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It happens to me all the time... But I'm not scared anymore!

by Lam
(Montreal, Canada)

Hi there. I experience sleep paralysis on a relatively regular basis. Most of the time, my body just becomes paralysed while my mind is fully alert, and I don't feel any "evil" presences. However when I first started having them, I would feel those presences quite often: demonic laughters (male and female), footsteps in my room while I'm being pinned down by some kind of hellish animal or dog, feeling the breath of that hellish animal, etc.


My answer to those "presences" was to pray. The more I would experience them, the more I would pray during the day. Anyways, I now go to mass and say my rosary regularly and ever since I started doing that, I'm still having the sleep paralysis from time to time, except that now, the "evil presences" are gone!

Today, I was a bit lazy and haven't said my rosary. That hasn't happened to me in quite some time. And guess what? I had a sleep paralysis episode where I could very strongly feel and hear that stupid hellish dog again. I haven't had such a bad episode in a very long time! As I was able to move again, the dog of course vanished. I then started reflecting about the whole experience and realised I hadn't said nor planned on saying the rosary that day.

I can experience sleep paralysis no matter what position I sleep in. However it looks as if my sleep paralysis episodes are not accompanied by evil presences on days when I have prayed whereas the evil presences manifest themselves when I become lazy with prayer. This is just what I have noticed about my own sleep paralysis experiences, I don't know if it would apply to everyone.

Although having sleep paralysis isn't fun, it's not something that scares me. Whenever it happens, I just say in my head the "Hail Mary" (I'm a Catholic) and it's usually just a matter of seconds for the paralysis to break, whether the paralysis is accompanied by the evil presences or not.

So prayer works for me! Hope my testimony can be helpful to some people.

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