Member-only story
There are many who sincerely believe they’ve experienced visits from long-dead loved ones, demons coming to snatch their souls, or space aliens coming to abduct them for experiments in orbiting spacecraft. These experiences may also involve complete paralysis, difficulty breathing, or the feeling their soul is being sucked out of their body, leading to confusion, anxiety, and fear.
What they all have in common is that they occur when someone is falling asleep or waking up. Indeed, the term “nightmare” comes from “mare”, which is Old English for a goblin or demon that rides on people when they’re asleep, causing harm and terror. Aliens are just the latest modern cultural version of ghosts and demons.
A modern understanding has to do with the effects of the molecule Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) produced by the brain’s Pineal gland while the body paralyzes itself and the remnants of the conscious mind persist during the transition from wakefulness to sleeping or from sleeping to wakefulness.
I will not dive into the objective scientific mechanisms in neuroscience or…
