In truth, I’m really, really hoping that what I experienced last night was part of a hypnagogic hallucination. (Hypnopompic, actually, for me.)
I live in a 70-year-old house. We have bats. It’s a fact of life. Mostly, they stay in the attic, but we always get a bat or two or three a year venturing down into the rest of the house.
A few days ago, I went to the attic to bring down my stored winter clothes and heard some squeaking that sounded very bat-like to me. (We usually catch the bats that come down from the attic, so I know the sound they make. OTH, I’ve heard squeaking noises I thought were coming from a bat, only to find they were coming from a mouse one of the cats had caught.)
So, last night, I slowly surfaced from deep sleep as I became aware of bat-like squeaking. Lots of it. Loud. Rhythmic. As is typical of hypnagogic hallucinations, there were all kind of weird, ominous feelings having to do with objects in the room. I had that familiar sensation of heart-pounding terror. I expected a bat (or hundreds of bats) to make an appearance in my room at any moment. I had to pee very badly, but I was too scared to get out of bed. I told myself, “It [the squeaking, not the urge to pee] will stop eventually.” And it did. I heard footsteps in the attic, and the squeaking stopped. (It was 3 a.m. No way was anyone up there.) I drifted back into sleep and then did get up at some point to go to the bathroom.
If a bat had appeared in my bedroom, I would have dealt with it. I’m startled by bats, but I’m not afraid of them.
I can’t ever recall a hypnagogic hallucination that involved sound. Scary, looming figures outside my (second floor) window? Check. Impending threat from the ceiling light fixture? Check. But not sound.
Mine usually involve seeing a spider coming down from the ceiling over my bed. This usually involves me flailing about and practically falling out of bed to get away from the spider. I have occasionally heard a doorbell in my semi-sleep state which often is not due to someone ringing my doorbell but that’s the only sounds I can remember “hearing”.
I’ve had a few that involved hearing someone exhale loudly and sadly right next to my bed (that’ll jolt you awake in no time at all) or saying my name. My most frequent one is feeling and hearing the edge of the bed drop as if someone had just sat down on it.
My best one was when I thought there was a serial killer coming down the stairs into my bedroom to hack me up. I quickly realized that there were no stairs into my bedroom, I must be dreaming, so why not take control of it? So I turned him into Don Juan and anticipated some fun, but I fell back into a deeper sleep before he made it to the bottom of the stairs. :mad:
Since Don Juan they’ve abated somewhat, although I still sometimes see the little demon girl in the white nightgown standing in the corner glaring at me. I hate that little demon girl.
More likely your brain is just in hyperdrive and translating weird ambient noises into more familiar and expected ones. Being sleepy meant you couldn’t differentiate between reality and the construction of reality in your head.
I’m not a criminal – it’s the people in my hallucinations who are the criminals! No bats last night. Last night, it was a bunch of old ladies who had brought every stick of furniture from my mother’s dining room into my bedroom. (My mother passed away 10+ years ago, the house was sold years before that, and the dining room furniture currently resides with my sister, in Las Vegas. Why does my brain come up with this shit?!?)
I heard an interview with Oliver Sachs where the interviewer asked him why auditory hallucinations are so rarer. He countered that they’re not actually any more rare than visual hallucinations, but may actually be more common than visual ones. Auditory hallucinations, he said, are under-reported, since we seem to be somewhat aware of our ears not being totally reliable (i.e. a creaking noise that isn’t there).
