Have you watched Severance?

For me it's having a large sleep debt and smoking weed.

Sometimes when I get sick I can sense that it might happen when I go to sleep. I think it's mainly about being the right amount of tired, though.

The other key element is having enough brain activity to keep your eyes open or to reopen them while your body tries to start REM sleep. People say stress will do that, and that tracks with my experience.

Also, try sleeping on your back. I've never had it while sleeping in any other position. It could vary from person to person, so maybe try sleeping in different positions.

Allegedly, making an active effort towards lucid dreaming increases the rate of incidence of sleep paralysis by some ridiculous amount. Which makes sense, because in lucid dreaming you're essentially trying to trick your brain into retaining conscious processing during a dream.

Never tried myself, but if you're not afraid of the paralysis demons, it's a win win. You either succeed and get to lucid dream on the regular which kicks ass, or you don't succeed and start having nightly visits from Slim Jimmy.

This is consistent with my experience. I didn't have a paralysis demon, but I was convinced my ceiling fan was plotting to kill me. Not that it was going to fall and hurt but that it was scheming to have me assassinated and would take matters into its own hands if necessary.

Wiggling a toe will make the movement come back slowly

I have crazy "Greek Toe" and can make sounds like clicking your fingers. It wakes my wife and she wakes me most of the time.

I get that feeling of "someone's in the house" every single time... Horrid even though I know that it's not true.

I've had a few episodes a few years ago while i was heavily depressed and my sleep pattern was messed up. i didn't see much, just shadows in the corner of my eyes, but i knew something evil was in the room and i heard deep, demonic voices from behind. the first few times i was in a full blown panic, but i read about sleep paralysis before, so i at least connected the dots quickly... wiggling my pinky finger was my mode of escape.

fixing my sleep pattern with sleep meds (by force) made it go away

This is almost exactly how it happens for me, I've never really seen "the demon", but I know it's there and I can feel its presence at a super intense level. Sometimes, I hear them walk into my room and stand over me. Other times, they're just there, staying perfectly out of sight.

The worst part of it for me is when I try to speak or scream and nothing comes out. That's more scary to me than "the demon"

I have extremely irregular sleep patterns and I’ve never had this happen… weird

I haven't had an episode in a long time but I would try to tell myself to just breathe through it. The moving an extremity would help too. The worse part was that I'd get them in bunches. If one happened I'd have to stay awake for a bit or I'd get them over and over. Thankfully never saw any demons; just a vision of my surroundings but I couldn't move.

Man…

For me it happens when I’m under extreme stress, like my 3 year long “come back, I love you. I don’t love you anymore. I’m not cheating, he’s just a guy I snuck out with for no reason while I thought you were gonna be at work” divorce.

You said wiggling a toe got you out of it. For me it was tapping my pinky and trying to scream.

I even learned to control it and it was like an acid trip. Well, more like I learned to ride it and not be afraid.

One of the wildest ones I experienced though, I had recently purchased a hamster for my daughter that turned out to be a pregnant female. I tried to give the babies away, no one would take them. They slaughtered each other. I didn’t know they did that.

I was laying in bed watching my comfort food, Star Trek TOS. Suddenly the hamster cage appeared on my stomach with the gate opened. 40-50 hamsters crawled out and started eating my fingers and burrowing into my chest and stomach. I couldn’t move. My ex appeared at the foot of the bed as a shadowy creature with wild hair rocking back and forth laughing at me and hissing. I tapped my pinky and tried to scream once I was aware it was sleep paralysis. A hamster crawled up on my face and started eating my nose. I finally managed to mumble scream enough to get my exes attention and she reached out and touched me. As soon as she did I snapped back to reality.

The last time it happened I wasn’t expecting it. I was in a decent place in my personal life, work was chaotic though. I thought my house was full of distant relatives and they were killing people from outside of the family in my living room.

I hate that shit when it takes me by surprise. When it happens regularly I take control and I don’t mind it.

I got shaken by the demon until it got shoved over by a white light in my teens. I wonder what kind of wires snapped in my head, probably knocked a few screws loose.