Brain demon
I read that when you are dreaming, your body completely shuts down. Your brain secretes a chemical that, in effect, paralyzes your entire body. This makes complete sense to me: no thrashing around and injuring yourself while in the throes of a nightmare. Back when I was troubled, I would wake up right on the verge of a dream and find myself unable to move! I was awake -- I knew this because the scenery was so vivid and I could see the clock ticking the minutes by. I was asleep, too -- I knew this because I was having vivid hallucinations. A few times I would be visited by a demon that sat on my chest and waited for me to take a breath so he could creep into my body and take possession of it. It was terrifying! On one particular occasion, the demon was trying like hell to squeeze into my ears and I could do nothing to fight him off -- being paralyzed and all. I glanced around the bedroom, panicked and began emitting little frightened sounds from my throat. My roommate, meanwhile, had entered my bedroom (after first knocking) because there was a very important telephone call for me. "Shake me, I'm dreaming! Help!" I cried when I saw him. So he set to work shaking me. Violently enough to fling the demon off me and wake me up. But when I awoke, no one was in the room. It was as if he had disappeared, since my eyes had been open during the entire dream. I got dressed and knocked on his door.

We had the following conversation through the closed wooden door:
"What?!?!" was his sleepy reply.
"Who's on the phone for me?" I asked.
"What?"
"You said I had a very important call. Are they still on the line? Who is it?"
"I'm asleep, no one is on the phone!" he yelled.
"Oh," I replied. "Well, thanks for shaking me and waking me up."
"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! I'M SLEEPING!" he screamed back.

Turns out, none of that actually happened. It's called something, I don't remember what.

Oh, yeah. Insanity.
(BrainSurgerysFun, Sat 25 Aug 2007, 0:29, Reply)