37+ Sleep Paralysis Zhongwen Pictures. Make sure you have gone to the bathroom. The sleep demon is actually a hallucination linked to sleep paralysis, which occurs when a person is jolted awake in the middle of the rapid eye movement (rem) phase of sleep associated with dreaming.
While it is not a fatal condition, it can cause anxiety.
Learn about potential triggers, including causes and risk factors of sleep paralysis. A person with sleep paralysis will wake up but be unable to move. Brian sharpless woke up in the middle of the night with the haunting feeling that he wasn't alone. Associations between sleep paralysis and other unusual and/or threatening sleep experiences such as nightmares, exploding head syndrome, and lucid dreaming have been reported.