Sleep paralysis is the temporary inability to move or speak while falling asleep or upon waking. It's quite common as millions of people experience it every year.
That doesn't sound too scary right?
Now here's the scary part - while you are in that state your mind can cause you to experience hallucinations and sometimes you will see things that are not there.
I also saw something that wasn't there or so I would like to believe as remembering it still sends chills down my spine.
It was a hot night in July, I remember sleeping without a blanket. I was sleeping in the only room on the second floor of our house, by only I mean a room connected to the first floor via stairs that open up inside the room and connected to the terrace. It's a small room with a single bed, a small table at my bedside where I usually keep my phone and water bottle while I sleep, a small closet on my left while I am laying on my bed( my frame of reference) and a set of 3 windows on the back of my head.    There is a single wooden door in the opening to the stairs on my left side as I am laying on my bed that I keep open all the time and there are two sets of doors to the terrace that my feet are facing towards about two meters from my feet as I am laying on my bed. The outer door to the terrace is a semi-metal door with its upper half consisting of a grille and its lower half made up of PVC. The inner door is a wooden door similar to the door connecting to the stairs. I like to keep the inner wooden door open as the wind that blows during the night enters through the grille of the semi-metal door and provides good ventilation and natural cooling during the hot days of summer. I usually sleep around 10 o'clock, after having a walk on the terrace to help in the digestion of the food I ate for dinner and it was the same that day as well. I came inside my room, closed the semi-metal door and switched on my wall fan and went to sleep. I probably had a dream that night that I don't remember.
Now here is where my encounter begins. I woke up or should I say I was in a state of sleep paralysis. I could hear the humming noise the wall fan was making. Having experienced sleep paralysis before I was calm before I saw the semi-metal door open and flailing due to the wind and the figure outside beside the door looking inside staring right at me. I swear that I  have tried to forget its appearance through the years but for some reason, I still vividly remember it. It had a  hazy and shadowy appearance and  I wasn't able to make out its shape due to it being completely dark outside as I live in
  a somewhat rural area. But I could see its dark red eyes staring at me. I was terrified unable to scream, unable to move and I was terrified that It might come in at any moment as the door was open. I couldn't remember any holy words that I could chant in my mind as I wasn't that much of a believer in God. Then all of a sudden to my surprise, I was able to move and as soon as I realised that  I ran down the stairs to the first floor where my parents were sleeping. I woke them up and told them what I had seen while they started to help me calm down by telling me it must have been a nightmare. I realized I was finally in a safe space and started to calm down. My nightmare was finally over or so I had thought. In the next moment, I was laying on my bed again in my room on the second floor with the same eerie figure staring straight at me with its dark red eyes. I could still hear the humming noise of the wall fan and could see the same semi-metal door flailing in the wind. It was as if time had rewound. I cannot put into words how horrified I was. I am still getting goosebumps as I am writing this. Then the same thing happened and I was able to move again. Similar to last time I again ran down the stairs where my parents were sleeping and woke them up and the same scenario unfolded in front of me with some differences from the last time. But to my utter dismay, the same thing happened again. I was laying on my bed in my second-floor room again with the apparition still staring at me. At this point, I had lost all hope. It was as if I was getting sucked into an abyss and there was no escape from it. It was as if my nightmare would continue forever. I closed my eyes and left everything to fate. It was at that moment I remembered the saying 'When you stare fear right in the eye it ceases to exist '. I gained a bit of courage when I remembered these words as I slowly opened my eyes and for the first time that night, I was fully awake. I sat up and grabbed my phone. It was half past two. After realizing that right now what I was experiencing wasn't a hallucination or a dream I was finally able to calm down after I drank some water. To be honest this was a truly terrifying experience but I would still have forgotten and cast it aside as a mere sleep paralysis ordeal. The reason I still remember it is because when I looked towards the terrace although there was no eerie figure there anymore there was still the semi-metal door that was a little open. It wasn't flailing in the wind but it was still a little open. I could bet  I closed it when I went to sleep as I remember the sound it makes when it closes. I could bet I closed it. When I remember that I got up from my bed and closed the outward semi-metal door  and the inward wooden door shut before going to sleep in the same room, I wonder where I got the courage to do that. Maybe the words 'When you look fear in the eye it ceases to exist ' gave me the courage. I was just 15 at that time and that experience left a lingering feeling of the supernatural in me. I still slept in that room a few times before moving to the ground floor. I didn't tell anyone about that experience because I thought I would sound like a scaredy cat. I was after all just a 15-year-old teenage boy back then. I continue to have sleep paralysis experiences but they are no big deal as every time I have one I start chanting a few holy lines in my mind that I learned from the Internet of course. Whatever you fear whether it be sleep paralysis or something else you have to learn to face your fears and I am sure that they will vanish as quickly as they appeared.