Night terrors..........

I'm a big fan of the paranormal and love to read books and watch shows about it. There's something about the unknown that I love. When I was younger, I read all the ghost books that were available at the local library. The Dewey decimal number for ghost books was 133.00. I knew it by heart. The ghost books only accounted for a couple of shelves worth of books. Eventually, I got to a point where I had read all the books in that section. In future visits, I'd go over to the ghost section and just look through to see if any new books had come out. Every once in awhile, I'd find a new one to read.

One of the things that people often mistake for paranormal activity is a phenomenon called 'night terrors'. Many people have had night terrors in one form or another. A night terror is when you 'wake up' and feel like you're paralyzed to the point where you can't move or speak. Often, you feel like you're being moved or touched. While it feels like a paranormal experience when it's occurring, it's really just your mind causing the problems.

During a night terror, your brain fools you into thinking you are awake when you are actually still asleep. You feel like you are actually conscious. The terrifying feeling of being moved or touched is a panic caused by the feeling of paralysis. When it happens, it's a very real experience and it can be pretty scary when it happens. There's no rhyme or reason as to what might trigger a night terror.

I only mention night terrors because I actually experienced one last night. I 'woke up' and was unable to move my entire body or speak. I felt like I was sliding slowly across the bed without any control and I couldn't do anything to stop it. It was pretty weird. Then, I woke up and quickly realized that I had just had a night terror. A couple of factors were a dead giveaway that the experience wasn't real.

1. I was in a different bed when I was sliding than when I woke up.
2. If I was sliding across the bed as I felt, there's no way I would have been oriented in the position on the bed that I was when I woke up.

Night terrors account for a surprising number of 'paranormal' experiences in the home. It's an interesting thing to experience, but it has little to do with any actual paranormal activity.