“I looked at my right arm and willed it to move. I commanded it to move. It stayed put. When I tried to sit up or rollover nothing happened. I panicked. On the inside I was a twisting fury, but the shell of my body remained motionless. I gave up the struggle, overwhelmed by an intuition that if I tried any harder I would break through the shell and float away…
I now recognise this as a lucid dream, an hallucinatory state in the hinterlands of slumber where the mind is alert, but the body remains bound by the paralysis of sleep — the intersectionof dream life and reality.”
- Paul Broks, The Ghost Tree
The Sleep Paralysis Project is a collaborative cross platform project examining the phenomenon of sleep paralysis. As part of the 10th London Short Film Festival, Rich Pickings hosted the project’s launch with a short film and discussion event at Science Museum’s Dana Centre. Event guests included Dr Paul Broks, neuropsychologist and writer; Prof Christopher French, Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths, University of London’s Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit and Psychoanalyst David Morgan. Accompanied by a programme of some of the best experimental and live action shorts on the subject, the speakers each brought their own interpretation of the phenomenon, its causes and its cultural implications.
You can read a detailed account of the event and find links all films on the blog of the Sleep Paralysis Project, but below are some of the shorts that were screened, and some of the things that were said.
Hypnogogia from Louise Wilde on Vimeo.
“You’re in this state, you realise you can’t move, and you get a very strong sense of presence. You feel certain that there is someone, or something in the room with you and whatever that thing or person is they mean you no good at all. they’re evil, in some cases a pure evil…
Very often these episodes are associated with hallucinations. These might be visual (you might see lights moving around in the room, dark shadows, grotesque monstrous forms); they might be auditory (you might hear footsteps, or voices, or mechanical sounds); they might be tactile (you might feel as if you are being touched, or as if someone is holding you tightly, or as if someone is dragging you out of the bed. Sometimes these can turn into full blown out of body experiences.”
- Christopher French, Professor of Psychology
ABDUCTEES from PAUL VESTER on Vimeo.
“If you’ve had these experiences, and particularly if you’re having them on a repeated basis, and you’re thinking ‘I don’t understand it, I want an expaination’… if you then read one of these books by any of the self-proclaimed UFO experts you then think ‘That’s it! That’s what happened to me! That explains my experience.’ And you may think that what you should then do is try to recover that memory… so you go to see a hypnotherapist who specialises in regression. And unfortunately, the use of hypnosis to try and recover repressed memories is actually likely to provide the ideal context for the production of false memories.”
- Christopher French, Professor of Psychology
Hum (trailer) from Emily&Anne on Vimeo.
“People take symbols from wherever they can… the dwarf, the hag – probably from fairy stories – represent an oppressive force keeping you down. Something in your mind that prevents you from being free.”
- David Morgan, Psychoanalyst
The Sleep Paralysis Project is supported by a Wellcome Trust Arts Award. To find out more about the project and the phenomenon, visit: www.thesleepparalysisproject.org.
