The closest things I’ve had to hallucinations have been when I’m on the very edge of falling asleep. And I mean the *very[/] edge.
To start with, driving home with my mother one foggy christmas eve, I (As the passenger, thankfully) thought I saw some shadows on the road about 50 feet ahead STAND UP, looking quite a bit like the scenes in the movie “Ghost” when the inky-black evil spirits rose up out of the ground to claim someone’s soul. That one woke me up right away.
Other times, I’ve heard things like bits of muffled speach or a piece of music, just as I’m falling asleep, but when I’m still semi-lucid. More recently, I’ve even had the chance to doze off in a waiting room or two, and been surprised to find that I can still see an image of the room after I’ve closed my eyes. Very odd. And very momentary, thankfully.
This is a weird question, but I must ask…what was the dinosaur’s coloration like?
In my old apartment, I used to hear a bell ring at 4 a.m. At least three times a week – but it was a different bell each time. Sometimes it was electronic, more like a “boop” sound, other times it sounded like the brass bell of a boat, an old fashioned bicycle bell, the little dingle bells that are on the doors of some old stores that jingle as you come in, the ding of an old fashioned cash register etc. It was almost always some kind of “antique” bell sound.
I have no idea why I would hear some kind of bell at 4 a.m. And I don’t kow why I only heard it at that apartment. I haven’t heard it since I moved, and only once did I ever hear it while staying at my girlfriends.
Mangetout when sleep deprived I’ve had similar experiences. Usually I’ll see black birds swooping around just on the edges of my peripheral vision, but I’m sure I’ve seen stuffed animals move too.
Oh yeah…for a while I’d hear wind chimes late at night and be certain I was hallucinating. I’d have seen them if they existed, they sounded like they were right in the room with me. Then, this morning I finally located the damned things. They’re hanging behind a shrubbery on the porch of the psycho-gardener lady who lives next door to us, almost completely obscured.
The first auditory hallucination I ever had was a couple of months ago while lying down for a few minutes to take a break from housework. Even though I never came near to falling asleep, I first heard something like Sam Cooke singing and then I heard an evil, scratchy male voice saying, “You will feel pain beyond pain - you’ll hurt so bad - you’ll wish you weren’t alive!” It went on in that vein, then it cackled manically until I sat up.
Most bizarre!
Well, it’s not a hallucination, but about every six months or so I’ll have a dream about something that really makes me mad, and I’ll wake up punching the mattress.
Also, just as I fall asleep, I’ll sometimes hear something like a voice. I guess that’s not very unusual.
Fever-induced a few years ago - For what felt like days I crawled around, four inches high, on the pattern of my bedspread which was actually a large, lumpy chess board, periodically being chased by knights. Very dark and vivid. Very Alice-y.
I had a fever-induced hallucination early last year. I woke up hearing music… singing, trumpets, drums etc. It was a fantastic R&B number and I thought it was the best thing I’d ever heard!
I thought to myself… I really need to write this down! So I tried to get up, but I was so exhausted (9 days of high fevers) I couldn’t get up. Then I figured it didn’t matter cos I couldn’t remember how to write music anymore anyway. So I just lay there and enjoyed it
My mom was very sick once, and had a hallucination that there was a man sitting on the end of her bed playing a banjo. He wouldn’t stop, and she hadn’t the strength to call for one of us to stop him.
One night I was getting into bed, and I turned to get comfortable when I heard my husband mumble something. I asked him what he said, and his response was “babe, you have eight ankles and you’re not going anywhere”
I started to laugh and I said, "what?" He proceded to say, “nothing, I was just routing”.
Till this day, I laugh my butt off.
It’s not quite in the same vein as the others, but a couple of weeks ago I woke up around three a.m. with the most horrible headache I’ve ever had; it was bad enough to make me physically ill. When I staggered to the bathroom to throw up I could see little flashpoints of light out of the corners of my eyes coupled with a very odd, inexplicable dread. The air conditioner kicked on, and, for some reason, the feeling of the air swirling around my arms and legs scared the shit out of me. I finally fell asleep around six, and felt fine in the morning.
black sheets of lightning bolts emanated from Jerry Garcia’s guitar my first time on LSD; that whole night was pretty spectacular.
The vast majority of the times that I’ve taken some kind of hallucinagin, my experience has not been one of seeing things that aren’t there–like little green men in spaceships or something–rather, it has been alterations (visual, auditory, tactile) of what is there. Usually, the walls or any flat surfaces seem to breathe, having a more fluid, 3-dimensional, and complex quality, also they seem to make noises (breathing, sort of). On mushrooms, the hallucinations tended for me to be a little less dramatic: things were brighter, and thicker, somehow, than usual, with nice gleaming attributes. On acid, after the first few times, most of my hallucinations had become more muted, unless I closed my eyes, when I would see a vast array of very complex, 3-dimensional geometric shapes spinning and re-arranging themselves in and around my thought processes.
Hard to explain?–yes.
no pablito, your explanationis probably the best i’ve heard…i’ve tried lsd/shrooms on many occasions and really enjoy the drug in a nice comfortable setting…most people assume the old pink elephant nonsense will happen, and i’d imagine one could conjure up that image it just doesn’t appear to be as real as most describe…
my advice , to anyone try it…
When I had my wisdom teeth taken out, there was a painting of a wild turkey in the room. Just as I was going under from the gas, that turkey started dancing.
The morning after my Dad died, I woke up and saw his shadow on my wall.
I did a little lsd in my younger days, but never saw anything interesting.
Back in 1996 my car was stolen from outside my home while I was on vacation, and recovered by the police in a shopping center’s parking lot. When I got back, the police report left for me said that the radio/tape player had been stolen from my car. By the time I went to the tow lot to retrieve my car, I was at the end of my tether for various reasons, including that the lot would not accept my personal check or credit card as payment for the storage. I asked if I could just look at the condition of my car. I sat in the car, upset and angry, and I could have sworn that the radio/tape player was indeed missing from the dashboard. Yet when I returned the next day with cash in hand and took possession of my car, the radio/tape player was in place and apparently undamaged. The stations I had electronically programmed into the radio’s tuner were still there, showing that the radio had never been disconnected from the car’s battery.
So how was it that I had convinced myself that I looked at a big gaping hole in my dashboard when apparently the radio was there all along? To this day I don’t really know, other than to say that the false report of my radio’s theft, combined with my very upset state of mind, made me see a hallucination.
I had a raging ferver once when I was about 5 and I saw a Horta from Star Trek come crawling in my room. This is a shaggy low-to-the-ground rock creature. I had never watched Star Trek at that time.
Another time when I was very depressed my friend shared his opium hashish with me. I saw demon-headed snakes trying to attack me and heard this beat of war drums. I huddled on the floor and began singing church songs and made them go away.
I never did any kind of LSD or shrooms in my life and that was why.
I lived in Los Angeles in 1980. I think it was de riguer to try LSD. I didn’t like the trips because everything was so intense: colors screamingly bright, inanimate objects breathing; annoying people being hundreds of times more annoying.
We used to sit up on the hill above our apt complex and look down on the boulevard. It was about 3 lanes each way. We played slot cars and it seemed so real.
I tried to make scrambled eggs and couldn’t eat them. The act of eating was too visceral. It was like chewing a sponge soaked with 1000 times a normal egg’s flavor.
I walked home one time at dawn tripping. I had been at a friend’s but left when a sleazy guy kept hitting on me. Due to tripping I was unable to talk. I tried to close myself in the bathroom but the walls began to close in, and were crawling with millions of (imaginary) ants.
So I struck out for my apt., about 12 blocks. As long as I walked towards home, the sun began to come up, birds were singing, the air was cool & refreshing. Sometimes I got tired, and turned back to my friend’s, but then the sun would go back down, the birds were still, the air became foul and dank.
I made it home and laid on my bed staring at the ceiling for about 6 hours. I never took any more dope after that.
Another thing that happens to me is that I will actually hear music when none is playing. It’s not running through my head, I’m actually hearing it. It sounds like its being played through an AM radio with no static. It only happens with a small group of songs from the 70’s. Strange. I’ve had this since I was a child. It seems to be decreasing as I grow older however.
As far as drug induced hallucinations, lets not go there. My friends still will not let me live down the fairy in the torn down computer. (Thank goodness that part of our life is over.)
The occasional flashbacks haven’t been unpleasant however. And I can still make tiled floor breathe on command.
I was in a car in Thailand after being up for more than a day, staring out into the fields that surrounded us. I thought I saw a ghostly looking Asian woman dressed like a rice patty worker (hat and all) rise up out of the fields really briefly…
And about that whole shrooming buisness. I’ve never done LSD,(soon…soon) but I’ve shroomed a couple o times. You never really “see” things. I mean real objects that are there. Stuff morphs. Trees shift. If you are in a room with wood paneling, the knots in the wood, look like pairs of eyes!! But mostly, its all in your head. Thoughts RACE through your mind for hours. And I mean RACE. The last time I shroomed was a couple months ago. I sat in a room with my friends (one was shrooming, two on DXM, and the other was just really really drunk) and I kept putting my hands in my mouth and laughing really high pitched. I thought I was crazy. I couldn’t complete a single thought, I begged my friends over and over to take me to an insane asylum. And I was dead serious. I think I really know what it feels like to be crazy. Also, when you shroom parts of your body go numb. It’s a really weird feeling. Your whole arm will just go numb and feel funny. Don’t know why I added that but oh well.
I used to have auditory hallucinations when I was very young, mainly of my mother calling my name in a very angry tone of voice. They frightened me to no end.
I also used to have minor visual hallucinations when I was very young, on the order of vague shapes appearing out of shadows or cartoony figures appearing briefly in the corners of my eyes. One I remember somewhat vividly was a cartoon image of an old crone witch cackling at me and stirring a cauldron I saw in a dark room out of the corner of my eye. Again, frightening.
(Is it any wonder I’m not a head? LSD would probably frighten me right into a heart attack!)
The closest thing I’ve had to a drug-induced hallucination was when I was taking Darvocet for persistant headaches. I took a dosage (actually, half of what the prescription allowed) on an empty stomach when I was very tired riding on a dark bus at night. I looked into the darkness and saw small flashes of white light very briefly.
(Interestingly, the only thing hydrocodone did for me, when I took it after I had my wisdom teeth extracted, was make me sick and put me to sleep.)
While somewhat off-topic, as it pertains more to delusions than hallucinations, I sometimes half-intentionally frighten myself by dreaming up bizarre `persecution’ scenarios (the CIA is monitoring the RF emissions from my computer, unknown groups are watching me through my windows, etc.) that my mind will not drop. I go into a panic state, avoiding windows and open rooms, while I’m internally commenting on how stupid I’m being. It seems to be related to fatigue.
(No, I never have good dreams. The best my subconscious can do is bizarre but nonthreatening. A person as creative as I am should be on better terms with his subconscious.)
