Sleep Paralysis | My Second Dream and the White Mist

This sleep paralysis dream looms over the first experience I penned down in Parallel Universe Dream. I do not wish to lose its meticulous details. Perhaps putting them together will help me understand why it felt so real. At the time, my imagination favoured a gateway to another world. That is a way of telling the experience, not evidence that a gateway existed.

Sleep Paralysis and the Second Lucid Dream

The gap between the two dreams was, as far as I can remember, three to four months. I had moved to a different place and had company too. People mostly stayed in their own rooms, although I often saw them in the living room. No one came into my room much unless it was necessary.

A jaded afternoon slumber happened as I drifted on my bed. I was on my back, in the same position as during the first dream. My hand had found my chest once again. I must have been lodged up good in a dream when I felt an abrupt urge to wake. I tried hard to open my eyes. As I did, I felt myself waking.

I distinctly remember the remnants of the first dream returning. In my head, I said to myself:

“Hey, it is the same portal I am venturing into.”

Maybe I had entered that parallel universe again, I thought. I was extremely elated to have finally found a trick for visiting the netherworld. The feeling was not proof of a discovery, but inside the dream I was cocksure of it.

I was still in the same room, on the same bed. It was as bright as it had been moments before I fell asleep. The door to my left stood wide open, and bright light shone through it too.

Riveted to the Bed

This time, I was determined to move around and explore. To turn that wild thought into something real, I tried to shift my body. Instead, I felt strangely riveted to the bed. I could not lift a finger.

With an adamant head, I decided to cause the ripples I wanted. I heaved with all the force I could summon. For a moment, I seemed to rise a little, only to fall back onto the bed. Something appeared to be pulling me down, stopping me from going any further. The intention to move was clear; the movement itself was not.

The White Mist in the Sleep Paralysis Dream

I lay helpless for a few seconds, still figuring out how to saunter into this strange world. Then it arrived. A white mist entered through the open door. I could not make out its face, but as it moved swiftly into the room, I began to recognise a contour. For a second, it felt as though my mother had come in. Frantic, I shouted:

“Mother, is that you?”

The figure moved to my left. Unable to turn my face towards the stranger, I decided to swing my legs that way instead. If I could fall off the bed, I thought, at least it would be a start.

I lifted myself with immense effort and felt myself heaving to the left. This time I kept going, determined to land on my feet. I could feel that I was moving and that the floor was almost there. Then, out of the blue, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I attributed it to that mystical white lady. The dream broke, and I came back to the world of the living.

Waking Up Without Having Moved

On waking, I found myself in the same position. I had not inched across the bed. My hand was still on my heart, just as it had been after the first dream. I had felt so sure of moving, so close to falling, that finding myself intact on the mattress was disheartening beyond limit.

Elated that I had lingered in that elusive enclave. Pissed off that I had been flung out like an insect. That was the contradiction I carried away: the thrill of an imagined visit, followed by frustration at having no proper time to explore. I wanted the dream to continue, even after it had unsettled me.

I tried going back to sleep, but in vain. When I looked for my roommates, they were all holed up in their rooms. Nobody had come into mine. The figure and the tap belonged to my experience around waking; I found no visitor there afterwards.

Looking Back at Sleep Paralysis

This brings me back to lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis. I called the experience lucid because I felt aware of returning to a dream and wanted to direct what happened next. That description records how it felt. It does not settle exactly which state I was in or explain every sensation I remember.

The NHS guide to sleep paralysis describes being unable to move or speak around falling asleep or waking. A sensed presence or a feeling of pressure can accompany it. That is relevant context, not a diagnosis of my remembered dream. The guide advises seeing a GP when frequent episodes leave you afraid to sleep or persistently tired.

A sleep-and-waking explanation is more grounded than a portal theory. Still, I like the story my fantastical head makes of the white figure: a guard stopping me from venturing further. In that imagined world, we receive a fixed interval to scour the unknown before something brings us back. So unfair!

The dog-like thing in the first dream and the white figure in this one seem like hired guards in that story. One pounced; the other seemed to tap my shoulder. Neither encounter establishes a world of the dead. Yet the connection is too vivid for me to ignore as a piece of dream-book imagery.

There is another dream, a third one, that ventures further into that imagined restricted territory. I wanted to record it too, rather than let its details disappear. These are the strange leaflets I keep in The Dream Book: remembered experiences, unanswered questions and a stubborn desire to explore the bizarre side of the universe.