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Non-Frightening SP Hallucination

by John
(Boston, MA)

The last time I had sleep paralysis, I think my brain was actually asleep, though my eyes were open. I was sleeping on my side, face toward an open window, and across the street there's a red brick church.


In my dream, I was going around about my business with this bright image of the red-brick church underneath a blue sky -- sideways! -- superimposed upon my field of view.

It was mildly disturbing but a rather calm dream. Funny enough, in my dream I didn't recognize the image as being anything familiar, even though it was the view outside my real-life bedroom window (albeit sideways).

I talked to some people about my "vision problem," and had just about resigned myself to the idea that this image had somehow been burned onto my retina due to some kind of accident or something. It was certainly a major visual disability, but I figured it could have been worse: at least I could still see some things around the bright image, and as these things go, it wasn't an unpleasant image to have to see in front of me for the rest of my life; it was just a sideways church underneath a bright blue sky.

Not too bad, could be worse. I woke up and realized what had happened, and just laughed and laughed.

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Welcome! This site is continuously being created by students of Dr. William C. Dement's Sleep And Dreams course at Stanford University.

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