Astral Attack, Man on My Back

Sunday Night, May 24, 1992

I hiked 12.6 miles in the mountains Sunday and did not eat much. I was intentionally losing weight. The result is that when I went to bed Sunday night I was exhausted. I read the first chapter of the book Dimensions by Jacques Vallee before turning out the light at 11:17 PM. I was lying on my stomach with my left arm down by my side and my right hand up under the right side of the pillow. The left side of my face was flat against the mattress. The pillow was between my head and the bed's headboard.

I felt the internal motion feeling and heard the rushing sounds I have learned to associate with leaving my body. I recognized what was happening, relaxed, and flowed with the experience. I perceived a fast, steady stream of hypnogogic images and sounds. In one brief scene I was lying on my side in bed between an animal and a child. I was facing the animal's back. I think it was a dog. I could not see the child. As the quick stories came and went I felt like I accelerated, stopped, accelerated, stopped, and so on in cycles. The feeling of motion and loudness of the rushing sound also occurred in cycles. I realized that the cycle coincided with my heartbeats.

Then I was distracted by loud heavy-metal music and the singer's face filled my vision. I heard and understood the lyrics. They were not profound. As I watched the singer and listened to the music I wondered why my separation was taking so long. Usually this part of a projection only lasted about one second.

Suddenly I felt harsh, forceful pressure on my right shoulder and on my left arm's biceps. Someone was holding me down, powerfully. My sense was that the being was masculine. I clearly felt the right hand and fingers squeezing my right shoulder, pushing it against the mattress. I tried to struggle, but I was paralyzed. I tried to scream, but I couldn't. Throughout the struggle I continued feeling motion, hearing the loud music, and seeing the singer's face. The being let go of my left arm and slid its left hand, palm up, under me, against my stomach. The hand grabbed my stomach, painfully gouging me with its fingers. The feeling was unendurable, similar to the feeling when someone grabs and pinches the nerves of your leg above your knee (called a "horse bite"), or forcefully tickles the bottoms of your feet. Somehow I grabbed the being's left arm with my left hand and tried to wrest it from my stomach. I screamed internally, "Whose hands are these? Why are you doing this? Who are you?" Everything stopped.

I opened my eyes and saw that it was 11:28, eleven minutes after I had turned out the light. I had not moved. My left arm was still straight down by my side and my right arm was still up under my pillow. As I reviewed the experience I realized the being who attacked me had felt similar to the being who tried to astrally abduct me several years earlier. Only this time the being held my astral body inside my physical body so that I couldn't project.


Copyright 2008 Jon Maloney

Man on My Back, Paralysis, Dual Consciousness

Tuesday Morning, June 5, 1990

A friend and I ate bad seafood on Saturday night. We both had cramps and diarrhea on Sunday and Monday. Monday night I went to bed very tired at around 12:45 AM.

I lay on my stomach and tried to go to sleep as quickly as possible. Soon I was in a dream in which a coworker was having convulsions on the floor nearby. When I tried to move to help her I discovered I was paralyzed. The dream world vanished and I was in bed struggling to move. This type of paralysis is not uncommon, especially when one is in the state between sleeping and waking. I have both read about and experienced such paralysis several times. It's usually unnerving, but it doesn't last long.

As I lay on my stomach trying to move I suddenly became aware of a man on my back holding tightly onto my neck and shoulders. I could feel his weight on my body and I could feel his breath on my left ear. I remembered reading Robert Monroe's account of the same phenomenon (in Journeys Out of the Body). Monroe identified the man on his back as his own physical body. I wondered if my astral body was simply out of coincidence with my physical body, making me think my physical body was someone else, or if I really had an unwelcome entity holding onto me. I tried to mentally create an energy field that would push the man off of my back. I also tried to move my physical body, which would end the experience. Both attempts failed.

Then I was standing in a dimly-lit room facing a light switch on the wall. I was conscious both there and in my paralyzed physical body where I was still trying to free myself of the man on my back. I knew if I turned the light on, normalcy would return. I flipped the switch but no light came on. Although I had previously used non-working lights in dreams as triggers to become lucid, this time it didn't work. I stood there staring at the light switch as my consciousness in my physical body kept struggling with the man on my back. Suddenly I was able to move my physical arms and the experience ended.

2008 Note: I had also read about the man-on-your-back phenomenon in other books and in Reflections on Lucid Dreaming and Out-of-Body Experiences: Father X in Lucidity Letter, June 1989, Vol. 8, No.1, page 39. In Father X's experiences the man on his back was not himself.


Copyright 2008 Jon Maloney