Three knocks thing is interesting...you know you're not the only one hearing them...at least they're polite aliens?

swear I felt someone get into bed with me, feel the weight as they settled in, etc, and I would be frozen, unable to move but knowing something awful was going to happen

This is so so common in stories of "hauntings". There's something in the human brain that wants to scare itself half to death, apparently.

I get the hypnopompic, then, I guess. Good to have the word!

Mostly it's the not being able to move, sometimes with a Presence or seeing a figure but not always, sometimes noises but not anything regular (and there are always noises in my house that I can attribute to cats or rabbits or dog, so those bother me less). Extremely unpleasant and anxiety enhancing. It seems like I get them more when I sleep during the day, so I've been trying not to nap. Which has been working out pretty well for me, except I don't know how to catch up on sleep when I don't get enough at night. Not like I'd be well-rested after one of those, though.

ETA: I rationalize it to myself as something going wrong with the mechanism that makes you not sleepwalk (which I also do sometimes, so it makes sense to me that it would be wonky in both directions) giving me that temporary paralysis feeling at the wrong time

Do sleep aids help, or make it worse?

I've never tried any because I'm a little afraid of being too deeply asleep to wake up in time to protect myself if someone did come try to attack me in my sleep. ha! Crazy.

There's something in the human brain that wants to scare itself half to death, apparently.

I know, right?! Stupid brains.

One of my uncles once dreamed so vividly of being in the way of an oncoming train that he threw himself out of bed hard enough to knock over his bedside lamp, bash his face on the nightstand, and bruise an elbow and a knee on the floor. We still tease him about it.

Wow, lisah! I had that when I was a kid. I would feel like different old men were looming over my bed. They often had the face of my grandpa. Which sort of sounds like he did horrible things to me and I was traumatized, but he did not.

Wow. I didn't have any idea that the sleep-related hallucinations were so common. Fascinating.

Last night was epic no sleep. Does Fitbit know that I have frozen in place trying to fall asleep, or does it think that's sound sleep?

One of my uncles once dreamed so vividly of being in the way of an oncoming train that he threw himself out of bed hard enough to knock over his bedside lamp, bash his face on the nightstand, and bruise an elbow and a knee on the floor.

And now it just occurred to me that's like what happened to my sister recently--a couple days ago I posted she was so convinced she'd seen a mouse in her bed upon waking she injured herself throwing herself out of it. Hypnopompic, huh?

I have a psych appointment for next week, hooray!

I'm really kind of excited to talk to a professional about my whole deal. Probably way overdue for this.

Does Fitbit know that I have frozen in place trying to fall asleep, or does it think that's sound sleep?

I don't use Fitbit, but I'm curious about how my sleep app tells me I slept great for 8+ hours and I am so tired when I'm getting up.

My sleep app (Morpheuz, for the Pebble) has never once told me I've gotten a good night's sleep. I routinely spend 30% of the night "Awake?" according to how much the app thinks I move around.

Fitbit sez:

LAST NIGHT 4h 23min asleep
You were awake for 2 mins (1x) and restless for 88 mins (8x)

Yeah, I was so awake for so much longer than that, just trying to fall asleep, or that weird mid-sleep space of infinite plausibility--I got a fascinating half-lucid PBS drama about alt universe royals.