I remember when I lived in the Middle East being told that sleep paralysis was caused by a djinn sitting on one’s chest.

What you’re describing sounds more like “Sleep Paralysis” to me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

The classic “devil sitting on you” image, of course, is Henry Fuseli’s “The Nightmare” which actually illustrates the above Wikipedia entry.

I’ve experienced said paralysis on a few occasions and it’s terrifying. The most vivid time was many years ago when I “woke upâ€? (or so I thought) to find myself unable to move. I felt the bed sheets being pulled back and then started to fall very slowly (face first) toward the floor. As I hit the carpet I felt something grab me by the back of the neck and drag me along the carpet toward the corner of the room. I even remember my brother sitting up in the opposite bed looking terrified as he saw me being pulled away! As suddenly as it started, however, it ended - with me jolting up in the bed, fully awake, but very badly shaken.

The other times it happened (and it hasn’t happened me for years) I kept reminding myself to try and move a single digit - a toe or a finger. As soon as I managed that the spell of paralysis was broken and I was fully awake and fully functional. Once or twice I remember deciding to “go with it� - letting myself slip deeper and deeper into that curious paralysed state, just to see where it led.

I don’t really think I was awake on such occasions, but I didn’t feel fully asleep either. It seems to be some kind of in-between state where the brain thinks it’s awake but the subconscious (REM, dreamy) mind is still to the fore. Just as it can be mega-scary, it can also be a bit of a rush: allowing a weird sort of “conscious� access to the “unconscious� mind. I don’t know any other situation in which that possibility can be so potently explored.

Of course, that’s not to say that some objective malevolence might not have been present in your case. Obviously I just don’t know.

I do now recall a strange experience from the same night.

That night I was saved from a thorough pummelling by an elderly lady just as one of Limerick’s finest decided I was fair game for a thrashing on account of my having made eye contact with him while making my way into town for the ‘Termights night out’ - the one we had both planned just before I left you in the company of your fateful Joy Division cassette.

Just as I was bracing myself for the ‘batin of a lifetime’ (I was never a fighter) I heard the voice of an old lady which suggested that my attacker and I not ‘be fightin all the time’ (some fight, I was cowering!). I looked over my attacker’s shoulder and saw a headscarved rosary-beed type making very slow progress along the deserted street (I was pinned to the wall). My assailant looked at her, then at me and walked away. I immediately went to thank the old dear for her intervention only to find the street deserted apart from my nemesis bounding away from me. Hard to know who she was, there were no side streets for her to hide in, she would not have had time to advance more than a few metres.

All this took place before the night out, so we can’t blame it on intoxication. A strange night indeed! Christ fústar, I had forgotten about that segment of the eventful evening! Again, sometimes it’s nice to have the odd mystery.

Didn’t you have a strange experience of your own that night? I was pretty drunk, but I remember a similarly freaky tale.

I do remember that “milk boy” had been visiting the chid for a long time and that the child never remembered these encounters in the morning. As far as I recall the friend invited Brendan to sit in the kid’s room one night to observe. Cue sleeping child, enter Milk Boy. Kid sits up and plays (happily) with Milk Boy. Milk Boy disappears back where “he” came from. Kid returns to sleep none the worse for wear.

According to the story the family weren’t concerned about it as they felt that Milk Boy was a wholly benevolent entity and that (if anything) “his” visits were making the young fella in question happier and more content.

Great story. I wish I could hear it told, properly, again.

I still maintain it was Michael Jackson.

The only spooky tale I recall is the one about the baby/baby murderers in the corner of the attic - I think you mentioned this in a previous post. There was also our landlady at the time who’d was fairly terrifying. Irrationality fused with a short temper always is.

I can’t say I regret not being able to remember - sleep can be hard enough to come by without visions of milky headed humanoids arriving in my room after traversing the galaxy in search of refrigeration.

Maybe it was Michael Jackson?

It was some story about a kid who used to get visited at night in his bedroom by this featureless humanoid entity that looked like it was made out of milk! That’s how I remember it anyway.

Great image…but details are sketchy.

I do know a guy who looks like the Milky Bar Kid but I doubt that’s what you’re after.