The Dark Image of Sleep Paralysis

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Nocturnal predators are real. It pays to be up in the trees or whatever away from them, but don't walk around when you sleep because you fall out of the tree. So it's good to be kind of paralyzed and fearful. You should be. I mean, there's a natural fear of snakes and spiders and things like that falling off cliffs at great heights and so on. There's kind of a logic to it.

Shermer and Alderson-Day discuss the psychologist’s journey to understand the phenomenon of sensed-presence: the disturbing feeling that someone or something is there when we are alone. Using contemporary psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, and philosophy, Alderson-Day attempts to understand how this experience is possible. Is it a hallucination, a change in the brain, or something else? The journey to understand takes us to meet explorers, mediums, and robots, and step through real, imagined, and virtual worlds.

Ben Alderson-Day is an Associate Professor in Psychology and a Fellow of the Wolfson Research Institute for Health and Wellbeing at Durham University. A specialist in atypical cognition and mental health, his work spans cognitive neuroscience, psychiatry, philosophy, and child development. His new book is Presence: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other.