Four Snore and a Couple of Nights Ago: Angels for Umbrellas

So I lied. I claimed that last week was the final Four Snore and a Couple of Nights Ago. Well, this is what you call, the wrap-up episode. I am not going to follow my old format; this piece will be free flowing. Since I first created my first hub about dreams, I have come across some epiphanies and come to one conclusion about sleep, my mind, and the dreams and experiences I have had in my life.

The subject I am about to talk about isn’t that hard for me to speak about but it might be difficult for anyone to understand or even believe. I am referring to negative (or maybe positive) entities that may or may not follow us throughout our lives. My viewpoint is from both sides, spiritually (or somewhat lack thereof) and scientifically. I will come up with a conclusion in the end but as I go along, I will share my story and provide my evidence for each side. I want to share with you my crackpot theories. Please bear with me, I will share stories that are also not my own that I have read a month or so ago all over the Internet. So, I will not be able to site those sources. I will leave it up to you to believe what you want to believe as I already know how I feel. Please leave your comments below with your stories and thoughts.

First off, I am going to explain what experiences I have been having. In my first dream hub, named solely Four Snore and a Couple Nights Ago, I had a dream involving an entity with no name. I will recap here instead of you having to read the entire thing (I called this entity “Leader” because when I wrote this, I never have put the pieces together realize what it truly was):

I crouched behind a slab of concrete and tried to see what was going on. The Leader was standing with his back to me and then turned around almost instantaneously appeared to look at me right into my soul. I immediately fell backwards and ran to my left into the closest building and dived into a small room. I tried to slam the door behind me but as I was doing so, the door flew open and I just fell to the floor in the center of the room. The Leader started to circle around me, looking down at me and speaking. The language he spoke was not even close to anything I have ever heard before in my life. As he angrily stabbed his words into my mind, the entire room shook.

It was the shaking of my world and the Leader’s words entering my skin that woke me up. I was in my bedroom at my apartment with the covers kicked off of me. It was when I was leaving for work, walking out to my car where I saw him on the road in the distance, walking towards me. He had come for me and that is when I truly woke up for real.

As creepy as that dream sounds, it all came together when I watched the fictional “horror” movie, Insidious. It was merely about a boy who practices astral projection at night when in bed (OOBE, Out of Body Experience). Well, his parents didn’t know that until after he went into an unexpected coma. Apparently, he astral projected and decided to explore and he then got lost. While he was away from his physical body, this physical body was more susceptible to be taken over by negative entities, like a possession. So, he had one negative entity trying to get to his body. One line that coincided with my dream hub was someone stating, “Don’t let him see you or he will come after you.” Is it a coincidence to that happening in a dream of mine involving a negative entity? Maybe, maybe not.

As I have been thinking about this entity, I started to think about the ghost that I saw a few years ago at my friend’s house. I have only seen one ghost in my entire life and it wasn’t truly frightening until I started to think about it. The ghost I described was a figure that was about 5’10” tall and when I saw it, it seemed like it didn’t want me to see it. It immediately moved quickly into another room. Well, this ghost wasn’t white; it was a shadow and black. I wonder if this “ghost” was something a little more.

Even though that Insidious movie was slightly corny, it started to make me think about a lot of things when it came to my dreams and the experiences of my past. Starting off when I was young, I was known to have a lot of nightmares. I, only once, can remember watching myself sleep from around 3 feet above my body. I learned lately that what I commonly experienced was called sleep paralysis where no matter what I did, I could not move.

Often enough, I had dreams where I tried to wake up and I just couldn’t move a muscle. As a child, I would have a dream inside a dream inside a dream. I would try to wake up, be paralyzed, wake up in my dream only to experience more terrors, and try to wake up then finally come back to this reality. I honestly don’t mostly remember what I dreamt about but there is one vision that always comes back to me.

This vision is that figure I saw in my dream hub. Not exactly the same entity but they have to be the same or at least similar. I remember, in my dreams as a child, it being nighttime in the house I grew up in. I would walk outside to our sidewalk and look down the sidewalk to my right. There was always a shadow there in the distance. I always felt it was after me and I think, if I remember correctly, it would chase me and then my feet would turn into concrete of course.

So, I have not had sleep paralysis for over 20 years until literally three nights ago. I was in my room facing away from the window. My “dream” was me waking up and sitting up a little in bed and trying to talk to this entity standing in my room. During this “dream,” I remember realizing that this is the same entity because I have been thinking about it a lot lately; I tried to talk to it. Because of sleep paralysis, I slurred my speech but I remember saying or trying to say, “Hello. This is so cool.” Then, out of weakness, I fell into my bed and fell back asleep (or just move from one sleep cycle to the next?). I think if you were sitting in my dark room with night vision goggles, you would have seen me literally sit up and stare at something and talking like a drunken sailor. I truly believe I physically opened my eyes because this dream took place only in my bed and I could barely move.

Something else happened that night. Before the dream, I prayed to God hoping for a great night sleep. After this prayer, I felt warm and relaxed. I never pray, only in certain situations because I have never really been a religious person, with my family being the same. So, I truly think since I mentioned the entity in the prayer, I pissed it off. After my sleep paralysis dream, I slept well until a loud bang in my room. I immediately woke up. It sort of sounded like a light bulb exploding but now that I have started to think about it, it sounded like someone smacking my lamp (because it is made out of a cheap hallow metal and is one of those floor standing types). I think it was trying to get my attention.

Moving forward, I am trying to figure out, for sure, if astral projection and sleep apnea are related. I am pretty sure I show the signs of sleep apnea from feeling tired in the morning to getting extremely tired during mid-afternoon. I have also been known to sleep walk a little bit as a child and I am an avid snorer. I am no expert but I feel I have a strong case for sleep apnea that my dad, the whole family feels, has. Now, does sleep apnea cause sleep paralysis? Many experts say yes and I have to agree. That could explain a few things.

When it comes to astral projection, some people say that it is separate from sleep and others say it can be done during one of your sleep cycles. Honestly I have done just a little research on this topic and I am not entirely sure which cycle it happens in. Is this ability a common occurrence during certain brainwave activity? This is similar to my belief that ghosts do exist, it is just some people, especially very young children, have the ability to receive certain frequencies that ghosts and entities could possibly travel in. Astral projection may propel our brains to see these frequencies and if we truly travel in a different plane during an Out of Body Experience, it is possible to interact with the deceased, angels or even negative entities like demons. I have heard stories of people interacting with these entities with neutral, positive and negative results. The following are a few of those stories.

As you project, you go to wherever you think of. You think of flying, you fly. If you get scared, you think of your body and in a flash, you are back beside or in your body (not sure how that truly works). The one thing they got wrong in Insidious is the fact to build up the suspense; you had to walk back to your body to stop projecting and that is how the kid got lost in this dark and lightless world. The truth is, from almost all sources I have looked at, you just have to think of your body or home and you are there.

Some people have stated that when they have projected, they have had negative entities hanging out beside or on their physical body. A lot of times, the entities would try to strike fear out of the person projecting because they fed off of this fear. All one would have to do is tell them to go away, show no fear and coincidently, they would finally go away. The first step to successfully “project” would be to get rid of all your fears and know that these entities cannot hurt you no matter what happens to you in this weird world.

When you project, you think and things happen. The problem when you try to project and think of good things, you will always have negative thoughts creep into your mind. What if I tell you not to think of a pink elephant? What do you do? Think of a pink elephant, right? Also, the same thing happens when lucid dreaming. This type of dreaming is the ability to train yourself to control your dreams, always knowing you are dreaming when you dream. Some say that lucid dreaming and astral projection are one and the same. That, I do not know for sure.

Other people have tried astral projection unsuccessfully. They would have an OOBE and things would, at the time, be going smoothly. Once something dark shows its face in the experience, the person would think instantly of this darkness and then a terrible nightmare would ensue. This person would experience this every time they dream or project. This is one reason I will not attempt to lucid dream or even read up ways on how to successfully project. That risk is a risk I do not want to take.

Also, some have ran into positive entities in the astral “plane” and have met their spirit guides. When you think of these guides you go to the highest plane where angels exist. In the middle planes contain the deceased and others like you projecting. Some people have been caught in the middle of a downpour and people have gawked in amazement as they are completely dry as if they have had angels for umbrellas.

In conclusion, here is how I feel about these experiences. I know for a fact that the ghost that I saw was real. I was awake and alert when that happened and will argue with anyone that thinks I have seen an optical illusion or have hallucinated. When it comes to the shadowy figure in my dreams, including my most recent sleep paralysis experience, I feel these are dreams. I was just in another cycle of sleep when I sat up and attempted to talk to what I thought or dreamt I saw in my room. I feel, when I have a fear or cannot stop thinking about this entity, I dream about it like every other normal human being on Earth would. If you watch a horror movie after horror movie after horror movie, there is a good chance you are going to have a dream about a horror movie.

When it comes to the sleep paralysis, I truly feel I have sleep apnea. All of the symptoms are there; I just need to go to the doctor to get a sleep study done. Many people would say, the reason I don’t get good sleep is caused by the reappearance of the negative entity messing with me every night. That is hard for me to believe but the answer that is science-based is going to be the winner here. If there was no such thing as sleep apnea, I would be thinking that an entity is after me and I would be asking for advice elsewhere. I have also realized that if I eat late into the night, I would have more dreams. There is one thing I cannot explain, what in the world caused that loud bang in my room a few nights ago? Was it all really all in my head?

I am very happy I have discovered these things about myself. I believe with my paralysis experience, I actually faced my fears by trying to communicate with “it”. I have grown over the years, changing for the better, facing my fears and growing as a person. A great man once said, “Nothing found is better than everything lost”. Who was the author of that quote? Me.