Food: Chinese, eaten early
Alcohol Intake: None
Smoking: Fairly heavy. Probably over a pack that day.
Went to sleep: 1:45AM, later than normal.
Sleeping position: On back.
Recent sleep patterns: Over the weekend I had been camping, and not sleeping much.

I had trouble getting to sleep, and was listening quietly to the BBC World Service. I kept starting to fall asleep, and then forcing myself to wake up a bit and listen to the radio. I'd guess I fell asleep at around 2:00AM. I think I had the beginnings of a dream, but it quickly transitioned to a bout of sleep paralysis. It had probably been a year and a half since my last occurence of SP, and I had since done some research into the condition. Hoping to transition to an OBE/lucid dream state, I tried to relax past the fear that the paralysis induced.

I did manage to calm down a bit when I became aware of a buzzing low in the back of my head. I became aware of a presence just outside my field of vision. It seemed to me that it was a ghost, definitely a malevolent presence. I imagined that it was a stereotypical Halloween ghost consisting of a white sheet, and I was able to see the very tips of the fluttering sheet on the edges of my field of vision, kind of above, behind and slightly to the right of me. I also noticed the ceiling fan above my bed swinging wildly back and forth, almost as if one of the blades had come off and it was badly unbalanced. It looked like it would come crashing down any second.

Fear started to rise, first about the impending crash of the ceiling fan, which would no doubt injure me badly. I was aware that I did not believe in ghosts, and had nothing to fear from the presence, but at the same time terrified of it. I started trying to move by rolling to my left, but felt like I could roll no further than up onto my left shoulder (though I remained immobile). I started trying to shout, and after the third attempted shout again was able to move.

I sat up, fully conscious, fully mobile. The ringing continued in the back of my head, and the ceiling fan still seemed to be moving more than it should be. I got up and got a drink of water, turned the radio up a bit and was able to get back to normal sleep in about thirty minutes.