If you've never heard of "sleep paralysis," consider yourself lucky. It's a scary condition that only effects a small number of people.

Basically, when your mind is not quite asleep and not quite awake, you can experience strange visions, feelings of helplessness, and the fear that a shadowy figure is watching you.

Photographer Nicholas Bruno has lived with this condition his whole life, and uses his frightening experiences to influence his work.

"In order to obtain the full effect that I wish to achieve," Bruno writes, "I use numerous strange props [...] which are for the most part hand crafted by myself using techniques of woodworking, blacksmithing and sewing."

He says that photography "became my way of battering through my terrorizing sleep paralysis experiences and expressing myself in ways that I never thought I could."

You can see more of Bruno's spooky photography at his website, just be careful you don't run into any of his creepy subjects in your dreams!