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134 Sixty years ago, only a small number of scientists and health-care practitioners were aware of sleep paralysis, although millions of Americans were experiencing the phenomenon. Even when sleep researchers began to learn about the neurophysiology of sleep paralysis, the impact of the personal experience remained obscure. Today, despite the high prevalence of (and growing interest in) sleep paralysis in the United States, the experience is only rarely recounted. This is partly due to the fact that public awareness of the night-mare is a relatively recent development, but it is also evidence of the fact that the long-standing stigma associated with anomalous experiences still discourages individuals from sharing details of their encounters. A supernatural or paranormal experience is so foreign to secular worldviews that it often cannot be reconciled with them. Adding to the sense that these sleep phenomena are pathological, health professionals only rarely encounter patients with (disclosed) night-mare concerns—and then only when the experiences are sufficiently distressing and anxiety-provoking to prompt individuals to seek medical care. Lack of information about sleep paralysis still causes confusion, misdiagnosis, and needless suffering. It has only been during the last two decades that the night-mare has begun to reemerge as a significant figure in American culture—one that can also be recognized by biomedicine, when the entity is conceptualized as sleep paralysis with hypnic hallucinations. From the night-mare’s increasingly widespread presence on the Internet and in social media to appearances in magazine articles, literary fiction, television,1 and film,2 the terrifying phenomenon is gradually becoming more widely acknowledged. Popular media representations of sleep paralysis reflect the growing awareness of the general population, but they also function to introduce cultural and biological frameworks to terrified and confused first-time experiencers. In an atmosphere of secular skepticism, isolated night-mare sufferers are overwhelmed with relief when their experiences are VVVVVVVVVVV Conclusion recognized and accepted. “I’m just glad I stumbled across this group, maybe I won’t feel so crazy! You know the way friends and family look at you when you recall what happens?” (Internet posting, ASP-L). It seems likely that sentiments such as these will remain pervasive for some time. We have learned a tremendous amount about the nature of the night-mare in recent years, but much remains to be explained. There are obvious areas for development, such as research into means of preventing and coping with night-mares (that move beyond changes in sleep position and attempts at toe wiggling), but the list of opportunities for future investigation is varied. Candidates for study include the night-mare’s role in community formation, memory development, trauma and coping, religion and spirituality, the nocebo, and mind-body interactions. The night-mare can provide insight into group development, particularly in the context of virtual communities. The event clearly contributes to a unique sense of shared experience among diverse individuals who seem to have little in common, except for their anomalous nocturnal encounters. Now that communities are no longer bound by geographic locality, will cultural understandings of sleep paralysis develop and evolve differently than they have in the past? How will interpretations of the night-mare function in the virtual spaces that facilitate the formation of online communities? In terms of memory, experiencers note that night-mare encounters are more “real” than waking reality and characteristically leave a deep psychic impression that is felt for decades. How is the night-mare encounter etched in memory in such a way that details can be realistically recalled (and relived) many years later? Regarding stress and coping, in some contexts, night-mares are so terrifying that they meet the clinical criteria for trauma. The emotionally and physically intense encounters with anomalous entities have lasting psychological effects; they traumatize, as well as replay traumas. What is the relationship of night-mares to past traumas and trauma recall among people from different cultures? What can the night-mare teach us about treating people who have experienced trauma? The night-mare’s role has been viewed as significant in terms of religion and spirituality for thousands of years. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, knowledge of the science of sleep paralysis coexists with spiritual explanations, often in the same individual. Given that natural and supernatural understandings of the night-mare have endured for millennia, this is not surprising . Neurophysiological findings regarding sleep paralysis simply do not supplant spiritual interpretations. Scientific developments do not preempt supernatural understandings of...

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