight into a body of water. You felt wet and cold, and water was everywhere around you. You knew you weren’t moving, but you saw your arms thrashing in the water, and you saw another pair of arms wrapped around your torso, dragging you deeper down. More tears ran down your face, and the figure removed his hand, the water vanishing and bringing you back into your dark living room. You stared at him with wide, pleading eyes, watching in horror as his face seemed to split open, a white abyss appearing where his mouth should be. The same voice that had appeared in your head just moments before could be heard again, this time coming directly from him as he murmured, “Since you managed to… entertain me so well, and since you tried so hard to challenge me, I’ll make it fast."
You whimpered louder, only for him to shush you. He then ran his fingers through your hair and began to softly hum a tune. The baritone of his voice paired with the tune itself was eerily soothing, but you refused to allow it to calm you. At this particular moment, you believed you had the god-given right to be terrified and to not feel any other way. Nearly choking on a silent sob, you watched through teary eyes as he raised the heart shape—which you were starting to think was your soul—to his mouth. He locked gazes with you, and then, without any hesitation, he opened his mouth and pushed your soul inside. His mouth sealed shut again once he’d consumed your soul, and immediately, your body temperature dropped.
It was like you were placed in a tub full of ice water, and your vision became spotty. It began to dull and fade in and out, and then, without warning, there was only blinding light. No matter where you looked, all you saw was empty white space. In the distance was a small black figure, and you hesitantly attempted to move toward it. To your surprise, it worked. Your body cooperated, and you broke into a sprint, calling out to the figure. It looked up at you, and you immediately came to a halt, frozen under its dead, solid white stare. There was a purple heart shape floating in front of it, and its gaze shifted, settling on something for a moment before it offered you a hand. You warily reached out to accept it, a scream erupting from you as your hand began to burn, feeling as though it was touching lava.
The figure’s grip tightened, and no matter how much you struggled, you couldn’t pull away. There was movement out of the corner of your eye, but you couldn’t bring yourself to focus on it, given the amount of pain you were in. When the figure finally decided to let go of you, you reeled back away from it, wide-eyed and sobbing as you cradled your hand close to yourself. You opened your mouth to shout angrily at the figure, but it merely tilted its head, offering you a wave. You were taken aback by this, and then let out a sharp cry as a set of arms threw themselves around you from behind and yanked you backwards. You fell, but when you expected to collide with the floor, you broke through, now submerged in a sea of black. The arms around you tightened and dragged you further down into the endless abyss, your limbs cold and heavy, and your struggling slowed, as if there was something invisible hindering your movement.
One huge cyan eye opened, noticeably larger than the entirety of your body, and the light it cast was enough to illuminate your surroundings; all around you were other humanoid figures, all floating adrift, completely still and seemingly lifeless. Unsure if they were dead or alive, you began to thrash and scream for help.
A collage of just a few of the horrible ignorant things people say about Narcolepsy. People ask why I’m so reluctant and embarrassed about having it and this is why. There is SO much misinformation about narcolepsy that it’s not even funny. Combine that with rape culture of today and you have a recipe for disaster…I could go on and on for ages with these collages of comments. Kind of depressing to read…
“It’s not against her will if she’s asleep” “Saves you from having to get your own chloroform” “It’s not rape if she’s narcoleptic” “It would be much easier..and more convenient that way (if a girl had narcolepsy).” “Narcolepsy is not a disease. It’s an excuse.” “You haven’t laughed until you’ve imagined narcoleptics doing everyday things like bowling and riding a horse.” “A girl with narcolepsy? You could rape her and she wouldn’t even know.”
This is rape culture mixed with IGNORANCE about a truly debilitating disease… The world we live in is so fucked up. This is the kind of thing that makes me wish I was six feet underground.
