Saturday, March 15, 2003
Demons, aliens and ghosts! Oh my!
A bizarre, dream-like paralysis experienced when people wake from a deep sleep can cause some sufferers to believe they have seen a ghost or even to have been abducted by aliens, despite being otherwise mentally normal.
Via The James Randi Educational Foundation, Why being abducted by aliens can seem so real
Don't let the rather dry article fool you—it can be downright scary when these things happen.
Years ago, this was possibly in 1993 or 1994, I had fallen asleep for a nap in the late afternoon. Around 7:00 or 7:30 pm in the evening I awoke, but couldn't move. I felt as if I had been drugged; I was mentally alert, but I could not move to save my life; I could barely get my eyes open and only with a huge effort on my part.
While this was going on, I could feel this … presence. It had unlocked the front door, made its way through the condo towards my room. I was struggling to move. Heck, I was struggling to get my eyes open!
It was a horrible feeling.
The presence made its way to the bedroom door and was in the process of going through it when I was able to snap out of the paralysis, upon which the presence vanished.
I was quite shaken afterwards and didn't go back to sleep for quite some time as I was calming down from the incident.
A few weeks later I related the experience to a friend of mine and he was convinced that it was a malevolent spirit (I think he used the phrase “demon from Hell”) that attempted to possess me. I suppose it could have been worse—it could have been an attempted alien abduction.
The Warehouse of Infinite Stuff
It must be shock.
I did not realize that Spring had made plans for a storage unit (it was my fault for not listening close enough during the past week) but last night she announced that we were renting a storage unit and that the stuff in the dining room was going.
So I found myself this morning living the ending warehouse scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark as I'm following the clerk through endless corridors of strored stuff on the way to our 6′×7′×8′ volume of air in which we can store our own stuff.
I had wanted to avoid this—to me, obtaining a rental unit to store stuff is a form of defeat—that the stuff is so important that I'm willing to spend money to store it. But we really need the space in a critical way and let's face it, after a year of not having a dining room (or rather, a dining room full of stuff) I do have to admit defeat.
“Hi, I'm Sean … ”
“Hi Sean!”
“And I have a problem … I'm … I'm … a packrat!” [breaks down sobbing].
I now wish I had the camera with me, but a picture of the Warehouse of Infinite Stuff will have to wait until I get a chance to get back there (our plan is to wait about a month, then take a box or two our, sort through the stuff and either find room for it at the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere, or toss it and eventually empty out our volume of air).
Several hours of hauling stuff and we finally have dining room!
Woo hoo!
