Terrifying footage shows what sleep paralysis really looks like from outside the body
Liv Bridge
Featured Image Credit: YouTube/joshv06
A terrifying homemade video has revealed what sleep paralysis looks like from outside the body.
If you've never suffered from sleep paralysis before, count your lucky stars because it's simply frightening, so scary in fact there's even a horror video game about it.
Imagine laying awake and only able to move your eyes while seeing a scary figure in your bedroom or feeling as though someone, or something, is suffocating you.
The Cleveland Clinic explains it's a type of parasomnia, a disruptive sleep-related disorder, though episodes tend to be short-lived and temporary, from seconds to 20 minutes.
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It's estimated that it affects around 30 percent of people around the world at least once in their lifetimes, but some unfortunate few suffer from the nightmarish problem repetitively.
One such sufferer from Texas actually managed to capture two episodes he's endured in video footage that has since gone viral.
The YouTuber, called Josh, said he has sleep paralysis 'about once a week' and in one 2017 video can be heard crying out while lay completely still aside from a few twitches.
A family member rushes to his room and tries to gently wake him while recording the moment.
In another video, the person filming says: "Josh is in a sleeping paralysis state right now.
"The best he could do is shake a bit like that and have a little moan and try to yell."
Josh could be seen twitching in an apparent attempt to move before he eventually wakes up and hugs his grandma.
Commenting on his ordeal, Josh told his 9,000 subscribers: "I have it very often and it's very rare someone is able to get me out of it.
"If you also have SP, I'm sorry for what you have to go through. Also, don't forget to hug your grandma."
In a 2023 update, he added he has suffered from sleep paralysis for years, logging 75 times throughout 2022, an average of one episode per every four days.
"I am now 30 years old and I still suffer from sleep paralysis," Josh wrote, before admitting: "I've had it since the first time I could remember at the age of five.
"This video is not monetized and no, I didn't 'fake' this for self attention."
In an apparent hit back to trolls who accused him of setting up the video, he explained it's 'impossible' for him to twitch his neck in the way he does in the video when he's not in sleep paralysis.
Josh added: "I hope someday that there will be a cure."
Josh isn't the only one to suffer from the condition on a regular basis, as photographer Nicholas Bruno said he has had sleep paralysis from the age of six and even used his skills to recreate some of his nightmarish episodes in a bid to liberate him from his fears.
As its name suggests, when in sleep paralysis you can't physically move any part of your body other than your eyes, usually in the moments when you're about to fall asleep or just as you wake up as your body is between stages of sleep.
Though it doesn't sound so bad, the episode is made all the more frightening due to harrowing hallucinations, like an unfamiliar scary figure in your room or the feeling that you're being suffocated from pressure on your chest, which you also might imagine as a person sitting on you and crushing you. Yikes.