The Crushing Demon

GUESS WHAT?!

The dream-based zine, Naked and the Hall, has just recently published issue no. 1! Thanks to everyone who submitted, and MAKE SURE (in caps!) to go and check out all of the July entries online:

--> [link] <---

You can submit for the August edition until Aug.24th, so, like all the cool people, you should go and do that.

For all the info on the zine, submitting, printing, getting involved and just just to check it out, hop on over to the site.

</end plug>

This was my entry, based on an 'attack' of sleep paralysis I had in the winter. Has anyone ever experienced this before?

Many thanks to ~CheeseBun for getting the show up and running

To shamelessly rip exact words from the website artist statement (why fix it if it ain't broken):

Sleep paralysis is a phenomenon wherein, normally after a violent or sudden awakening from the REM cycle of sleep, a person finds themself unable to move for a short period of time. While the mind is 'awake', the body remains asleep; you can see your bed, see your clock, hear the radio in the distance, but your body is almost completely frozen.

Often, this experience is accompanied by highly tactile and vivid hallucinations, as the mind struggles betweens two different realities. Curiously, regardless of culture, time period or person, these hallucinations are frequently of 'evil' creatures; dark shadows, monsters, or general impressions of negative energy that float above, trying to drag the mind back into a nightmare.

The person is left with a feeling of absolute dread afterwards. The Hmong people refer to sleep paralysis as the 'crushing demon', and after experiencing it, I can absolutely agree with this interpretation.

This face stayed in my mind for a long, long time afterwards... and still does o__o

> Photoshop 7.0 + tablet, + photocollage