 Welcome to Piranormal Episode 6. This time we're going to be talking about sleep paralysis. And as we jump in, we have most of our co-hosts with us together. We have Trey Strickland and Doug Overmeyer's with us. Brian Goddawa has graced us with his presence. Doug Van Dorn and of course Natalina. So welcome back everybody. Just chime in. Merry Christmas. That's sort of an inside joke because Natalina, why don't you tell everybody sort of what you're dealing with today? Well, we have had about two feet of snow in the past 48 hours and I'm just barely here on the show by the skin of my teeth because I've been trapped in a pile of snow for several hours. So it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas over here in North Dakota. Yeah, which is real by the way. It is a real, it's a real, it's not a militarized zone. And your teeth aren't shattering so you're in good shape. Yes. All right, well sleep paralysis, we decided to take a look at four articles and I'm just going to mention those for listeners. This is going to be in no particular order. They range from 1999 all the way up to 2015. But one is titled, The Identification of the Transmitter and Receptor Mechanisms Responsible for REM REM Sleep Paralysis. And that's from the Journal of Neuroscience. The authors are Brooks and Peaver. Then we have two authored by, I'm not sure how you pronounce this last name, it's C-H-E-Y-N-E maybe Shane or Cheney. I guess you could see either of those. And then one of those two has a few co-authors, Roy Furr and Newby Clark. But one of the articles is entitled, Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Hallucinations During Sleep Paralysis, Colon, Neurological and Cultural Construction of the Nightmare. Of course that refers to brain function, regions of the brain whatnot. And the second article by, we'll just go with Shane here, is entitled, Situational Factors Affecting Sleep Paralysis and Associated Hallucinations, Colon, Position and Timing Effects. Now those two articles again authored primarily by the same person. There's going to be a lot of overlap there. The second one that I just mentioned, Position and Timing Effects, really deals with the body position and like the time of night when sleep paralysis typically occurs. And then lastly, we had an article by Anne Cox entitled, Sleep Paralysis and Focal. That was from the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, an open journal that is freely accessible on the web. And I should mention the two Shane and articles. One was from the Journal of Consciousness and Cognition. And the other was the Journal of Sleep Research. So we have four different journals, different aspects of sleep paralysis. And I think it's probably good to start off this discussion by asking all of you, and then I'll go last, have any of you ever had sleep paralysis? Can you tell us about it? I have. I was thinking about this and leading up to the show because initially I was going to say that although I've experienced sleep paralysis, I've never experienced the really kind of scary things that usually come along with it. I just could recall waking up and being unable to move but seemingly fully aware. And that in and of itself is a scary sensation. But as I was thinking about this, I recalled that when I was quite a bit younger, I did have this series of instances where I had waken up. I woke up in the night and I couldn't move. And I remember, I thought people were screaming at me loudly, screaming directly into my ears. And I was so scared and I couldn't move. And I also was trying to like, I was very young. So I still, you know, lived at home and I was trying to scream for my parents and I couldn't actually make any words come out. And so that heightened the scariness. And I remember my eyes kind of darting around the room, trying to figure out who was screaming at me. And this happened to me a number of times, but I have kind of forgotten about that. But I think that would qualify as a sleep paralysis and auditory hallucinations or whatever they were. But I've never experienced like the full, you know, seeing things and, and, you know, feeling the crushing pressure on my chest or anything like that. But I've experienced it kind of on that level when I was younger, more of an auditory thing and just the paralyzing fear along with the actual bodily paralysis. It hasn't been something that's been an ongoing issue for me, just kind of some isolated instances. This is Brian Goodell to add to that from my own experiences. Yeah, I've found this very fascinating because of the fact that it sort of explains a lot of the things that I have experienced as well over the years. And I guess we'll be talking about the several different major categories that they fall into. But the one that I've experienced most was the intruder version, which is this notion that fear, you're being watched, maybe an evil presence or at least hostile presence, that kind of a thing. And I definitely have experienced that over the years. But mostly in more recent times, it always ends up with me. I'm in the supine position, and I am looking up at the smoke alarm in my, in my bedroom that has a little teeny green light. And I go and it's so funny because like every time I go through the same process of who is that watching me? Is that a government worker? Is that an alien? Is that a demon? Is that a, you know, and I go through the process every time. And it's very confusing until I finally sort of become more woken and I realize, oh, it's a smoke alarm again. Why do I always keep thinking it's someone watching me type of thing? It's kind of amusing in some ways. But yeah, so that's been mostly what my experience has been. And that's like once every, I don't know, maybe four months or five months or something like that. Wow, that's pretty frequent. I mean, it must be the stuff you write. That's what I was thinking too, that totally explains your books, man. You know, and that is more than a joke because I do believe that that might actually have some effect, you know, because if you're if you're trafficking in thought patterns that deal with, you know, whether it's the demonic or just scary things, I do believe that that can put your mind in that category thinking, you know, you can become a little bit more paranoid. I'm the kind of person who walks down the street and I'm thinking of movies I've seen when I see people do things, you know, and I'm like, honey, don't do this because I saw this in a movie, you know. And so it kind of does consciously come into my world. And I actually do think that that may be some of it, you know. Yeah, when I walk down the street, I'm thinking about either my wife or my pug. I haven't seen either of them in movies. Well, I mean, like, you know, like we go, we I live in a condo. So we go down to the garage and it's sort of like, watch yourself, look around, make sure there's no one in the garage who might attack you because and of course, LA in LA, it's not an it's not an unrealistic. We actually did have people steal cars and break violent people break into our cars in the basement. So it's not unrealistic. But I definitely I think more about those things. And so it doesn't it wouldn't surprise me that they it comes up more frequently in my dreams or whatever. How about either of the dogs? So what Brian just said is interesting to me, because this is a DVD. Because, first of all, I mean, I tend to think that I think about some pretty weird things. And Brian's kind of my hero. So I've been watching more horror movies lately. But I actually, I mean, I might be able to remember one or two instances sort of like Natalina where I've had a I couldn't move, I wake up and I can't move. But I've had nothing of what's what Brian described. I haven't heard anything. There's been nothing but that seems supernatural or strange. It's just like I just couldn't move, which like she said, it's terrifying. But there's nothing more to it. So it's curious that Brian would would make that comment. And then I'm, I'm kind of making the opposite, I guess, I don't know. Yeah, this is the I've never experienced any of these situations. Oh, that's interesting. This is true. I have a handful of time. And it is pretty scary. I remember everything and just fighting trying to make my muscles move. It hasn't happened in about 20 years, but I have had a handful of experiences, only one that felt demonic in a sense that I was sleeping, I was on vacation, and I woke up, I was paralyzed, and I felt like something was trying to kill me. And it felt like my conscious was kind of fading out. So it was like getting blacker and blacker and blacker and blacker. And as it got blacker, I fought more and more and more just to get my hands to move. And finally, sure enough, I was. And that's the only time that it was actually ever scary in the dark since the other handful of times is just I woke up, I couldn't move. And it was just I took everything in my brain to just move your hand, move your hand, move your hand and try to fight it. And it's the most weird sensation to be awake and not be able to move anything into it literally took everything brainpower I had to move my hand. And that wasn't as scary as much as that one time. And I've only had one episode that it it felt scary in nature. And, you know, I have no idea what that means or what it is. But I have experienced it and it's not fun sometimes. Yeah, I can remember this. I can remember having this experience two times. And I it's probably happened, you know, more than two times, but that I distinctly remember. And it hasn't happened for, in my case, you know, over 10 years. But I could tell you where I was both times, you know, the situations and whatnot once was in college where I was not lying on my back. So according to the literature, this is a little unusual. I was face down, but it's the classic, you know, you, you're awake, you know, you're awake. And you can't move, you know, you mean, you're just totally paralyzed. And in the, in the one instance, the one when I was in college that which would have been the first one, at least that I recall, distinctly, there, I did have the sensation of something being on top of me. So you have this pressure. But, you know, I just, I don't know why, because I can't remember ever doing any reading about it or anything like that. But I just sort of knew, okay, there's just something going on here that, you know, I didn't think it was sinister. I didn't think it was supernatural, even though it was kind of freaky. I just thought, well, I just need to go back to sleep. And that'll be that. And, and basically, that's what I did. But, but it was very real, you know, the pressure was real, the immobility was real. But I was completely awake. I'm looking at the wall, you know, on the side of the bed, and I'm looking around. I mean, I, I'm fully conscious. But I can't move. So it was, it was very strange. And the second one was a little, a little more frightening. I had the sensation of, you know, being choked, you know, like something wrapping around your neck, and you could sort of feel it moving around your neck. But I, again, I kind of knew what was going on. Like I had the memory of the other one. And so, you know, I, I didn't like, you know, freak out at, you know, too much. But it was, it was really uncomfortable. That's the way I would describe it. Now I've had one of my kids, and I'm not going to get any more specific than that, have what probably I'm not quite sure after reading the articles, it probably does fit into the sleep paralysis category. But there was the paralysis, the immobility. And, you know, my, my kid told me that they not only felt a presence in the room, but thought that they saw like a shadowy, you know, kind of presence, and also had this sensation of floating. And that comes up in the journal articles as well. I've never had that. But again, there was an example where somebody I, I know lives in my own house, you know, has had this happen. And, and that's, that has occurred two times, kind of not, not real close together. But it hasn't happened for a number of years. So I have that experience as well, you know, having, you know, one of your children, you know, report this to you and, you know, having to, they're trying it to talk to them about it. And so that they're not, you know, too alarmed by it. You know, because I, I'm not willing to completely exclude, you know, the supernatural from these things. I mean, we did have people, you know, you know, pray about the situation and, and what not, you know, prayers of protection and so on and so forth. And we, we let, you know, my, my child know that we were doing that. And so that I think seemed to help now. You know, I don't know that, that there's a connection, a necessary connection. And I'm being pretty deliberate with my wording here. I don't know that there's a necessary connection. In fact, I would sort of be skeptical of a necessary connection between sleep paralysis and, and supernatural activity, although I think there could be overlap. That's sort of the way I, I think about it. But why don't we, for the sake of the listeners, I think they might also find it interesting at how our, our articles defined sleep paralysis, because you get a bit of a, a range here. Now the one on folklore, you're going to get a folk lorry definition. So in the summary, Ann Cox writes, sleep paralysis is a relatively new term to describe what for hundreds of years many believed to be a visitation by a malevolent creature, which attacked its victims as they slept. Again, that's a very, you know, folk lorish, you know, kind of definition, something that's more clinical. One of the Shane articles, sleep paralysis is a transient conscious state of involuntary immobility occurring immediately prior to falling asleep or upon awakening, and is classified as a parasomnia associated with REM rapid eye movement. The other, the other articles are going to have something like that. Again, very clinical. And this one hints at the connection clinically with rapid eye movement, that, you know, that stage of sleep. So I'm just going to throw it out here and ask two questions of all of you. What did you find again, interesting, stimulating, questionable, whatever adjective you'd put on it about the research? And also, what do you think? Do you think there's any relationship at all between sleep paralysis and, you know, a supernatural, you know, demonic sinister presence? Well, I was thinking about this as I was reading the articles and they seem to all kind of share the common thing that this is a physiological response. It's that, you know, there's not a whole lot of analysis on whether there might be a supernatural component. So they kind of all seem to agree all seem to agree on that. And it's very convincing. I found it very convincing in the various articles that there's probably most of these instances have to do with it disrupted sleep patterns and stuff like that. I kind of came away from it because I did a show a number of years ago about the phenomenon of spectrophilia, which is really closely linked to sleep paralysis. And it's kind of more getting into like the incubus succubus thing. And a lot of people experience it a lot of for a lot of people, it goes so much farther beyond just that sensation of a presence or or pressure, you know, they experience that there's literally a person there and and having encounter with them. So I kind of came away from this with my supernatural worldview very much intact, but convinced that sleep paralysis is a thing that is probably largely, you know, natural, but that perhaps, you know, a say a demonic presence could exploit that vulnerable state or mimic it. But, you know, that would probably just be anecdotal and maybe not any way to prove it. But it the articles were very convincing to me that a whole range of things from auditory hallucinations like what I experienced thinking that someone was screaming at me to actually seeing a presence that that all can be pretty well explained by what's happening in the brain in in in those instances. So I don't see any reason to discount that it's a natural thing that happens to a lot of people, but that perhaps there could still be this supernatural component where of of more just like exploitation, because how how much more vulnerable can a person be if their body is literally paralyzed and yet they're fully conscious, you know, so that's kind of where I was at with it. For anybody else, I'll follow that again. This is Godawa. Yeah, I had the same reaction, the same response. I've never really considered it my experiences to be supernatural. I know I go through the process where I think they are because you're waking up and you're you're not fully, you know, cognizant and of your senses and your intelligence and all that. But by the end, I realized they aren't I've seen shadows as well. I've seen shadow figures looking at me. But as I continue to look at them over time, they end up being Oh, that's the pillow in the corner, you know, or that's literally the the something standing up, you know, that that's already there. So as I as I read this, you know, this is another one of those cases, you read these descriptions, and they're mostly neuroscience and materialist explanations like Matt was saying. And I too also had, I had to come to the conclusion that though I resent, though I have a particular animosity towards materialism because of its reductionist factors, and you see this in some of these articles where there's a tendency to reduce reality to the chemicals in the neuroscience that's going on in your brain with a complete ignorance of the fact that describing what's occurring in your brain does not automatically describe the reality, you know what I mean? Like the brain could be functioning as a interactive mechanism, it could be functioning in response to something, right? And so in general, the reductionism that's going on in these articles of reducing it to neuroscience factors and chemical factors. In general, it's a fallacious philosophical factor. However, this would be one of the cases where I have to begrudgingly agree with the materialist's assumptions and say, however, in this case, it does seem to explain a lot of the, you know, factors of experience that I've experienced what other people say. There's it's very difficult to believe that there's this mass supernatural thing occurring, you know, throughout all cultures and time and such. I find that very difficult to believe myself. So in this sense, I would tend to agree with the general assumptions that there are natural explanations for these phenomenon. Yeah. Yeah, I mean two important things out of what you just said. I mean, on the one hand, it is kind of, it does seem kind of odd and a little, oh, I don't know, I guess I'll use a word might be a little inflammatory, a little silly to think that if this is a supernatural thing that the demons have to follow a template, like, are they going to be graded, you know, after harassing? So you didn't do it right. You missed this element, you know, bad demon or whatever, incompetent demon. You know, so on the one hand, it is kind of, you know, at least to my thinking a little bit odd that you would have that as an explanation when there's such consistency across cultures and time, you know, like why would that be if we're dealing with intelligent supernatural beings, they could do what they want. You know, why do they have to follow a template? So that's one thing. And the reductionist thing though, I think is really important because, you know, to put it in really simplistic terms, if your model is materialism, that consciousness is a thing produced by the brain and nothing more versus some sort of filter, well, your brain is essential for consciousness to be experienced and detected and operate kind of like a radio, you know, capturing the radio waves. It doesn't, I like the radio model because it doesn't produce the radio waves, but they're undetectable without it. So if your brain is instead a thing that filters consciousness or makes consciousness known, that's a totally different model and consciousness is separate from the brain. Depending on which one of those perspectives you follow, you're going to parse the data of something like sleep paralysis quite differently. And you can tell you're right. As you read through the articles, it is a very reductionist model. It's only entertaining these, not just these things, but it comes out in a few places. Consciousness in general is just a product or a byproduct of this thing we call the brain. So if you're operating from that perspective from the get go, you're going to be sort of conditioned to not entertain any other possibility, or even if it's not a cause and effect, any other, like Nat was saying, supernatural exploitation or some sort of involvement, even peripherally, that's just not going to be on your radar because you've adopted a materialist model, whereas someone who doesn't, you know, could, these other things could be part of the picture, but again, not a cause and effect sort of thing that anybody else will your feelings and push back or you got one of the different direction. This is Dio, one of the Shane articles, the one in the consciousness and cognition journal hints at this worldview assumption coming into play. And I'll just read a couple sentences from it. Shane wrote that the major function of the central nervous system activity is a generation of coherence and meaning. So like your brain will take its input and generate a narrative. And actually that kind of reminded me of an article we read for the EVP, which also talked about dream theory, where your brain, you know, will just try to put together a narrative based on the input around you. And that narrative may or may not be accurate. Well, this hard Shane goes on and says, look, you're basically says your brain will conceive a narrative based on input of either exogenous origins, which is input from outside your body, or endogenous sources that mimic exogenous input. So and she goes on to argue that the causes of sleep paralysis are a cascading effects of inside and outside. But what kind of struck me about that sentence or about that idea is if a spirit appears to you, and well, let me be more even more material. If someone enters the room right now with a gun pointed at you, your heart's going to start racing, you're going to have adrenaline, you're going to have a hard time breathing, and you're going to have heightened senses. These articles treat it like, well, yeah, these are what's going on. And that's just what your body's doing right now. Whether or not it kind of ignores the fact it kind of ignores that the reason your body is going through this. Now, one of the articles says, well, it's doing that because they're sleeping on their back, or there's something going on with a neurotransmitter being muted, or it's just, you know, they're trying to go into REM sleep or coming out of REM sleep. And so at the meantime, the ears are picking up some sounds, and they can't really breathe because they're laying on their back. And so therefore, the brain's constructing this narrative, while that might be true, or there could be a spirit in the room doing something to the person. And so it's, I'm kind of in the overlapping theory where I think a lot of people have a hard time sleeping, especially transitioning from one type of sleep to another. And also, but some of the more heightened experiences, I mean, some of these people describe the situation as rape. That's just, it seems inconceivable to me that your brain's picking up stuff on the inside and outside, and you know, I watched a movie about something and not sleeping well. So I'm dreaming about getting raped. I mean, that's pretty horrific. And these people who suggested, this article is one of Shane's articles, it was very clinical. And then the very, almost concluded with, oh, by the way, some of these people describe this as rape, which was very unsettling, you know? I was like, man, that's kind of like, you want to tell, that just sort of undid some of the clinical, maybe Shane was trying to remind us that this is a significant thing, but Okay, you'd have to ask yourself the question or ask them the question. Why would the brain process this set of stimuli as rape? In other words, why would the brain go that direction as opposed to something that a little more, a little less violent or a little more innocuous? You know, why would, why would that be the message your brain is firing off in your head? Right. You know, it does seem like kind of an, you know, an exaggerated brain response, or, you know, overkill or something like that. That it just, it's, it's way over the top for what you would think, you know, brain, your brain ought to be, you know, doing or something like that. So yeah, that again, if you're, if you're, if you're a researcher or if you're a person, you know, who, who may or may not have experienced this, if you believe that, that again, consciousness is not inextricably tied to the material and not just a, not just a thing that, that this material organ produces, if it's actually independent, well then it, it being external again to what's going on inside of your head, that's on the table. You may not be able to know, well, is it a part here in this case or what role or, you know, you may not be able to parse that at all, but it's still on the table because of a non-materialist worldview. And that might account, again, for something that sets off a fright mechanism, you know, the whole, you know, fight or flight, you know, kind of thing, that response inside your head. And you could see where that, something, you know, strange happening to your foreign, and that might, you know, get processed by your brain as something real frightening and violent or whatever. I mean, to me, I, again, I don't think, I don't really hear any disagreement, you know, among us that, that there's, there's some point of overlap here. Natty is the word exploitation, you know, which, you know, is a word that involves intent. But again, if, if, if you're talking about, you know, consciousness or conscious beings, that, you know, a part of this, this thing we call the conscious world, it's not just a product of our brain, then you can use terms like that, even though, you know, that involves volition, you know, on the part of whatever entity, you know, would be in discussion. So, I mean, I, the articles to me, I want to hit Trey, you know, yeah, but I just want to throw this out. The articles to me, and I think we've all sort of hinted at it. If you read through these things, it's pretty clear that, you know, clinical studies have established that this happens to people, you know, in REM stage, either, either, you know, going in or coming out. And it's also pretty clear that there's at least a preponderance of people who experience this have had disrupted sleep patterns or they're under stress or something like that. That would, of course, disrupt sleep patterns. In my case, that, that's exactly true. One, it was in college and I, you know, worked, I had a night job and an early morning job. So, I wasn't getting a whole lot of sleep. The other, the second instance is when I worked third shift in graduate school. So, your sleep patterns are always screwed up. So, that, that, that makes a lot of sense to me, or at least I fit the profile really, really well in those situations. So, again, I would say, yeah, that's been established. And then the one article, I'm trying to remember which one it was. I think it was the, the Brooks article. Yeah, the one about transmitter and receptor mechanisms where they would, you know, go into, you know, they use the mice or the rats and and they would, you know, they were able to, you know, mimic the paralysis, you know, very precisely and correlate that with, you know, areas of the brain and brain function and all this sort of stuff. I mean, you could, you know, they made a really good case for we know how this works. We even know where it works in the brain. And we know, you know, biochemically what you need to turn off and turn on again in simplistic language and how that would work in terms of brain chemistry and biology. And what they didn't know is, is what exactly how the brain triggers all that, you know, how, how it does its own shutting off and shutting on, you know, that sort of thing. So they, they could, they could isolate it really well to brain chemistry, brain region, REM sleep, all this stuff. And so I would agree with that, that that's pretty compelling. If that wasn't the case, you should not have those, those kind of precise results. But there's still this element of we don't exactly know how the brain sort of tells itself what to do, you know, and, you know, what, what spickets to turn on and what, which other ones to, to shut off. They might, they can do that. Yeah. Can I ask a question? This is very relevant to what you're talking about. And that article you're referring to the Brooks articles heavily, you know, a lot of medical languages, hard, hard to follow. But did, I was under the impression that that, that they were, their studies were drug induced, which, which means, isn't, wouldn't there be a qualification on the fact that these are all artificially drug induced states that they were able to achieve, but that doesn't necessarily make it natural. You know what I'm saying? It kind of makes me question. That was the disconnect because they're, they're using drugs, you know, that, and they're not using like artificial drugs. Hey, what will LSD do here? I mean, they're using chemical components. You know, again, I'm not a scientist. So my words to probably vocabulary is probably going to, you know, be imprecise here, but stuff that actually is found in the brain and, and, you know, operates in this or that region or whatever. So they're, they're using that stuff to produce, you know, the, the results that would, would mime, you know, sleep paralysis, but, but you're right. They don't know what the mechanism was for turning that stuff on or off. And so you could ask, well, okay, now you've reproduced it, but are you sure that this precise set of chemicals is what is producing this, that the brain is actually using the stuff that you decided to use, even though obviously it could, because that's where we got the stuff from the brain. So yeah, I think that, that that's a, that's a legitimate question. It's a, it's a, it's a loop. It's an open end in their work and also why the brain would decide to do that. That, I mean, they don't, they don't necessarily have a, a terribly precise answer for that either. I had two thoughts in reading that article. I jotted one of them down right next to it. I thought it was bad for these rats. For one, I mean, I can't think of it. Somebody was going to, somebody was going to bring that up and well, but it told you what, like when they, when they decapitated the rats, I'm actually looking at the page now. I just flipped over to it. It says under deep anesthesia and then they have the chemical names and the milligrams. Rats were decapitated. Brains removed and placed in chilled 4% pate of formaldehyde. It's like, they're so precise to give you the exact conditions, you know, so that, so that, you know, the rats didn't suffer, but nevertheless, hey, they, they're dead, you know, they gave them terrible nightmares. I kept thinking of the secrets of Nim, you know, like no wonder the rats are mad. Oh boy. But the other thing I thought of, and it was not specifically addressed in any of these articles, and maybe we can address this topic in a future episode was, um, what, basically the pineal gland is sort of famous in the paranormal community for being some sort of spiritual something or other. But biologically, we know that it regulates, it releases hormones that regulate sleep and also sex hormones. And so I was kind of curious, maybe we can investigate this at some point that I wonder if there is some correlation people perceiving a spiritual component, a sexual component sometimes, and certainly is all related to sleep. If that's all related to, to something going on in that part of the brain, it's just, it's just sort of just a, a weird thought at the rock. Well, we, I mean, I'll try to track down some stuff on that. I'm sure the materialist were here, he would say, yep. That would be the answer to that. And again, if you, if you're, if you're presuming, and again, it's not just a, a faith statement. I mean, there, there are real reasons again to view the brain as this filter as opposed to this producer of consciousness. If you're taking that perspective, you'd say, well, you know, maybe there is something, you know, in other words, you leave the door open, that, that gets on the table because of the, the, you know, the different perspective on the whole mind body thing that, you know, people have or have or don't have. So, you know, and I'll try to look, look up and see if anybody's done anything on that. Trey, we haven't heard from you. What, what do you think? Yeah, I like the Shane's paper about the position and timing effects. You know, laying on your back during sleep paralysis was reported to be more prevalent in the middle and the end of the sleep than at the beginning, suggesting that sleep paralysis episodes at the later times might arise from brief micro arousals during REM, possibly induced by apnea. So I think maybe a lot of people are waking up mid-sleep, mid-REM sleep and who knows what their brain is in the midstream dreaming or what not, trying to wake up to catch a breath. So that whole sensation of, of, of, you know, something choking you or on your chest, you can't breathe might simply just be apnea and perceived as something demonic in nature. And, and, and we even had a listener, Eric emailed us about his experiences and, and he echoed kind of what I'm thinking. And I think that alluded to it that the supernatural, who's to say that the supernatural cannot, can't take advantage of the situation. You know, there's probably a supernatural element here that during these complete normal human, human biological events are capitalized on. So, you know, that was making me think of that a little bit. Yeah, no, I, yeah, the apnea thing I thought, you know, that, that certainly that just has to play a role, you know, in, in those symptoms, especially the, the choking, the pressure, you know, trying to get oxygen, you know, all that sort of thing. So if, if everything sort of, you know, if the, the stars align, so to speak, where you're, you wake up during that particular, you know, stage of sleep and, and you know, you have an apnea problem, you're, you know, you're going to, you're going to have this sensation, you know, in your, in your brain, you know, could be processing that, even if you're conscious, let's say that you don't, there were like the Cox article, which was the one on folklore. It had a, it was a short article, but it had a lot of good cross-cultural stuff in there about people who, you know, wouldn't necessarily know anything, you know, scientifically that could help them process whatever experience they were having. You could, you could see where they could be totally conscious and unable to move and struggling, you know, to take a breath or, you know, they start to panic and all these things could sort of combine and then be processed as this, you know, attack, you know, I think in demonic attack, that sort of thing. Again, not, not to rule out, you know, the supernatural component or at least some sort of, you know, peripheral relationship or, you know, again, I, I think we have to leave the, the door open for that, but I think overwhelmingly I, I was reminded of the whole alien abduction thing through this, and it's long been my position that, you know, I don't think, you know, that, that there are aliens, you know, assaulting people in their beds and whatnot. I think most of it is explained either by, you know, sleep paralysis or some other, something else, you know, going on inside the brain, but, you know, I think you could have a couple, you know, instances, again, things that, that I've at least read about that just seem to be a bit beyond that in terms of what the person relates and frankly beyond, you know, the, these articles. And so, you know, I'm willing to leave the door open for some sort of, you know, demonic, you know, presence or assault or whatever word we want to use, you know, in some cases. But since I brought it up, what do we think about not just the whole connection of this? Because one of the, I think one or two of the articles, you know, mentioned, you know, the alien abduction thing in relationship to this, the old hag, you know, thing comes up all the time with this, but I think a couple of them mentioned the alien abduction syndrome. So what, what do we think in light of this, you know, this might be a bit of a curveball and we might want to, you know, reserve it for another episode. But, you know, we all know people who either, I had this experience and I, you know, asked the Lord to intervene and the experience stopped or people who, you know, recommend that in terms of a procedural counseling, you know, technique or, you know, some sort of maybe deliverance model or whatnot. So what do, what do we think about that in relationship to this, you know, what, what we read for this time? Any thoughts? Well, you know, we're all familiar with Chris White and he's got sort of a whole sub ministry dedicated to stopping sleep paralysis. And his claim is that in pretty much every case that he's encountered, he has found that calling on the name of Jesus does stop it. And then there's other people like Joe Jordan and, and, you know, they would kind of in relation to the abduction phenomenon would say that, you know, calling on Jesus to intervene will stop these experiences. And, you know, some could say that that is just maybe, you know, that's where we find our comfort. So calling upon the name of Jesus can maybe put us into a more relaxed state. I suppose that would be the, the, the clinical explanation for it. But Chris White will go so far as to say that he recommends even non-believers to call on the name of Jesus and it will stop these experiences from happening. So that would sort of negate that. And I don't know how many actual case studies he's followed, but he tends to be a pretty level headed guy, you know, I'm sure he's looked into this, but I was thinking, gosh, wouldn't it be interesting if one of these studies was open minded enough to say, okay, let's try this in a handful of people in the midst of having this experience if we, you know, suggest to them to specifically call upon Jesus to intervene and stop the experience and see what would happen. That's kind of what was going through my mind. Because I, even during the course of this conversation, I'm fluctuating back and forth because I know in just my own research when I did that show on spectrophilia, there were so many cases and, and Doug Overmire alluded to this where people go so far as to consider it to be rape. And of course you could take that into even into the alien abduction thing where people think that they've been, you know, impregnated by aliens or whatever. That seems like such an intense thing to discount as, as just, you know, hallucination. But then at the same time, I'm looking at this Cox article, the folklore article, there's instances like they cite this community of Hmong men in East Asia, where they like had this unusually high percentage of men who were actually dying in their sleep, very similar experiences to the classic sleep paralysis thing where there was, you know, inability to breathe and, and all of that. But it was actually, they were dying. And the article says that even now the Centers for Disease Control statement holds that there's no actual, the cause of death is unknown. Like they can't completely explain it, but it tracks with sleep paralysis. So to me, that would indicate that gosh, it must be able to get pretty darn intense if you can actually die. Like dying from fright, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah. Yeah. So that's where I keep fluctuating back and forth because my, my, my supernatural worldview wants to say, well, if it's that intense, then obviously there's this other explanation. But yet there are plenty of studies and anecdotes that show that this strictly physical response is enough to actually kill you. And it does say that, you know, stress was a catalyst, probably in this particular community. Um, so I can see it, I can see it relating to the abduction phenomenon. I can see it related to the demonic attack phenomenon. I can see it relating to all of these things in a, in a, in just the very clinical way that they describe sleep paralysis, but I would just be so interested to see a study where they included that calling on the name of Jesus. They probably never would, but it would be so interesting to see if that's, if that actually yielded results like Chris claims that it does. Yeah. I mean, I, I know Chris, you know, probably not as, as well as some of you, but, um, and this isn't, this isn't in any way a comment to impugn, you know, Chris's integrity because I think he has high integrity, but I'm a little dubious, you know, when it, when it comes to, to this sort of thing because there hasn't been a large sample study and I'm also wary of it because all you need is one or two to falsify it. You know, so what happens if we do the study and let's just say it's all Christians, you know, let's just exclude the, the unbeliever and, you know, we, we, you know, convince people, look, we're going to, you know, we're going to just follow you, you know, for X number of months or years. I mean, you get people who say they experienced this with some regularity and, you know, we want you to try to stop this with the name of Jesus and then you tell us what happened and, you know, assuming everybody's going to be honest and whatnot. Well, so what happens if you get one or two believers that say, well, I did that and it just didn't work, came back? Well, the reason I'm wary of it is, is to me that, that takes us into the whole faith healing thing. Then the problem is you. There must be something wrong with you because you didn't get this resolved over here. Your faith is lacking. Right. Your faith is lacking. Maybe you have some secret sin. It becomes really, and again, I'm not saying a researcher would intentionally do this, but, but even if they were passive and then they said things like that in the person's mind, they can be manipulated by that sort of response in a bad way, you know, that it's going to, it's going to really damage, you know, their, their walk with the Lord or their Christian life or their doctrine or whatever. So I'm really wary of this kind of approach because it is falsifiable. And, and I don't, I don't really care so much that it's falsifiable because I want to know if it's A or B. I mean, that's just, that's me. I just want to know if it's A or B. Yeah, you can have Christians who would, you know, again, my concern is the effect it has on, on other people. Again, in a negative way, go ahead. Yeah, you could have Christians who don't even really believe that much in the supernatural realm and say, well, I don't think it's going to work. So that's just, again, that's priming, that's a perfect example of priming the audience, you know, I've had people, I've had, I shouldn't say people, I haven't had very many, but I had a few people written into the website, my ministry with these things and I sent some prayers and one person replied back that, hey, it worked and I'm an atheist. I don't know what to do with my belief system, basically was her reply. I don't know what to do with that. Theologically, I think I'd be curious if someone said, well, pray in the name of Buddha and see if the same thing happened. I mean, is it just part of, is it just organizing your thought pattern? Or is it really a supernatural thing? Or is it some experiencing a physical healing? Like maybe it's not a supernatural presence, but it's a physical thing going on. So God releases healing. I don't know. It's hard to, it's hard to do scientific studies on, on. Yeah. And I would, I would even be a, again, a little, a little more blunt. I think it's, I think it's theologically dangerous. In other words, not dangerous to good theology, but it's dangerous to, to people in the way they, they think theologically, because in that case, I mean, we, we'd all, especially if you're a non-materialist, you're gonna, you're gonna say that there's something to, you know, well, even if you are a materialist, let's just, lots of materialists would say that there's something to mind over matter. That in other words, the way, what, what, the way your brain is operating and thinking and whatnot has an effect on your body, you know, for good or ill. I mean, there are very few people who are going to deny, you know, that sort of thing. Well, if that's the case, then, well, hey, maybe, you know, invoking the name of Buddha or Jesus or something else is going to have a psychosomatic effect that will help, you know, take away or ameliorate this sleep paralysis problem. I mean, so, so then what if it works for them? You know, it, again, it just, it's sort of taking a, a kind of nebulous cause and effect kind of relationship, like what is, we know what the effect is, but what really is the cause, you know, it's taking that and then sort of superimposing it on theological thought, which again, I'm very wary of that in, in really both directions. And so I would be one who would challenge, you know, Chris and Joe in a good way. Again, I'm not doubting that, that this actually does, you know, help people and people, you know, have the outcome that they want. But I want to see a large sample study. I, you know, and I want to see it in all these different directions, like with Buddha and all this other stuff, because once you do that, and again, you have to assume like any study that your people are being honest, once you do that, it is a falsifiable thing. Well, then what do you do? You know, so I'd like to see it done, but I'm wary of it. It makes me think of the problem, too, of using like, this is a little off topic, but like using near-death experiences to prove heaven, because once again, there's probably just as many people out there who have NDE's where they go to Nirvana, or they encounter Buddha, or, you know, all of these different kinds of things. So then does that disprove heaven? You know, I think that's a really good example, because you look at NDE's and there's, there's two, there's two things you can take from that. Oh, this tells us exactly what heaven is like. Or, well, there are things about these things that really strongly suggest a disconnect of consciousness from the brain. Those are two related, but quite different, you know, assertions, different ideas. One is going to be really theologically problematic, because you're not always going to have the same description, and you're going to, it's going to be colored by various things that are floating around in your head from religious content. But the other is theologically helpful, because, you know, it sort of validates a non-materialist approach just more generally. You know, so yeah, I think that's a good example that you could, you could do the same kind of parsing with this. And if we're too categorical about what we say is happening when a person does this or that to stop sleep paralysis, that's, that's pretty edgy. I mean, again, that, that's something that I'm very wary of because of the effect it'll have on people and what, what opponents of good theology might do with it. So I'm, I'm just suspicious of that. The whole enterprise, even if it, if it could be done, I think we'd find out that we really can't say the things that we're saying about stopping sleep paralysis, if we actually did that kind of research. I wanted to put something out there, it's a little bit controversial, sort of related to this, came to mind reading the article about the position where Shane made the argument or I thought compellingly defended the position that most people who have sleep paralysis are in the sublime position. And in sort of piggybacking off NETs earlier thought that maybe sometimes spirits exploit these situations for whatever purpose, tear or whatever. And this is, this is going to be sort of a hyper spiritual interpretation of this. So it's just with that assumption, what is it about the sublime position that that is conducive to a spirit maybe attacking somebody and I couldn't help but to think that about yoga and some people and I'm all over the place on yoga and so don't take this as a position statement. It's just, I'm just throwing it out there. It's just spaghetti. I'm throwing on the wall and if it sticks, it sticks. If it doesn't, it doesn't. But some people consider yoga, you know, it was from the Eastern religions and had a spiritual component. Some people today even say, even argue that the positions that people do when they do yoga are conducive to spiritual influence. Now the people completely discount that. But you know, I'm not taking a position, but I just kind of wonder is that maybe there's a connection, maybe, I don't know, maybe not. But it came to mind when I was reading the articles, if that makes any sense at all. I have so many disclaimers in there, I'm not sure I said anything. Yeah, I don't know a whole lot about yoga. I have never attempted it, nor will I. But anybody have any thoughts about, you know, body position? If that's a big deal in yoga, anybody have any experience researching that or doing it? That sounds like a no. Maybe we should, that should be the topic of one of the next shows. We can give you homework, Brian. Let's see if those dreams and those movies all. You do that for a couple months and then tell us about it. Well, I mean, I think, you know, to sort of draw this, you know, to a close, I, again, I think we're all sort of on the same page that, you know, because of the weaknesses or the inadequacies are really the unsatisfactory nature of a materialist view of everything that, you know, we're all willing to leave the door open to some sort of supernatural, you know, some involvement, some element in maybe, you know, some instances of sleep paralysis, again, very small as the sense I get from the discussion. And that would, that would be my assessment as well. I don't think there's any necessary connection here to the supernatural world and sleep paralysis. Because I do think even though they don't necessarily know why the brain does what it does when, you know, they don't have all of the answers as to what triggers this, the articles to me, you know, do satisfactorily demonstrate that this is a, this is an issue of brain activity, you know, brain chemistry, even, you know, body position to some extent, especially if there's an apnea element to it. I don't, I don't really find any major holes, you know, in that approach, you know, even though, you know, they're going to admit that we don't know exactly, you know, how, how the brain decides to do X, Y, or Z. But they can, you know, it can be replicated, it can be observed in conjunction with, with REM sleep in a clinical setting. And to me, that, that sounds pretty persuasive. So anybody want to add anything to that or detract from it? Yeah, I've just been thinking the whole time that you've kind of got, we're doing a show on sleep. You know, we haven't been talking much about the sleep part of this, just the paralysis part of it. And it seems to me like the kind of the three main articles, the clinical articles, are dealing with the paralysis part. So they can test that, and they can, you know, you can do all those kinds of scientific things with it. But you can't really do that with the idea of sleep. It's more, it's more metaphysical than that. I think Brian was kind of getting at this a little bit earlier. When you read about the, the Lilith and the Hag and all the kind of old ways that people thought about this, they were dealing with it more, I think from the sleep part than they were from the paralysis part. And so they're trying to explain the paralysis because they have this view of what sleep is that's very different than what a materialist view of sleep is. Get into that a little bit. I mean, do you think, do you think they did that because they don't know, they don't know the biological mechanisms behind sleep or something else? I just think there's something mysterious about what sleeping even is. I mean, we can talk about it in physical kinds of ways, I guess. Obviously, you lay down, your, your eyes start moving around, your brain chemicals start kicking off and stuff. But, but what is sleep really? And why do we need sleep? And why is this something God has given to us? And another thing that came to me to, I was thinking of is why, why is it that so many times in scripture, God is coming to people as they're dreaming and sleeping. It's not all the time. Sometimes it's the middle of the day, you know, but oftentimes you got the night visions and those kinds of things. I just think that there's something about sleep itself that scientism can't fully explain. And it's not capable of doing it because I, I don't think that it's a purely physical activity. Yeah, I mean, it, well, it does have to do with, you know, obviously it's related to consciousness. And again, if, if your brain is just this filter for consciousness and consciousness is this disembodied thing, then, you know, it would make, you know, sense, you know, to, to have consciousness, interact with a, you know, the spiritual world, the disembodied world and vice versa. So yeah, I think, again, it's really about that, that either or, you know, proposition, you know, either the brain produces all this stuff and that's the materialist view or the brain is actually a filter to sense and participate and, you know, interact with a consciousness and a conscious world that is separate, you know, from this, this body organ, again, our brain. So if you're, if you're at number two, then all, then what you just described, you know, is, is a, is a valid idea. There has to be something more to this than purely, you know, pure biology, pure brain. It's not the, it's not the fault of the, of the three articles that are dealing with it from a medical point of view. It's just that that's, that's what they're limited to. They can't really really deeper than that. Right. And they're probably not even either inclined or even kind of, the question would not occur, you know, to, to even raise an investigator or, or ask, you know, try to, you know, factor into the discussion. Yeah, I think the, the ancient mindset did not separate supernatural from natural, like, like we're trying to do in sort of a post enlightenment era. I've been thinking, of course, we're approaching Christmas and I've been thinking about, you know, the Christmas story and like when the angel appeared to marry with news that she was favored, it didn't really faze her that an angel appeared to her. It was that she was favored. I mean, the favored part was like, Oh no, what does that mean? But the angel appearing was not, apparently didn't, wasn't a shocking. And I think it's because she just, you know, okay, it's like, that's because angels are supernatural and natural and just like the sun is supernatural and natural and that ancient perspective. And so I kept another sort of random thought. I have random thoughts reading these articles, was something that Tolkien said, I think he was talking about myth, but he sort of compared it to like when you drink, when you eat soup, and you enjoy the soup, don't get caught up with where the soup came from, like, you know, don't look at the bones that's, you know, how you just, you see the soup out of, because that kind of runs, kind of runs it. Well, these guys in these articles are certainly trying to, that's the scientific process for biology, trying to narrow down to which neurons are firing. And it just seems so, it is, it's very clinical. And the ultimate, and the one article I mentioned earlier concluded with, you know, just how horrifying these, these are just to kind of remind us that, yeah, we're looking at the bones that produce the soup, but keep in mind, the soup is pretty horrific in this case. Yeah. Yeah, or, or again, the old sausage, you know, how sausage gets made, you know that. Yeah. No, it's the same idea. Yeah. Well, this was a good, good discussion. I'm not quite sure where, what we want to do next. Again, I have a list of possibilities, but if you want to, you all want to let me know, you have a vote in favor of something by all means do that. Otherwise, I'll pick one out of the hat again to focus on. So thanks for everybody that showed up. Most everybody, I know, you know, Jud wasn't able to make it. He has a bit of a health issue, not serious, but something that was debilitating that he couldn't be here. But thanks to everybody else for taking the time. And Nat, thank those who rescued you from the snow. Pass on our thanks who dug you out of the car or whatever. Yes. Yeah. Well, and you have a, have a good rest of the afternoon, you know, dealing with dealing with the snow. I don't miss that at all. Yes. I, as soon as I'm done here, I have to go out and get the car ready to head out again. So that's awesome. Oh, well, yeah, be warmed and filled. That's all I can say. Thanks everybody. Thanks. Have a good afternoon. Talk to you guys.