I’ve had hallucinations from lack of sleep. I was at work late at night (had been up about 60 hours) and the monitor in my cube looked like it was very big and far away - more like a drive-in theater screen from across a field than a 15" monitor a couple of feet from my head. I became very sensitive to pressure changes in the building and the walls seemed to be breathing.
Another time I stayed up a long time I had an experience I’m guessing is pretty common because I heard other people describe it - events seemed to happen twice. Someone would walk into the room, and I would turn to look at them and see them enter the room again, stuff like that. It was almost like a constant state of deja vu.
I’ve had that happen too, the thing where you misinterpret real objects driving late at night. Most of the time this happened to me I hadn’t been up for extremely long periods of time - I frequently stay up 36 hours with no ill effects, my stories in the post above were both after well over 48 hours awake. This happened to me when I had only been up 16 hours or so, I was just sleepy. I think instead of sleep-deprived hallucinations I was actually beginning to dream as I went half-asleep.
Anyway, one of the weirdest misinterpretations I had was driving home from work around 2:30 AM on a country road. I saw what I thought was some large vehicle with a light in the top of it ahead on the road. I was kinda wondering what it was, and as I got closer and closer I realized this was really huge - at first I thought maybe it was some construction equipment being hauled on the back of a truck, but it soon seemed that this thing in the road had to be at least 40 feet tall. When I got closer I realized it was stopped and was afraid I would rear-end it, and jerked to full alertness, stepping on the brake - when I realized it was a big tree on the side of the road surrounding a street lamp.
Another time like this I guess I dozed off because a black shadowy figure came through my passenger-side door, sat in the passenger seat for a second, then passed through me and the drivers side door. Scared the crap out of me.
Yeah, I forgot about that one; I sometimes get that in meetings if I’m tired; I sit there listening to someone drone on and on about first quarter margins and suddenly I can’t make my eyes focus properly and I can’t be sure whether their head is the size of a grape at arm’s length, or the size of a hot-air baloon a mile away (well, something like that, anyway).
Whenever I’ve experienced sleep deprivation hallucinations, I take it as the brain going about its normal job of producing dreams. Except that the dreams start while you’re awake (or semi-awake). It’s the overlay of the dream state superimposed on the waking state that gives it that deeply weird affect. The two are generally not supposed to overlap.
Hmmm, that sounds exactly like the onset of a migraine. Its called ‘migraine aura’. See this, skip down to the ‘aura’ section.
Most migraine sufferers don’t get auras. I happen to be one of the folks that do, and its pretty darned scary if you don’t know what you’re experiencing. Luckily, it only lasts 15-30 minutes.
(Although it is really annoying when an aura hits at a restaurant. All you can do is stare at your plate and watch the fortification spectra dancing in your eyes. It hasn’t happened to me while driving, yet, thank God.)
What you described sounds like something called hemianopsia. Experiencing a visual field cut in both eyes on the same side means something weird is going on in your brain. If it keeps happening- go to the doctor. As others have noted, sleep deprivation can cause different kinds of ‘hallucinations’. I often hear someone calling my name if it’s late at night, I’m really tired, and have been reading for several hours.
Last week, I was home at lunch and asked the dog if she wanted to go outside. A voice answered me back, “Not right now.” I went on washing the dishes and nearly dropped one when I felt a hand on my shoulder! Turns out it was Eddie (He’d taken the afternoon off) and he was freaked that I thought the dog had answered me back. Geesh, I knew it wasn’t the dog- I just thought it was some voices in my head.
