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I have experienced sleep paralysis in almost all of its forms, from terrors to vibrations and auditory hallucinations to out-of-body experiences. Most often it is completely terrifying, but I did have one episode that was elating. Sweet dreams.

Kathleen Milroy
Ontario, Canada

The manifestations reported by sufferers of sleep paralysis are eerily similar to the visitation of death in “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” written by Ernest Hemingway and first published in Esquire in 1936:

It moved up closer to him still and now he could not speak to it, and when it saw he could not speak it came a little closer, and now he tried to send it away without speaking, but it moved in on him so its weight was all upon his chest, and while it crouched there and he could not move, or speak, he heard the woman say, “Bwana is asleep now.