Being trapped inside your own body unable to move or communicate and without anyone, including yourself, realizing you are still there, might sound like the worst nightmare one could ever imagine.

Sadly, such terrifying stories are some people’s reality.

Martin Pistorius, a 12-year-old boy from South Africa, was struck by a mysterious neurological illness. It didn’t take long before he lost the ability to move and communicate. He simply slipped into an inexplicable comatose state, or at least everyone thought so.

It seemed like he was completely unaware of his surrounding, but that was far from the truth. A few years after he became bed-bounded, he became aware of his condition, but there was nothing he could do as he couldn’t move or speak.

It wasn’t until years later that doctors discovered he was somewhere there, trapped inside his own body.

“My awareness was something that happened gradually, so it wasn’t like one moment I was asleep and the next moment I was awake,” he told All in the Mind. “As my awareness returned, it took me a while to fully comprehend that I was trapped inside my body,” Martin shared after he finally got his life back, although never to the fullest.