[chrisnight]

REM atonia, which is the paralysis that sleep paralysis comes from/uses, paralyzes the majority of your body. However, one organ it doesn’t paralyze is your eyes, hence people experiencing it generally open their eyes as they try to escape it. However, even with your eyes open, you can experience dream-like hallucinations overlayed ontop your view of reality, hence people thinking they see other entities in their bedrooms, etc. It’s possible that it was a dream, but it’s completely possible it wasn’t, so if a person claims they were awake, then in all likelyhood they were.

[lisper]

Well, there's an objective test: did they see something that actually happened out in the world during the episode that could be verified later?

[Waterluvian]

When it happened the Monorail episode of the Simpsons was on. And it continued to be on when I was shaken out of it because my girlfriend suggested we just watch the rest to get my mind off it.

It was also just a very vivid experience. I felt completely awake. Just unable to do a thing.