My nightly sleep is usually very weird and I’m wondering if there is a more specific term for it so I can try to find out more about it.
I usually fall asleep and stay asleep for a while, but then things start happening. I don’t really wake, but my level of consciousness is such that things that I can see in the room become part of what I’m experiencing. I hesitate to even label it as a dream, because most of the time, there is no plot or story like we normally associate with a dream. In other words, if you were to ask me what one of these dreams is about, I could not describe it.
For example, one night, what kept entering my field of vision was the ceiling light fixture. Part of me knew that was what I was seeing, but in the “dream” I was having, it had something to do with beadwork. My consciousness was kind of drifting back and forth between seeing the light fixture and being fully asleep, but in both states, there was something going on in my head that had to do with beading.
It’s all very jumbled up, non-linear, and lacking in concrete images, and the sleep I’m getting is definitely NOT refreshing.
Last night, I had just seen the movie “Breach,” and the shadows I could see on the curtain has something to do with being threatened, and at one point I even went into fight-or-flight heart-pounding adrenaline-rush mode. (That doesn’t happen very often, though.)
So, does this phenomenon have a specific name? (Or does anyone have a clue as to what I’m talking about from the description?!??)
I’m betting that you’re talking about a hypnogogic state. Here’s a skepdic definition. There’s a lot of stuff onn Wiki as well.
Thanks! The Wiki article does a pretty good job of describing what I’m experiencing. And now, at last, I know the truth… I’M BEING ABDUCTED BY ALIENS EVERY FRICKIN’ NIGHT! 
Heh.
This is a pretty weird account from another Doper of what’s also most likely a hypnagogic hallucination. Fun times.
I suffer from hypnagogic hallucinations - or more correctly whoever is sleeping with me does. I’ve combat-rolled off the end of the bed because I thought the ceiling fan was a spidey about to land on my face. I’ve seen Nazgul-like creatures come into my room. I’ve woken up laughing from a funny joke. My brother has them too, and we thought it was from excessive LSD use in his wild past, but it seems genetic.
The best way I’ve found to cut them short is to turn on a light to wake myself up all the way. Needless to say, the Man isn’t too happy when I do that, but at least I’m not screaming about Blue Meanies.
I’ve had some dreams that incorporate elements of my surroundings.
In one, I was dreaming about wandering around a strange swimming pool complex with a girl I know. At the end of the dream, I went up the diving platform and looked down to see swimming pools from above. Then I woke up, and realised that the various swimming pools were just different rectangles formed by shelves at the end of my bed.
I find this really neat, because I half woke up, and my brain interpreted what I saw in the context of the dream.
In a more dramatic case, I woke up looking at a little rhino statue I have on my shelf. In my semi-conscious state, I saw it as a cat - which proceeded to pounce at me!
The worst was the one dream I had as a kid where I went to the toilet. Guess what happened!? Even now, years later, I still wake up in a panic and start feeling around the sheets if I have a dream where I go to the toilet.
When I hit puberty, I had loads of dreams where I would be walking around with me eyes closed - exactly like they were on my sleeping body. If I opened my eyes in the dream, I would wake up - and I was ‘conscious’ of this. I could sometimes open them just enough to see light patterns. Needless to say, these dreams were extremely frustrating. My sister had similar dreams around the same age, but I’ve never met anyone else who’s had them.
However, I think it’s quite common for sounds to be incorporated into dreams. It’s common enough that it’s usually used on TV at the end of a dream sequence (i.e. somebody in the dream will say “Wake up”, and it’ll turn out that somebody really is saying “Wake up”). I guess visuals are less likely to be incorporated, since we don’t usually sleep with our eyes open!