Text:

Interviewee: When I was young, my mom and dad would say it’s “Ghost pressing on the bed” that made me unable to move my body, despite being mentally awake.

I was 7 years old. One day, I woke up early in the morning —I think it’s around 4 or 5 o’clock—I was mentally awake, but I just couldn’t move my body. I thought I was stuck by something, but it was invisible, so I could not really see what happened on my body. This kind of like situation stayed with me for around 10 minutes. And then I fell asleep again, and then the next time I woke up, I could move properly.

When I told my parents about this, they said, “Oh, it’s a ghost. He or she was pressing down on your body so you could not move.”

It’s kind of like a common belief or way to explain this in China. Scientifically speaking, it’s about your mind—maybe you are being too mentally stressed or, like, too tired, and that will happen to you.

But the tricky thing is that after that happened, I kept dreaming about weird things. I would dream of being in a playground, like a theme park, and riding a rollercoaster without any security belts on. And then, I saw someone sitting next to me, but I couldn’t really see her face, though I somehow knew it was a woman. It was just so scary that I almost peed (and I was young, only seven years old.)

I never told my parents that I had this dream after the “Ghost pressing down on my bed” experience because I didn’t know how to tell them, or maybe I was too ashamed to tell them. Now, when I think back on this experience, I think it’s funny—it’s something that not everyone will experience, and it’s something that is both very tricky and very unique.

Context:

My interviewee was told of this ghost by her parents when she was 7 years old, when she experienced sleep paralysis. She was then told of this monster that pressed against her on her bed, which made her uneasy even after that experience.

Analysis:

• Folklore filling an explanatory gap: before scientific understanding of sleep paralysis was widely understood and accessible, the supernatural was used by folks to provide culturally acceptable explanations of this symptom.
• Psychological pressure: The ghost that presses down can be read as a projection of psychological weight: stress, anxiety, repressed fear, made into an external, physical force in the form of a supernatural ghost. This is an example of using an “external being” to explain what’s inside people’s minds—their unconscious, inexplicable feelings and anxieties.
• Memorate: this story is also an example of a memorate: a personal encounter with a legendary figure or spirit.