The Nightmare Page #4

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of me being afraid of,

not going to sleep,

but, you know,

I would just pressure myself,

to wait till exhaustion

to fall asleep,

for the most part,

'cause after that,

it just never stopped,

um... kind of ever.

I'll get it just about anywhere.

Some places will be much worse.

And the voice

is different by place.

Um... I had an apartment

in Boston.

I lived in Jamaica plain

in Boston for a while

above a pizza place,

and I would always hear

this middle-aged woman

singing in a baby's voice there,

this gradually faded away

until I pretty much

almost forgot

I had ever experienced it.

And I... thought I was good,

finally over.

It was just a phase

I was going through,

and now It's done.

One afternoon,

I was up doing housework,

and was kind of tired,

and I figured

I'll lay down and take a nap,

because I'm gonna go out with

some friends later on tonight.

So I went, laid down,

and set the alarm on my phone,

checked, saw the time,

and just kind of threw it

on the nightstand next to me,

and just laid down.

And...

As I started to fall asleep,

I felt, like, this tingling

sensation come over me,

and since I had been

dealing with it so long,

it was kind of like

a familiar feeling,

it was like the warning sign,

"okay, sleep paralysis

is about to happen."

Like, my body would tingle,

start to feel heavy.

I'd see, like,

all these pixilated colors,

and so I set myself up

to wake myself up,

kind of shake it off.

So then... it felt like

it went away.

So I just, like,

picked up my phone,

looked at the time,

okay, laid back down

and started going to sleep.

And just as I fell asleep,

my phone rang.

And so I laid there

for a second.

I was like, "do I answer it,

don't I answer it?"

Just fell asleep,

and now somebody's waking me up.

So finally, I gave in

and I answered it.

I grabbed my phone.

"Hello?"

When I did that,

the person on the other end

of the line said, "hello,"

they said something else

I couldn't really make out

'cause it was all staticky

and cutting out.

So I said,

"I can't understand you.

You're breaking up.

There's a bad connection."

I said, "hello," again,

and I was like,

"you're breaking up.

I can't, like, hear you."

And so, finally I...

trying to make out what

they were saying and whatnot.

And I decided I'm up.

I'm gonna go get a cigarette.

So, I got up,

just talking to him,

like, "hello, hello?"

And then finally I'd walked

out into the living room,

and just as I got out

in the living room,

it became...

the connection cleared up

and the person on the other end

was this very pleasant man.

He was like, "hello."

I was wondering

If you could do me a favor."

What kind of favor?

Let me in.

I freaked out.

I was, like, there's a demon

on the other end of my phone.

I wanted nothing to

do with this.

So I threw my phone

across the room

and it broke into pieces,

then everything around me

just went into complete chaos.

Then just like...

almost like an earthquake hit.

Like, everything was shaking

and dark.

My whole body started vibrating.

It felt like

something was trying

to rip me out of myself,

kind of like pull my soul out.

You know,

just trying to process this,

like, what's going on, you know,

just absolutely terrified.

And so the only thing

I could think to do

was I just started praying.

I was, like, "God,

If you're there, help me."

I don't know what's happening.

Just, please,

somebody help me."

And as soon as I said that,

I felt like somebody

just grabbed me from behind,

just, like, yanked me back,

like, down the hall,

and just, like,

slammed me back into my body.

And, like, I hit my body,

and I, like, sat up instantly

and, like, looked around,

and was like,

"did that just happen?

Was that real?"

And so the first thing I did

was grab my phone, you know.

I'm like looking through, "okay,

who did I just talk to?"

And, like, no...

there was no missed calls

or no answered calls or nothing,

and I looked at the time,

and it had only been,

like, two minutes

since I initially laid down

to go to sleep.

Um, I did tell my mom,

and she just

kind of told me I'm nuts.

She's like, "it was a bad dream.

It happens all the time."

"No, mom.

It wasn't a dream."

I was in seventh

or eighth grade,

about '87 or '88.

And I saw "a nightmare

on elm street"

with my mother,

thank goodness, on cable.

"And she was like," Oh, my gosh!

This is like our dreams,"

and I was like, "yeah, I know."

So we definitely agreed on that.

And I kept watching it because

I wanted to find some clues,

some answer

to what was going on.

And of course, they mention

a little bit of myth

in the movie but not enough

to really research.

Did you ever read about

the balinese way of dreaming?

No.

They got this whole system

they call dream skills.

They get all their art

and literature from dreams,

just wake up and write it down.

Dream skills.

What If they made a monster

in their dreams, then what?

When I was... you know,

we had hbo when I was little,

and my dad was very liberal

with letting us

watch whatever we wanted

to watch on hbo.

Once he was watching a movie,

and I just kind of wandered in.

I didn't really know

what the movie was.

And then this, uh...

Creature emerges

from behind a dresser.

And It's like...

It's an alien.

And It's like the...

it was the movie "communion,"

with...

what's his face?

The guy

who was in the dancing video.

I don't know.

Christopher walken.

Yeah, exactly.

Christopher walken.

And when I saw that face...

My mind immediately drew

a parallel

to the things I had experienced

as a child,

and I was petrified.

I remember just being petrified.

And...

and then, you know...

but I stayed watching

as this, like, little kid.

And, you know,

these images I remember

as incredibly shocking images

to me, as a child.

Because it was the first time

that the kind of things

that I had seen

aligned with something that...

that was known about

or was explored.

A bunch of people came over,

and they're like,

"let's watch this

'insidious' movie."

And I was like,

"yeah, sure, why not?

"I don't care," and, like...

about 20 minutes into the movie,

I'm like, "this is about sleep

paralysis, I'm pretty sure."

I was like, "all right,

that's kind of cool."

Somebody made

a horror movie about it."

When, you know,

the dude's, like, in the chair,

he just goes into this world,

and he's searching for the kid.

They're pulling from

so many different parts

of sleep paralysis lore.

The shadow man.

I kept leaving my body.

The night hag.

The old hag.

I sat there and, like,

just kind of getting annoyed.

I mean, I don't even know why.

It wasn't like,

"this movie sucks!"

I mean, it was...

it was okay.

And then, all of a sudden,

they do, like,

the head shaking thing,

like this, like, weird...

it was in "Jacob's ladder,"

and it freaked me out.

I was like,

"that's exactly how it feels."

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