This troper happened to have gallbladder removal surgery in '07. The actual surgery and going under was fine, but I woke up outside of the surgery room via a nurse hitting my arm asking 'who are you, where are you supposed to be?'. While I was on a hospital bed. Apparently entirely abandoned. Without being hooked up to pain meds. The pain was so intense I was trying as hard as I could to scream, but after a few minutes just passed out from the pain with my mouth gaped open in horror.

This troper is the queen of nightmares. The next three are me. I have several, including a recurring nightmare where I'm alone somewhere for some reason and then I hear the door slam shut behind me for some reason and the same man is stood there, he has a gun and shoots something important to me at the time and then holds me hostage for a different reason each time. People knock on the door and I can't tell them what's wrong and I always wake up as he's in the middle of talking, usually screaming.

Another one I have that is recurring is that I go out somewhere with my friends on the bus, there is a TV on the bus where a "psychological expert" is breaking down the profile of a prolific serial stalker and rapist working in the area I'm visiting at the time, but I always know the expert is really the rapist. I go and have my fun with my friends in the town I'm visiting and then go to get the bus home. The expert is stood by the bus stop being recorded by live TV and I've had a bit to drink and I'm feeling brave and tipsy so I'm being quite loud and giggly with my friends. The bus pulls up as the interviewer asks the expert what kind of girls the suspect is focusing on, I get on the bus and we all agree to moon him "for a joke". He says "Girls like that", and then stops the interview and gets on the bus, sitting behind us. We all realise what's happening and get really unnerved. I invite them all over to my house for the night and we got off and start walking to my house and he gets off too. For some reason he gets distracted so we take a shortcut and think we lose him. We're sat in my living room, having some snacks before going to sleep and one of my friends says they see movement in the garden, we look out and he is stood in my garden, but doesn't know we've seen him. We all hide and turn the light off and crawl upstairs. We look out of an upstairs window and can't see him, so we watch TV up in my room for a little bit before going to sleep. Then we hear a thump on the window. And another one. And another one. One friend goes down to see what's happening. There's a sound of smashing glass and a scream and all hell breaks loose with people hiding and screaming and running. He comes in and kills all my friends and I am hiding under the bed shaking... but I must not scream.

My final one was the worst, it's not recurring, but it happened when I was sleeping in a tent with a guy I was trying to impress and a few other people. Apparently I started breathing really shallowly and speedily, loud enough to wake the guy up next to me. I then grabbed onto his sleeping bag and starting breathing louder, shallow, heavy loud breathing. Then my legs started flailing. I was tossing and turning and he touched me to try and snap me out of it and I slapped him off. I was properly running in my sleeping bag unconsciously. I was then screaming in my sleep and he came back and had to shake me awake. I woke up shaking and crying and couldn't stop for a good few hours. Fun times. I'd been dreaming I was being chased through a forest and wherever I turned it was exactly the same and I knew if the person caught me I would die.

I have occasionally had the urge to just scream at the sky and have done so often in my dreams, but I never am able to really scream in real life for fear of looking like a lunatic.

During/after my operation to have my tonsils removed(I'm not really clear) I woke up and began screaming and hallucinating. I had visions of sharks holding down my arms and legs and this weird, hooded figure shoving its hand down my throat and saying in a creepy/sweet/pedo voice "Now don't be afraid... This will only hurt a lot! *Evil scream that sounded like voice of the legion* ". I later found out I had started screaming so loudly people could hear me all down the hall "I can't breathe! Help me! OH MY GOD, NO! DON'T KILL ME!" I swear on my left testicle it's all true.

This Troper would like to thank you for that left testicle remark.

Yeah, getting your tonsils is trippy as hell. Everyone I know who has had their's removed had hallucinations, including myself. I kept seeing a little black shadowy thing that looked like a mix between a human and a spider crawling just in the corner of my vision. And I was alone all night, in the dark. Worse of all I couldn't scream because my throat hurt too much.

A few years back, I was having an operation to get a tooth taken out (long story). Everything was going fine...until someone's car hit a telephone pole outside, knocking out power in the building. Just for a few seconds, I was semi-consious. So I saw the doctors in a state of near-panic, holding CELL PHONES and flash lights to provide light--luckily, the anesthesia was still in effect, and I went back under after a few seconds. But that's little consolation, considering I saw people sticking blades and needles in my gums, was more or less paralyzed, and the room was almost completely dark. To this day I'm even nervous about laughing gas at the dentist's office.

One time this troper had a dream in which he was in his bed, everything is normal, but for some reason everything moved extremely slow so that he could see a path me hand makes while moving in the air, and every time he tries to get out of bed he wakes back up in bed (think Szayel's death except no pain and stuck in one point). He could only whisper help so that someone would wake him up forcefully. Fortunately, he did get better, but not without a mental scar.

This might be a common sort of dream. A few months ago this troper had a very similar experience. All night he kept dreaming, and waking for a split second, then falling back into the dream. And every time he tried to get up (while bizarre, frightening hallucinations were going on all around me) he'd rewake up for a split second, back in bed, no hallucinations, then immediately fall asleep (He was very tired due to the lack of sleep this dream caused) once again to once again be trying to get up amongst hallucinations. Every few minutes at most he woke up. Like in your dream, everything was also sort of in slow motion during the hallucination parts. Very disturbing dream to have.

This troper had something like this happen a couple of times in a row a month or two back. I think I was falling asleep and waking up a lot of times in a row, all really fast, but it felt like I'd spent an infinite amout of time staring at my bedroom door.

This Troper has had the 'infinite recursion' dream within a dream thing happen to me often but luckily I'm a lucid dreamer so I regard them as more an annoyance than a horror, my usual solution to them is to conjure up a jetpack and use that to rocket myself out until I literally break the cycle

This Troper had a very negative experience with wisdom teeth. Not counting the fact that he had all four of them ripped out at 15, the surgery had been botched in one side of his mouth, and nerve damage was inflicted. For the first two days after, his mouth was completely packed with gauze to absorb the blood oozing through the stitches, rendering him completely incapable of talking, eating, or even sleeping due to the pain that moving his mouth would cause. No matter how much he wanted to scream. The few days after, he still couldn't talk.

Whenever this troper was sick with the flu, she'd often be semi-comatose until healed; during one of those groggy days, she felt like she was slowly suffocating like she was buried in sand or under a pile of corpses. This was often accompanied by throat constriction and, of course, the inability to scream out loud for help.

Would this count? As an 8 year old, this troper experienced what could only be described as hallucinations similar to a bad trip. After drinking iced tea. At two in the morning, she woke up to find green geometric shapes floating around her room, as well as a pulsing headache. Wandering over to other rooms made the shapes change form and colour. Triangles became screaming classmates became the 13th}} Jason and his chainsaw. And she couldn't fall back asleep, no matter how hard she tried. She just huddled in the corner and cried.

This troper is a violinist, and had a dream where she couldn't move her arm. She woke in a panic, and had lost blood to everything below the elbow. There were many seconds of pure fear as she tried to get the blood flowing again. It worked, but it was scary.

Happened to this Troper, only she is a pianist. *Shudders*

Quite often, This Troper has very short dreams when he's just beginning to fall asleep. In the dreams, I either smash into something small and hard, fall a long way, or find somebody smash my head with a spiked club. After that, I usually fall to the ground and then either feel like I'm falling a long way into my bed, or I shiver violently. Both make me wake up. It is really scary at times.

Don't be scared. That's just a hypnagogic jerk. It's a result of bodily paralysis as you drift off, causing an odd dream-like state. We all get them at some point.

It can be scary; especially getting them every night for months, sometimes two or three per night. They're caused by (among other things) stress and lack of sleep, and the recurring heart-poundingly abrupt awakenings exacerbate both problems so that it can become a cycle feeding on itself. Not fun.

So THAT'S what it's called! I've only had that once or twice when asleep at home...but it happens all the time when I fall asleep in class. I'll be at my desk, my head in my arms on the table, when I'll suddenly just convulse for no reason. It sure as hell wakes me up, but it's got to be WEIRD seeing me do that. I only get the feeling of falling when I'm sleeping at home, though. And I don't find it scary, because of Dane Cook's "Gay Crab Dream" sketch.

It started 3 years ago with this troper staying up late at 1 PM, through friend's recommendation and curiousity, watching Silent Hill - No Escape for the first time. A sudden blackout turned everything pitch black right at the 1:17 mark of the movie's first part, severely damaged this troper's mind. This troper conjured all his braveness and made it into his bed, only to have the worst sleep ever, where the disturbing scenes of the movie turned into an eternal loop of nightmare sequences that went through the trooper's mind. When the troper finally woke up, he realized he was hospitalized. The doctors later explained that he just went through an extreme case of stress-induced fever and almost died...

This Troper will occasionally have sleep paralysis, often accompanied by a sense of urgency that says I HAVE TO WAKE UP NOW. After struggling to wake up for several freaky minutes, I try to scream to get someone's attention so that they can come shake me awake. Naturally, I can't scream. Sometimes I have half-dreams that give me a sense of false hope, where I manage to regain some movement by sleepwalking, and stumble around my house like a zombie trying to get help. I still can't scream. I can moan, but not loudly enough to wake anyone up.

A good way to break sleep paralysis is to change your breathing pattern: start breathing slower with deeper breaths. Usually after 10-20 seconds your body realizes you're awake and breaks the sleep paralysis.

Sleep Paralysis is pretty bad. Sometimes it happens when I'm face down breathing into my pillow, so it feels like I'm smothering myself. Not that serious, since I probably just spent a few hours in that position, but severely alarming to half wake up to it and not be able to move to a better position.

This Troper once woke up only to realize he was still dreaming only to wake up again... in another dream. And again. And again. Always the same scenario, waking up in bed, realizing he was dreaming, waking up. At the end of it he was desperately clawing at his eye-lids, trying to force them to open up to the real world and to wake up. Then he woke up for real, eyes still intact but with his arms numb, aching after hours of trying to move them. This Troper is completely terrified of what would have happened if the sleep paralyzis ''hadn't'' worked. And much less inclined to consider Morpheus a hero.

This troper had a similar experience, but in the dream she got up and walked into the other room before waking up again, and so on. She eventually managed to force herself awake out of a dream state, which was quite an experience in itself.

This Troper also had an experience of constant "waking up" within the same dream. Only every time she woke up, she accidentally killed a kitten, and realized she was dreaming and tried to wake herself up. Only to be back in her bed within the dream, thinking she was awake, and killing the same kitten a different way. Over and over.

It also happened to this troper after she heard of the death of a girl she once knew. It wasn't really about the girl herself, but this troper kept dreaming about people like friends or relatives dying in front of her, and every time someone died she 'woke up' into the next scenario, knowing that the previous one was a dream but thinking that this one is reality. At some point she was afraid to go to sleep.

This troper's also been through a similar experience. He woke up to realize he was in sleep paralysis. At this point, he couldn't see anything. It had been years since he could remember how he used to force himself out of it, and at nearly 2 minutes in, was becoming terrified. Trying to force his arms out, he felt them slowly but surely moving. They got to about a 20 degree angle before he re-awoke to realize they were back at his sides. This time, he immediately moved his arms in a way to roll over, to try and fall out of bed; maybe that'd force him out of it. After a quarter turn, he realized he was flat on his bed again. Slowly, he'd make progress getting closer and closer toward his computer chair, to pull himself up, each time reappearing on his bed again. To make it worse, he could see now. Countless experiences go by for what seemed like forever, until finally, he did something different. Rather than move his arms out, he moved them upward, so that they'd reach out in front of his chest. This time, it worked. Turns out, this troper fell asleep with his hands snugly and warmly tucked into the sides of his pants.

This is an oddly common type of dream (see the second example on this page, too). Its really bizarre to have a dream where you continuously are put back at the start after only a few seconds. I wonder what in our brains makes us do that...

This Troper has had a few times where he was on a breathing tube. All times were waking up after a sudden extreme health crisis; once after throwing up blood and blacking out, once from hepatic encephalopathy (brain shorts-out from a bad liver allowing a buildup of toxins) and once after a liver transplant. All three times the Troper was trapped in a bed with no ability to use his voice for several days. Pens and paper were recruited after motor skills returned.

This troper occasionally experiences sleep paralysis when dozing overday rather than sleeping properly. He is aware of not being able to move unable to rectify it except through desperate attempts to wake up, inevitably when he does so ends up with his heartrate having shot through the roof and it creeps him the fuck out every time it happens.

I was eleven when I had my first experience with sleep paralysis; I thought I was dead. Not helping matters any was the fact that I'd just come out of a rather disturbing dream involving the time-lapse decay of an elderly woman who had just fallen several stories to her death in a deserted farmhouse. (Yes, I was a rather odd child.)

This troper's best friend had the exact same thing happen to him, although at the time he believed it to be a strange dream. His friend called it the worst nightmare he has ever had.

This troper feels better now. I had no idea what that was but it kept happening to me and it's so frightening. I'm glad I'm not alone.

Sleep Paralysis is a bitch. The best thing to do is stay calm and ride it out, which this troper can normally do. However, he was in this state once and dreamt that he saw the shadow of someone with a gun approaching and could have sworn he felt something ''hard'' on the back of his head. All bets were off at that point, even though the hard thing turned out to be the bed frame.

Really? This troper experiences it occasionally (once a year or so) and kind of enjoys it. It feels kind of terribly uncomfortable to try to wiggle out of it, but hey. One time this troper didn't try to struggle my way out, and instead he was greeted with a horrible loud ringing in his ears. Weird stuff, but not bad.

This troper once had sleep paralysis, and vaguely remembering that it usually lasted for around 5 minutes, decided to count off the seconds to pass the time. He awoke at 6 seconds.

This troper has had a couple instances of SP- the first time, he was stuck for about thirty seconds as the walls around him started shifting and warping as if the room was going to collapse, and some tall, pale humanoid thing rose up from the foot of his bed. The second time, there were hornets crawling in and around his sheets. Needless to say, the moment this troper got up he was beating the living crap out of his bedspread.

Sleep paralsis is sort of enjoying to this troper. Then again, most of his dreams are perverted..

This Troper has some experience with lucid dreams, and has heard that the way to break out of sleep paralysis is to try to wiggling your fingers and toes first and to stay calm. Once you can move your fingers/toes, the paralysis should wear off.

This troper finds she does some of her most creative thinking while in sleep paralysys. I find myself thinking "Gee, I can't wait until I can start moving again so I can write this down!"

This troper gets sleep paralysis when under a lot of stress or when trying to stay up late to finish a project. Not as terrifying as before now that he understand what it is, but still annoying none the less. One time he had sleep paralysis, combined with four or five false wake ups... it sucked.

This troper had such an experience the other night. She dreamed that someone was trying to wake her, and it jolted her out of her dream before the sleep paralysis wore off. It was an AndIMustScream moment in that she tried to say that she wasn't ready to get up yet but was unable to talk or move or anything. Aside from that, though, not nearly as freaky as she would've imagined it; her thoughts were actually something along the line of reminding herself to write about it here if/when it wore off. Happened again later the same night. It was surprisingly kind of fun.

This troper only tends to get sleep paralysis on occasions when he falls asleep on his side. On these occasions, I wake up and for some reason, ''really'' want to roll over on my back, except I can't. And even though I should know what's happening, and that it'll eventually wear off, all logic goes out the window and I feel seriously scared until I can move again.

Don't feel badly. In most cases of waking sleep paralysis, the part of the brain that has to do with the fight or flight response is highly active, giving most people a feeling of being in a very dire situation. Even if it's very innocuous, this creates a very real AndIMustScream situation for most who experience it. I know this troper felt that way. Doesn't help the situation that you literally cannot scream no matter how hard you try.

Whenever this troper gets sleep paralysis she is fully awake and she doesn't hallucinate at all, but every time she even tries to move, even if it's just a bit of twitching, EXCRUCIATING pain will shot down my whole body that will last for a good 10 seconds. It's so painful it even brings tears to my eyes and I have clench my teeth to stop myself from biting my tongue. I don't know if this is common with sleep paralysis though.

This trooper's first experience with sleep paralysis involved waking up, looking out my window at the soft white light emanating from the sky. Then, an enormous hand descended from the clouds. While hallucinating seeing the hand through my window, I simultaneously saw the hand pass into another kid's room, and lift him, screaming, into the sky. I was terrified, and wanted to move, or call out, but couldn't.

This troper first had sleep paralysis years ago. I was having a dream where all my family were being killed. My mum and dad blown up by a bomb, and my brother machine-gunned in front of me. I was lying in bed (in the dream), and there was a hole in the ceiling. A plane flew overhead, and it dropped a bomb on me. I saw it falling, it hit me and exploded. I was then paralyzed for a few seconds, but it seemed like an eternity, unable to open my eyes. I thought I was really dead.

This troper felt a hand grab her by the ankle, while she was experiencing sleep paralysis, then drag her down, like it wanted to pull her under the bed. The worse part was the she couldn't even scream, not even make a sound, and no matter how much this troper struggled and hold onto the sheets, the hand still clutched her leg. She woke up a few seconds later, panting.

Another experience was when this troper was lying on the bed, stiff and unable to move, then she felt someone hug her from behind and she saw a black, surreal hand, from the corner of the eye, that rubbed her face a few seconds later, while a low, horrific voice spoke words that she couldn't understand.

Yeah, this troper thinks he had expierance with this once. He was laying in bed with his eyes closed after waking up, and lay there a second to try and fall asleep, but couldn't, and decided to get up. Except thatdidn't work either. He couldn't open his eyes, no matter hard he tried, and I don't think his limbs worked either because he was freaking out, and he could not scream which made it much worse or flail. When he calmed down, he waited what felt like an agonizing 20 minutes, until he woke up. And what made it all worse? Throughout the whole time, his brother and friend who slept over were talking and watching T.V., and I could not ask them for help. He was lying there, helpless, and they were soo close, and HE COULD HEAR THEM!!! He also remembers attributing it to pink eye, despite not having any reason to or not being able to move or scream, but he was mostly worried about going blind, since his eyelids wouldn't open. When he told his brother, he shrugged and was a little shocked. This was when he was 7 and he was 9, so it was acceptable that he didnt understand how terrified he was of going blind or dying of starvation from never moving again. He also had a feeling of deju vu about the show, but that happens often. At least this only happened once.

As someone who experiences sleep paralysis frequently (''frequently''), I've learnt a thing or two about it. It used to scare me, but now it's more of an uneasy annoyance. The causes are already well established, but let me tell you how it feels: while you feel awake, most of your brain is still in sleep cycles, so you're not fully conscious. You can't open your eyes, and you can't think straight. You're not fully aware of where you are or how you got here, you just know that you're somewhjat conscious and you can't move - it's a lot like being in utero, for anyone that remembers. For myself, it seems to happen more frequently in certain conditions. If you're curious and want to experience it, it occurs roughly 1/15 times when sleeping in a chair, slumped over a desk (or a tall stool) with your forehead resting on your folded arms (I find it more comfortable to press my forehead into the soft inside of my elbow). This will mostly be in the middle of the day, often when you're tired and are taking a break from work. The lower you can get your head, the better - but watch out for waking up with a stiff neck. You can't snap out of it on your own, becuase you're not conscious enough to summon the willpower. You either have to ride it out until your body loosens up, or you can be jumped out of it if someone else wakes you up, or you hear a sudden loud noise. That seems to kick your body back into action.There have also been a few times where a nest of wasps exploded over my bed, and I couldn't do anything, and most recently, a cat jumping up, right next to my head. When I regained control, I punched it in the face, and hit my light instead.

It's not that bad if it's just that. The worse part of Sleep Paralysis is when you enter the black shadows' realm. ''When you start seeing, hearing and feeling unreal entities.''( There are a few cases above. Those are 100 per cent RealLife HighOctaneNightmareFuel.)

Happens to me about once a month, and I can usually see a still, yet blurry image of whatever is in front of my face. Half the time I'll actually be paralyzed -- the other half, I'll hallucinate sensory input as if I were getting up and moving around, but the image doesn't change (I'll be feeling the bathroom door but still seeing my bedroom ceiling).

By reading these Troper Tales and doing some research This Troper has just realized that she got Sleep Paralysis as a little girl. After realizing she was dreaming, she awoke to closed eyelids that wouldn't open even though she knew she was awake. She didn't panic though, because it didn't last long. This Troper's just glad she didn't have a nightmare beforehand.

This troper has the fortunate habit of being able to break sleep paralysis 99.9% of the time, on a wim.

In a similar incident, this one ended up elbowing his girlfriend in the chest. Oops...

This Troper has experienced sleep paralysis several times, and in each case was terrified that he would start hallucinating and be unable to stop it. (That's what extensive reading does to you, unfortunately; you know exactly how a bad situation can get worse.) Thankfully it hasn't happened yet, but the paralysis on its own is weird enough.

This is very similar to how this troper's friend described having a seizure, complete with the fear and helplessness.

Rowan}} This troper has had a seizure before, and it is very much like that. I stood up too quickly after taking a bath, passed out and hit my head. At least that's what I assume happened, because the next thing I remember after standing is being in the dark, with my entire body shaking and shuddering and being unable to stop it or even really understand what was going on.

This troper has focal seizures which leave her immobilized and mostly mute. I'm fully conscious but pretty much paralyzed other than a few twitches. This is made even more fantastic by the hallucinations of moving walls and patterns, distorted perception of time and the overwhelming feelings of fear and hopelessness. I can't call out and most people don't even realize I'm having a problem until I'm five minutes into the damn thing.

This troper's seizures are preceded by a full minute of mental horror. I get a feeling of panic and impending doom, hear voices, am unable to talk, and finally my body tenses up out of my control before I finally black out.

This Troper: My seizure was extremely scary and preceded by a full aura across my right eye. I sat down on the floor and started twisting and couldn't stop and then I blacked out. The last thing I heard before I blacked out was my mom screaming "HOLY SHIT, SHE'S HAVING A SEIZURE! CALL 911!" My mom told me later that I was jerking around and one of my eyes were bulging out of my head and I threw up a little bit. Luckily she knew to roll me onto my side so I didn't choke on my vomit. The bad thing was she thought she should put her finger in my mouth so I wouldn't bite my tongue. I bit her instead, quite hard. The next thing I knew, I was coming to and the medics were coaxing me to move up on the stretcher.

This troper had a minor arm operation and was drugged. I have a vague recollection of opening my eyes halfway through. I ''could'' talk and my parents were in the room, but they ''ignored everything''.

This troper once had a case of being so afraid in bed he could literally not move when he was awakening out of a dream and this human shadow appeared at the foot of his bed with piercing red eyes. It was the first time he cried in pure fear since he was a child.

This would be sleep paralysis.

This Troper is a little surprised by all the horror stories about sleep paralysis. He's experienced it plenty of times, and it's really mostly just annoying. Especially when you know what it is.

''If you don't,'' then you find yourself as immobile as a statue, having no idea what the hell is happening or when it will end (something that isn't supposed to happen in the first place is happening, so the fact that it'll end in a few minutes is ''not'' obvious.) Bonus points if you get hallucinations that look and sound as real as the walls and ceiling around you and you can do ''nothing'' about things that far outweigh anything on the NightmareFuel pages moving toward your immobile form. I could see it eventually coming to be no big deal if nothing like that ''ever'' happened and you just got used to the fact that once every few weeks (or however often) your body was going to wake up about thirty seconds or so after you did.

Even if you do, it can be the most horrible experience in the world, if you have a phobia of not being able to control yourself.

Averted/subverted by @/{{Azreal}} because every time he's suffered from sleep paralysis, he ENJOYED it. Mostly because there were no nightmares or bad hallucinations, just a plesant feeling of immobility. Which he fought against only because it was FUN! Sadly, it hasn't happened in a few years.

This fairly new troper was prescribed a fairly heavy opiate to deal with pain in his leg until it was able to be operated on ... and was told to watch out for warning signs like chest pressure, extreme sloth/inability to move (which could be from an overdose or toxicity), and erratic breathing. Unfortunately, vicodin seems to give him sleep paralysis ... imagine waking up and being unable to move (which was specefically given as signal that you might be getting ready to die), struggling/panic that causes increased heart rate (and therefore chest pressure and shortness of breath) ... and not screaming for help SIMPLY BECAUSE IT DIDN'T CROSS THE MIND. Bad juju, to say the least.

When this troper was about ten years old, he was admitted to a psychiatric facility, and promptly pumped full of tranquilizers. They were supposed to put him to sleep, but due to the other four drugs he was on at the time, they completely restricted his movement, but left him awake and aware. Then to top it all off the drugs created a distorted perception of time, resulting in forty-eight hours feeling like several months.

How does several months without sleep feel? Inquiring minds want to know.

You'd be dead, probably.

This troper frequently has sleep paralysis experiences which can be pretty disturbing. Sometimes they involve the vivid feeling of suffocating or drowning(perhaps her worst PrimalFear) or drifting around uncontrollably or falling from some great height, and though this troper is an atheist, her vivid religious-studies-inspired imagination sometimes makes her think she's in Hell until she finally awakes. (And she also experiences a milder form of sleep paralysis when just barely dozing off, but it's generally more annoying than frightening.)

This troper dreamt that she was walking through a crowd of people- when suddenly they all stopped talking, turned around and stared at her. The vision of so many sets of eyes were still visible as she woke up, and was unable to move for the next five minutes.

This troper also has sleep paralysis, and it occurs once a year or so. It has been happening ever since she was a child, so now when she experiences it she knows exactly what is going on. That, however, does not make it any less terrifying. Especially since it is extremely unpleasant and causes her to panic regardless of how often it has occurred. The hallucinations certainly don't help either--dark figures lurking in her room, loud noises and voices, thousands of buzzing bees... not very relaxing or fun at all. It tends to happen when she's slept for too long (or too irregularly) and when she sleeps on her back. And there's just something about laying on your back and not being able to move that makes you feel horribly vulnerable.

Same troper here, with a more recent tale about sleep paralysis. This one had me trying to scream out for help, but a Narmishly funny occurrence made things slightly better. I have a {{Kuroshitsuji}} wall scroll of Sebastian and Ciel, and while I was hallucinating, their faces turned into skulls. It was frightening at first, but now I find it kind of hilarious.

This troper can't compare to any of these other stories, but... I once fell under a form of laryngitis, which meant that within a day and a half, I literally could not speak for the pain it would cause me. It truly drove me nuts, especially since the disease also left me bedridden for a few days, meaning I could not leave my bed and I could not speak... Oh! Did I forget to mention that it started on my birthday?

This troper can remember three right now... the oldest, or so he thinks, was back in grammar school. It was shortly after reading, in class, a book about... I think a donkey who finds a wishing stone and at one point turns into a rock? Well, that night, I had a horrible nightmare of a man eating rock chasing ME. I woke up with my little heart pounding and terrified that rocks were going to eat me. The second was all the more horrifying, to me, for when it happened -- the night of Christmas Eve, mere hours between receiving presents at my grandparents' place and when I would open my presents at home. I was swimming, in the dream, at the pool of a friend of the family, and then my brother tried to drown me. I woke up gasping for air, even though in the dream I had been trying to scream. The third was another one during junior high, possibly before the drowning dream, possibly after... I was going around my daily routine, unaware that I was turning into a woman until, very awkwardly I went to use a bathroom. At the time, it was a nightmare that left me screaming... but now there's something about transformations that takes a lot of the sting out of remembering THAT one.

... I really want to find out what the last one is like so i can convince myself i am not transsexual.

''Pablo's Magic Pebble''. NightmareFuel-iest children's book ''ever''.

Can someone explain that book please? This page is literally the only result on Google.

This.

It looks like a Troper copied and pasted the line "Nightmare Fueligest kid's book ever", and put it on Wikipedia.

This troper now feels like a a total Jerkass, but the last nightmare did give him a Ranma 1/2 induced chuckle.

This troper was once woken from a nightmare by her mother who said she had been throwing herself about the bed and moaning in fear. The cause was a nightmare involving a popular swimming spot, alligators attacking the troper's younger brother and an inability to do anything about it. Said troper's mother then went to check on said younger brother and found him also having a nightmare... about being attacked by alligators at the same swimming spot.

This troper, back when he was 10, experienced a nightmare where he was locked in a dark interrogation room, being endlessly tortured by faceless EldritchAbomination in seek of answers to crime he has never committed. This troper then got awaken by a terrified mom, who later explained that she had a nightmare about being strapped on a wall and forced to observe his own son being tortured in the same settings as the troper's nightmare, unable to do anything...

This troper only seems to get sleep paralysis while ''under the covers.'' Go asphyxiation!

This troper occasionally feels a numbness throughout his body, usually in his bed, and automatically tries to move his arms whenever this happens. It may stem from a primal fear of becoming this, as he once read ''Sylvester and the Magic Pebble'' when he was a small child.

I recently had a bad trip due to some badly tainted marijuana. After the run-of-the-mill shakes and vomiting came the paralysis...then a slowing of time, loss of short-term, then long-term memory, an inability to remember concepts like "love" and "human", and finally a complete loss of identity. However, the worst of it was reserved for my close female friend...who had to keep herself calm while trying to convince me I wasn't dying/dead/imaginary. I may be a Troper, but that girl is a ''Trooper.''

Shrooms will do this to you if your trip goes bad; presumably so will any other psychedelic drug. That's given this particular troper a very healthy degree of respect for those substances, to the point of almost feeling ready to try a low-strength version of the very short-acting salvia two years after a bad shroom trip. Imagine time ceasing to exist, and realizing that your consciousness, which is almost destroyed but still self-aware, is completely stuck in that moment of non-time, forever. Of course, you can't imagine it unless you've experienced it, but this troper will never have trouble imagining the experience of someone trapped in eternity again.

This troper had one of the worst LSD trips of anyone he knew. For about fifteen minutes he believed he did not exist. Not that he was dead, or alone. Simply not there, even after he responded to other people. This doesn't really fit the trope, but during it and for a few months afterward he had a massive disconnect with everything he knew. Perspective's a bitch.

This troper was permanently turned off to the idea of shrooms after her boyfriend related an experience to her about a time he had a bad trip during which he became painfully aware of the passage of time acting on every person around him despite being exempt from it personally, until every person he looked at rotted in front of his eyes but was totally unaware, continuing to function despite putrefaction. He has yet to touch shrooms since.

Brain problems do not a happy person make. When This Troper was younger, middle school, there were problems with grades, homework, focus, paying attention, everything and anything that made school SCHOOL. Because we had reached the end of the rope, my parents started trying to find out what was wrong. So after a number of therapy sessions This Troper was taken to a hospital for an MRI. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. When I went in the first time, under a blanket and keeping my eyes closed (since I had opted to not be 'put to sleep'), I had in earplugs. Not even two minutes in my eyes opened and I was trying not to cry. I started begging them to let me come out without moving around too much, but they told me just to wait. In the middle session I begged them to put me to sleep during it, but the nurse said it would mean we would have to start the whole thing over. So they gave me the shot, and put headphones on me this time, playing the classical music station. Then, listening to Tchaikovsky, I started crying again (no sentimental reasons whatsoever. Just weird coincidence). But this time I couldn't move. It felt like I was drowning. I could barely breathe, the tears had gotten under the headphones in my ears (everything sounded like I was underwater), and worst of all I couldn't move any part of me. When it was over I could barely stand on my own. So now anytime I feel even slightly lethargic, it almost causes a panic attack. Oh and the MRI results? This Troper has ADD. Which could have been confirmed without the ordeal.

This troper's biggest fear is that this is that death is an eternal "And I Must Scream"

Thanks for the NightmareFuel.

Actually, the 'Fuel goes away if you imagine that Death might, just might, be like the one from Discworld... Considerate and quite fond of kittens. This troper hasn't been afraid of dying since he picked up his first Discworld book (which was Reaper Man, actually.)

I know! I've always thought that it would be so cool to meet him...

I've never been too scared of death ever since I read TheSandman. PerkyGoth girl, who is hot to boot! DontFearTheReaper indeed.

...This might change your mind: Okay, Death of the Endless--sweet, friendly and kind. Surely she'd be a very gentle sight to help ease you into death, right? She'd make you feel comforted and cared for in this likely traumatic moment, unafraid of whatever comes next. Now consider this---In the Sandman universe, hell exists. '''And every single soul in it was taken there by her.'''

You may also want to consider that in the Sandman universe, hell is a place you can just leave and presumably choose not to go to in the first place. Then again, most of the people there probably don't realize that.

This troper had a chilling revelation. There are two possibilities: either there is an afterlife or there isn't. Even though being in the afterlife (whatever it may be) is technically dead, you're still conscious and thinking, meaning you are "alive" in any meaningful sense. This means it boils down to two, more general, possibilities: either you will be conscious ''forever'' (i.e. you will subjectively experience an ''infinite length of time'' with all the excruciating boredom that goes with it) or your conscious will stop at some point. ''Forever''. Sort of like when you sleep, except you're never going to dream or wake up. Those are the only two possibilities, and there is no way out of it (and killing yourself only makes it happen sooner). It '''will''' happen to '''you'''. You're welcome.

Third option: Heaven. And given that this troper is the same as the one below (starting with "NightmareFuel?"), and is completely phobic about the first two options, if Heaven isn't available, then he'll take the fourth option: staying as a ghost.

5th option: Reincarnation

Hmm... this troper can get down with the second option. She didn't remember it before she was born.

Through the power of SCIENCE, it has been determined that, essentially, there really ARE 2 options: 1. Religious afterlife. 2. No afterlife, but because of the whole "everything will happen at some point" thing (especially if the universe doesn't collapse in on itself), you WILL live again, no matter how short that life is.

NightmareFuel? This troper has had the key put in the ignition and turned. A few years ago, he had a dream that culminated in his "death". Except that unlike most "die in the dream" dreams, he didn't immediately wake up. Cue four seconds of '''nothing'''. Just white void. And the implication that this was what Eternity would be. He would've screamed upon waking, but it took him a couple of seconds to realize that he needed to start breathing again.

This troper had a dream like that once. The dream ended when she was shot in the heart. Then there was nothing, just... Darkness. This troper was so afraid that she was dead that she didn't even try to wake up until it occurred to her that she might still be alive.

What if that's the trick to being dead? Nothingness, until you remember to wake up.

Here is the thing about death, though. If you believe death means "nothingness", then every scary thought you have about it is incorrect. Eternity, the void, these are concepts, they are "things". Nothingness is the opposite. No matter what you imagine death to be like, you are wrong. So if you imagine a terrifying void that never ends, you're way off-base; death won't be scary, it won't be eternal, it won't be anything. Furthermore, you can't possibly hope to imagine true nothingness. By definition it can't be done. So you might as well stop speculating about it and get on with life.

The thing is, this tropers greatest fear IS death meaning nothingness. Not being able to comprehend it makes it worse, because the ideas he has already are bad enough!

Having consulted numerous deceased individuals I have discovered that, conveniently enough, death is a very reliable cure for such anxiety.

This troper once woke up unable to breathe or utter any sound for no apparent reason. After futilely trying to force out a cry for help, I gave up and collapsed on the floor which jared whatever was keeping me form breathing loose. It felt like an eternity and only took a few minutes.

During this troper's (@/KurtmanJP) pre-teen years, I suffered from serious sleep paralysis where non existent sounds would block out my entire field of hearing and I couldn't scream and only move in slow motion. I felt salty tears rolling down my cheeks by the time it all ended and I almost never cry. Oddly enough, I can tolerate MRI studies but they sometimes make me queasy.

When this troper was about twelve or so, after going through a series of surgeries on his hip then returning to school where he is contantly picked on, once had an incident of a stress induced fever, while this isn't that bad as through most of it he could still move, one night he began to have a violent case of the shivers where he couldn't move and all and could just barely rasp out a call for his mother and the fear caused by the situation only served to worsen the condition where I could barely even move my mouth, about an hour later this troper's mother came in to see why I was still up, since the light and tele were still on at around 1 AM, only to find me mostly paralyzed and sweating enough to have drenched the sheets. Needless to say it was a scary incident for both of us, and thankfully the shakes went away fairly quickly after mother came in.

This troper cannot scream in her dreams. No matter what is happening, even if help is within earshot. Attempts at doing so lead to a very real feeling of something caught in the throat. Once, while only half asleep, she realized she could be heard outside of her dream and proceeded to moan until someone woke her up.

This troper has the exact same problem, except that she also cannot speak at all in a dream. It doesn't help though that most of her dreams are filled with tall buildings and very large cliffs that she has a bad tendency to fall off of...

I thought I was the only one. Good to know I'm not.

While it's not quite comparable to most of the other examples here, this troper frequently finds during nightmares that he is unable to scream and the harder he tries, the harder his mouth clamps shut.

When this troper was younger, he had a series of nightmares involving giant spiders. In one dream, I killed one and then a whole bunch of little spiders came out of its corpse. One of them grew into another giant spider and chased me for a bit before eating me. And yes, there was a stomach where I wasn't digested immediately. Probably my scariest dream ever, but in another dream I was able to kill them all. After writing this I now feel like I need a psychiatrist.

This troper has very long, complex, almost always unpleasant dreams every single night. Oh, and once discovered that you can feel pain in your dreams.

This first time troper had a dream where he ended up getting slowly cornered by a bear (don't laugh!). For whatever reason I could not scream or run or anything despite it being across a field from me. Woke up before it reached me but dang...

This troper got unconscious while falling off a horse once, twice while skiing and one last time while being suffocated during a Judo match (my fault, I didn't yield soon enough) but I must say, that kind of thing isn't scary at all cause you're, well, unconscious. But one time, I was at school and had a really bad fever, I was standing in the school office when suddenly I lost control of my whole body, and fell like a puppet whose string are cut. I was conscious but couldn't move at all and this lasted for one or two minutes. The worst thing was that for the whole time I couldn't tell or do one thing while I saw the adults around me totally panicking, which made myself even more scared. Yes, adults are really useless when you really need them. And yes, I had some really "interesting" experiences in my life, luckily I'm still kicking ass.

This troper had one episode of sleep paralysis that conjured hallucinations of SAS troopers performing a flash and clear on the bedroom door, dispersing inside the room before firing in the general direction of the bed. I am a perfectly legal citizen, with no previous encounters with the law.

This troper once had a dream where I was splashing around in puddles after a rainstorm, when I stepped into one that turned out to be as deep as a lake. I felt pressure on my chest, almost like I was really drowning, and I couldn't move for a few seconds after waking.

This troper experiences a {{Narm}}ish version of this most nights in the form of chronic insomnia. I feel the pain of being tired, but I am too awake to sleep. I call this "And I must whine".

This troper has a teacher which had the same problem while getting his master's degree. He was tired after all the work, but was completely awake. So he had to wander for a while in order to calm down his mind.

This troper remembers twice in his life where he felt really helpless. At 8 years old, I came down with a terrible case of croup. The best my family could do was lock me inside the bathroom with an incredibly hot shower going, in the hopes that the humidity would help. All I remember is darkness, coughing and screaming. Believe me, I screamed, and I screamed constantly. I eventuallyt for some reason, I couldn't move or speak, only watch. I woke up the instant before I died, to the sensation of having my lungs filled with blood.

Wait if you said you died, then How did you post this?! or was it your family?

SHIT WE GOT GHOSTS

This troper has a reoccurring dream in which she's walking around her grandmother's house, and has completely lost her voice. Now, usually this isn't a bad thing, but occiasionally the dream will get weird, like after she watched the Ring and the Grudge in two nights, and she could not scream, and her parents were there and couldn't see the monster and, and- oh god.

This troper underwent a wisdom tooth removal operation about three years ago. The complication with my case was that my lower-jaw facial nerves passed directly between the two wide-set roots of each wisdom tooth; the surgeon planned to put me under, crack each bottom tooth down the middle and extract the roots separately. All well and good, until my anesthesia wore off just enough that I became helplessly conscious -- for an excruciatingly long time -- during what felt like literally taking a jackhammer to my jawbone. What still haunts me was my total inability to interrupt the mundane discussion in the room between hammer bursts, until lifetimes later the last thing I heard was an assistant saying, "Oh god -- doctor, his eyes..."

This troper had the same problem, except the freezing never took effect in the right side of her face. I remember being barely conscious and feeling them drill into my face as they extracted the impacted bottom tooth in pieces, but unable to do anything but flail a little. They tried to freeze my face again but it didn't work so they just proceeded with the extraction. Once the operation was over I screamed at the surgeon.

Same here, in my case jaw anesthesia was working and my tongue was dumb, besides a nurse and the dentist were holding four instruments in my mouth so I couldn't communicate. All was fine until the dentist reached the last set of thooth local anesthesia wasn't working well and I start feeling how he cut my skin. I failed in closing my mouth, using the tongue to fight medical instruments and of course, screaming. Also moving while he cut seems a very bad idea...It was but the pain was so much that finally I rolled violently to the side I got a beautiful wound in the intern cheek but it was such a relief.

Me, too. The worst pain ever, and unable to move at all... ugh. I'm just lucky it only lasted a few seconds.

This troper underwent anesthesia while getting jaw surgery. She came in and out of consciousness afterward when it was starting to wear off. When she was aware, she could barely move or open her eyes. She was cut off from the world, unable to see or say anything, but she could still hear people around her. She couldn't remember where she was or even the difference between being awake or not. It took an eternity before she could even moan faintly, and even that took a lot of energy. The highlight of this experience was when someone decided to stick an IV needle (one of this troper's biggest phobias) in her hand while she was still unable to move.

Recently I awoke suddenly in the middle of the night, and began I panicking when I realized that there was something heavy on my chest that was preventing my lungs from taking in air. However, I was paralyzed all over so I couldn't remedy the situation of possibly suffocating. Luckily I was only awake for about thirty seconds to experience this panic and confusion in the darkness. After reading other similar Troper Tales on this page, I decided that this happening was a case of sleep paralysis. And I hope it never happens again.

This troper has a life version of this, in that they cannot scream no matter what. Nightmares, sleep paralysis, injuries, sickness, emotional turmoil... ''nothing'' can make me scream. I've actively ''tried'' to scream, and I ''can't''. I can only remember screaming ''once'' when I was young, and those that heard it said it sounded like a cat instead of a human. Which is probably one of the worst things to sound like when a dog is the cause now that I think about it.

I swear to god, if I was you, I would not be alive.

I once fell asleep in class after a state test and ended up having a nightmare. When I woke up, it was another dream. There was no noise at all and I couldn't move from my head-down position. Then I felt like someone from my nightmare was behind me with a knife and I panicked. It didn't help that the people next to me knew I was freaking out in my sleep by my breathing and decided to "help" by poking me in the back with a pencil to wake me up.

This Troper occasionally forgets how to talk, or how to blink (usually not at the same time). Blinking comes back naturally, but since he doesn't talk much anyway, it can be a veritable nightmare of silent gasps and gapes before sounds or words come out. On the "can't move, can't talk, going to go insane" side of things, high fever or severe vomiting tends to make him immobile and unable to talk (either because of the weirdness that comes with high fever, or the racking pain and want not to throw up again that comes with the latter).

Once at a carneval-sort of thing at my local church their was this boxing match sort of thing and I challanged this one girl I know to a match. Only problem is she was way stronger and heavier than me. We had to wear these little helmet things that strapped over or chins but in the first round she dog-piled men and The strap fell over my neck while she was pressing down on the helmet, laughing like it was a game while I was choking and desperatly shouting "GET OFF!" repeatedly. She almost didn't.

Due to a spinal problem, I needed an operation to fuse two vertebrae. It's just about the most painful operation you can have, but this trope came into play in a way I didn't expect. Due to my insides being... rearranged a bit from the bone movement, I required a tube to drain out my stomach fluids (morphine had slowed digesting), which was fed so deep into my throat that I couldn't speak or scream without scratching my throat to the point of bleeding. To speed the digestive process up, I couldn't use morphine, so I laid still, unable to move or say anything, for days. I suddenly no longer gave a shit about the back pain.

This sort of thing happens to this troper all the time. When dreaming, to some extent, she apparently realizes that she's asleep, because 90% of the time she's almost totally blind, and unable to speak (or scream), think, or move properly inside of her dreams. And most of them involve bizarre, extremely frightening things happening, which she then can't run away from or even see...

This troper had to check to make sure she didn't type that previously. She gets the same kind of things, the most frustrating times being where her eyesight is crosseyed, or she's constantly fighting to keep her eyes open during the dream, no matter how strange it is. She's woken up one night to find she had been crying in frustration not only in her dream, but in real life as well.

This Troper went under laughing gas at the dentist. The experience can only be summed up as: flashing colors, muffled drill sounds, memories of riding the school bus mixed with SuperMarioBros3 and Tetris (I don't even like Nintendo). Of course the scariest bit is that I couldn't even remember when they had started the gas.

Really? This troper finds the experience of dental work, in an of itself, to be a severe case of this trope (what with all of the pointy objects in your mouth, makes talking impossible) but, with the laughing gas, suddenly actually sort-of enjoys it. (Being able to finger spell to my mother to ask questions helps a lot, too.)

This troper went into convulsions one day after she accidently cut her hand pretty bad. (I'm not emo, I just wanted a brownie!) I thought my brother was shaking me. Turned out, he was trying to make me stop shaking.

Said brother had an AIMS moment of his own when he had the flu, lost his voice and couldn't speak. So, he communicated by writing notes. He gave me one that said "Please get me some watter." I replied "OK, but you misspelled water." He wrote down "Fuck you! I'm sick!" (I got him the water anyway.)

I had a nightmare last night where I was in my own house late at night and I was walking to the kitchen. In the doorway to the kitchen, I saw a pair of bleached white eyes. The eyes were low to the ground, so I think it may have been a dog; I am a cynophobe after all. Before I knew it, I was on the ground and looking back toward my room, but everything around me was covered in complete darkness. I felt that ''thing'' mauled away at my left arm, the same arm that I would cut when I was an EmoTeen. At least, I think it was; now that I think about it, I don't know if I actually felt any pain. I tried to scream as loud as I could, even though I live alone, but no sound came out. The only thing I could feel was a hot and dry sensation in my mouth. I looked to my left at that thing and it didn't look like any dog I've ever seen in real life. Then I woke up; when I woke up, I realized that I had sprawled myself diagonally across my bed versus being parallel with respect to the width of the bed.

This troper got in a fight with a drunk and got stabbed. Thing is, I was able to wander outside trying to get to a phone or anyone and collapsed under a corner. People assumed I was homeless as i laid there, too weak to move or shout for help. It only lasted five minutes before someone called 911, but the shock made it feel like hours.

This troper has epilepsy, which manifests in night terrors as well as seizures. The night terrors are much much worse. The wolves pin me in the corner of the room, having cast aside the mauled and mangled body of my roommate, I can smell their breath, I can see them drool, I try to scream as they crouch, but no sound comes out... Then I wake up. As a child I took a screwdriver to bed in the hopes of one night ramming it through the brain of those wolves - I rammed it into my own leg instead.

This troper's daughter had night terrors (sans epilepsy) from about 6yo to 10yo. You '''absolutely do not want''' to see a child of yours having night terrors. Mercifully, it eventually stopped. She would wander randomly around the house, screaming MOMMY MOMMY with her eyes wide open but '''not seeing or hearing any of us as we tried to calm her down.''' After an hour of this, we would manage to get her to lie on her bed and she'd sleep. She never remembered anything the next morning.

Not entirely sure how much this counts, but this troper had a horrid nightmare a few weeks ago. In the dream, I was sleeping in my room, woke up and leaned over to the end of the bed to pet my cat Kia. (As I usually do when I wake in the middle of the night.) Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow move but ignored it, assuming it was just my other cat wandering. Then I see the shadow creeping up the side of the wall...and look behind me to see MORE shadows. Cue room gaining a dark black-and-purple tint. (If anyone has seen Fullmetal Alchemist, it was like the transmutation scene.) Freaked out, I ran out of my room with Kia and told my brother we had to get out of there. He didn't believe me (skeptic of supernatural stuff) so I took him to my room where a disembodied voice told us to leave or we would be dead within the hour. We got our other cat and took off in the pouring rain to go to a hotel in town. For whatever reason, they didn't mind our cats. We got in our room and prepared to settle in for a long stay, and I crawled into one of the beds...and notice a shadow creeping up the wall and hear a dark chuckle. I woke up screaming.

This troper has a blood issue where, if she stands up too fast, or breathes in a too hot room (and other things like that), she'll become unable to see (as in, everything goes white/black), her entire body will prickle and she'll get so dizzy that she just... falls. Sometimes she's able to grasp a wall to support herself, but she usually just ends up lying on the floor with her mouth open, trying to scream without being able to... The worst part is that it only lasts for about 30 seconds, but it actually DOES feel like hours, sometimes days.

Ah, jeez, same here, only with me it's more purpley-bluish than black or white. Lying on the floor when the world is just spinning and spinning and you can't see or get your footing or anything sucks. (My doctor suggested salty snacks may help.)

Same thing, except I only see strange colours, and they only cover part of my eyes, and they leave once I fall. And it only happens when I stand up too fast.

Minus the blood issue and the falling, give an unfound trigger only and seeing in a browny-yellow colour instead of black and white and you get me. It is most common after sitting down for too long and occurs when I stand up. I hope I don't get it again...

It also looks bad from the outside. I've had a friend go into it in front of my eyes, and I thought that she was dieing. Turns out that somebody being there for you while it happens make it a little less hellish.

This troper actually suffered this in real life. She awoke one morning to find that she physically could not speak, scream, or make any noise at all, for some unknown reason. (switch to first person) My mother actually got angry at me for not telling her what was wrong and began yelling at her. At this, I began to cry, and when my mom realized that I wasn't making any noise (as I'm a very noisy crier), she immediately apologized and drove me to the doctor. I'm better now, thank god, but getting a sore throat still freaks me out.

This Troper once had a dream where he was digging a tunnel underground, for some reason. Eventually he came across this trap door that was nailed shut from the inside. After opening it, he came into a room where there was windows, but apparently Word-Of-God dream him insisted there was absolutely no way out of the room other than the trap door. As he pondered the problem, a dude in a vintage diving suit (those metal ones) came up from the trapdoor, walking as if he were under water. It was creepy as hell, but try as he might, dream-him couldn't scream. By far more horrifying than that dream he had of his brother coming at him with a butter knife...

This same troper has also fallen victim to sleep paralysis a couple of times (Stress and the worst sleep schedule you could ever force upon yourself). He first time he experienced it has been the worst so far, thankfully; He was on the verge of sleep, but suddenly felt a presence in his room. He tried to move, or shout out, or anything, but the most he could do was wiggle his pinky. Of course after about thirty seconds he was able to look about his room and realize he was alone and no one was about to jack him with a butter knife or something. But frick.

This troper once had a dream where he was "watching" an ad (which, in the case of his dreams, means being conscious of nothing but the ad/movie/show/video game and being able to see and hear nothing but this) for a mostly black-and-white pachinko/pinball computer game. He'd have the dream, wake up five minutes later, have the same dream again, wake up five minutes later, through a good portion of the night. Needless to say, that night was hellishly long. It almost reduced me to tears. Fortunately, that only happened once. The general concept happened incredibly few times, but that one was by far the worst, and I still remember the "ad" fairly clearly. I had no fear of advertisements either. It was just weird.

This troper had a reoccuring dream around the age of 11 that consisted of a huge castle with a large slide going up to the roof, upon which stood an evil wizard beside a man-sized egg. In order to kill the wizard and escape I had to climb up the slide and knock the egg down it, breaking the egg. Every night for months I would have the SAME dream, over and over, and was continuously frustrated, eventually to tears, by not being able to end it. The dream eventually ended in success after two months, but it still stands as this troper's default thought when thinking of this trope.

This tropette has woken up and blearily reached up to rub the sleep out of her eyes... only, that isn't her hand that's flopped onto her face. She's attempted to scream, but either she's trying to hit notes out of her range or her voice isn't awake yet. Horrified, she grabs the hand, feeling down the arm... only to find that it's her own after all. The misunderstanding was due to having fallen asleep on said hand and cutting off its circulation. Still, that doesn't mean she remembers any of that when it happens again...

Tolly here. I've had issues with sleepwalking. Some of them I remember, some I don't. The ones I do remember involve sandbags attached to my limbs and a vague sense of impending doom. The ones I don't... Well, once I nearly broke my ankle, and I was trudging around the house all that night. I've been told by my family that was truly disturbing experience, both to see and hear.

In many of the dreams of this troper, I will be running or walking along when suddenly it becomes incredibly difficult to move. It is horribly annoying, because I almost always believe it's real. Sometimes something is chasing me for good measure. It sucks.

The possibility of waking up mid-procedure is why I am terrified of the prospect of having surgery, ever. I don't even want my wisdom teeth (which luckily haven't caused problems so far) out.

This troper's mother's Epidural started to wear off. While she was having a CAESAREAN SECTION. She says that it felt like the whole of the lower half of her body was burning, and she was shouting at the doctors "I'm burning, I'm burning," but they didn't do anything. It was apparently one of the most horrible experiences of her life.

This troper (same as above with mother) has found herself terrified, unable to even reach out and turn on the light, late at night. She now realises that it may have been sleep paralysis, and vows to remember this next time it happens.

This troper had seizures at a younger age. My very first seizure, I had gone to bed after having some pizza late at night. I woke up, body rigid and unable to breathe. I tried to scream, but couldn't hear ''anything'', so far all I know I made no noise, other than some choked gasps my brother overheard (thus saving my life). The freakiest part was when he carried me down the stairs towards the ambulance, the edges of my vision were already dark and the rest of my vision was fading. I lost consciousness with no way of knowing if I'd ever wake up again. I still occasionally have nightmares of it.

This troper had a nightmare a long time ago, where he was winded and lying on the floor due to strange and unrelated events. For some reason, my breath never returned to me, so I called for help, but my voice came out as some almost silent choking noises, I couldn't move because I couldn't build up any energy in my body and it still felt like I couldn't breath. I was writhing around on the floor trying to get someone to pay attention to me while I watched my parents calmly walk downstairs without noticing me when I suddenly woke up. I just on the bed breathing very deeply for a while after that to remind myself my lungs were working.

This troper isn't sure if it qualifies as this, but it certainly felt like it, to her. I have rather horrible (and I do mean horrible) asthma, and there was a time in Middle School where I'd forgotten my inhaler at home. During Gym class, I started having an asthma attack, and my gym teacher offered to call the nurse down. At that moment, I didn't realize how bad it was (I thought it was my average, run-of-the-mill attack) and so I politely refused and said I would walk down to the nurse myself (with the help of my sister). Half-way to the nurse's office (which was, unfortunately, on the other side of the school), I realized that this was perhaps one of the worst asthma attacks I'd ever had. I doubled-over, completely and 100% unable to breathe. I'm not sure if you can really understand the feeling of not being able to breath until it's happened to you (and holding your breath doesn't really count. It's more similar to only taking the shortest, quickest, most unsatisfying breaths possible). I actually told my sister (with what little breath I had) that I thought I was going to die. Eventually, I made it to the nurse, and she fumbled about, wondering if she should call an ambulance, but in the end all was worked out (and no ambulance was needed). It remains one of my worst memories to this day.

This troper has two. Not as bad as others, but they were still scary to me.

Once, in middle school, I had gotten a drink of water at a water fountain. The water went down the wrong tube, but I still had water in my mouth. I decided to swallow, but that was a mistake. When I swallowed, I couldn't breathe! No air would go in or out. It didn't last that long though.

When I was in elementary school, I cut two fingers on a dog food can. I managed to get my mom, and we went to the bathroom. When we were in the bathroom, I fainted. The only reason I didn't hit the floor was that my sister was behind me. When I woke up, I was on the floor, and I felt stuck. I couldn't move for a second.

This troper had surgery when she was five to remove a tumor near her lungs. When I woke up from the operation, I found out that there was a tube in my mouth, going down my throat. If it was supposed to help me breathe, it sure wasn't making a good job. I couldn't even tell anyone that I was choking.

Whoa, you lived out one of my worst nightmares at 5! This is why I broke down crying when I was told I needed an endoscopy where I'd be left conscious -- when I was in my mid twenties. I kept on picturing them stuffing the tubes down my throat while I was still awake and aware of everything and struggling to breathe at the same time, then I imagined gagging on the equipment and eventually choking to death. It took them a good 36 hours for me to calm down to the point where I could do the procedure -- and then they busted out the IV. Insert conscious sedation HERE. When I came out of that fog, I couldn't remember a thing about the procedure. It was as if I'd been put under. I honestly wish you'd had as blissful an experience as I did, because it is like emerging from the most relaxing sleep ever. I'm sorry yours proceeded the way it did.

This troper has a panic disorder. Most of the time it's under control, but there are exception. Imagine trying to tell people that something is wrong, but being unable to because your mind is so confused and scared that your body does not know if it wants to run or try to kill everything in sight. The hyperventilating and shakes don't help either.

This troper had a frightening dream during sleep paralysis not too long ago. The dream entailed a young woman with a facial deformity, which resembled a large, beating tumor. She said that on the day of her 21st birthday, it would explode and she would die. It was especially frightening that she said, but Im going to take you with me! She chased after me and all I could do was run, however she did not cease, and I could feel my arm twitching, trying to wake up. After about a minute, I managed to wake up. But the dream was so vivid it felt as if I were still living it, but I managed to get up and get a glass of water. It was pretty scary.

This troper remembers having a phobia of sleep paralysis when he was a child. I didn't know it was sleep paralysis until I was older, but I just knew it was a moment when you awaken and are unable to move and more importantly, scream. It scared the hell out of me since instead of screaming, I found myself just barely being able to whisper. More often than not, such events would tie into my dreams, where a witch or some kind of monster was chasing me, and I tried to call for help, or waking up, since I knew if I screamed loud enough, someone would wake me up. But I couldn't. And more recently, the very fail-safe that causes sleep paralysis (the paralysis) failed while I was dreaming that I was choking. Besides not being able to scream, I found myself actually choking, and fortunately woke up, finding my very own hands around my throat choking me. I still have no idea whether I was choking myself or if something else caused the sensation of choking and my hands reflexively got op to my throat to help ease the choking.

A few years ago, there was a major political debate regarding a woman named Terri Schiavo. Most doctors claimed "She's in a persistent vegetative state, most of her brain is gone save for the brainstem. She can breathe and her heart beats, she'll pull away if you stick her with a pin (you sadistic bastards) but other than that, she's mindless and running on reflex.". After a few years of trying various therapies, the husband gave up, agreed with the hopeless diagnosis, and tried to have the life support ([=IVs=], gastric tube) removed, which would allow her to die. The parents, on the other hand, insisted their little girl was still alive in there (and would one day jump up, Kill Bill style, perfectly ready to pick up where she had left off.). They even posted videos to Youtube of her turning towards flashing lights and mirrors (although to this troper it sometimes looked like the person holding the lights was turning to stay in front of her head instead of the other way around.), and grunting in response to her name (even if they had to say her name ten times before she grunted, and never managing more than an inarticulate scream...a slight subversion, since she could indeed manage a scream, but not much else.). All this troper could think about was "My god. I really hope the husband's doc is right, because otherwise...fifteen years of being bedridden, inarticulate, paralyzed, and with your parents treating you like an infant." AndIMustScream indeed.

This Troper just had a dream which culminated in a woman being trapped inside a wall with nothing but her eyes sticking out. This appeared to be a standard punishment in the dream, as there were multiple sets of eyes in this wall, and guards whose job seemed to be to walk up and down the wall and occasionally pull levers that would inflict tortures on the people behind the walls. *shudders*

Junior troper Kaelthias has been branded (or if you prefer, diagnosed) epileptic and has experienced two seizures. The second one that got him the epileptic tag was a much more pleasant experience, as it involved uncounsciousness and all-around not sensing anything happening. Waking up at some sort of ER was a "Oh, this again"-experience and some more nice uncounsciousness followed. Thing was, he was sleeping at that time. The first time wasn't so good though, as the seizure hit him while he was fully awake. Nausea and dizziness seemed for the first second or two only a minor inconvenience, but then things got bad. Vision blurred as the eyes started forcingly going up-right. Eyes felt pain and kept "going" that way forcing the whole body to flex while all control was lost. Somehow, regaining some sort of control, I was able to stumble up from the chair, walk to one wall of the room, then the other, finally collapsing next to my bed losing all control again with eyes going and going forcing me to almost roll on the floor while twitching and jerking all around and generally losing all control of bodily functions (yes, all). This kept going for a long time untill unconsciousness kicked in, though this time paramedic intervention actually brought me BACK conscious, still seizuring.

This is very minor compared to most of the stories on this page, but this troper suffers from occasional migraines, and although they don't happen often, they are intense enough when they do happen that they cause this trope to happen. Any effort I make to make any sort of noise only serves to make the pain worse, and the pain itself warps my perception of time so that days seem to go by when it's maybe only been a few minutes. It's not nearly as terrifying as some of these sleep paralysis stories, but it's still one of the worst things I've ever experience.

There's this woman that lives down the street from me. She was once beautiful, highly intelligent, and a talented painter. Then she got sick. An infection of some kind, I don't know what exactly. It reached her brain - destroyed one optic nerve and one hemisphere of her brain. The eye associated with the wrecked nerve had to be removed. She's now functionally retarded, and between the false eye and having reached middle age, she' no longer beautiful either. All she's got left is painting. The stress destroyed her family-her sons are ashamed of her and her ex-husband despises her. The worst part of all of this-she remembers. She remembers what life was like before.

This troper just lost a few thousand man-points crying for that poor woman.

This troper knew someone with a case like this too, but she had a blow to the head that caused brain damage. She's now mentally retarded, but she remembers things like being able to do math. Her story isn't so sad, though- she has a boyfriend who is very sweet and she works as a cake cutter.

This troper would kill the painter mentioned out of a sense of mercy if he could get away with it, like becoming the Prime Minister of Australia - he believes said intellectually disabled female painter would be better off dead.

This troper has hearing loss, so his speaking voice isn't very well developed. Add to that an irrational distaste to the feeling of paper sliding across the side of his palm and his messy hand writing, this troper sometimes goes through period where he can't control his voice or write clearly enough to be understood. Without a computer this troper sometimes has no easy way of communicating with others. However, this troper has averted this a quite bit, in that he's learned how to be content inside of the cozy confines of his mind.

I remember this one nightmare I had when I was young; it took place in my old house (we had to move due to troubles). I was standing in the living room with the doorway to the porch (it doubled as my sister's room) open (and a matress laying in front of it for some reason). All of a sudden, there is a big shadowed person climbing into the room, I notice him. As soon as he enters the room completely, I try to scream, but nothing comes out of my mouth. Then, he starts lumbering into the room towards me, and yet I can't move; I'm frozen in place. And as soon as he reaches me... I wake up.

This troper had one case of paralysis: I was lying on the couch, sick as a dog, when I decided to sleep. My dad was in the same room watching TV. I fall asleep, then I wake up a few hours later. I can't move, the TV is on. I was stuck watching Boris Yeltsin's funeral for several hours.

This troper would have dreams where she would be unable to scream, horribly outmatched by whatever was going on, and was aware it was a dream, but would be unable to wake up. Although she did have an awesome power: TIME STOP. Which would be used to keep herself alive in the dream a few seconds longer. the kicker? Every time she died, it would start all over again. Dying. For hours. ON END. And unable to wake up.

This troper has had countless dreams like that. May be a sign of sleep apnea. Luckily, I have an [=ACPAP=] machine now.

Though it's [[strike:probably]] nothing compared to some of the stuff on this page, I feel like this sometimes. I've got this germaphobia thing, and I generally view school as "germy." When I would touch something off routine, I'd have to go through the rest of the day with it. I just want to to freak out or scream or at the very least go wash my hands for a while, but I can't, for fear of either getting in trouble or looking like a freak. I just continue through the day pretending like nothing's wrong, when it's bugging the hell out of me. But then I take a shower when I get home and all is well.

This troper, like many other people on this page has dreams like this. They usually involve me being in danger, but I don't have any breath, so I can't speak, or scream.

This troper isn't even 20 yet and has undergone 10 surgical procedures. During my most recent one, I had to be there very early in the morning and I had difficulty sleeping the night before. I fell asleep before the anesthesia really hit me, so I started dreaming. However, my dreams are often affected by outside stimuli, so when I started feeling the doctors starting to mark up my face and things like that, they took the form of monsters trying to restrain me and surrounding me. Apparently, this was because the doctors WERE trying to restrain me. I was thrashing about in my confusion, trying to push them away. Imagine how terrifying it is to wake up from a nightmare while being surrounded by doctors and scalpels and the like. I still had the laughing gas mask on my face so yeah.

This troper has reacurring dreams where she is naked and being chased thoughout her school. Sounds like Narm but I cannot decide if they are dreams or real life. And I am highly uncomfortable with my body being seen naked and I already don't have the best social status.

This troper has narcolepsy, as well as the hand-in-hand condition of cataplexy. It's the latter that's responsible for the occasional moments (usually when I wake up) during the day when I feel a very strong emotion and then slump against the wall, unable to move much at all. My speech is slurred, so all I can do is sit there and wait for the feeling in my limbs to return. On the other hand, the only way to avoid it is to become an EmptyShell and not feel ''anything'', so even AndIMustScream is better than that. So I guess it's not ''that'' bad.

There are times when this troper's vision goes completely black and everything seems to spin. I'm not sure how long it goes on, but during that time I'm always unable to move or talk, but am still concious. I've gone to a few doctors and each one of them says something else, but anyway, that's not too scary unless I'm on the stairs or holding something heavy. But one time it actually did happen on the stairs (not too high though. luckily), and then I suddenly found myself sitting at the bottom of the stairs, with my head hurting like hell, but I couldn't scream or do anything at all. Judging by the time it was before I fell, I've been there for about half an hour. But at the same time, after I woke up I was almost completely concious, except that I couldn't see. I could think about as rationally as the pain of banging my head, remembered what I intended to do before I fell, the fact that I was alone at home, where my cellphone was... but I couldn't move. It was just plain creepy.

This troper occacsionally has dreams that reminds him of various works of Lovecraft that he has read. I'm not sure why I've started dreaming this, but once or twice a month, I dream of being in blackness, where all I can see is an indescribable being quite similar to the Old Ones. All I can hear is some alien language that I'm not sure my brain knows IS language... it's some wierd sound that fills my heart with dread on such a basic level that I break down sobbing IN THE DREAM... and then I wake up only after my mind has shattered in the dream, and has come pretty close to in real life... once, I woke up in the hospital, since I had gouged at my own eyes and tried to bite my arm off to wake myself up. Sweet Dreams.

You know, Dreams are the prefered method of communication for the Old Ones. There's the off chance that those could be real. Sweeter Dreams.

Not dream-related, but still pretty terrifying: on two occasions (so far), this Troper has woken up to an episode of sleep apnea - basically, waking up and ''not being able to breathe'' for about ten seconds. Could be considered a case of "And I Must Scream, But I Cannot, No Matter How I Try."

Not much of an example, but this Troper has some...anger issues. During a family dinner at a restaurant he got really angry at his peckish sister, so he went for the bathroom to cool off. Cue complete white-out. Falling to the ground felt like HOURS and crashing was equally in slow motion. Made slightly worse by the fact that he can trigger this now. Willingly.

This troper has had dreams about others suffering this trope, with the agonizing exception that they ''can'' scream. But more painful to him was a dream he had that culminated in his "death". Except that unlike most "die in the dream" dreams, he didn't immediately wake up. Cue four seconds of '''nothing'''. Just white void. And the implication that this was what Eternity would be. He would've screamed upon waking, but it took him a couple of seconds to realize that he needed to start breathing again.

This Troper didn't experience a literal AndIMustScream situation, but he experienced it like the AM supercomputer from the original trope namer. He possessed the ability to absorb knowledge, but instead use it to function as ThePhilosopher most of the time like pondering how life came to imitate art and what human imagination is, but he cannot experience bliss as a result. When he responds deeply, it is stopped by an immediate "Whatever", and sometimes people tell him that he thinks too much, but when people speak in real life, he can only hear nothing but nonsensical mockery. After a while he became depressingly aware that there will be no freedom in the world, with the laws and everything, and that humans are just machines collectively experiencing this trope. He cannot express and shout his beliefs against the universe without fear and anonymity, and he must scream.

This troper has a tendency to have semi-lucid dreams; that is, she can realise that she's in a dream, but attempts to control the events of the dream don't always work, or the dream keeps changing back. It gets REALLY annoying sometimes.

Are you me? Because I've had the same dream about ten times: I realize I'm dreaming, decide I want to fly, and turn halfway into a dragon. Usually I wind up burning my lips, too.

Similar to an above account, this troper will frequently stand up and promptly lose all sense of direction, vision, and orientation. Sometimes, when I know I'm safe, it's pleasant, but often when I'm not sure how I'll land, it's a few seconds of your body limply going numb as you pray that you don't smash your head or break your neck.

I've had a few dreams lately where I will attempt to say something, and broken glass will come out of my mouth. It doesn't cut or hurt... I just keeping pulling more and more glass from my mouth, and I am unable to speak. This only happens when I have something really important to say, too.

This troper almost drowned once...my psychotic sister held me under the water while laughing. I couldn't breathe except for once or twice when I managed to bob my head above the water for a fraction of a second, but she pushed me back down again and again. I tried to scream but it was a quick lesson that screaming underwater is not a good idea. Eventually I managed to get my whole head above water and feebly call for help, and some adults got involved in the nick of time. My lungs were half filled with water by the end of it and I couldn't talk.

This Troper is psychotic, and some of his psychotic symptoms involve ticking and speaking in word salad. One time while directing a production of 1984, he was trapped in the Black Box Theater at his school on a couch due to his ticking, and when one of the actors in his cast entered, he called for help, only to speak repetitive phrases such as "I'm sorry..." and "I didn't mean to..." while his brain frantically tried to scream the right words out. It didn't help that he had recently pissed this actor off; she quickly left the room. It persisted for about an hour or so until one of the other actors entered and called the drama teacher, who promptly called for help. He [I] couldn't speak very clearly or properly for months afterwards, and was very much unable to talk to the female actor who ignored him. He was a few weeks ago diagnosed with schizophrenia.

This troper is terrified of ''all'' of the potential afterlives (or lack thereof). This gives her panic attacks sometimes, which are an AndIMustScream all to themselves.

This Troper tends to hallucinate when she runs a fever. They're not usually very bad, but one time when I was about eleven or so, I had a very bad fever and was out of it for a few days. The whole time I could only think in numbers, and thinking single digit numbers was like a constantly dripping faucet drowning me, and thinking multiple digit numbers mostly felt like I was being crushed or pulled apart. My mother told me later that I babbled about "the noise" a bit. I don't remember noise, but I do remember that I never thought I was going to die, just keep drowning, being crushed, and pulled apart as the numbers kept cycling.

Two stories here...

Some 9th graders once grabbed a seventh grader (Jr. High goes grades 7-9 out here), bound him, gagged him, and left him on top of the bleachers in the gym for the hell of it, on the last day of school. He wasn't found until two hours after the buses left.

I'm working at Subway. I am trying to clean the cookie display case...yet every single time I try to clean it, or clean ''something'' a customer shows up and I have to serve them. I serve the customer, and they continue to stream in. It's way after lunch time...why on earth are there so many people bum-rushing subway at ''this hour''?! In ''SUMMER'', too! (Summer semester tends to slow business down) I wind up staying there for ''hours'' past when I should have clocked out, because the customers don't ''ever'' stop coming, meaning I am stuck in a perpetual cycle of running back and forth, dropping the rag until it dries out, stuck with the customers repeatedly asking stupid questions and having to tell people we're running out of bread and only have white and wheat left...the rude faces, the people who look at me like it's ''my'' fault a bunch of people suddenly decided to show up. I want to just yell "fuck it" and leave but I'll be fired, and dump the sad fate of endless customer rushes onto the other coworkers, who are just as eager to clean something and get home as I am. I have no mouth...and I must ''scream!

This troper rarely has sleep paralysis, but when he does, the dream usually takes the form of being trapped in his own house with some undefinable presence (which often turns out to be a daemon or evil disembodied spirit, ''especially'' after a marathon of Ghost Hunters), and either the lights don't work at all, or work at a fraction of their usual luminance at best. It becomes a search for the most brightly-lit room in the house; there's always one room, usually one of the bathrooms, where the lights actually work like they're supposed to. At that point, this troper usually wakes up just enough to be able to take control of the dream and banish the entity... and then rolls over and drops back into normal REM sleep.

This troper, while at summer camp one year, had a nightmare/hallucination that two partcularly unpleasant camp counselors stole my clothes and valubles and slowly destroyed them in front of me, taunting and laughing at me the whole time, while I could only lie on the ground and watch. And although I could move and had my eyes fully open, I could only thrash my legs around in my sleeping bag, and when I tried to scream, only a hoarse whisper came out despite me opening my mouth as wide as possible. Did I mention I was ''fully aware that I was dreaming/hallucinating,'' and screaming and trashing in an attempt to get someone in the room to ''come wake me from the ''extremely uncomfortable situation?''

A month or two ago, this troper got put on antidepressants for the first time. It all went fine until we upped the dosage. Cue hallucinations. I saw bugs absolutely everywhere, along with colours and odd patterns, at school, no less. I ended up alone in one of the counselors' offices, sobbing, incredibily terrified, and unable to speak until my mother came to pick me up. I still have nightmares about it, and cry at the sight of bugs.

This troper had massive eye surgery when she was 5 years old, eye surgery that involved taking the eyes out of their sockets to operate on them, and to top it off this troper was also one of the unlucky few who experienced anesthesia awareness during that surgery, for those unaware of it, it's a rare condition where the anesthesia does NOT put you out, it just paralyzes you so you can't move or speak, but you are still awake and can still hear, see and FEEL everything that goes on, a perfect case of And I Must Eye Scream.......sweet dreams everyone

This troper has diluted emotions from reading things. Usually, i wish that i had more. You, if this did not happen, would have scared me for life. Thank you stoic powers.

I was wondering if anyone knew anymore details about this particular example. I heard it much earlier from The Other Wiki that there was a magical white wolf named "Marishka", and that there was an example of this trope in the legend where Marishka had cursed a girl accidentally to become a werewolf, eventually ending with a brawl, the girl killing Marishka and the gods punishing the girl by transforming her into a sentient gust of wind whose soul would never rest and would always guide Marishka wherever she wished. Originally, it was edited once on the page for Marishka in Van Helsing and quickly removed for "bullshit", but can still be accessed through that wiki entry's history here : note that [[CaptainObvious the original page for Marishka was deleted, but this edit is still here with the tale]]. What stopped this entry from being on the main page was I was wondering if this particular tale had any references or came from any particular source or was completely made up. As much as I tried, I couldn't find anything that sounds even remotely similar to a wolf like this, let alone one named "Marishka" (but that's probably because I might not be looking in the right places).

Combine sleep paralysis with auditory hallucinations and a hyperactive imagination and you've got one of the most terrifying nights of my life. After finally giving in to the fact that I was literally falling asleep in the computer chair, I was so tired that I decided to just take a quick nap on the couch until I was rested enough to walk down the hall to my room and bed. I was either asleep or half asleep when I was woken up by an auditory hallucination of a whispery voice calling "my" name even though it wasn't actually my name (cue dream logic). Just like I "knew" the name called was mine, I also "knew" that it had been called by a ghost. Then I wake up enough to tell myself that of course it wasn't a ghost, it was just me being half asleep. So I decide that since I'm semi-awake now, I'll get off the couch and go to bed. ...And I can't. I can't remember if I was able to open my eyes, but I do know that my parents' living room, at night, with the lights off, creeps me out for no good reason and I was ''trapped'' in the middle of it after being woken by a ghostly voice. It doesn't help that I ''do'' believe in ghosts. By the time it wore off, it took a great deal of manning up for me to ''voluntarily'' move, because I was almost convinced that I'd been paralyzed ''by'' a ghost and that I would turn my head to find it staring at me.

Same troper as above, with an earlier example, though I don't know if it entirely counts. It involved my one and only camping trip. I fell asleep in the tent and woke up not only severely dehydrated but also in desperate need of a restroom. So of course I couldn't ''re''hydrate before stumbling to the nearby restroom building. I made it in, did my thing, and managed to exit the stall before my body just gave up and dropped right there on ''a campground restroom''. Ignoring the the horror of that alone, and the fact that in that state I couldn't tell the difference between the sensations of "cold" and "wet," I was completely aware during this. I could see and hear and feel. Thank god, I was also able to speak enough to slur out the number of the camping spot next to ours to a surprised parent accompanying their child to the potty. Soon after that trip, we went to the doctor and were informed that I need to stay hydrated or else I'll pass out. No, really? I now carry a water bottle with me everywhere.

This troper went throught a depression a few years back. He still remembers the four days he spent on his bed looking at the ceiling. Four days. Without sleeping. Without drinking, or eating, or going to the toilet. Leaving the dust to settle on him like furniture. He had to be carried to the hospital afterwards, and fortunately, this is what made people realise what he was going throught and jump started his recovery. The scary part? I still remember every second of it... but I don't remember what I was thinking at the time, if anything.

During ROTC Freshman Orientation, you get no rest, for they invade your dreams. Even after getting back from it, I hallucinated drill commands for the next two days. When you start hearing phantom Marines issue commands, even when you know it's just the stress, it's terrifying.

This Troper used to have sleep paralysis a lot, fortunately it hasn't happened in a while. The worst part was that often it would mix with dreams, and I'd see whatever I'd been thinking about. Sadly I don't have much control of my thoughts, and naturally my brain went to the worst things I could think of. Attacked by giant GrayAliens and torn apart by zombie versions of my family members were the most awful that I can recall.

Two stories:

I used to have bouts of sleep paralysis, thankfully rarely. I’m not sure if this is exactly AndIMustScream, but it was still interesting. The first time I had sleep paralysis, it was after a dream where I was a group of people (about 3 to 8) questing. We/I were all getting ready to sleep in a barn, when I woke up, confused, and couldn’t figure out how many people I was. More confusing than scary.

This one is closer to the trope. I created a character for Star Trek whose species were natural shape shifters. I was watching the episode “And The Children Shall Lead,” where some of the main characters had to face their worst fears. I paused the show to question what my character’s worst fear would have been. Then I imagined it. She was forced into the form of a tribble—no sense of sight, hearing, or smell, no ability to breathe or move. She couldn’t make a sound or communicate in anyway (the species has the ability to use thought-speech, normally.) Now I can’t look at a tribble without feeling uneasy.

This Troper experienced this trope, via the stupid, stupid, ''stupid'' idea of combining the following. 65 dried grams of mescaline-containing cactus, with a high-potency strain of cannabis, and DXM. The result of this marvelous idea was full body paralyisis while time dialated out to the point of seconds seeming to last days. She felt her body slowly ossify and merge, becoming like a block of granite, all the while hearing the sound of someone chewing vigouously, magnified a thousand thousand times. Compounded to this were more sounds, which she thought were her synapses breaking. All the while, titanic forces were felt trying to drag her in every direction. Oh, also, thank to the cannabis, which in large amounts, is dissociative, she wasn't even aware of the room around her as a coherent entity. It was meaningless blobs of 4D color. And her awareness of herself as a person was pretty much gone too. Not fun times. Thankfully, none of those substances do any damage ''physically''. As for the psychological aftereffects, it can be likened to mild to moderate PTSD. After about six months, she got better. Mostly because fuck feeling like that and the force of will to not let the flashbacks, which were constant, get to her. That's her story. Do drugs. Dont mix them.

When this Troper was in High School, she had to go and have her appendix removed. It was far from her first operation, so she went in feeling completely relaxed, joking with doctors, ready to go to sleep for a few blessful pain-free hours. What she DIDN'T know was that her local hospital had changed their anaesthesia in the three years since her last trip. She woke up during the surgery... but only her brain. She could feel and hear everything, but couldn't respond in any way. They must have realised something was going on at one point because she got dosed back into unconsciousness, and when she woke up again she screamed until she literally couldn't scream any more. To this day, this troper doesn't even like having too many blankets on her bed.

When I was five, I had a bout of sleep paralysis. I couldn't move anything other than my arms. My eyes wouldn't open up. I tried open it, but I felt like I was ripping my brain apart. I tried to open it with my hands, I felt like my eyes were on fire. After a few minutes if finally opened up. I made a really loud "whew", waking up my parents.

Another time I woke up with sleep paralysis again. My eyes were open, but I couldn't move them. Neither did the rest of my body. I was stuck there for almost half an hour before someone got into my room and I jolted.

I have a nightmarish example of this. I went on a trip with a class to Africa for a month to help out (It was actually pretty awesome), and about a day after getting back, I was constipated. This was bad enough, so I tried a shot of brandy to see if it helped, and it didn't. I decided to say "Fuck it" and went with the phospho-soda route, seeing how it'd cause my bowels to loosen up enough so I could just 'go'. I tried to sleep, but massive cramping set in to the point where I couldn't sleep, and I couldn't scream for help either, seeing how my parents were not home that day. Imagine being stuck, in massive pain, unable to do so much as utter "help", for about twelve hours. I had to be taken to the hospital for this, once I was found writhing in pain. It got worse. Not but about half an hour before being found, my appendix burst. Imagine those enzymes from the appendix spreading, eating at everything. I had surgery done to remove what was left. About two days after being discharged to go home and rest, it got worse. Sudden pains everywhere (back, chest, stomach, arms, legs, etc.) started to pop up, symptoms similar to that of a flu, and worst of all, some nasty red bruising on my abdomen. Turns out that it was viral hemorrhagic fever, which is nightmare fuel incarnate. Imagine having a fever, mixed with pain all over, and internal bleeding that just cannot be explained. It was a few weeks before I completely recovered from all of that. So how was your week?

This troper once had a heat-exhaustion related incident where she almost passed out. She had been outside and was going to her car to cool down when her vision suddenly started to blur. It had almost faded to black before she sat down, terrified of passing out and hitting her head on the ground. She was mere feet from the car, but had to be supported while she walked over to it. She was too weak to even scream, too. All that came out was moaning.

I was playing a male in a school play (A Midsummer Night's Dream), and had to bind my chest with duct tape. The person helping me with it went too tight, and I found myself unable to breathe at all. It was five minutes before curtain, and the more panicked I got, the less my hands worked, which made it even harder to tear the tape off of me, and all the while I couldn't breathe whatsoever. It was horrifying.

This Troper had just moved from Virginia to Ohio at the age of ten years old. I was going into fifth grade and had just started the school year. Naturally I was a little off the wall, since the differences between OH and VA are night and day, but I was teased ''mercilessly'' by everyone. Not one person, no matter big or small, had any love or sympathy for me in that new school. One day, I was going to the restroom, and someone had found a way to lock me in with no way out (it was one of those single restrooms). Naturally I banged on the door asking to let me out, but I just heard a voice go, "You deserve this, freak!" Me being ten years old, I was scared to death, but figured if I just wait for the next bell to ring, someone would be bound to open the door. Someone walked by before the bell rang as I was pounding my hands on the door, and they asked me who it was, and when I said my name, no one answered. I heard a bit of rummaging and scribbling and the sounds of footsteps walking away. Then the bell rang and I ''screamed'' bloody murder for someone, anyone, to let me out, and no one did. I truly felt helpless as the last bit of clatter in the hallways died down and I was still locked in. I was stuck in that bathroom for about three or four hours before someone let me out. I saw scribbled on a piece of paper on the door as I came out, "[Troper's name] is in here! DO NOT OPEN!" I went to the principal, the guidance counselor, even some teachers, and all of them insisted I was exaggerating and it was just regular hazing of the new kid. Luckily, my parents did not find it so funny, so I was withdrawn from the school in question (with a few choice words to the faculty in the office and principals courtesy of my dad), and we moved to a different school district not long after. It took me three and a half years to become social again, even if my new school district wasn't nearly as cruel.

This also counts as KidsAreCruel.

this troper had a really crappy nightmare once, i was going to sleep and it was a particularly bright night, we live on the top of a mountain so whenever the full moon shows it basically lights up the entire room, anyways i have a history of strange sleeping stories, and this one night i was falling asleep and didn't quite catch the moment that i finally fell asleep, so when the dream started up i though that i was still awake, so i'm sleeping on my futon coutch and i'm looking all around the room. suddenly i notice a little coating of white on everything, like a very fine fuzz, well not 2 seconds after i noticed it mold started GROWING on everything, and still being asleep i sat up in my bed and i could feel the mold. EAHG, it took me literally 2 minutes to stop freaking out!

This troper has hyperventilated three times in her life. The first and second time occurred during two different roller coaster rides. Instead of being able to scream, she could only gasp weakly while trying to breathe. This, combined with the numbness spreading throughout her body, caused her to panic even more. Hyperventilating at 60 MPH kind of sucks. The third time she hyperventilated happened while she was at school. Feeling an attack coming on, she asked to go to the bathroom. She ended up stumbling down an empty hallway, clinging to the wall, unable to scream for help. Just gasping. She got better, though.

This troper had sleep paralysis today. Only for a minute or two but it felt like eternity. Have you ever been unable to breathe through your nose and have to breathe through your mouth, since you have a cold? You try to move your mouth open to breath but can't? Unable to move your hand to lift it open? UNABLE TO MOVE YOUR TONGUE TO PUSH OPEN A SMALL HOLE BETWEEN YOUR LIPS? You'll basically be counting down the seconds left until you die from lack of air. It's even worse when there are people nearby who see you but think you're still asleep.

Ever been buried up to the neck in sand? It's all fine, you probably did it for a laugh. Now imagine you had stayed up the night before, and fall asleep under the warm sun. When you wake up, the tide is coming in and your friends are on the other side of the beach (where you can't see them or motion to them) and the water is as high as your nose, and the wet sand is too heavy to move, and crabs and other small creatures are nearby, and you don't know if your friends left you there or not, until half an hour later, when your friends remember you and dig you up? If this has happened ''to you'', then you need to get some new friends. I certainly didn't forgive them for a while.

Scariest moment of my life, in 8th grade during PE I was running and made a turn... Then my back went pop. Cue 2 minutes of half paralysis and me frantically trying to tell the teacher that I was fine. Fortunately it passed.

When this this troper was 10, his appendix burst after the night of a large family dinner party. When I first complained to my parents of stomach pain, they just said I ate too much (a reasonable diagnosis, because at that age, I had a tendency to eat way too much and throw up after parties) and told me to try to go to sleep. Later that night when I was still complaining they told me to try to throw up (once again, not so weird considering the troper). By the time one in the morning came around, I had forced myself to throw up for the first time in my life because I was so desperate for the pain to stop. By that time, my parents had fallen asleep, and I desperately didn't want to hear another speech on overeating, so I forced myself to stay quiet; I spent the entire night crying and whimpering in the fetal position. When my parents had woken up, I finally thought I was saved, only to have them tell me they were going to yoga (a 2 hour ordeal) and would only take me somewhere if i was still in pain when they got back. By now I would have let myself scream, but just making noise was enough to make the pain worse. Finally, they took me to a day clinic, who told my parents that my appendix had burst and I needed surgery. By this point in my life I had had about ten surgeries, and was generally terrified of the idea of having another. In response I convinced myself that they would deal with the pain now, and give me the surgery in a few days (I didn't understand the severity of the situation), giving me enough time to get used to the idea. Twenty minutes later when I was being rolled into the OR (it was a slow day in the emergency room, thankfully), I finally realized that the surgery was happening whether I wanted it to or not. At that point I had already been hooked up to Anesthesia, and screaming in those ten seconds wouldn't have done anything to help.

I often had dreams where I am stuck in bed and sometimes when I tried to get up, He couldn't move. Seems relevantly harmless, but one time, when I put my face in the pillow, I can only whisper, no words spoken or screamed. brrrr...

Lucky me. The only "I must Scream" experience for me was not being able to find a lightswitch while having a morbid fear of darkness (I slept with a nightlight untill i was 10 and at 19 still keep my lights on on some nights). I sat down and cried. For you lot with night terrors, here's a hug. y'all need one.

You do NOT want to get stuck in sleep paralysis while on a CPAP/APAP machine (for treatment of sleep apnea).

I was once stuck in sleep paralysis while being awake. I wanted to scream for help and I couldn't. It was scary.

This troper has an insane phobia of needles, to the point where just the sight of one will cause me to freeze up in fear. When I was about...eight, I think, I had to go to the hospital for a polio shot (this was before I was aware of my phobia), and the nurse pulled out a large needle. And I went ''berserk''. Finally, my mom grabbed me and held me down, even wrapping her arm around my face to muffle my screaming while the nurse just walked over and pretty much stabbed me in the arm with the needle. Meanwhile, I began to panic even more because I couldn't breathe or make any noise, and to my mind, it seemed like they were really trying to kill me. Later I was told by my brother that the entire waiting room had heard me begging and screaming for help, and that a couple of the kids in there had started crying when my voice was all of a sudden cut off. Oops.

Once, by legs stopped working while I was walking down the stairs. I fell all the way down and laid there crying because my legs still didn't work and I couldn't get up to use the phone. Naturally, I started screaming.

This troper once went to bed like any other night, climbing up to the top bunk (he had a bunk bed since he commonly had friends spend the night during the weekends). The next morning, I'm in a hospital bed with a broken leg, arm, and jaw. Unable to make an audible sound due to still being drugged up, he was scared shitless due to what was going on. It wasn't until a few minutes later (which felt like hours) that his father came out of the restroom and told him the situation. Having a wired jaw is similar to having no mouth, and despite all the screaming he wanted to do, he just couldn't for the life of him.

Whenever I take this one medication for my migraines, I usually need to lie down and sleep because it knocks me out. I noticed after a while that when sleeping I'd become aware of everything, suddenly, without being able to move. My doctor said it was sleep paralysis. I didn't really like it, because my dreams were always weird and VERY lucid. Once I had a dream where a shadowed figure came towards me and I couldn't move. I ended up hurting my neck because I wrenched it away out of fear. But the WORST was when I had just injured my back (I was 15 and had disc trouble) and was stuck with the WORST pain and I couldn't move. And this feling of "Oh God getoutgetoutGETOUTGEOUTNOWHURRY" crept in. It felt like there was some psycho killer about to get me or something. I couldn't scream then, but once the paralysis stopped I started.

This troper has an experience recently while getting cavities filled. I was given the standard anesthetic injection in my cheek, but, according to the dentist and his assistant, it was not enough, since a part of my jaw didn't go numb. After testing my jaw for fifteen minutes, they proceeded to administer a booster, which consisted of a foot-long syringe with a four-inch-long needle that was inserted deep into my cheek. As soon as it was administered, my jaw went completely numb, and they began drilling. Unfortunately, I could still feel them hit the nerves of my teeth. My mouth was on fire, yet I couldn't say anything lest I risk interrupting the procedure.

A similiar scenario is the reason this troper avoids the dentist unless absolutely necessary, with the added bonus of a colossal tolerance to anesthetic they use from childhood dental work.

This troper has recently been remembering more of his dreams, primarily because they have brought back something I remember from my childhood that I attributed to my sleep paralysis. I seem to be able to feel a degree of pain in my dreams. The recent example was from a lord of the flies scenario in which a shank made of animal bone was stuck into my side suddenly. In a normal dream it would do little, but a sudden, dibilitating cramping tore through the afflicted area and woke me up. I also vaguely remember dreams where the pain was present but didn't wake me up. I frankly don't want to contemplate a scenario in which a dream state's cognitive time dilation overlaps with cold blooded torture.

This particular troper is suffering from something that has not been identified yet which makes my throat sore- combine that with coughing it forms a NightmareFuel-ish raw throat. It is extremely painful, which makes her want to cry... badly, however it is extremely painful when I do... So, it's kind of more like 'and I must cry,' really, but it's the same thing, kind of...

This troper has some sort of issue with his mind, which basicaly makes him imagine things on a constant loop. To explain in a different way - You know those videos with a neverending tune looping over and over again? Imagine that, except you can't stop it. And the song is a vision of a knife spining round your head, which could at any moment turn and stab you in the eye. You'd think, being a vision, you could just vision up some steel, or maybe just vision it out of existance, or maybe just have a snake come out of your head and eat it - but no. It might stop for a second, but it keeps coming back, never stopping it's rotations, untill you finally just give in... Yeah. That's what it's like. There are other visions too, nearly all of them involving spinning of some kind, and all of them things you would want to stop.

This troper has autism, and until he was around 5 or 7, all he could do was scream. Now, this troper can talk, speak English and so on and so forth. Boring, eh?

This troper has two cases. Once when she was about 6, she started having the same nightmare every night where this big monster would rip her limbs apart one by one and crush her. It happened ''every'' night. She sometimes forced herself to stay awake for days before falling into a dreamless, exhauasted slumber. This other case happened to my father. A few year ago, he crashed his car on a remote highway in Australia into several roadblocks. Both his arms were broken, so he couldn't reach for his phone to call anyone, and he had no idea whether anyone might pass him soon. He was stuck in his car for a few hours with sever injuries until a couple of farmers found him. Just listening to him recounting it made me want to scream.

This troper has had several "moments": 1. when I was 19 my girlfriend and I were shot multiple times, she died and I barely survived; it was from a botched hostage operation in south america. 2. I was ran over when I was 25 by a drunk driver who fled the scene while i remained conscient with 17 fractures in my right leg, my left hand ripped almost to shreds, and from my right arm: my triceps muscle was hanging out; I was operated in my left hand and right arm without anesthesia (pain was horrible to say the least) was in bed for 6 months o BTW my girlfriend dumped me 4 days after the accident. 3. and many many others to mention... way to private.

This troper often experiences this while something bad is happening to him in a dream. He wants to scream and get out, but... he can't.

For this troper's mother, it was ''friggin''' [=~Barney & Friends~=]. She had to put up with it for me, and my brother, and my sister. (Then again, most everybody had to!) She had to ''suffer'' for 9 years. Probably, the worst offender was TheMovie! With the rainbow-striped {{egg|McGuffin}} and all. Oh, and KylaPratt!

From what I read, they actually used the song "I Love You" to torture prisoners in some cultures.

This Troper had a fever of 103 degrees this morning. I spent the entire day laying in bed, unable to move because I felt I was frozen solid and that it's get worse if I didn't stay under the covers. Any piece of music I heard, such as CarlosSantana's version of "Oye Como Va" or even the AngryVideoGameNerd theme song sounded much slower than usual, and every hour felt like two hours. I type this at 9pm at night and it feels like midnight.

This Troper once dreamt he was a ghost, capable of talking to people but (somehow) really clear on how he would be forever stuck in a white-greyish translucent thing for a body. To clarify, this Troper doesn't fear death, but he certainly fears the idea of being stuck forever between life and death. At least, he does since that dream.

This troper once had a series of short dreams caused by dozing off, which was caused by lack of sleep. In each dream, he would wake up, but could't move his entire body from the neck down until like 10 seconds later.

This troper dreamt that she was being held hostage in a white room. Fortunately, I woke up in my bed before the nasty stuff started. But when I got up, I was still in the white room, fully aware that I was dreaming though. I wanted to wake up, but when I opened my eyes, I was still in the room. It took me two or three tries to finally wake up in my real bed.

This Troper has two points of view to this. One of them is being trapped in a room being forced to only listen to JustinBieber. The other is living. Which one does he prefer? Being sucked into a video game. And also, he thinks this trope is funny, but only when it happens to someone else. In fact, he had a dream where he was an EvilOverlord who trapped fans of everything he hates in ? Blocks. He woke up, evil laughing while he was evil laughing.

When this troper was about 9 she was in hospital having a bone graft and swallowed a large amount of her own blood, which made her quite ill. So when she was recovering in the ward a nurse gave her some lovely anti-nausea medication to help settle her tummy. This however cause this troper to experience an acute dystonic reaction that wasn't checked out by the nurses until it was wearing off because she couldn't talk. However, much later when she told the nurse she was feeling ill again, the nurse gave her the '''same medication''' to rid her of this. This triggered a rather sever acute dystonic reaction that froze this troper's body in an arched position, rendered her speachless and unable to see. Luckily the nurse (by that time several nurses and a couple of doctors) actually noticed in time to save her from snapping her spine in half.

Another wacky story from the same troper as above is when she was 15 and had a bimaxillary osteotomy (jaw surgery.) Her hip was '''incredibly sore''' from where the surgeon harvested a small amount of bone (from the same site as the above operation) and could not tell her mother or any of the nurses because her face was so swollen she couldn't speak or convey any emotion. Also, her brain was so tired and confused (since she didn't have a blood transfusion) that she forgot how to write. This troper still thinks the worst part of it all was that she had it done 5 days before her birthday.

This troper gave birth via c-section. This involves an epidural strong enough to paralyze everything below your armpits, which includes your lungs, making you feel like you're suffocating. Add that to having your arms tied down (so you don't flail around when you inevitably panic), the throwing up because it was an emergency so I never got the "don't eat the night before" warning, and a doctor yelling at me to calm down because the whole reason I was there was my blood pressure being so high, and it all added up to some pretty high-octane nightmare fuel.

I also occasionally have dreams where I'm seeing everything as if I were at that stage of drunk right before you're so drunk you pass out. The problem is that I know what's going on, and I know I'm having a dream, I'm just not able to sober up and have a normal dream or wake up and end the whole thing.

This troper often has dreams where while speaking and moving are technically possible, they're incredibly difficult. Limbs feel like they're made of lead, and no matter how hard I try to scream the most I can manage is a tiny squeak. I'd almost rather be fully paralyzed, as the situation induces me to keep struggling, convinced that if I tried ''just a little harder'' I'd be able to run away or call for help.

This troper's LARP character has had an eventful life to say the least. During his 4th or 5th adventure he was essentially stabbed to death and running on negatives approaching his total HP (He had been stabbed no fewer than 17 times by a group of thugs, mauled by wolves, burned by acid and attacked by two shoggoths.) and finally collapsed into a healing pool. He remained alive in suspended animation for several months before being revived via lightning magic as a defibrillator. He spent those months engulfed by his culture's reaper, The worm that walks (Kyuss himself, it's theorised), being continually eaten by the vast mass of worms that is Kyuss' body and regenerated by the pool's magic. Lately he fell in with an evil mercenary company that essentially sold his platoon to The SCP foundation expy as a controlled D-class group. He went through surgery to implant magitec cybernetics that amounted to vivisecting him and replacing certain parts with chunks of other animals, monsters, abominations and the usual cybernetics. He remained concious, as the neural implants required it. He got to watch them administer the modifications to allow his right eye to percieve time 5 seconds ahead of his existence (it involved installing a warp conduit in place of its lense) and also got to feel them replace his central nervous system with a sentient super-conductor. One that hates him and was pioneered by a villain known to cause sanity damage by existing near you. It has only gotten worse since then as he has essentially become afflicted with cyber psychosis and his skin has begun to necrotise. He now faces a fate as fleshy-baggage attatched to an animate frame made from his bones and the many symbionts thereon. Completely sapient with no control over his own actions, used as a shock trooper for a company that has a reputation as a collection of the most inhuman creatures in history.

This troper is very, very emotional. Maybe it's just teenage hormones or something. But when she's sad enough to cry, she sometimes tends to cry a ''lot''. And in those times of crying a lot, she can hardly focus enough to make any other movements, and especially can't ''breathe'' throughout it, just doing a lot of strangled wheezing and gasping and can't freaking stop at all. It gets to the point that she's more upset over the crying bit than whatever made her upset in the first place. And the only thing anyone else in the area does is go, "Awww, don't cry!" or even worse, ignore her awkwardly or in disgust.

This troper recently had the flu for the first time in years. She had to get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night and subsequently spent about three hours lying paralyzed on the bathroom floor, experiencing terrifying hallucinations. Periodically, she would return to awareness for a minute or so and try to get help from her partner, whom she could hear watching TV in the next room, but she was unable to speak or to move at all. Much later, she came to her senses and found that she had somehow managed to crawl into the bathtub at some point during the ordeal. She was able to move at that point and dragged herself off to bed, only to repeat the experience a short time later.

Today I couldn't go to college. I had 17 false awakenings in a row and I knew al the time I was dreaming -and that's why I counted them-. When I finally wake up, I experimented sleep paralysis. I'm still scared.I am 19 years old and I feel like a terryfied crybaby elementary school girl :(

Under extreme stress, I have been known to undergo a mild version of this where I can still ''move'', but I have inexplicable mood swings that I can't control, making me feel that I have no control over my mind. It's just as scary as it sounds.

I've had a few strange and violent dreams where I have suffered fatal wounds and then stumbled around for a little afterward. The first instance occurred when I was in eighth grade and I only remember the second half. I was running from an unknown assailant in a sort of gray world where it was hard to see because of the misty haze everywhere. I remember being very (understandably) afraid at this juncture. The real fun started when I suddenly flew twenty feet in the air and landed on the ground on my side. It was then that I saw my body on the ground and the legs of the person who had formerly been chasing me. I tried to say something, but, having no lungs anymore, I was unable to. Naturally, this means that I couldn't scream. It was chilling to see my own body, but I had a strange and almost euphoric experience. It was like getting out of school for summer break, only with the knowledge that I'd never have to go back, and that nothing I did would matter anymore. The weight of the world had been lifted off of my shoulders along with my head. I was free. I guess you can really call this more of a subversion than anything else. I want to make something clear, though. That horrifying, grim, wonderful moment when I realized that I was totally and irreversibly dead was something I'll never forget. Of course then I woke up and had to go to school. Damn.

Once, this troper went on a roller coaster with two friends. The ride went fine until at one point the roller coaster went downwards really quickly. I screamed/laughed along with everyone else, but when we went upwards again, I found I couldn't breathe. Several panicked seconds later, after I'd tried to warn my friends who didn't understand what I meant, I was finally able to breathe again. It only lasted a few seconds, but it really frightened me, as I couldn't get help and couldn't get off the roller coaster. When the ride stopped, one of my friends laughed and asked if I had been so scared that I had began crying. Turns out I didn't realize that I had teared up. When I told my friends that I'd been unable to breathe, they didn't believe me and thought I had just been scared from the ride. Even now they sometimes mock me for it, and just laugh it off when I try to tell them what happened. It kind of makes me angry that they don't take me seriously, as it felt very real for me, and actually made me fear getting on roller coasters again.

This troper is a lucid dreamer. Thing is, he developed this ability on his own and it had a unintended side effect: My dreams are sometimes identical to reality. Even worse, sometimes the dreams are within dreams, similar to Inception but with no obvious details pointing out that it IS a dream. Once, after a surgery, I woke up from what was well over 40 dreams like this, trying desperately to prove to myself I wasn't dreaming anymore. The fastest way to do this? Stabbing himself in the hand with a knife. My mother screamed when I did it and then cried with joy that I could feel again.

This troper woke up in the middle of the night, apparently with sleep paralysis. I didn't mind at first, because I knew what was going on, and I was too tired to move anyway, so I just tried to fall asleep again. But then I suddenly had the feeling that someone was sitting on my bed, pressing up against my back. I live alone, and I was so horribly scared. I'm just happy that I fell asleep again.

This troper had been having an endoscopy and colonoscopy on the same day and under one round of general anesthesia. Thing is... I ended up waking up during the endoscopy. Yeah, I woke up with a large scope stuck down my throat. Granted, the paralytic agents were still working and the doctor doing the procedure had sprayed a numbing agent on my throat before he put me under. But still, I had about 10 seconds of awareness where I knew that there was a scope stuck in my throat and that something was a little off.

This troper also realizes that this is nothing compared to some of the surgery horror stories from above.

While it doesn't exactly fit the name of the trope, this troper's 3-year-old son does not speak yet and can only barely manage to communicate in any other way. While he ''can'' scream (and does), it is painful to contemplate what goes through his mind; not only can he not communicate, he's never really been able to. One hopes this will get better in time.

As a child, this troper had always been adverse to any kind of violence, because violence led to death, and death led to the unknown. I was absolutely ''terrified'' of not knowing what was beyond, even if my religion somewhat explained that, after death, you are unconscious. (That actually made it worse.) When I was eight or nine, I had a fairly strange dream. There were two boys, one good and one bad, and they were walking together, side-by-side. Out of nowhere, the bad kid took a pole and ''beat the other boy to death with it.'' The dream ended rather abruptly and, for about five seconds, there was darkness. I couldn't do ''anything''. I remember waking up and spending five minutes trying to scream, and failing miserably. I couldn't even talk. All I could do was cry silently. Then, I suddenly let out a sob, and I could talk again. Now, the dream wasn't all that scary, but it was brutal. As I type this, I realize that the dream may have instilled an idea in me through my subconscious: Good and evil can go side-by-side with no problems, but no matter what we do to try and stop or a change it, the bad will always overcome the good. This idea was placed in my young subconscious, and possibly warped my opinion of the world until it became what it is today.

This Troper distinctly remembers being completely conscious for the first hour of the operation to remove all four of his wisdom teeth. I was heavily drugged and couldn't feel a thing, but I could see the dentists doing their work and I even saw them pull out the first tooth. That was probably when lost consciousness.

Well, I heard this story somewhere before, and I am not sure if it is true or not. Once there was a girl and her alchoholic boyfreind. They were both in there early 20's. The boy reacently lost his job, and his girlfreind was about to dump him. However, right before she did so, he sold her as a sexual slave to a group of middle aged, fat drug dealers, for money money. However, on his way home, he was killed in a car accident for drunk driving.

You know that ride where you're in a circular room-like thing, standing flat against a wall, arms at your sides, while the thing just spins and spins and spins? When this Troper was 14 and vacationing with the family in Wildwood, NJ, I thought that would be fun. No. No, it wasn't. With the damn thing going full-speed, I felt like I couldn't breathe, and like my heart had stopped beating (I'm... pretty sure the heart-stopping thing didn't actually happen, or else I'd probably not be here now; sure felt like it, though). Even though nothing was strapping me or the other passengers to the wall, I couldn't move, exactly like how it feels when your body is strapped down. I kept screaming that I couldn't breathe, that they stop the ride, and that I thought I was going to die (I seriously thought that was going to be the end of me, right there). They didn't. On a slightly funnier note, though, upon getting out I couldn't walk a straight line for about a minute. I felt pretty sick, though, and went back to the condo we'd rented. Needless to say, I'm never riding that monstrosity again.

This troper was very young (seven or eight) when she walked into the bathroom of her apartment and tried to turn the light on. She hadn't already closed the door, but it was pitch black and it stayed that way as she flipped the light on and off for nearly a full minute, unable to yell or scream in her terror. When the light finally came on and she realised it'd been working the entire time.. Well, that was some HighOctaneNightmareFuel, assuming she'd literally gone blind for a minute there.

I have an example that would go better under the name "And I Must Pee" because anytime i have to pee in the middle of my sleep, i tend to have a dream wear im searching for a bathroom desperately trying to go. But being asleep dosnt give me enough voluntary reflex to actually go pee, and no matter how hard i try i cant push it out. This is half a good thing cause if i did go, id pee the bed in reality, but the feeling of having an extreme amount of pee to let out that just wont come out is pure torture

This troper gets that any time he's in a public bathroon and other people are there. No matter how badly he has to go, he ''can't pee.'' And this is when he's fully awake at daytime.

This troper once wound up watching a "Man VS Wild" marathon, late at night (at a friends house). I passed out at a fairly reasonable hour, having disturbing nightmares about Man Vs. Wild. Except they were only disturbing because of the bizarre combination of colors, sound, and the fact that they kept going when I OPENED MY FUCKING EYES. This went on for something like four hours, I was almost certain I was insane, the most movement I could get was twisting my neck, and lifting my arm a couple inches. And, as the page suggests, I couldn't say anything. At about six AM, I regained enough function to speak/shout again (exact words: loudest "Help" ever)-before losing them again for a week.

This troper experiences sleep paralysis that is always accompanied by the feeling that a force is trying to possess her. It's scary, especially since it can happen multiple times in succession. She also went through what could be called the emotional version of this in high school after losing multiple family members and friends within a span of three years, having been raised to not express grief in any way, even when it makes you feel like you're going to explode.

This troper will occasionally find my eyes opening during a bizarre dream, but the rest of my body is in sleep paralysis. It's disconcerting, since I have to close my eyes and go back into the dream.

Anyone here have an MRI before? Even if you're perfectly fine psychologically, being stuck in a loud, potentially dangerous tube for over 30 minutes, and being told to not move an inch at all during that time, can make a man a little frantic by the time he's ready to come out.

Depressing story time. When I was in high school, there was an extremely unfortunate girl in the special ed class. Formerly an honor student, she had been in a terrible car crash that made her paraplegic and gave her ''severe'' brain damage (although I'm not sure if the accident had taken away her legs or if she just didn't know how to walk anymore). What really made this tragic (and qualifies it for this page) is that she went around with just two expressions: completely braindead or absolute despair. The only sounds she ever made were loud, anguished moans. Hearing them, one got the expression she could ''kind of'' remember how she used to be, and could never be again.

This Troper has several medical conditions that affect the autonomic nervous system and other brain stuff. Suffice to say that not everything in my brain works totally the way it should all the time. Every now and then, when I'm doing really poorly, my nerves start acting up. They decide that everything hurts. I mean EVERYTHING. The air on my skin hurts. Anything warmer than me feels like a burn, and anything cooler stings like when your bare skin touches snow. I cry, and my tears burn my skin, but I can't wipe them away because TOUCHING MY OWN SKIN HURTS. I've found a painkiller that works, but trying to swallow anything is like swallowing shards of glass, so I have to be fed it forcibly. This can last for hours.

FusengerShadow reporting with a bit of a variant on this Trope. There have been times when, due to my eyes being excessively watery (due to allergies or whatnot) where I have woken up and found my eyes effectively glued shut by that crust that forms on the corners of one's eyes when you wake up. The only way to amend this is to lick a finger and rub at the offending crust until it loosens enough to be able to open one's eyes again. Still scary to find you're awake but essentially blind.

In an example more in line with the letter of this trope, I've also had a dream in which something horrifying happened and I couldn't scream...at least not in the dream. I have woken myself (and my girlfriend) up with a sudden gasp ''outside'' of the dream, though.

This is perhaps a non-literal example. Late at night, or early in the morning, depending on how you look at it, I usually find myself alone, with everyone else in the house asleep. After seeing the film Threads I found myself unable to sleep, constantly replaying images from the film. However, due to said asleep family I wasn't able to distract myself or comfort myself in anyway but lying awake. It was quite a horrible experience, and I didn't sleep more than an hour that night... I find the idea of physically being stuck in such a state even more horrifying

Not as major as most of these, but this troper has a few examples

One time, I was at the dentist getting a filling, and when they gave me Novocain, the needle hurt so much I thought it struck a nerve. Then, when it came time to do the drilling, I learned that the Novocain did nothing and it hurt like hell. The worst part? They told me to raise my hand if I felt any pain during this, I did so, and ''they ignored it''. Needless to say, I switched dentists after that.

More than once I've woken up to find my head flat off the pillows and myself ''unable to breathe''. Thankfully, I managed to summon enough strength for my oxygen-deprived arms to push me up just enough to unfreeze my lungs, but the time prior was pure hell.

Narrow subversion: When I was little, I was playing om a swing when the rope snapped. I fell flat on my back, and all the air was pushed out of my lungs in a loud scream of pain, with me unable to inhale. Bad news was my parents were on the other side of the yard using a weed-whacker with their backs to me. Thankfully, my (now deceased) dog had been watching me and dashed across the yard to my parents and started barking at the top of his lungs to tell them something was wrong. They turned off the weed-whacker, heard my screams, and came to my aid.

When this tropette was small, about 5-6, I started sleep- talking. Only, I was fully aware of that, and couldn`t stop. It wasn`t that creepy for me then, but now it kind of is. I still don`t know what happened exactly, but luckily it never happened again (I`m 14 now).

Besides that one incident, this tropette has also suffered from a more recurrent (almost constant) ailment: Overwhelming embarrassment. It just creeps on me during the day, and I can only think of things that made me feel embarrassed. I can`t shake it off, just wait for it to end. It doesn`t help matters that I, while not shy, am an extremely easily embarrassed person.

A few years back, this troper went on a trip to Six Flags. At about the end of the trip (unbeknowst to me, at the time), everyone was gathered at the plaza to leave. It was very hot, so after begging for some money, I went in a shop to buy a soda. The line was a tad long, however, and when I came out, everyone was gone. I took a few steps, and suddenly my legs were asleep. I was having my first heat-induced hallucination. My vision was transformed into reds, yellows, and oranges, and I could not feel my legs for ten seconds. No one came to help me. After the feeling returned to my legs, I saw a familiar teacher running across the parking lot to get me. I quietly and calmly followed her to the bus, got on, and never spoke of it again.

One time, this troper woke up in the middle of the night and the power was out. When I looked over, I saw a sillouette that looked like my dad lying next to me on the floor. At the time, he was getting used to a new matress, so I didn't think that was strange. I blinked and he was gone. Then he was in front of my closet. I blinked again and he was gone. I believe in all kinds of ghosts, friendly and unfriendly, so this was espeically terrifying. I ran to my door, but since the power was out I couldn't find my doorknob and was stuck in my room. It took me a few hours to fall back asleep.

When I was around 12, I got on a plane from South Africa to England, a long flight. Only once we got in the air did I know I had an ear infection. It was the most painful thing to ever happen to me, the entire left side of my head became super sensitve, I could feel the teeth in my gums. All I could do was sit in my seat and wait.

A friend of mine works as a nurse, including volunteer work. At one point, she was working at a prison, tending to a prisoner who had sustained a head and spinal cord injury during a failed escape attempt who couldn't seem to do anything but blink and was considered to be largely brain dead because he didn't respond to attempts to talk to him. She'd recently been on a missionary trip to Spain, so one day she accidentally lapsed into Spanish when talking to him. Cue furious blinking and her finding that he could answer questions asked in Spanish. In the space of the week she was there, she was able to ascertain that at the time of the accident, he only spoke a regional version of Spanish and couldn't understand the questions being asked of him in English. In the years he'd been strapped to the bed, he'd picked up some English but by then, no one was paying attention until she happened to be looking at the right time.

I solo Queue in ''LeagueOfLegends''. I'm in a team with Garen, Poppy, Xin Zhao, and Vayne. I'm Tristana. The game goes so well, but then I realize slowly that these four premade people weren't interested in knocking down turrets...they just wanted kills. Their strategy was to beat the team down so hard they surrender. The team we were fighting was ''very'' stubborn and would keep failing surrender votes made every couple of minutes. I really ''really'' wanted to scream at them to just ''end the game''. Finally, I ended it by building Tristana up to max speed with her "Q" and just...pushed very hard. The other three were actually saying "Please end this!" And conveniently disappeared when they saw me ramboing. The game lasted almost ''twice'' the average length of a summoners rift game. AndIMustScream indeed...