I can laugh about it now but at the time I threw myself out of bed to get away from it. On a serous note a couple of months ago I had sleep paralysis & it was petrifying. Mr T was away & one night this entity moved across the bottom of our bed, climbed in - I could even feel the movement on the mattress & started stroking my neck. In my dream I touched the hand & it felt soft, almost boneless, I was literally pinned to the bed but then had the idea of throwing my glass of water at it, at this point it drifted away as I obviously woke up. When I looked it up I was horrified by the stories of Incubus & the fact that some poor souls regularly have these terrors during rem sleep. When his nibs came back I told him all about it, he obviously wasn't listening because he thought I was talking about the cat..! Sorry CC, all that from a Space Bag & your laughing men.
Oh gosh, my heart goes out to you or anyone who has or does suffer from sleep paralysis and/or night terrors.
Because of an exisiting, chronic illness, and also medication side effects, I have horrendous sleep problems (they even want to study me at a sleep clinic as such an "interesting case"..! Sadly too ill with primary condition to go at the moment) and this includes regular episodes of both...
As you've experienced, sleep paralysis is hideous. For me, the presence often comes into my room and sits on my chest, or I have intruders coming up the stairs but because your body is "paralysed", you can't react or move or get away. Sometimes I have all sorts of weird multi-sensory experiences as part of it too. Afterwards I am often too scared to go back to sleep...
At one point they were so bad, I used to keep myself awake on purpose to avoid them.
They say it's worse when you're over-tired, and under stress. Also sleeping on your back makes it worse (def does for me). Mine has got less frequent recently (was having them x3/4 a week) which is a huge relief. Although seem to be having more terrors!
Don't know if it's still on there, but there was a really good 3 part series on sleep disorders on More 4.
(Just looked and the "Secrets of Sleep" is still there on All 4 to watch if anyone interested!)
So sorry not sure how rheas got from Kim & co to sleep disorders but it's my specialist subject so I had to comment