In the deep watches of the night, prayers are heard. The veil is thin. Note that word “watches”: it reminds one of a watch tower.

We are or should be both on our guard against unwelcome visitors and also on the joyful lookout for holy ones.

“Now the watchman was standing on the tower in Jezreel and he saw the company of Jehu as he came, and said, ‘I see a company.’ And Joram said, ‘Take a horseman and send him to meet them and let him say, “Is it peace?”‘” (2 Kings 9:17).

“When I remember You on my bed, I meditate on You in the night watches” (Psalm 63:6).

“Arise, cry aloud in the night At the beginning of the night watches pour out your heart like water before the Presence of the Lord” (Lamentations 2:19).

Have you not noticed how powerful, how vulnerable, you are in deep night?

This makes it important to read Scripture before falling asleep and to seal it with prayer and more Scripture (even if only a phrase) when we arise.

For to us all come “strangers in the night.” Make the song “Jesus in the Night.” We may have dreams of deceased ones, who seem to connect at that time; we may have dreams of angels; there is the joy of saints; but also, we may have nightmares; we may feel the intrusion of demons. This makes it doubly important to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

How many of us suffer insomnia, especially as we grow older?

Some is a simple lack of the hormone melatonin. Often it can be stress. But also, there is the “spirit of insomnia” (that should be cast out, in the Name of Jesus).

The Cleveland Clinic (from a purely medical viewpoint, of course) says that at least thirty percent of people around the world have encountered what it calls “sleep paralysis, when you can’t move any part of your body right before falling asleep or as you wake up. It happens when your body is in between stages of sleep and wakefulness. An episode is temporary and only lasts for a few seconds to a couple of minutes. It’s a type of parasomnia. You’ll likely feel scared or anxious during a sleep paralysis episode. When it ends, you may feel confused because you’ll regain movement of your body as if nothing happened.”

Even secular news outlets have acknowledged, if not from a spiritual perspective, the phenomenon of night terrors—what no less than CNN, in a recent headline, more accurately called “the sleep paralysis demon.”

Said one young man who experienced such paralysis, “I tried to call my mom (and) dad, but no words would emerge from my throat. … I had this ominous presence of a monster, and it lifted my legs up and down. “It strangled me, trying to kill me. And I was one hundred percent sure that I was going to die. It literally feels like all the evil of the universe is condensed into a bubble, and it’s in your bedroom.”

You can’t move your arms or legs, says the clinic. You can’t shout or otherwise speak. There may be sensations of pressure (suffocation) or moving out of your own body. There are “hallucinations, like there’s a dangerous person in your room.”

Hallucinations?

Or a clearer perception through that thinned veil? (Clinics have much to learn.)

For ninety percent of those who hallucinate, the illusions are terrifying. “They can include ghosts or cat- or alien-like creatures, and their actions can be as innocuous as simply approaching them or as nefarious as molesting or trying to kill them,” said the news network.

People living in Egypt and Italy often see witches and evil genies and hold them responsible, fearing they could die from sleep paralysis, says a researcher named Baland Jalal  from Harvard. People in Denmark, Poland and parts of the United States, on the other hand, have less supernatural or exotic explanations and less fear.

Of course, too, Jalal—who himself suffers sleep paralysis about twice a year and has since age 19—sees it all as the subconscious swarming into visions and dreams, thought bombarding the body with signals to move but the body unable to respond to such feedback. His theory, in short, is “that your brain says, ‘to hell with it’ and concocts a story it thinks your body must be facing to be experiencing such bizarre symptoms,” said the network.

Stress. Sleep deprivation. Jet lag. An irregular sleep schedule. Narcolepsy. Genetic factors

Yes, how scientists see it. And such factors can figure in.

But curious it is how Christians who have endured such experiences report that the episode ends when, in the watches, they blurt out the Name “Jesus!”

[resources: books on spiritual warfare]