paralysis

    Was it "sleep paralysis"?  Years later, Nathaniel found a natural explanation for what happened that night.  The name for it is "sleep paralaysis."   Psycologist and sleep researcher, Al Cheyne, defined it as follows:

"A conscious state of involuntary immobility occurring prior to falling asleep or immediately upon wakening. An episode may last from a few seconds to several minutes. Although individuals in this
state are unable to make gross bodily movements, they are able to open their eyes and
to perceive and subsequently report on external events."

    Around that core if difinatiive features, there are some assciated features including commonly, fear and in rare cases, "out of body" experience.  The vast majority of sleep paralysis experiences are anxious and fearful, but  those rare few who have a sense of going out of body, often report bliss.  

.....................    Different cultures report have their own myths of the meaning of sleep paralysis.  In Norway, there was the "old hag" who attacked and sat on the chest.  In current American culture, there are reports of alien abductions which fit some aspescts of sleep paralysis.  Nathaniel was in his own subculture.  One of Chyen's papers addressed the sense of presence in terms of the viewpoint of Rudolph Otto, the theologian who wrote about the experience of the holy, and who coined the terms "numinous" and "mysterium tremendium."   And here, insofar as Nathaniel was concerned, Cheyne was brilliant.  He had felt the mystery that makes one tremble.