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I was curious if anyone else experiences these when they sleep. Basically, at some point during the first few hours of falling asleep, I'll wake up but not fully aware of my surroundings, I'll "see" things or feel things in my bed, or the room I'm in.
Usually it's a kind of insect, spider or a snake (although once it was a balloon...lol). I will "see" it or feel it and believe 100% it's real and in the room with me and wake up and turn on a light, tearing off my bed sheets until a few minutes pass and I wake up enough to realize what happened. It's not really a dream because I'm awake prior to it, it's akin to night terrors but I can move and after waking up a bit realize what's going on.
I call it sleep hallucinations, there's some medical name for it I think but I don't remember exactly. I've experienced it for quite awhile, since I was fifteen-ish, so about six years. It seems to happen randomly, the only consistent thing is it happens within the first few hours of falling asleep. It can once, than not for a few months, than occur every night for a week.
Basically I'm just curious if anyone else has experienced this at all.
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All clear here. Have you grown accustomed to this? Sounds kind of scary to be able to see or feel a spider or snake around you.
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i hallucinated spiders all over the bed when waking up once as a kid.
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I absolutely hate this, and yes I do get them sometimes, usually when I'm very sick. I had these for about a week when I had a bad head cold last summer.
For me it was always spiders or roaches. I would open my eyes an hour or so into my sleep, half-awake, and right on the wall one foot from my face would be a gigantic spider as big as my fist, or sometimes even as big as my head. Right there, not blurry or anything, a clear as day giant fucking spider. Or if I was facing my night-stand when my eyes opened, it would be covered in giant roaches crawling all over it.
Obviously the immediate reaction is to jump out of bed in a panic, grab the flashlight on my computer desk, and shine it on the wall or nightstand, where the spider/roaches no longer are at that point (because they were never actually there). Lemme tell you that pretty much ruins any chance of getting a good night sleep after that.
The illusions are very strong, to the point where you could look at them for several seconds and have them not fade away.
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I never had those, but it's all very interesting. Sometimes I've woken up in the middle of the night having a "dreadful" feeling, but I don't see or feel anything. Probably I've just dreamt something I don't remember or whatever.
I've even taken vitamin B6 and 5HTP in pretty high doses which makes some people dream extremely vivid things or have night terrors. I get nothing. I dream but I don't remember the dreams.
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United States24342 Posts
I used to occasionally dream that I was lying in my bed and it was horribly disorienting :-/
Never had your problem though.
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On January 13 2010 20:29 Hinanawi wrote: I absolutely hate this, and yes I do get them sometimes, usually when I'm very sick. I had these for about a week when I had a bad head cold last summer.
For me it was always spiders or roaches. I would open my eyes an hour or so into my sleep, half-awake, and right on the wall one foot from my face would be a gigantic spider as big as my fist, or sometimes even as big as my head. Right there, not blurry or anything, a clear as day giant fucking spider. Or if I was facing my night-stand when my eyes opened, it would be covered in giant roaches crawling all over it.
Obviously the immediate reaction is to jump out of bed in a panic, grab the flashlight on my computer desk, and shine it on the wall or nightstand, where the spider/roaches no longer are at that point (because they were never actually there). Lemme tell you that pretty much ruins any chance of getting a good night sleep after that.
The illusions are very strong, to the point where you could look at them for several seconds and have them not fade away.
lol that's just fucked up but still quite normal.
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i've had these before they're called sleep paralysis, if im right? :s
had a dream where i was in my room (my tv had broken and i threw it away) and i heard my tv playing a movie , it had a vcr/dvd built in, and i heard my mom's laughter (it's pretty spooky sounding, if you havent familiarized with it) directly in my ear; so i woke up pretty fucking scared.
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On January 13 2010 20:16 MYM.Testie wrote: All clear here. Have you grown accustomed to this? Sounds kind of scary to be able to see or feel a spider or snake around you.
every time it happens, because i'm not fully awake, it freaks me out. afterward i realize it's the same thing as usual, sigh, put my bed back together and go back to sleep. it's just too random to get completely accustomed too, since i don't know when it will happen, and what i see is almost never the same. i might see a large spider one time, than feel several crawling in my bed another. i'm not afraid of anything that i see normally, but i definitely freak out when i think it's either in my bed or room while sleeping, especially given the size/quantity of whatever it is.
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On January 13 2010 21:02 Revolt wrote: i've had these before they're called sleep paralysis, if im right? :s
had a dream where i was in my room (my tv had broken and i threw it away) and i heard my tv playing a movie , it had a vcr/dvd built in, and i heard my mom's laughter (it's pretty spooky sounding, if you havent familiarized with it) directly in my ear; so i woke up pretty fucking scared. sleep paralysis implies not being able to move. i can move just fine, as soon as i see/feel whatever the hallucination is i get the fuck out of my bed and turn a light on asap. after a few minutes of tearing my bed apart i wake up enough to realize it wasn't real.
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On January 13 2010 21:02 Revolt wrote: i've had these before they're called sleep paralysis, if im right? :s
had a dream where i was in my room (my tv had broken and i threw it away) and i heard my tv playing a movie , it had a vcr/dvd built in, and i heard my mom's laughter (it's pretty spooky sounding, if you havent familiarized with it) directly in my ear; so i woke up pretty fucking scared.
Haha, damn son.
Yeah, some form of sleep paralysis, without the paralysis part. Some people have lesser ones like yours and some have longer, drawn out ones which can involve scary people charging them and jumping on their chest. The word "nightmare" is believed to come from sleep paralysis as a phenomenon.
I can't recall having so vivid dreams, like it doesn't feel like reality.
I'm very curious though, what do you guys eat and drink during the day? Some stuff affects dreaming immensely.
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Yeah I get this every once in a while, it usually occurs when I have a sudden shift in my sleeping pattern.
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I dreamt that I woke up and took a shower once... Imagine my dissapointment when it turned out that I had to shower AGAIN once i woke up.
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On January 13 2010 21:49 Catch]22 wrote: I dreamt that I woke up and took a shower once... Imagine my dissapointment when it turned out that I had to shower AGAIN once i woke up.
That has really nothing to do with the topic though
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On January 13 2010 21:13 Foucault wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2010 21:02 Revolt wrote: i've had these before they're called sleep paralysis, if im right? :s
had a dream where i was in my room (my tv had broken and i threw it away) and i heard my tv playing a movie , it had a vcr/dvd built in, and i heard my mom's laughter (it's pretty spooky sounding, if you havent familiarized with it) directly in my ear; so i woke up pretty fucking scared. Haha, damn son. Yeah, some form of sleep paralysis, without the paralysis part. Some people have lesser ones like yours and some have longer, drawn out ones which can involve scary people charging them and jumping on their chest. The word "nightmare" is believed to come from sleep paralysis as a phenomenon. I can't recall having so vivid dreams, like it doesn't feel like reality. I'm very curious though, what do you guys eat and drink during the day? Some stuff affects dreaming immensely. i haven't found anything that affects when it happens. as i said, i've had this since i was fifteen, so there are a lot of variables.
as for dreams, i rarely remember them. i started remembering vague pieces of them after i started sleeping more than when i did in highschool, but i don't remember much and they aren't very vivid. i have a friend that says she dreams really vivid dreams that are distinct and real-ish. it was always interesting to hear them, while the only thing i had was inconsistent bouts of hallucinations.
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haha i wake up once in a while with real spiders right in front of my eyes, luckily i don't mind spiders at all. Not trying to say i'm braver than you but... pussies. + Show Spoiler +hehe joking, spiders i don't mind a bit but ants make me cry like a child. For some reason my instincts tell me spider= nice and kinda cute as well as totally harmless Ant= evil critter that wants to call his buddies and eat you alive, i'm not joking. Spiders i don't mind a bit which is lucky cause like i said i get them in my room pretty regularly. No ants luckily though. edit: never experienced an hallucination like yours, however this has happened to me 3 times in my life allthough latest more than 1,5 years ago, apparently it's not unusual to get hallucinations with it.
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Oh alright, but how often does it happen then? Do you drink coffee? Supplement with any specific vitamins? etc.
I see. So you have these sleep hallucinations but don't recall your dreams much otherwise? lol I sound like a doctor. Anyways, it's interesting.
Why do you guys wake up seeing spiders? Sounds so random that you have a similar experience. Maybe it's the cobwebs when you open your eyes that create spider-like images and your sleepy mind project these images as spiders
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There was one really bad time where I woke up but it seemed that my conciousness was stuck in the reality of some extremely random star wars dream. I woke my g/f up and was going on and on about having to get boxes of lightsabers to somewhere or something and at the same time saying sorry. I can vividly remember thinking that none of it was real but I couldn't escape the hold it had on my brain. Like my normal personality was totally engrosed in the fake world while that little logical voice in my head was going wtfwtfwtf??!! It actually launched me into quite a bit of research into finding out if my family has Alzheimers in it anywhere. It lasted about 10 minutes I believe...
Not that this is what you are referring to but I thought I would throw it out there :D
*Edit* I went and did some more looking around today seeing as how it has been a while and I'll just say that wikipedia is awesome. I found that it was most likely a dream turned into a hypnagogic hallucination. The dream makes sense when I think about it now because it was reflecting on the stress of my current job.
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This is how Aliens and obductions are made.
Seriously I watched some documentary and this was probable reason why are ppl "seeing" aliens & ghost or feeling them. I belive it was call sleeping awake, something like that.
Anyhow have you tried looking for some professional help? I seriously think this is very nasty problem you have here and need to check it out. Coz if your not using drugs or some sheat like that and this is happening then it can be indication of some serious illness or some sort of mental disorder in its roots. Just my thoughts.
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Sometimes I hallucinate mosquitoes flying around and trying to bite me. They are real half of the time.
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I had sleep paralysis a few nights in a row because of extreme stress/anxiety. You wake up and you look around the room but when you try to get up your whole body just lies stiff. It literally feels like being tied down in a cast. I remember the first time it happened I was totally dazed. It was totally dark but I could make out shapes by the starlight. I glanced to my left towards the nighttable and saw a white silhouette of a woman sitting an arm's length away. After a split second the head quickly looked up at me as if startled that I could see her. I was fucking shivering in fear but no matter how much I wanted to run I was frozen. I started screaming but nothing came out; my mouth was wide open but no sound materialized. I closed my eyes and just started fucking rocking my body side to side as hard as I could as if trying to push the lid off a coffin. After 15seconds of the rocking and screaming (in my head) I finally was able to move. I believe I ran to my parents room and just paced around for a few minutes.
I first thought the person I saw was a relative who had passed away very recently, but being that I dont really believe in that sort of thing I researched online. I read about sleep paralysis. Its a psychosomatic condition where the body falls asleep but the brain stays awake. So you can register aurally and visually the things around you but you are half asleep. The hallucinations are caused for that very reason, though I dont think there is complete understanding on why it happens. Some people theorize that being in that state of half sleep allows one to enter the ethereal void; the middle of life and death or something like that.
All I know is that it was the scariest experiences I've ever had and the closest I've come to dementia/mental illness.
It is not fun......though some websites say you should take advantage of being in the ethereal state and do fun things, ie imagine flying through the sky.... I tried this the second night. I woke up in similar fashion, and prior to panicking, I quickly shut my eyes in fear of seeing scary shit. Problem was that my ears filled with white noise that increasingly got louder like a horror movie and I had to again shake my body awake.
Its pretty interesting from what Ive read about it. definately something I'll never forget.
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While I was going through alcohol withdrawal after about a year of daily abuse I'd see spiders and insects on my walls after waking from the light sleep I was able to get the first few weeks. It's a pretty common symptom of Delirium Tremens brought on by abrupt stopping of alcohol intake I found out...
Are you a heavy drinker?
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wow! that starts out really gross, but ends up cute :D
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Pretty sure your house is haunted.
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On January 13 2010 23:32 meegrean wrote: Sometimes I hallucinate mosquitoes flying around and trying to bite me. They are real half of the time.
lmao... me too. Even when it turns out they're not real, its probably some other bug.
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I've had the same thing you have since I was young. When I was like 4 or 5 I was stung 14 times in the neck by wasps because I didn't see the nest when I was leaning over a window sill. Ever since then I would occasionally wake up over the years with various terrors of the kind you describe where I would see something and attempt to either get away from it or attack it. One time as a kid I woke up to see a bunch of bees flying above me so I freaked out and started swatting at them. (A lot of my hallucinations are insects/bugs etc and involve wasps or bees, I've never had the cockroach one if I'm not mistaken. I have had spiders though, but the worst is wasps for me.)
Another time .... lol this is going to seem funny but I saw a bear with a shotgun and my family ran in and I was yelling. My family said I was looking at this picture on the wall or something but it wasn't bears if I recall. Interesting part about this one was that it was in the middle of the day and the light was on in the room. I still woke up thinking I saw the bear with a shotgun where the picture was on the wall.
A few years ago I almost pulled my fan out of the ceiling because I thought there was something there. I'm not entirely sure what I saw, only that I realized in time I had ripped the cord off and was about to dislodge it lol.
It's interesting to me though because you and I have exactly the same pattern it seems. I rarely remember my dreams. Sometimes I can get right back to sleep and other times when it's really severe I have to go sleep elsewhere. It hasn't happened to me in at least six months. I think the funniest and coolest one I had but I wasn't aware of was this time I was on vacation with family. I didn't remember it but apparently I ran into my sister's room woke her up and told her there was a zealot in the living room lol.
Sounds weird but it's nice to hear someone else shares this because I've never known anyone else that had it even in my own family.
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On January 13 2010 23:58 Alpine wrote: While I was going through alcohol withdrawal after about a year of daily abuse I'd see spiders and insects on my walls after waking from the light sleep I was able to get the first few weeks. It's a pretty common symptom of Delirium Tremens brought on by abrupt stopping of alcohol intake I found out...
Are you a heavy drinker?
Yeah, my mum told the same stories when she worked at a mental hospital a long time ago. Alcohol withdrawal can be very psychotic, and people usually hallucinate and are terrified.
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Yea, I have these at times too - waking up in the middle of the night, seeing faceless toothy heads skulking behind my bed legside as I try to focus, or being absolutely sure there's snakes or spiders or any other form of poisonous animal in my bedsheets. The first one's getting me all terrified and lounging for the light switch for a few seconds untill my brain manages to realise I'm awake, while the second one is followed by frantic sheet and pillow-shaking, to get rid of those damn pests.
I can't remember how long I've had it happening - maybe just the last few years, really.
Edit: I'm not a heavy drinker, and I don't smoke or do any other kinds of drugs anymore.
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Gryffindor, this honestly sounds like the wasps incident as a kid caused you to have a case of PTSD that lead into a sleeping disorder. PTSD isn't that uncommon for children to develop but it isn't widely broadcasted or viewed the same way as the war vets people usually associate it with. The incident that I had which was very much like your shotgun bear time, I believe, was caused by the build up of stress with a new job that was physically demanding and I was providing for myself entirely for the first time along with my g/f at the time. I would not be very surprised at all to find that there are many more well documented cases of hypnogogic hallucinations caused by stress out there.
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Sometimes when I'm falling asleep, like right on the edge of sleep, I'll feel like I'm falling and a couple seconds later I'll shake violently like I'd just hit the ground (I think its a sort of reflex thing?). Never woken up hallucinating though. If it bothers you I'm sure you can find a therapist to help you with it.
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On January 14 2010 00:47 Gryffindor_us wrote: I've had the same thing you have since I was young. When I was like 4 or 5 I was stung 14 times in the neck by wasps because I didn't see the nest when I was leaning over a window sill. Ever since then I would occasionally wake up over the years with various terrors of the kind you describe where I would see something and attempt to either get away from it or attack it. One time as a kid I woke up to see a bunch of bees flying above me so I freaked out and started swatting at them. (A lot of my hallucinations are insects/bugs etc and involve wasps or bees, I've never had the cockroach one if I'm not mistaken. I have had spiders though, but the worst is wasps for me.)
Another time .... lol this is going to seem funny but I saw a bear with a shotgun and my family ran in and I was yelling. My family said I was looking at this picture on the wall or something but it wasn't bears if I recall. Interesting part about this one was that it was in the middle of the day and the light was on in the room. I still woke up thinking I saw the bear with a shotgun where the picture was on the wall.
A few years ago I almost pulled my fan out of the ceiling because I thought there was something there. I'm not entirely sure what I saw, only that I realized in time I had ripped the cord off and was about to dislodge it lol.
It's interesting to me though because you and I have exactly the same pattern it seems. I rarely remember my dreams. Sometimes I can get right back to sleep and other times when it's really severe I have to go sleep elsewhere. It hasn't happened to me in at least six months. I think the funniest and coolest one I had but I wasn't aware of was this time I was on vacation with family. I didn't remember it but apparently I ran into my sister's room woke her up and told her there was a zealot in the living room lol.
Sounds weird but it's nice to hear someone else shares this because I've never known anyone else that had it even in my own family.
That's pretty funny because this happened to me once before i woke up in the middle of the night with a grizzly bear standing up in the middle of my room it scared the crap out of me i just stared at it for a good 10 seconds until it seemed to just shrink away into my closet. But there was no picture or anything it was just completely random.
I've never hallucinated mass bugs but my little sister used to wake up screaming saying her bed was covered in bugs that obviously weren't there.
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On January 13 2010 21:49 Catch]22 wrote: I dreamt that I woke up and took a shower once... Imagine my dissapointment when it turned out that I had to shower AGAIN once i woke up.
I dreamed that I woke up and walked to my next class, which was like a kilometer away... then I woke up again and I was very annoyed and packed all of my stuff again and was about to go to the class again, and I woke up. So I had to pack my bag and walk the kilometer again T_T.
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Lucid dreams happen while one is actually asleep. What people are describing here is something completely different and falls more along the lines of hypnagogic hallucinations.
On January 14 2010 01:35 canucks12 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 13 2010 21:49 Catch]22 wrote: I dreamt that I woke up and took a shower once... Imagine my dissapointment when it turned out that I had to shower AGAIN once i woke up. I dreamed that I woke up and walked to my next class, which was like a kilometer away... then I woke up again and I was very annoyed and packed all of my stuff again and was about to go to the class again, and I woke up. So I had to pack my bag and walk the kilometer again T_T. These are examples of lucid dreams.
On January 14 2010 01:06 Lexpar wrote: Sometimes when I'm falling asleep, like right on the edge of sleep, I'll feel like I'm falling and a couple seconds later I'll shake violently like I'd just hit the ground (I think its a sort of reflex thing?). Never woken up hallucinating though. If it bothers you I'm sure you can find a therapist to help you with it. This is a hypnagogic jerk or hypnic jerk. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk
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I get this sometimes. Not in my bed with me, but across the room from my bed. I just assumed (afterwards) I was still sleeping and only imagined I'd woken up. It's funny though, I knew exactly what this thread would be about just from the title. It's a big spider for me too, like some tarantula climbing up my closet. I'm not really alarmed by it though, because I still have the awareness that it's not real (or maybe even if it were, I wouldn't particularly care... lol).
It's also possible that it could just be sunspots on your eyes, and that in the dark your imagination is able to transform them into lifelike things.
Wouldn't worry about it either way. I wouldn't call it a hallucination, just your eyes playing tricks on you (a hallucination, I think, is something your brain creates all on its own. This is more your eyes just not being adjusted to the light yet).
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On January 14 2010 01:37 Scorcher2k wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2010 01:06 Lexpar wrote: Sometimes when I'm falling asleep, like right on the edge of sleep, I'll feel like I'm falling and a couple seconds later I'll shake violently like I'd just hit the ground (I think its a sort of reflex thing?). Never woken up hallucinating though. If it bothers you I'm sure you can find a therapist to help you with it. This is a hypnagogic jerk or hypnic jerk. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk
Oh whoa. Thanks man, very interesting 0_o
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On January 13 2010 22:22 Foucault wrote: Oh alright, but how often does it happen then? Do you drink coffee? Supplement with any specific vitamins? etc.
I see. So you have these sleep hallucinations but don't recall your dreams much otherwise? lol I sound like a doctor. Anyways, it's interesting.
Why do you guys wake up seeing spiders? Sounds so random that you have a similar experience. Maybe it's the cobwebs when you open your eyes that create spider-like images and your sleepy mind project these images as spiders it varies on how often it happens. sometimes it'll happen once and not happen again for another month, than several days in a row etc. i don't drink coffee or any vitamins. even when i had mono it happened and i was barely eating or drinking anything.
i don't only see spiders, but spiders are probably the most frequent. i've never had any experiences where i was traumatized by some insect or spider, so it isn't that. i'm not afraid of spiders or anything that i see, i just freak out when i think it's in my bed while i'm sleeping. i'm sure most people don't want a large spider or snake in their bed.
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On January 14 2010 00:47 Gryffindor_us wrote: I've had the same thing you have since I was young. When I was like 4 or 5 I was stung 14 times in the neck by wasps because I didn't see the nest when I was leaning over a window sill. Ever since then I would occasionally wake up over the years with various terrors of the kind you describe where I would see something and attempt to either get away from it or attack it. One time as a kid I woke up to see a bunch of bees flying above me so I freaked out and started swatting at them. (A lot of my hallucinations are insects/bugs etc and involve wasps or bees, I've never had the cockroach one if I'm not mistaken. I have had spiders though, but the worst is wasps for me.)
Another time .... lol this is going to seem funny but I saw a bear with a shotgun and my family ran in and I was yelling. My family said I was looking at this picture on the wall or something but it wasn't bears if I recall. Interesting part about this one was that it was in the middle of the day and the light was on in the room. I still woke up thinking I saw the bear with a shotgun where the picture was on the wall.
A few years ago I almost pulled my fan out of the ceiling because I thought there was something there. I'm not entirely sure what I saw, only that I realized in time I had ripped the cord off and was about to dislodge it lol.
It's interesting to me though because you and I have exactly the same pattern it seems. I rarely remember my dreams. Sometimes I can get right back to sleep and other times when it's really severe I have to go sleep elsewhere. It hasn't happened to me in at least six months. I think the funniest and coolest one I had but I wasn't aware of was this time I was on vacation with family. I didn't remember it but apparently I ran into my sister's room woke her up and told her there was a zealot in the living room lol.
Sounds weird but it's nice to hear someone else shares this because I've never known anyone else that had it even in my own family.
the only semi-funny interesting thing i've seen was when i was at a friends. i saw a red balloon floating over his bed, he asked me what i was doing so in my sleepy daze called him a retard and said there was a balloon above him. i'm not entirely sure if this was similar to my other experiences, but i knew the balloon wasn't a threat so i didn't wake up fully like i normally would, just went back to sleep.
it happened the other night which is why i got curious if anyone else experiences these. i don't know of anyone in my family or friends that has experienced it, and i've had it for six years. i already don't sleep that well most of the time so when it happens it really messes up my sleep more, as i usually become fully awake when i realize what happened, sometimes i can go back to sleep just fine, sometimes not.
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I've had this happen several times before, but only when I'm trying to take a nap during the day. Usually, I don't even see anything, except the room I'm sleeping in. One time, I had one eye half-open, I'd be able to consciously move my eye and look around my room, but I won't be able to control my eye-lid or my other eye. I have to force my finger to move to fully wake up again, which usually takes a lot of effort -_-
Oh and this other time, I was able to hear running footsteps (when there was nobody else in the house) and was the only time I saw a hallucination as well, which was a women who ran into my room and tried to strangle me while I was asleep. Pretty freaky o_o
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On January 14 2010 03:49 Chef wrote: It's also possible that it could just be sunspots on your eyes, and that in the dark your imagination is able to transform them into lifelike things.
Wouldn't worry about it either way. I wouldn't call it a hallucination, just your eyes playing tricks on you (a hallucination, I think, is something your brain creates all on its own. This is more your eyes just not being adjusted to the light yet).
yeah, I think this is where it's at. Your brain creates an image from the dreamy scenery your eyes are taking in
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On January 14 2010 06:54 Foucault wrote:Show nested quote +On January 14 2010 03:49 Chef wrote: It's also possible that it could just be sunspots on your eyes, and that in the dark your imagination is able to transform them into lifelike things.
Wouldn't worry about it either way. I wouldn't call it a hallucination, just your eyes playing tricks on you (a hallucination, I think, is something your brain creates all on its own. This is more your eyes just not being adjusted to the light yet). yeah, I think this is where it's at. Your brain creates an image from the dreamy scenery your eyes are taking in Please go and read the thread and the things that I linked earlier. Of course your brain is creating these images but it isn't making a bear out of a damn sunspot. I am a firm believer in Occam's Razor but a sunspot causing an optical illusion of a damn bear is wayyy more far fetched than having a hallucination.
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I've had something similar a few times. the biggest one that stood out was this time where I was like barely asleep and this paper on my wall just came loose of a tack or tape and swung back and forth on the wall scraping it in a dead silent room. I awoke but was still under the effects of deep sleep paralysis that comes from the stage after or before REM sleep or something (I forget). couldn't move, struggled to breathe, and couldn't make a sound or yell/scream for help. So I was completely scared and didn't know what was happening, my brain started to try and make sense of it and since I was still in a sleepy dreamy state it just made up something. I assumed it was a ghost and willed myself to see a figure. After what seemed like a few minutes (probably seconds) I 'came to' and jumped out of bed and went to the bathroom.
I read something about this on wikipedia and it was called 'the hag'. Old folklore about an old hag sitting on your chest while you sleep so you can't move.
http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa112000a.htm
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I used to have this in high school also and in fact just a couple months ago my sister did as well. Its actually fairly common though I doubt you would ever be able to find out how many people have it because most people write it off as nothing or a vivid dream or something.
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On January 15 2010 05:21 Chuiu wrote: I used to have this in high school also and in fact just a couple months ago my sister did as well. Its actually fairly common though I doubt you would ever be able to find out how many people have it because most people write it off as nothing or a vivid dream or something. 15% of people experience it at least once in their lives.
Let's run a poll!
Poll: Have you had something similar happen? (Vote): yes (Vote): no
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sounds a lot like sleep paralysis
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wow i've experienced exactly the same thing. seeing spiders, half-waking up unable to think... happened once at my dorm too and i freaked one of my roomates out =P
started two years ago when i stopped running. better start again =)
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Rofl. I remember back when i was younger, I was in bed and then I saw a mummy jump out of the wall. Twas weird o_O
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When my brother was really young he used to hallucinate that E.T. was under his bed lol.
I've experienced sleep paralysis twice, about 6 months ago and both in the same week weirdly enough. Basically I was lying in my bed and I could look around my room and there were ghostly figures of some kind hovering about or whatever, was essentially dreaming with my eyes open, random things would appear but the background was what my open eyes were actually seeing.
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Just wanted to bump this and mention that I had a "HAG" dream last night.
Basically I was laying in bed watching some science shit + Show Spoiler +it was about how Einstien and Newton's laws contradict. If gravity is instant but nothing is faster than the speed of light, and since it takes 8 minutes for light from the sun to reach earth, If the sun just vanished what would happen? Would we instantly fly away or would we still be rotating around for 8 minutes then fly off? . so anyways, I was asleep and all the sudden I was awake and totally aware of a presence either to my left or right. I was totally paralyzed and I tried to move my arms which were folded on my chest but could not. I instantly realized that I was experiencing this phenomenon dubbed 'the hag'. I tried to not panic and just close my eyes and go to sleep. I did, a few minutes/seconds later it happened AGAIN. I did it all over again and went back to sleep. THEN AGAIN, this time I was starting to get annoyed and somewhat interested in my groundhog day-esq debacle. I began to try and lucidly dream and I imagined that aliens were abducting me and I was being lifted up out of my bed. I started to white out (like blacking out but I felt the extreme presence of light - like I was in a laboratory.) What seemed like a minute later I was being lowered back to my bed and into normal sleep.
This kind of thing is EXACTLY what people are experiencing when they imagine alien abductions, ghosts, spirits, whatever. The mind is a powerful thing.
It was a crazy experience, I'd redo it every night (or almost every night) if I could. It seemed kind of taxing on my rest.
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I'm kind of curious if you guys eat anything special before going to sleep or during the day. Things like vitamin B6 are used by some people for lucid dreaming. Does anyone drink red bulls or something in the evening?
Edit: CharlieMurphy, if you wanna do it again, try popping vitamin B6 or anything else that affects your serotonin action. Vivid dreams will ensue. 5-HTP might work too
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