Just about through my crazy-busy work stretch! I’ll make it! About to go get some much-needed sleep. Here’s hoping I wake up without any unwanted guests…

I used to call them the “waking ghosts.” At least that’s what I used to say to my mom when I finally got away from whatever it was that came into my room at night and sat on my bed.

“Mom! The waking ghosts came again! Mom!”

“Julie, you were just having a nightmare,” she’d say. But I knew it wasn’t a nightmare – I was definitely awake.

When the Waking Ghosts persisted for years my mom finally took me to a sleep therapist. I described the Waking Ghosts and told them about how they would come in my room in the morning and sometimes they would just sit on my bed and watch me or walk around the room or – in a few cases – one would put its head close to mine as it pet my hair. I don’t know what that one looked like because I was too scared to open my eyes, but I know the hair petting was real – not a nightmare.

The therapist listened and took notes. He didn’t seem surprised or disbelieving. Pretty quickly, though, he said, “Julie, what you have is called ‘sleep paralysis.’ It’s what happens when you wake up during the dream phase of REM sleep. Normally, during this phase your brain turns off the signals that let your body move so you don’t act out your dream. But since you wake up you’re now fully conscious but you’re still dreaming. It’s what we call hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucination.”

With every term or big word I felt more and more relief. I wasn’t being held down by a ghost – it was “sleep paralysis!” And it wasn’t a ghost petting my head, it was a “hypnopompic hallucination!”

The next morning when I woke up and the Waking Ghost that sits on the bed and leers at me was there sitting on my feet I actually smiled as I thought to myself, “You’re not real!”

Then the voice came right next to my ear, cold and dangerous, “Wanna bet we’re not real, Julie?”