The researchers found that over 1 in 10 people, or 11 percent of the general population, will experience the incubus phenomenon in their lifetimes, Blom said. The different studies came from various countries, including Canada, the United States, China, Japan, Italy and Mexico. In the meta-analysis, which was published in November in the journal Frontiers in Psychiatry, the researchers looked at 13 studies of the incubus phenomenon that included nearly 1,800 people. The experience feels exceptionally real, Blom said. What the afflicted person sees is a combination of their actual surroundings and a nightmare, which is projected onto the real world. 'Lying in bed in such a state of paralysis, the brain's threat-activated vigilance system kicks in and helps to create a compound hallucination of a creature sitting on the chest,' Blom told Live Science. But when sleep paralysis takes place, the person's mind wakes up - however, the person is still dreaming, and the body is still paralyzed.

During REM sleep, which is the period when a person typically dreams, the body's muscles are relaxed to the level of paralysis, presumably to prevent the sleeper from acting out his or her dreams, Blom said.

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