They only shut their eyes for REM

Ostriches sleep like platypuses (and look wide awake when they do)

Ostriches and Platypuses have the longest REM sleep of any bird or mammal.  

David J. Hufford Part 2

David Hufford argues that sleep paralysis defies current natural explanations and is therefore likely supernatural.

David J Hufford Part 1

Sleep Walking Cats

They unparalyzed cats during their REM sleep! What kind of mad scientists are you that you create sleep walking cats!

NARRATOR: Nature, it appeared, had devised a special state of paralysis to house our dreams, one in which they remained internal experiences. It was a conclusion that seemed impossible to deny, when researchers learned to switch the paralysis off.

This cat looks as if it's awake; in fact, it's deep in REM sleep.

This dog appears to be running; it too is in REM sleep, and, like the cat, dreaming.

To see these dreams played out, scientists disabled the part of the brain that paralyzes muscles during REM sleep.

PATRICK MCNAMARA: And what we see when you do this, with cats in particular, is that they can walk around during REM sleep, and their behavior is not random, it's not chaotic. They're not just doing any old crazy thing. They appear to be doing the kinds of behaviors that cats like to do, like stalk a prey, you know, play with a mouse or something. So presumably that's what they dream about when they go into REM sleep, so that's what we think is happening.[NOVA]

Aliens may be all in your head

From Harvard:

Many of the people who believe they have been abducted by aliens are bombarding Susan Clancy with hate e-mails and phone calls. The Harvard researcher, who has spent five years listening to the stories of some 50 abductees, has described her (and their) experiences in a new book to be published in October.

Clancy, 36, likes most of these people. "They are definitely not crazy," she says. But they do have "a tendency to fantasize and to hold unusual beliefs and ideas. They believe not only in alien abductions, but also in things like UFOs, ESP, astrology, tarot, channeling, auras, and crystal therapy. They also have in common a rash of disturbing experiences for which they are seeking an explanation. For them, alien abduction is the best fit."

As you might guess, the people behind all that hate mail and the phone calls don't buy that. They were there, she wasn't, they insist.

In her book, "Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens," to be published by the Harvard University Press, Clancy describes a typical reaction. "Can you believe the nerve of that girl (Clancy)," one abductee says. "She comes to me, like, 'Oh, I believe you've been abducted! Let me interview you to learn more.... Oh, what really happened [she says] is sleep paralysis.' Riiight! How the - - does she know? Did it happen to her? There was something in the room that night! I was spinning. I blacked out ... it was terrifying.... I wasn't sleeping. I was taken. I was violated, ripped apart - literally, figuratively, metaphorically, whatever you want to call it. Does she know what that's like?"...

...Bizarre effects aside, sleep paralysis is as normal as hiccups. It's not a sign of mental illness. About 25 percent of people around the world have experienced it, and about 5 percent get the whole show of sight, sound, tactile hallucinations, and abduction.[Continue...]

From the UCLA:

The majority of subjects underwent at least one full or partial out-of-body experience, while some experienced several. Subjects who became conscious while dreaming were instructed to transform the “lucid dream” into an out-of-body experience by returning to the physical body in order to separate from it.

Visual contact with UFOs or “extraterrestrials”: 10 cases for 7 volunteers (35%)

(Some other volunteers were close to achieve the same result, but were unable due to overwhelming fear in the right moment)

The fact that UFOs and extraterrestrials may be deliberately encountered in a controlled manner and within a few days proves that such experiences are a product of the human brain. It was the first experiment to ever prove that close encounters with UFOs and extraterrestrials are a product of the human mind. The experiment also demonstrated that alien contact is not indicative of the existence of otherworldly civilizations, but rather of a poorly studied state of consciousness that people occasionally fall into inadvertently (the Phase).[Continued...]