Sleep Paralysis

Has anyone ever experienced this phenomenon? I'm pretty sure I did early this morning before waking and it scared the shit out of me.

From the good people at WedMD:

"Sleep paralysis is a feeling of being conscious but unable to move. It occurs when a person passes between stages of wakefulness and sleep. During these transitions, you may be unable to move or speak for a few seconds up to a few minutes. Some people may also feel pressure or a sense of choking. Sleep paralysis may accompany other sleep disorders such as narcolepsy. Narcolepsy is an overpowering need to sleep caused by a problem with the brain's ability to regulate sleep."

I had a similar experience. I had a feeling of being conscious yet unable to move, mostly. For some reason I thought I was scratching my head and became a little freaked out when there was no sensation to the scratching. I believe now I was actually scratching the pillow underneath me, if that's even possible. I definitely had trouble breathing or at least I thought I did. It was like I couldn't catch my breath and I was convinced that I was suffering some kind of fatal medical condition. I mentally willed myself to breath or move to no avail for maybe a minute. Terror doesn't even begin to describe how I felt throughout this ordeal. Finally I was able to breath normally again and move. I got up off the sofa (my normal sleeping place) and relocated to my bed without any further incidents.

Since I don't have narcolepsy and this has never happened before I'm not really worried about it. Most likely, from the reading I've done, in my case it was probably from a lack of sleep or the alcohol I ingested last night. Still, it was a horrifying experience that I don't want repeated any time soon.

It's also interesting to note that previous, less medically advanced cultures, thought that sleep paralysis was the result of demons or the devil sitting on your chest. Modern scientists conclude that some reported alien abduction encounters and ghost encounters could simply be explained away as a sleep paralysis episode. Who knows, maybe I was possessed by the devil, something that a few people who know me wouldn't dispute! Interesting stuff.

So, dear reader, has this phenomenon happened to you and if so what was your experience?

The Skirvin Hotel

One of the first places I took J. on his site seeing tour (I use that term loosely) of Oklahoma City was to the Skirvin Hotel. I did a little digging for purposes of this blog and got some specific information on the history of the hotel:

The Skirvin Hotel was build by a man named William Balser "Bill" Skirvin, a Land Run participant and wealthy oilman who moved his family to Oklahoma City in 1906. In 1910 he began building the hotel on one of his properties at 1st and Park Avenue. The original 10 story hotel opened on September 26th, 1911. Over the years the building changed hands between various investors where is was remodeled many times, upgraded to 14 floors, and eventually closed in 1989. In 2002, the city of Oklahoma City acquired the property where it was renovated and restored to it's currently glory and reopened on Feburary 26th, 2007.

This specific information I did not know. All I could tell J. about the structure was that it was old, had been renovated, and that there was supposedly a ghost that haunted the hotel. A bartender at the Red Piano Lounge inside the hotel filled us in on the details of the ghost.

According to legend, Bill Skirvin had an affair with a maid named Effie. She became pregnant, and to avoid a scandal, Skirvin locked her in one of the 10th floor rooms, the top floor at the time. Here she remained lonely and desolate even after childbirth. It is said to avoid her prison, she jumped to her death from her window with her infant in her arms! Supposedly today people claim to hear a crying infant throughout the night in their hotel rooms or other strange happenings such as sightings of Effie, items moving about on their own, and strange noises. Even the New York Knicks blamed a haunted night at the Skirvin Hotel for a loss in Oklahoma City to the Thunder.

Who knows if any of this is true since the apparent suicide wasn't reported in the papers at the time. It does make a fascinating story to think about when visiting the Skirvin Hotel. For more accounts of Skirvin hauntings click here.