Some idiots decided to chain-saw a tree outside my window early this morning. I lay there for a while wondering whether I should just give up and get up, and then they finally finished. Apparently I fell back to sleep until I heard a voice in my head distinctly asking, “Are you awake?”
Which woke me up.
The voice was nothing like a dream. At first I thought my wife had come in and said it for some reason, but she was a floor away.
Apparently this is a mild form of auditory hallucination, no big deal, but way over the border into spooky.
Sure. Always happens on the border between being asleep and awake. Has been voices (usually a couple of words from a voice that I know) car horns, car doors slamming, phone message alerts. If I reflect on the sound for a second I can tell if they were real or not by the “feel” of them.
(This sounds like it happens all the time, but it is a couple of times a year.)
Sometimes it happens as a dip into dreaming, sometimes as the brain trying to pull signal out of noise.
I used to have it a lot while falling asleep. There was a window at the head of the bed and it sounded like people talking outside. Just meaningless snatches of stuff - “so I said to her…” “I don’t remember that…” “how many of them…” “turn left at the corner…” Once I realized they were hypnagogic hallucinations ( I guess the OP’s was hypnopompic) I came to quite enjoy them. Unfortunately paying attention to them stopped them instantly so it was only ever brief. Hasn’t happened for years though. Perhaps because I fall asleep so quickly now.
Once. During a stressful time when my mother was ill with Alzheimer’s, I felt very guilty because I couldn’t be there all the time as I lived far away. My sister and brother bore the brunt of care.
As I was drifting to sleep one night, I distinctly heard my sister’s voice loudly and accusingly say my name. It jerked me awake and gave me the shakes for awhile.
Yep. For me, usually a voice or a knock on the door. Almost always in the morning, as I’m laying in bed, not quite awake. Probably once or twice a month. Startles the heck out of me, and I wake up groggy and confused but with my heart racing. Usually takes me a few minutes to calm down and sort out where I am and what’s going on.
When it happens, it’s clear and distinct, and not in the least dream-like. I suspect I may be hearing a more distant noise, and my brain is processing it as being much closer and louder than it actually is, and also processing it as a something more coherent and distinct.
Or just some random neurons firing.
Purely anecdotally and impressionistically, it seems to me like it happens most frequently when I’m not entirely comfortable sleeping. I enjoy snuggling under blankets in a cold bedroom. I’m also a restless sleeper and have a hard time getting to sleep in the first place if I’m not bone tired. If my bedroom is a bit too warm or I wasn’t that tired when I went to bed, and I had a particularly hard time getting to sleep and spent a particularly restless night, it seems like I’m particularly likely to be woken by a hypnopompic auditory hallucination.
I nearly always read before sleeping. I was gonna say before "going to bed, " but I’m in bed when I’m reading. I usually read until things aren’t making sense anymore. Frequently, I’ll start slipping into sleep, and I’ll be “reading” something, jerk awake, and realize what I was actually reading while nodding off was in no way related to what I was dreaming I was reading. Funny, and a little weird.
Dreams are a startling reminder of how much of the world exists just in our brains. A dream will have all the sights and sounds of reality and often of things that never have existed in reality, but each is equally presented.
Both of my parents are deceased. Since their respective deaths I’ve heard both of them saying my name at one time or another while I was sleeping, thus waking me up. Given I don’t believe in sentient ghosts, presumably it’s hypnopompic hallucinations.
I don’t audibly hear them, but one sure sign I’m falling asleep is when I start “thinking” other people’s thoughts. It’s always nonsense but sometimes entertaining. There was something once about Queen Elizabeth and her feelings about hippos…
Mostly I hear my dogs barking for me to let them out. I’m generally halfway to the door before I realize the little furballs are still fast asleep. Sometimes I’ll hear my kids, as if they’re in the room, but they’re not.
I have an interesting variation, which happens to me extremely frequently, and always has since I was a young child: When I am in the process of falling asleep (and sometimes even when I am awake, not in bed, but just sleepy), then ambient background noise turns into music.
Sometimes very plain musical sounds. But often marvelous symphony orchestra level music. Often having a classical music sort of sound to it. Almost always purely instrumental. On the less-frequent occasion when there seems to be some vocal component, it’s always distant and muffled, never with words that I can make out.
Never experienced anything like the OP, but I do sometimes have audio pareidolia – hearing imaginary sounds in white noise. Oddly, it only happens when I’m short on sleep, such as being up all night, and then it happens fairly predictably in response to noise specifically from my electric heater fan. It’s a sure sign that I’m overtired. Sometimes sounds like instrumental music, sometimes singing. It’s distinctive enough that I can describe a specific melody, or specific instruments or vocal style, but there are never any discernible words. Also odd that none of the sounds produced by my white noise machine will do it, including simulated fan sounds – only the real physical fan does it.
I don’t remember that exact thing happening to me, but I often have unsettling dreams after I’ve slept six or seven hours (my usual amount). I’m convinced they’re my brain’s way of jarring me awake. Most mornings, having to go to the bathroom is what wakes me up. Once in a while, though, that won’t be an issue, and that’s when I get the weird dreams. Sounds to me like it’s what’s behind the OP’s anecdote.
For what it’s worth, I read an interview with Lou Reed in which he said he gave up heroine after hearing a voice that came from the empty back seat of his car while he was driving. The voice said, “Lou, you have to give up heroine” (paraphrasing), and it rattled him enough to carry through with it.
Also, I’ve heard that, shortly before dying (not necessarily dying at the time), people will sometimes hear their name being called. I don’t know if it’s true, but it happened to someone I knew and friends have told me of similar experiences. Seems like something that would have come up here on the SDMB at some point. (?)
Similar. On a couple of occasions in the middle of the night I’ve “heard” the doorbell ring. It’s never a good thing when a doorbell actually rings in the middle of the night, so this hallucination gets the adrenalin going and I lie there listening intently for a minute or two, waiting to hear whether the doorbell rings “again.” And then I need like 45 minutes (if I’m lucky) to get back to sleep.
People who don’t like hippos should be forced to stand in a line! I fell asleep before I found out what she planned for those standing in line, though.
Yes, usually just my name - normally not in a voice I recognize.
I also have exploding head syndrome about once a month.
And an odd one, as another person who reads until they fall asleep, I read on my phone, white letters on a black screen. When I am drifting off, I can see phosphenes of words - generally slightly similar to what I was just reading, but with blotches of the page faded so I can’t really make out the words. Normally my phosphenes are abstract swirly or checked patterns.
And for the really funky, mrAru and I have mutual vardogres - forerunners, not exactly ghosts, but a happening. See, if he is traveling home from work or the house in western NY about 20 minutes to half an hour before he actually gets home, I hear the front door open, his boots hit the floor and him opening the bottom of the stairs door and walking up the stairs. He doesn’t actually happen to be there, and if I stop to think, I didn’t hear his car in the drive before the entry sounds. He will show up shortly, making the normal coming home sounds. Same happens if I an the one travelling. Usually it is if the weather is bad or something like that, I suppose there is a bit of worry [?] involved.
