This may be all in my mind, but heres the deal. Even though I have a hard time sleeping during the day unless I’m absolutely exhausted there are days when I just want to take a quick cat nap. But whenever I fall asleep in my bedroom during the day I have the same disturbing dream every time.
I didn’t think much of it until this past Saturday. My wife went out of town with a friend and around 2 in the afternoon I felt like taking a nap. So I laid down in the bed and the same dream started up again. I always dream that I’m in the bed, the entire dream is from my POV in the bed. I hear sounds like the front door opening and footsteps in my hallway. Sometimes I can catch glimpses of indistinct people in the hallway from the bedroom door….and I hear voices. I can’t usually make out what they are saying, but it feels as if they’re taunting me, trying to make me scared. This time I thought to myself “Its just this same old dream again….I’ll ignore it and it’ll go away. There is no one in here.”
And I heard a voice say "YES WE ARE!”. It was deep spmewhat distorted voice. Not a hokey horror movie ghost voice.
“Ooookay”, I think, “My mind is playing tricks on me now. But if I just relax it won’t stop me from getting some shuteye.”
And the voice said “We’ll GET LOUDER!” and the “louder” part sounded as if someone yelled it into my left ear. Then the voices got louder but I couldn’t make anything out. I was starting to get really disturbed.
So now I think “Fuck this, I’m waking up!” and I start thrashing until I wake up with a start. Its dead quiet. Still bright as hell but nothing is moving. The cats were all asleep in their little hiding places as always.
When my wife got home I told her about the dreams. They never happen if I take a nap in the spare bedroom or on the couch. They never happen at night if I go to bed early or alone. They never happen if we go to bed together. (they do happen if I go to bed in the day time when she’s home but not in the room.)
My wife thinks maybe the bedroom is haunted.
One friend says its all in my mind.
Another friend suggested I get holy water and spread it around the bedroom.
Another friend says I should try a séance to communicate with “it” or “them” and ask ‘em to leave me alone. Hey, I’m not doing that because it seems crazy and besides, I’ve seen enough Horror B-movies to know that holding a séance or using a oiuja board only pisses the ghost off.
Its probably my imagination, but what do you guys think?
Called “hypnopompic” if they occur when you’re awaking. I get them occasionally. Seems that they’re OK if they occur in a somnolent state, but if they start to happen when awake, you might want to get a checkup.
There was a story on NPR…the guy who does the Saturday program, sounds like a kid…haunted house hallucinations caused by carbon monoxide posioning from the furnace and gas lights.
I had have hypnogogic hallucinations on occasion. They almost always occur when A) I’m lying on my back, B) during the day, C) when I’ve already had a night’s sleep and am only sleeping out of boredom of a false sense of tiredness brought on by a lack of activity (a kind of after-the-fact oversleeping). I’m pretty sensitive to them though and will often awaken with a start at the first startling (not generally unsettling, but abrupt and shocking) event. It’s almost always a voice making a sudden, loud report, but may also be what sounds like something malleable (my brain always thinks “a human body”) being thrown against a wall – hard. I’ve never actually seen anything or anyone in these states, it’s been entirely auditory in nature.
I’ve heard someone whispering “JIM” loudly in my ear on several occasions, once saying “over by the door. Over by the door!”, and one time I “awoke” to see a partial human figure standing by my bed that floated up into the ceiling. I guess the latter was like a retinal after-image, except in my brain from a dream, not my retina from a real sight.
I think it’s connected with sleep paralysis in some way, as the only time I’ve had this has been during daytime napping too - my mind awake but my body still asleep. I could hear myself breathing and no matter how hard I tried to yell for help, all I could hear was my regular sleeping breathing. Freaky.
Yes, thanks Telemark. I was listening in the car while Mrs. Plant was in the store.
I keep expecting his Mother to come on the air: “Ira, it’s time for lunch. Will your little radio friends be staying?”
Apologies to whomever I stold this from on the Dope.
While I agree that this is a hypnogogic hallucination, I really do think you should make it a habit to nap there more often and try to talk to them. I get the “brain wakes up before body and freaks out because we can’t move” sometimes, but never anything that answers my thoughts. Let us know if it happens again so I can live vicariously through your (far more interesting than my own) sleeping disorder.
How many times do I have to tell you folks, that’s interior decorating.
“You painted the kitchen ivory?! Good gad man, the appliances are arctic white!”
Next time you take a nap in that room, switch on a tape recorder before you fall asleep. If you hear voices while you nap, play the tape after you wake up. If there’s no sound except snoring on it, then you’ll be reassured it was only a dream. If there are voices, call the Amazing Randi.
Classic hypnogogic hallucinations. My wife gets them whenever she’s stressed, and I tend to get them from time to time when my sleep schedule is weird and I fall asleep “faster” than I actually fall asleep.
To everyone who thinks it’s probably hypnogogic hallucinations, how do you explain that it only happens in the one room?
The tape recorder idea is a good one. Also, maybe stop napping in this room and see if it then will start to happen in other rooms. Is there a way you can nap in the hall outside the haunted room?
The fact that it happens in only that room is what creeps me out. A friend of mine mentioned that since we’re in bavaria in what was basically a nazi army post in WWII, maybe there is a ghost. Of course I had to counter that wouldn’t that ghost speak german? Yeah, I couldn’t tell what the voices said most of the time, but I know German when I hear it.
I’ll try the nap in another place though. I’ll let you guys know what happens if anything.
…and it couldn’t be the cats. They tend to stay away from me in the bedroom. My wife says its cuz i fart when I’m sleeping.
