Roommate is being visited by aliens (psychological problems?)

[roshke]

<p>This article is dated, and I don’t know what, if anything, more recent research has uncovered about this condition, but seems quite relevant to this discussion:</p>

<p>[Alien</a> Abduction? Science Calls It Sleep Paralysis - The New York Times](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/06/science/alien-abduction-science-calls-it-sleep-paralysis.html?pagewanted=2]Alien”>http://www.nytimes.com/1999/07/06/science/alien-abduction-science-calls-it-sleep-paralysis.html?pagewanted=2)</p>

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Called sleep paralysis, this disorder – the result of a disconnect between brain and body as a person is on the fringe of sleep – is turning out to be increasingly common, affecting nearly half of all people at least once. Moreover, a growing number of scholars believe that sleep paralysis may help explain many ancient reports of attacks by witches and modern claims of abduction by space aliens.

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<p>Apparently, sleep paralysis is much more common among people of Japanese descent - which could explain the Prime Minister’s wife’s claim.</p>

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‘‘I think it can explain claims of witchcraft and alien abduction,’’ said Kazuhiko <em>**uda, a psychologist at *</em>*ushima University in Japan and a leading expert on sleep paralysis. Research in Japan has had a headstart because sleep paralysis is well-known to most Japanese, who call it kanashibari, while it is little-known and less studied in the West.

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<p>There is a current movie, The Fourth Kind, out about this subject as we speak . Ads are everywhere right now. For someone experiencing sleep paralysis, the combination of that suggestion along with the scary experience itself,could be relevant: </p>

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Several scholars have found that people are more likely to report alien abductions when they have been exposed to movies or books about the idea. Simon Sherwood, a researcher on sleep paralysis in England, said that in one case study he gathered, a regular sufferer of sleep paralysis watched an alien film and then had a hallucination of ‘‘little blue aliens’’ inserting a metal probe into his forehead.

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<p>The schedule of college students, their patterns of interrupted sleep as well as their age may make them more predisposed to this:</p>

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Among ordinary people, sleep paralysis occurs most often after jet lag or periods of sleeplessness that interrupt normal REM patterns. Men and women seem to suffer it at equal rates, and although it is most common in the teen-age years, it is reported at all ages.

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<p>I’ve actually had a few episodes of sleep paralysis, myself. It was pretty scary the first time, when I was a teenager. I felt like I was awake but couldn’t move a muscle for ages. No levitations, visions of aliens (or anything else for that matter) - just the unnerving experience of not being able to move. I’ve probably had less than a handful in all the years since - much more of a momentary thing, but by then I knew what it was and didn’t panic. I think some people just have a more intense,mixed up in the dream state, version of this than others.</p>