sleep paralysis, occurs when you wake up from sleep, but you find yourself restricted, unable to move or speak, or feel short of breath, and then after a short time you can move and talk again.
Many medical explanations appeared to the perches, the most famous of which is that a person goes through many cycles during his sleep, including the stage of rapid eye sleep so that the brain is very active and teeming with many dreams and a simulation of reality that may lead you to harm yourself and here the brain works to temporarily paralyze your body upon waking up to prevent you from harming yourself and explain Medicine that sleep paralysis disease occurs to exhaustion psychologically or physically or due to physiological factors such as tension, or because of lack of oxygen to the brain.
There is another interpretation that tends to the superstition, where some believe that the kneeling is nothing but touching a simple genie that quickly ends, and its solution is to read the Holy Qur’an, as in the past the Arabs believed that it was a genie who wanted to kill a person while he was asleep, and in the West it was interpreted that he was an angel who was expelled from Paradise for assaulting Asleepers, and was depicted in medieval paintings in the form of a frightening monster perched on the chests of the sleepers, such as a painting by Henry Fuseli.
Jathoom in movies and novels
In the movie The Nightmare, a group of people watch a nightmare about a frightening and strange man, and this film discusses the phenomenon of squatting, and is based on real stories.
The late writer Ahmed Khaled Tawfiq mentioned in the series Supernatural three complete pamphlets about the squatting and portrayed him with a frightening animal that was controlled by a person who sends it at night to kill his enemies.