Don’t be afraid of the “Ghost”

In China, there is a traditional saying about a “supernatural” phenomenon talking about when people wake up in late night, they see a “ghost” floating somewhere and even they wanted to shout out loud, they are not able to do so because of the unable of opening their mouth or move their body. In China, older generations called it “Gui Ya Chuang”, literally means ghost is pushing you on your bed. And people usually consider this as a supernatural event in past time because of this feeling of trapped by other things invisible and feel like dead but alive. By remembering what Andrew said about that there are actually a scientific reasoning on supernatural events. And in fact, in this case it is called sleep paralysis.

Sleep paralysis is when people are awaking or sleeping, they temporally not able to move their body or speak.  When people are asleep, the body is cycling between phases of sleeping, which are REM(Rapid Eye Movement) sleeping and non-REM sleeping. REM sleeping repeats about every 90 minutes when sleeping. During the deep sleeping of REM stage, the brain is ordering the body to goes into a situation called atonia. During atonia, the voluntary muscles are ordered to stop their movements and be relaxing, it prevents the action of day dreaming or hurt ones’ selves without knowing. And if you are awake during this state of sleeping, it is when sleep paralysis happens. During sleep paralysis, people are awake, but could not use their voluntary muscles, however their involuntary muscles will not be affected, such as breathing. This will last about 20 seconds or couple minutes. And this is why many older generations called it a ghost pushing you; it is horrified when you are awake but you can not move your body. 

But besides the fact of not able to move their body, they may also claim about they saw ghosts flowing around. It is possible that people claim that because of the fear that appear to a person when they discover that they cannot move their body, but 10 percent of the whole population may experience in the other situation. And it is called the hallucinations that happens between you are asleep and awake. Unlike dreaming or some kind of illusion, it occurs when there are lack of external stimuli. According to an article on Health Line, there are several different kinds of hallucinations includes visual hallucinations, auditory hallucinations, tactile hallucinations and temporary hallucinations. During the process of “Gui Ya Chuang” that people saw a ghost belongs to the visual hallucination when people see a thing that is not real during the sleep paralysis, such as saw a person that no other people can see. And this is the “ghost” that people are afraid of. And this situation appears with a higher possibilities between the people around the age os 20 and thirty.

On the other hand, people may be also concerned about the reason that sleep paralysis happens. Is it really due to chance or based on the healthiness of a person? Many scientist tried to link this problem with the psychological stage,such as depression or stress, or the lack of sleeping due to some of the research. But all of the evidences are not strong enough to support their ideas. Even many scientists suggests people to take more sleeps and relief more stress in day time, but the appearance of this problem of sleep paralysis still exist. But one fact can be determined, that sleep paralysis will not harm people or damage a person’s body. Dr. Michael J. Breus, a Psychologist and a Diplomate of the American Board of Sleep Medicine, suggested that it is necessary to educate people not to be afraid about this harmless and don’t be worry about it. So, don’t be afraid of the “ghost”, just be happy and relax, and keep sleeping!

4 thoughts on “Don’t be afraid of the “Ghost”

  1. Qian Chen

    I have to say I am interested in this blog because I always have sleep paralysis (which also is GuiYaChuang). I have no idea why I am easily to be sleep paralysis and I cannot breathe during that time. However, my sleep paralysis only remained around ten seconds, otherwise I cannot live till now to put this comment. So it is more scared for me to get sleep paralysis even though I know there are no ghost for this situation. Sometime when I slept on sofa or in the noon, I will wake up easily with sleep paralysis every time. That’s really killing me. So I would say if people cannot sleep deeply, it is more possible for them suffer from sleep paralysis. And maybe if you have sleep paralysis once at night, you may have it continuously that night. Possibly because you broke the period of atonia so your body has to restart that period.

  2. Rachael Moyer

    As a full believer of ghosts and the paranormal world, I was extremely excited to read your blog post. I have heard many stories, and watches them on TV, about those who wake up and see a ghost but have an inability to move. I am very open to accepting the sleep paralysis theory, it seems to have a good basis, and explains why these “paranormal” experiences mostly happen just at night. I also feel as if having hallucinations between sleeping and being awake, makes complete sense. Sometimes I find myself falling asleep in class, and some really weird, crazy things come to mind as if I’m dreaming. Maybe this is somewhat related to the hallucinations others see. This being said, it would be interesting to do a study in which we observe sleeping behavior in “haunted” houses, using technical equipment there could be a measurement of temp and energy (which initiates a ghost nearby), and see how many people wake up and see a ghost. This could prove that a ghost might be present, and they are not just in sleep paralysis. But if many results show no energy or temp change in the room when sleep paralysis occurs, this theory might be the right one. At the end of the day, I can accept these new theories, but I still believe in the paranormal. Here is a video that provides a story that leans towards ghosts being completely real (I wouldn’t recommend watching if you get easily spooked out about ghosts, I also wouldn’t recommend watching this alone at night): Video

  3. Kaitlin Anita Caminiti

    This was such an intriguing topic to learn about because it was from a different culture that I am not accustomed to. Your information on REM sleep was also very detailed and informative and I like how in older generations they use the analogy of a “ghost pushing down on you” to describe the REM sleep effects. I’ve had friends who have experienced this kind of activity in their sleep and they say its one of the most terrifying experiences they’ve ever been involved in. Is this a popular phenomenom that is believed all throughout China?

  4. Alexandra Carley Spanier

    This is a great blog. Although I never have experienced this first hand I found it quite scary to just read. It made me wonder why exactly older people get it so much. I think that maybe it could be overtime the older you get the more weak your bones become which causes them to experience their body to fell like its being pushed. Sleep paralysis is also very common for students with around 28.3% of students experience it. This could be related to what you said earlier, stress. With staying up late and doing so much work students have a very anxious sleep which causes them to form sleep paralysis. http://www.today.com/health/when-you-jerk-awake-think-youre-choking-theres-name-it-t47876

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