A very interesting page pointer on one of my mailing lists: Sleep Paralysis and Associated Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Experiences. It's sort of serendipitously topical as well, because, while I hadn't had anything like this for almost a year, I had re-occurrences on Friday and Saturday mornings last week.

Okay, the Friday one could possibly have been explained by the larger than usual (almost Leeds Biophysics-style), alcohol intake (beers, tequila shots, even sillier shots, beer drinking game, and then on to the Kro Bar) followed by checking into a hotel ('twas cheaper than a minicab at that time of the morning and I got into work by nine), but the Saturday one happened in my own bed at home, after a quieter than usual night on the sleeper.

Both times I had the sudden, jolting as if from a sudden fall, "wake up", followed by a feeling of sheer dread and being almost sure someone, not particularly malevolent, was watching me. Oh, and the complete inability to move or speak...

I suppose - in a more superstitious era - I may well have decided the hotel was haunted, but with the occurrences being on two consecutive mornings, and more than four hundred miles apart, the only common factor was me (oh, there's always the 'Meeting in Samora' hypothesis, but That'd Be Silly).