Anyone who has followed the incredible story from poverty to riches of Bruce Lee’s incredible journey from a poor and troubled childhood to his meteoric rise to fame in the martial arts action films of the 60s and 70s will be aware of the Mysterious legend surrounding him of his battles with a demonic entity.

For those of you who are not familiar with the circumstances surrounding this, I will try to elaborate and select from the many strange myths and wild stories that have been spawned over the years since his untimely death in 1973.

Some have suggested that there was a curse on the Lee family and that Bruce and his father inherited it and that to hide Bruce from the devil, his father adopted the Chinese custom of giving him a girl name Léi Saifung Pinyin: Li Xìfèng, which literally meant “little phoenix”. Many people believe that an evil spirit was ultimately responsible for Lee’s death on July 20, 1973.

Of course, all of this has been mythologized over the years, most notably by the 1993 movie ‘Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story,’ which was supposed to chart the actors’ rise to fame and eventually death. The film greatly exaggerates many elements of Lee’s life and towards the end shows Lee in a martial arts battle royal with an armed samurai demon.

But is there any truth to the Lees Demons story? I think so. . . but not in the way you would think and not in the literal sense of demonic obsession.

Sleep paralysis is a phenomenon experienced by millions of people around the world and those who suffer from it typically report the same symptoms; they wake up and find themselves completely paralyzed from head to toe and often experience unpleasant symptoms such as vivid old witch hallucinations or more commonly; dark figures in shadows.

In his 1996 book ‘Bruce Lee; Fighting Spirit ‘Bruce Thomas includes a chapter called’ The Shadow ‘which includes statements made by Bruce’s family and friends recounting his battles with a dark and gloomy figure in his dream that stopped him, a typical symptom of sleep paralysis.