When filmmaker Carla MacKinnon started waking up several times a week unable to move, with the sense that a disturbing presence was in the room with her, she didn't call up her local ghost hunter. She got researching.
Now, that research is becoming a short film and multiplatform art project exploring the strange and spooky phenomenon of sleep paralysis. The film, supported by the Wellcome Trust and set to screen at the Royal College of Arts in London, will debut in May.
Sleep paralysis happens when people become conscious while their muscles remain in the ultra-relaxed state that prevents them from acting out their dreams. The experience can be quite terrifying, with many people hallucinating a malevolent presence nearby, or even an attacker suffocating them. Surveys put the number of sleep paralysis sufferers between about 5 percent and 60 percent of the population.
Her questions led her to talk with psychologists and scientists, as well as to people who experience the phenomenon. Myths and legends about sleep paralysis persist all over the globe, from the incubus and succubus (male and female demons, respectively) of European tales to a pink dolphin-turned-nighttime seducer in Brazil.
Is it worth losing your immortal soul to have sex with a demon? Depends on the demon, I guess:
I think I'd definitely be in trouble if a succubus showed up looking like Coco Austin.
3 comments:
Just think of Iced Tea or whatever his name is hitting that. That ought to cure your problem. ;-)
@Murphy's Law: technically I specified a succubus that looks like Coco. ;-)
As a narcoleptic, I'm familiar with sleep paralysis. But I must say I've never seen THAT during an episode!
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