Hey it’s Michelle Newman, and tonight’s show is about what visits you when the lights go out. It’s built like a staircase. The first half is stories sleep paralysis explains well, and the second half is where I’m not sure it can. Along the way I get into the word nightmare, the radio show that gave us shadow people, and what medieval Europe blamed for the weight on your chest.
Nellie from Clinton, Illinois was eighteen, asleep on her stomach on a weekend morning, when something heavy climbed on top of her. A dark shape. A growl that sounded like a laugh. Her grandmother had warned her. In Mexican culture it’s called se te subió el muerto, the dead got on top of you.
Yamari from Pennsylvania woke to three black figures standing around her bed, all focused on her, while she couldn’t move or scream. Researchers call that sense of an evil presence the intruder. What a hallucination can’t explain is the door. She remembers shutting it before bed, and when she woke up, it was open.
Dave from Kansas City has had sleep paralysis since he was a kid, so he knew what was happening. Then he thought he woke up. A false awakening is dreaming that you’ve woken up. He heard three loud bangs and found two figures made of TV static attacking him in his living room. He chanted Jesus help me until they stopped. That morning there were four police cars outside, and his front door had been unlocked all night.
Yvonne from the Philippines wasn’t asleep. In the afternoon, at her aunt’s house, she looked back down the stairs and saw a black silhouette in the shape of a person that began running up after her. Shadow people are usually reported by the sleep-deprived, but many sightings come in broad daylight. The next day her aunt confirmed she’d seen it too, and she had one rule. Never acknowledge it.
Dave from Sioux Falls remembers dying of spinal meningitis in a hospital at about a year old, and a woman standing over him. He grew up in a Connecticut house that was just not right, with a babysitter no one else in his family ever saw. He says she still watches him sleep, and he sleeps with the light on.
Hector from New Mexico has been scratched for ten years with no explanation, usually three long marks. One night a nightmare of a laughing figure woke him at 3:33 AM. The next night a loud bang woke him at 3:33 again, and his bedroom door, which he always kept shut, was open. The witching hour, also called the devil’s hour, is usually midnight or 3 AM.
Rachel from Myrtle Beach says something has been attached to her since she was four. After her first sleep paralysis episode, three long scratches appeared on her makeup vanity. When she described it to her mother, her mother said the wall behind her was turning black. She still won’t repeat what something whispered in her ear three weeks before she called.
Tyler from Texas closes the episode with the longest story. After a car crashed into his Oak Cliff apartment building, he spent weeks alone in the only livable unit, waking with something crushing his chest. Incubus is Latin for one who lies upon the sleeper. A late 1400s witch hunting manual listed exorcism and moving away among five cures for an incubus attack, and Tyler tried both. Then a new neighbor walked out the front door, and everything stopped.
The Hat Man gets his own episode on Halloween.
00:00 Intro: What visits you in the dark?
00:00 Nellie from Illinois and the dead who climb on your chest
00:00 Yamari from Pennsylvania and the open bedroom door
00:00 Dave from Kansas City and the TV static figures
00:00 Yvonne from the Philippines and the shadow on the stairs
00:00 Dave from Sioux Falls and the babysitter no one saw
00:00 Hector from New Mexico and the 3:33 AM bang
00:00 Rachel from Myrtle Beach and the wall that turned black
00:00 Tyler from Texas and the weight on his chest
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Theme music: Sexy Sax by Cool Cascade
Production: Newman Media