Intense Sleep Paralysis

by Addie
(Seattle)

I'm 19, and when I was 17 I went to work at a Kenyan orphanage for a month. One night, I woke up and saw many of the children in the room with me (they weren't allowed in there), and they were being very quiet and sneaky. I meant to get up and ask what they were doing and take them all back to bed, but I found that I was unable to, I couldn't move. They walked around for a very long time, blending in with the dark walls, and I began to doubt if they were real. After a while I found I was able to move, and I looked down only to see a tiny naked baby next to me, on top of the blanket. For some reason, a huge panic gripped me--she wasn't breathing. I stared and stared and stared unable to move again, or do anything about it, trying to watch her little body for signs of life. I could see every little finger and fingernail, though the longer I stared, the more I realized that it was very dark in the room, and she might have only been a large fold my blanket, not a baby at all. I was terrified. Finally, minutes later, I found I could move and breathe normally again.

But she didn't go away, or at least my paranoia didn't. Careful not to touch her, I slipped off the other edge of the bed. I was so scared of seeing a dead baby on my bed that I crawled to her side, looking up at her from the floor, trying to see her eyes or her face or something that would give me a clue whether she was alive or even real. It was too dark. I stood up very slowly, completely panicking, and lit a candle, holding it up to her.

She was a fold in the blanket.

Feeling like an idiot, I went to back to bed.

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