Question: Well, I just moved in to this house a month ago and that very first night, I awoke to the feeling of being choked!! I started to yell help and it stopped, but I kept getting bad feelings and chills the rest of the night. I had my pastor come bless the house and things were quiet for the next month, but just the other night (exactly 1 month after we moved in and 1 month after the first experience), I had the feeling of my face being squeezed as hard as possible. What woke me was the feeling of my hair being played with. Does this sound like it needs further investigation or is it just my imagination? Thanks so much for any help!!
Answer: I don't think it's all in your imagination...but I don't think you necessarily have a haunting either. It sounds like you have experienced a common phenomenon called Sleep Paralysis. I put a link to wikipedia below. Basically, the brain wakes up but the body doesn't. Sleep paralysis is commonly reported with hallucinations and other sensations, including feelings of being choked (which could, by the way, also be sleep apnea or acid reflux).
Reports from some of our past clients who experienced things similar to yours are very common. In fact, we have investigated a couple of homes where one or two sleep occurrences caused a cascading effect where the person started believing that every little thing was paranormal. They felt so afraid and believed so much that it was a ghost that they became hyper-aware of other things in the daylight hours that normally wouldn't have phased them. For example, we had a client who woke up in a paralysis state and thought there was a man standing over her. Suddenly everything became paranormal...lights flickering, a wind picking up some ashes, her toddler falling down the stairs...all things that we could logically explain or debunk. It got so bad that she and her family moved out of a beautiful 19th century farmhouse that they had just bought and begun restoring. Our investigation found nothing, and the husband did not believe the house was haunted. But, the wife was so frightened that she moved out. All of this from a single dream-like experience.
For our part, we usually dismiss any accounts of waking up and being ______ (fill in the blank: choked, hit, watched, touched, etc). There is a lot of research out there to attribute these reports to normal sleep phenomena, so we don't consider these experiences as evidence of the paranormal. The fact that you just moved into this place makes me even more inclined to think it's normal sleep behavior. Moving is a stressful event...couple that with a brand new environment and I would be surprised if your sleep WEREN'T disrupted! :-)
If you have other things happening that lead you to believe you have a haunting, that's another story! Just be careful not to let your sleep experiences dictate your honest evaluation of other events.
Hope this helps! And thank you for visiting our site!
Follow up from questioner: Thank you so much!! You have put my mind at ease. That definitely sounds like it since these things usually happen when I am half awake. Thank you again!