I don’t know, I never tried to move must try to remember that next time! I have had times where “The lines are all busy” so to speak, awake but couldn’t move very strange.
Z
Mamma Zappa
you da rapper
queen snapper
blue-green algae trapper ! <grin>
Wow, just wow, to know there is a term for it and it is sufficiently prevalent to get recognized. To render an oft repeated sentiment: The folks at the dope are the greatest!
Z
Whew a story on my self: I grew up Mennonite with that sect’s emphasis on spiritual / religious training. The story of Samuel with the theme of God calling him being one of many. So one night many years ago while on the edge of sleep I hear my name (just as clear can be.) I sit up and say " Yes Lord here am, I send me.) Wow. Suffice to say; I would now consider my self an agnostic.
Z
Yes exactly
Z
Oddly enough sleep has gotten to be a bigger issue here lately, so much so I just had a preliminary sleep study at the local hospital. Friday of this week I go back for a CPAP.
I think that these noises have been happening two - three years but that also about as long as I have been struggling with sleep issues.
Z
A big thank-you to all
Thank you Dopers! You da greatest!
Z
The discovery back in, oh, 1999 or 2000 or so, that there was such a thing as hypnagogic hallucination/sleep paralysis and that it is pretty common has been worth every subsequent penny of my SDMB subscription, by the way.
I used to get these all the time, but it seems to be getting less and less frequent anymore…maybe once a month, whereas it used to be almost nightly. I’ve always described it as sounding like I was in the passenger seat of a car driving slowly down a crowded street with the window open, just hearing tiny snippets of everyone’s conversations.
“…for someone like that, sure…”
“…then go back to McBride’s place and we’ll…”
“…otherwise, I’ll bet you she was talking about…”
Always meaningless bits without context, and always sounding the same…fading in, becoming clearer sounding until the words were like someone was standing right there, and then fading back out.
Yeah, my thoughts sometimes turn from utterly quotidian to very strange when I start to drift off to sleep.
It was really bizarre when my son was 2 or 3 years old and I’d be reading a bedtime story as we snuggled in the papasan chair. We’d both doze off, and suddenly I would snap awake and realize that my “reading” had turned into a weird babble:
"Then the three bears came home, hungry and ready to eat. Papa bear looked at his dish, and said ‘someone’s been eating my porridge!’ Mama bear looked at her dish and said ‘someone’s been eating my porridge!’ Baby bear looked at his photo collection and extracted a carrot from his nostril and said “barkeepers fornicate apple cores…’” HUH? WHAT?
I’ve always wished I had tape recordings of when I did that, because I know some of the things I said were probably very comical. But each time it happened, as I snapped awake realizing I was spouting gibberish, my memory of the peculiar things I had just been saying vanished as soon as I was aware of them.
No wonder my son is a bit unusual.
I get these really frequently, especially when I’ve taken NyQuil or some other cold medicine or antihistamine. I get into this weird state where I can hear people talking, sometimes about weird random things (“The bears are soft and sleeping, fret with wool”) or single words like “apples,” or something. And I get sleep paralysis really bad when I wake up from a scary dream, which manifests as terror so extreme I can’t move. I don’t like that. 
I think it must be related to our creative processes, because I’ve done some of my most outstanding problem-solving in that transitional phase. I’ll be just drifting off, and my mind wanders over to some problem I’ve been worrying at, and it goes, “Well, how about if we just move this over a touch, and try doing this?” and the solution is perfect.
Weird though it is, hypnopompic and hypnagogic hallucinations in any modaily are a variant of normal, not a sign of mental illness and something you can totally not worry about, unless you find them particularly distressing.
I spend at least one clinic review every week reassuring a patient that these kinds of voices are NOT the same as the voices they used to hear when they were psychotic.
This is fabulous. Sometimes when I’m falling asleep, I can hear myself talking (only in my head) and stringing together nonsense like above - “barkeepers fornicate apple cores…” It’s so strange, because in my head, it has the tonality and structure of an actual statement, but is total nonsense. I too have wanted to transcribe this somehow.
My other big one is seeing images in my head of faces, drawn in a woodcut style, with big thick lines and sharp angles. These images start to expand into big, puffy comic strip style faces. That one freaks me out a little.
Hooray! I’m not crazy!! 
I’ve never had aural hallucinations, but I have extremely vivid visual hypnagogic hallucinations. I’ve seen ghosts (usually small children dressed in white gowns, with an eerie glow around them), a vase filled with a large, beautiful bouquet of flowers floating by my bed, a security camera mounted in the corner of my bedroom, and various other oddities. The other thing that happens to me is a sudden terrible feeling that something is wrong with my hand or arm. I will be in an absolute state of panic, thinking that my hand is bleeding or has been amputated. By now I’m so used to it that it usually only takes a few seconds for me to realize, “Oh yeah, hypnagogic hallucination,” roll over and fall asleep.
Although I never believed in ghosts, and always thought it was just some weird sleep thing, I too first learned the details of this phenomenon from the SDMB.
I’ve been having the aural illusions more and more often recently, although they grow more and more faint. Several years ago, as I was falling asleep, I distinctly heard an Irish woman say, loudly & clearly, “More, after the break.” It wasn’t until after I stopped freaking out that I realized it was Marian Finnucane, who had presented the news that night in Dublin – and I had watched her say those words several hours earlier.
Dopers
This is just fascinating, to learn that Aural hallucinations are a recognized phenomena and that many of you have experienced it. At first I was quite hesitant to broach the subject, such a revelation to find out I am not alone.
Again thanks so much.
Z
I asked people quite a while ago if they “fall” asleep, because I usually don’t have the sense of falling asleep - it’s like there’s an awake/sleep switch quickly pulled. When I do feel like I’m falling asleep, it’s often something I only notice because I’m having “thoughts that aren’t mine.” Nonsense thoughts like tuning into a radio or as you said listening to someone else’s thoughts. Thoughts like “I’m afraid I left the sausage out on the deck” or even less sensical such as “people who don’t like hippos are now lining up on the left to be shot by the queen.”
Oh, my favorite dead cat Mocha jumps on my bed too. I have free-flow water bed, and it feels like there’s really something landing on the bed, but not heavy enough for a real cat. Ghost cats weigh less, right?