OBE and the Paranormal

I use to sleep walk when I was a child, and it is my hunch that I had sleep terrors or night terrors as well, but I am not for certain. When I was fourteen-years-old, I started experiencing sleep paralysis, hypnogogic hallucinations and lucid dreaming. Of course, at the time, I had no idea to coin any of these terms with what I was going through. Within the first ten to fifteen minutes of me 'falling asleep' my mind was still awake and my spiritual self was no longer attached to my body. There appears to be more and more research being done on this front, but to date, there is no true explanation or medical treatment to cure this phenomenon.

For anyone that has had hypnogogic hallucinations during sleep paralysis, you understand how frightening these can be at first (or even second, third, fourth, etc.). In medieval times, this use to be called old hag syndrome because there was the belief that a spritual succubus, relentless evil woman, or any type of demon would come and sit on top of the victim, draining their life energy from them. There have also been some accounts in the middle east of it being called psychic vampirism, for those vampires that feed off of energy instead of blood. Nevertheless, I did not know these things either when the experiences started. I just thought I was possessed by demons that I often seen in my hallucinations.

For the sake of brevity, let me give a sample of what may occur:

You are laying in bed, breathing deeply trying to fall asleep. Slowly, your body seems to melt away and then you feel what seems to be an electrical current popping in your head. Your senses literally shake, much like the sound of a old television first turning on and trying to bring up a picture. Then, a strong wind (and I mean extremely strong) rushes around your body and presses down on your chest. This might take your breath away at first, but soon you learn to breathe calmly through it. This is followed by audio hallucinations, the roaring of trains, gunfire sounding, screaming of people dying, angry voices yelling; sometimes it is just one or the other, other times it is a mixture of all the above. If you choose to open your eyes, you may have strange shadows lurking over you, dark eyes searching you. Or, it could be a woman with sharpened fangs howling in your face. It could be any number of beasts or demons, or long dead corpses wielding chainsaws and screaming your name. I long ago learned it was best to keep my eyes steadily shut. You may try to scream or turn away, but your body is completely paralyzed. And although you can hear the people in your house talking, or the fan blowing in the room, or feel the person at your side fast asleep - you cannot alert anyone in the real world. You are trapped for minutes at a time, which feels indefinitely longer. When you finally make your brain recognize what is happening, your spiritual self reconnects with your body, and you jerk to full alert, yelling or gasping deeply, and feeling completely rested.

I have went through this off and on for the past 12 years. Sometimes it was as infrequent as once a month. Or, like this month, it may be every three days or so. It is usually brought on by a lack of sleep or an increase in stress levels. Recently, I have learned to induce the experience though without having either.

You may ask why I would want to do this. Well, a week ago, the whole thing started, but instead of going through the usual hypnogogic hallucinations, I completely separated from my physical body. I pulled away and a full out-of-body experience (OBE). I was in my room, looking around and checking things out - fully conscious of my surroundings - while my physical self was fast asleep on the bed. I did not leave my bedroom, but I am told that once accomplishing this feat, one can travel anywhere in the world in a matter of moments like a ghost or even travel time and other planes of existence. I am interested to find the truth in those statements.

Cheers.