The Ups and Downs of Sleep Paralysis

I know this is covered in my general testimony, but it's broken down and summarized here. This is my testimony for www.stopsleepparalysis.org. Great ministry, from what I hear, and Tom Bionic has some great stories of those who have over come sleep paralysis. So here's mine.


I’ve given this testimony before, multiple times, but I’ve had some new things happen since then, well. It’s time to consolidate these. Unlike a lot of people, I don’t recall having sleep paralysis before becoming a Christian. In fact all of mine happened afterwards. I suspect because of I had switched sides in the Ephesians 6:12 spiritual war, from the side of Satan to the side of God by accepting Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.

Prior to this, I had had a pseudo Catholic influence and prayed as such, but hadn’t become a Christian. In my teens I had been into the New Age, ghosts, cryptozoology and UFO’s. In middle school I had read a few UFO books, and even into high school, I read Fate magazine quite a bit. This magazine had quite a number of each of those sorts of stories. I never really seriously practiced any magic or meditations, though from time to time I did try to move objects with my mind or collect chi/life energy so I could become stronger. I knew “magic” was wrong, but thought that psychic powers and stuff were natural phenomena. So, I had this sort of mixture of Bible and New Age mixed together in my head.


Episode 1: Night Terrors at 19

This one happened right after I had become a Christian. I was 19 and had just come to Christ through Chuck Swindoll’s ministry, Insight for Living. This was for purely selfish reasons, I didn’t want to go to hell, because deep in my heart I knew there was one.

Then I started reading the Bible and read quite a bit. I wouldn’t say I really “got it” but it was a good foundation. After some months of listening to Chuck and reading the Word, I occasionally caught Jerry Falwell’s program on TV. One of these few times, I saw they were talking about the Columbine massacre and had an author on commenting about the two killers and how they were into Satanism. The book they were pitching was The Dark Side of the Supernatural. Having come from the New Age, I had sort of this fascination with demons and spiritual warfare and so figured that I’d check it out.

Looking at it now, they have some really great information for a foundation of what the Bible said about UFO’s and a number of other things. I read it, but in some part of my heart I didn’t want to accept everything they said. One incident in the book was…sleep paralysis.

They talked about the classical “demon sitting on someone’s chest and pressing them down” story. I was freaked out by that. That night, or within a few days I had my first taste of sleep paralysis.

I awoke, and was being pressed into my bed and felt the most evil and hate-filled presence that one could imagine. Hate-filled is actually an understatement. Try as I might, actual words fail to describe the kind of intelligent evil that assaulted me in my bed that night. Luckily, it did not show itself.
I was confused. I wasn’t sure what was going on. My cat was not reacting to the presence, surely if something were in my room, my cat would react. Not so. She slept soundly.

It was then that I recalled what the Darkside book said. Which was more or less to pray in Jesus’ name and it will stop. So I did, and it stopped. I went back to sleep.

Episode 2: A year or more later

My second nocturnal attack was more or less the same as the first, except for one thing. I don’t remember how the attack stopped. It did stop of course, but all I remember is blacking out and going back to sleep.

My memory of this incident isn’t the best, but I have some ideas of what happened. What I think happened was that I did cry out to God, and I did eventually ask in the name of Jesus Christ for it to stop. It is also possible that I tried on my own to concentrate on moving one part of my body (a New Age, anti alien abduction technique) to make it stop. In any even, I think it did eventually stop after pleading in Christ’s name.

Why didn’t it stop right away?

At this time, though I was saved, I was living in sort of a “cheap grace” mode. Sometimes sinning thinking that I an just repent right away. Salvation was my get out of sin free card. I believe also that along with my Christian faith, I had not fully renounced my New Age beliefs. In fact, I tried on occasion to try developing telekinesis and also tried to will myself to dream of the future. In short, I was a Christian, but carnal. I confessed sin, but who knows how often I had truly repented of it. I also had sin, unconfessed, which I also didn’t believe was sin.

All of these things together, I believe resulted in a sleep paralysis attack that didn’t stop right away. As if God was showing me that the trick to beating this is that Jesus just isn’t a magic word, but that my relationship with Him had to be right.


Episode 3: Dark Shadows, Darker Shadows

My third episode was not really sleep paralysis, but related.

I was in my early to mid 20’s and lived in a basement, in a house with a pastor at the church I was going to. I still had sin issues in my life that I was dealing with, but was also going through a hugely dark time. I had just been fired from a job, I was struggling to find a new one. I also wrestled with what it meant to be a Christian.

I had been friends with a pagan or two at this point, and unfortunately they were not the best influences. Who knows how many demons were attached to them and if they (demons) decided to ravage my life. I was also really into occult entertainment, thinking it harmless. Buffy and Angel were my favorite shows. I played Soul Reaver a lot. These things subtly and not so subtly put my relationship with God on the rocks. On top of that, I was going to church mostly for socializing and I was dealing with a lot of anger from the job situation.

One night, I awoke in the middle of the night. Eyes closed, I could sense or feel that a person was in the room with me. Not that I claimed any psychic gift, but the way this person moved or felt in my room really seemed like it was my roommate. Like other times we had been in a room together.

But it couldn’t have been.

My door was quite noisy when opened, and my door had not opened. Furthermore, if it had been opened, my cat would have woken up and ran out of the door, or reacted in some way. Realizing this, I decided to open my eyes and peek around motionlessly.

I didn’t see anything or anybody. That is, until I looked into the darkest part of the room, where even light from the egress window didn’t go. In this mass of shadows, I saw a pitch black, man shaped figure. It stood motionless because I think it knew I saw it.

Again at this point, I don’t recall what happened. I believe that I whispered “In the name of Jesus Christ, leave” and went back to sleep. If not that, I prayed in Jesus’ name for it to leave and went to sleep.

It must have left because I was not bothered further.


Episode 4: A New Direction

After the shadow person incident, I went into a sort of slide. I continued struggling with sin issues, but also began to struggle with who God was. I felt really hurt and did the bare minimum one could do and still be called saved. I probably read my Bible infrequently as well. During this time I got back into UFOs big time, and did Yoga periodically and really was starting to get into some bad stuff again. Backsliding big time.

Not to plug the Revelations Radio Network, but it wasn’t until I started listening to Future Quake, reading Dr. Heiser’s work, listening to Russ Dizdar and Revelations Radio that I turned back to God. Long story short, God slowly healed those things and I’ve repented. I began to understand things from a real Christian worldview instead of the philosophically/morally Christian worldview.

I had an interesting dream which had an impact in the spirit world, but that’s not what this episode is about. Suffice it to say, there were a couple dreams that I am pretty I was visited by a demon, though not attacked.

One day, I heard Gaz Parker’s testimony. For some reason, I really felt an urge to get in touch with him, and we exchange(d) emails periodically. Within a very short time, Gaz encouraged me to do a blog. I began to pray for him to have deliverance from spiritual attacks he was having.

Almost right as I was starting the blog, I had a dream.

This dream I was in “my house” but it wasn’t actually the house I do live in, nor that I have ever lived in. Outside on the street was this tough looking biker guy, bald. My family was around too, but I saw this guy walking around outside on the street and I saw him and knew he was a demon. I was going to go outside and give him a whuppin’ and rebuke him in Jesus Christ’s name. I was just opening the screen door when I realized I couldn’t talk.

Then I just began thinking “the blood of Jesus” repeatedly and then I woke up instantly. As I began to become aware, I could feel my body suddenly being released from paralysis. At the time I knew it was a demonic attack because it felt like the same kind of presence as my first attack.

After this, I began praying to God about the spiritual armor, and asking to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I was able to bring each piece of armor to God, which is odd because I can never remember all of them.


Episode 5: Really?

My most recent attack wasn’t triggered by anything that I can think of off hand. And I really have no background story to go with it. I just remember waking up and feeling like there was a light pressure holding me down. It was incredibly light, but I could tell it was sleep paralysis.

Of course, by now I know what the game is, and as I was about halfway through thinking “Jesus” I could move.

Not to say that demons are not dangerous, but if I had to guess, this demon wasn’t fully committed to his mission to paralyze me. The reason being, I am taking my relationship with Christ a lot more seriously now, and I am doing my best to follow Him. This demon knew that Christ would save me from him, and so ran almost before he started.


So that's all I've got for now. I hope that I don't get anymore, but you never know. I do know that if they come again, Jesus will save me again as He has before.



UPDATE 5/2012

Episode 6

I recently slept in a room where I know someone did qigong. This person does qigong merely for health, and "knows the border" or where to stop before getting into outright demonic oppression I guess. And although I typically pray for protection before sleep, that night something was off with me and my prayers (maybe I forgot, maybe I had some unconfessed sin) and guess what. Sleep paralysis. It wasn't bad, but I felt something pushing on me and verbally asked Jesus for help as i awoke. And it stopped.