I caught this crazy story on Reddit in which a user shared his friend’s drawing of a demon that torments her nightly through sleep paralysis.
“She is an incredible artist but is plagued with a lot of sleep distress and an overly-active imagination which leads to some pretty intense visual hallucinations and frequent sleep paralysis,” he explained. “She has seen this creature lurking in the corner of her bedroom almost her entire life, but she just recently decided to draw it in an attempt to sort of “own” it and maybe take control.”
Here’s a bit taken from her blog and below the art, which was shared on DeviantArt.
“This is entirely different subject matter than the humorous nature of the rest of my comics. But it’s very personal and I decided to post it anyways. I didn’t exactly make this creature up. I get sleep paralysis terribly. (For those of you who don’t know, sleep paralysis is a semi rare thing where a person’s brain releases a muscle paralyzing chemical while the individual is still awake. This chemical is meant to keep you from acting out your dreams, but during sleep paralysis the individual is conscious but paralyzed. Most people who get it, including myself, get it on a regular basis. This is often accompanied by hallucinations.)
I happen to hallucinate the same creature almost every night. He isn’t pleasant. He’s been haunting me for as far back as I can recall, so I decided that maybe if I try drawing him, I will feel more in control of him rather than victimized. Here he is. I have yet to find out if this will help me or backfire. I have an underlying fear that I might have just made it worse by letting it escape my mind and attain a physical depiction. Only time will tell.
Drawn in pencil and coloured in photoshop.
Art source: christobit