Why Do People Feel Paralyzed During UFO Encounters?

Term: Sleep paralysis: a temporary inability to move or speak while falling asleep or waking. It can come with a felt presence, chest pressure, and fear.

Term: Old Hag: a folk name for the sleep paralysis experience in Newfoundland and other places, in which a hag seems to sit on the sleeper’s chest.

Term: Hypnagogic hallucination: a vivid sensation, image, or sound that occurs while falling asleep.

Why Do People Feel Paralyzed During UFO Encounters?

Many abduction accounts describe waking unable to move, often with a sense of a presence in the room. Sleep paralysis is a real and well-studied condition that produces exactly those feelings, and researchers have linked it to abduction reports. It does not explain every case, and it does not answer what people are seeing. Some cases involve paralysis while awake, and those are harder to account for.

Paralysis in UFO reports

Many abduction accounts describe being unable to move. In Levelland, Texas, in 1957, drivers reported that their engines died and that they felt paralyzed as a glowing, egg-shaped craft flew low over their cars. When the craft moved away, they said, the paralysis lifted and the cars started again.

What sleep paralysis is

During normal sleep, the body blocks most muscle movement. Sleep paralysis happens when a person becomes conscious while that block is still active. The person cannot move or speak. Many people also feel pressure on the chest, hear sounds, and sense that someone is in the room.

An old experience with many names

Folklorist David Hufford studied this experience in Newfoundland, where it is called the Old Hag. His 1982 book, The Terror That Comes in the Night, argued that the experience is real and similar across cultures, and that it does not depend on belief in ghosts. Other cultures have their own names for a night-time presence that presses on a person who cannot move.

The link to abduction reports

Psychologists Richard McNally and Susan Clancy wrote in 2005 that sleep paralysis, combined with cultural ideas about aliens, may lead a person to believe he or she was abducted. Many abduction accounts begin in a bedroom at night, with paralysis and a presence. Researchers treat that as a strong reason to consider sleep paralysis first.

What sleep paralysis does not settle

It explains why an experience feels the way it does. It does not tell us whether the presence a person sees is a hallucination or something else. It also does not cover reports of paralysis in the daytime, outdoors, or while awake, such as the Levelland reports. In those cases, other causes such as intense fear must be considered.

An older parallel

In Daniel 10:8 to 10, Daniel sees a heavenly figure, and he says no strength was left in him and that he fell face down. A hand then touched him and set him on his knees. This passage describes weakness and being overcome in the presence of a spiritual being. It does not describe sleep paralysis, and I offer it only as a comparison.

What is solid and what is not

Sleep paralysis is real, and it explains a large part of the paralysis in abduction accounts. What is behind the presence, and whether some cases involve something more, is open. Disclosure is available on Amazon. You can find more of my work at ckqbooks.com.

Sources

David J. Hufford, The Terror That Comes in the Night (1982). Richard J. McNally and Susan A. Clancy, Sleep Paralysis, Sexual Abuse, and Space Alien Abduction, Transcultural Psychiatry (2005). Daniel 10 (King James Version).