This is related but a bit off.
I had uncontroled random muscle contractions sometimes, when I was really sick. My arm might fly up and the mouse would hit the wall. Stuff like that. I woke up about a foot above my bed from my arms and legs contracting while I slept. It happened a few times and eventualy the bed broke and the mattress hit the floor. I can laugh at it, because it was comical if not desired.
I lived in a studio apartment with and old Murphy bed for a while. It had this habit of collapsing at the foot, just when you were really deeply asleep. Not every night–just infrequently enough to keep you complacent.
I second raccoons. Also cats. And possums.
Well, I was laying in bed one night watching a movie when I had the urge to look up at the bookshelves above my bed. They were in the process of no longer being above my bed if you catch my drift.
I missed being known “pancake head” by about three seconds.
THAT will wake you up.
-Joe
WOW. These are some stories.
The worst I’ve had is when our Chocolate Lab would wake up and go off like a BOMB barking. It was never anything but some small wildlife in the yard. Foxes and stuff. Bears a few times.
But one time, she (our Lab Alpine [yes that’s where my user name is from])did have real reason to set off the ALARM.
It was about 5am on a Saturday. Just a little bit of light. I got up and looked out the window and woke up my Wife. “Honey, there is a horse in our driveway.” (didn’t have my glasses on yet).
What in the hell is a horse doing up at this elevation? Must have gotten loose and wandered up here.
Turned out to be a moose licking the salt off our cars.
In my college dorm, my roommate and I both woke up thinking we were at the start of an earthquake. Turned out all it was were some Christmas lights we had taped to the window peeled off from the tape holding them. Why we thought it was an earthquake, I don’t know.
A few years ago, I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of the most ungodly shrieking and screaming coming from my backyard. I can’t even describe it accurately…it was just the most disturbing, inhuman screeching you could imagine. I thought it might be an animal being skinned alive, it was such a desperate and terrorized sound. It lasted for about 20 minutes and then stopped abruptly. I looked out of the window but didn’t see anything, and eventually went back to sleep.
I never did find out what it was – there was no sign of carnage in the yard the next day. But the day before, my brother had burned a batch of cookies and had thrown them into the yard for the birds (I guess this seemed a sensible thing to do), and somehow I got it into my head that the screaming had been rabbits and birds fighting over the cookies in the middle of the night. It was either that or zombies.
The sound of another person vomitting in the room next door in your small house sounds an awful lot like a monster devouring a small goat. Not that I know what that sounds likes >_>
I was sleeping on my back when my big cat jumped from the top shelf of the book cabinet right smack into the middle of my stomach. That is waking up suddenly.
It scared the hell out of me one night when the blender started in the kitchen of our apartment in the middle of the night. Apparently the container was leaky and some leftover drink leaked down and shorted out the switch.
HORNK! Huh-Huh-HORRRRRRRRNNK! I am literally on my feet and carrying the dog outside before I’m fully awake.
My wake-up story: When I was a college sophomore in my very first apartment, I had a stuffed dragon (plush animal) about two feet tall, green and pink. It was noise activated. If you made noise or clapped your hand it would roar: : Clap : ROAAAAAARRR! So the very first night in my very first apartment, I was quite nervous to be in a new place with the usual creaks and groans, and I wasn’t used to being alone, so it was a while before I went to sleep. In the middle of the night a framed picture (poorly hung by me) fell off the wall. The dragon was sitting on the couch: BANG! ROAAAARRRR! I about shit myself. I had no freaking idea what had happened, and in my confused asleep mind I thought there was a bear in the living room. (Of my second-floor apartment. In an apartment building. In the middle of town.) I eventually processed that what I had heard was the dragon and got up the courage to crack the bedroom door open and peep out. I saw the picture on the floor and knew what had happened. So then I unthinkingly walked out to pick the picture up and cut my foot pretty badly on the glass (I hadn’t realized the picture was broken). So there I was, bleeding all over my apartment in the middle of the night, no band-aid (cause I’d just moved in), alone, scared, and apparently completely incompetent. I had felt so grown up the day before, and then that night I felt like I should never be let out without a keeper. It was completely demoralizing. But then I went back to bed and things looked better in the morning, as they always do. 
Here’s mine. Asleep in my house near the university, around 3 am I wake up and hear what sounds to me like a wild animal in my bathtub clawing to get out. My dog however was not reacting like that was what it was, but I was still on edge. I got out my revolver and crept into the bathroom and flicked the light on, fully expecting to see a raccoon or something in my bathtub.
Turns out that the entire glass panel in the shower stall had shattered, and the “scraping of sharp claws” sound I was hearing was little bits of glass dropping off the frame into the tub. My dog often slept in there and I theorized he had hit the glass with his claws or something-he was acting rather guilty but like I said I was in fight or flight mode and half-asleep.
A few years ago I was staying in a hotel in Melbourne, Australia. The hotel was arranged around a central, well, courtyard is too grand a name, more of a light shaft really that the room (and bathroom!) windows faced onto. Well, someone staying there was really ill one night. The sounds of this incredibly loud retching and chundering reverberated and echoed round the entire hotel. Yuck. I hate being exposed to other people vomiting at the best of times, but this was something else.
Do you get foxes round your way? They can make the most hellish sound. I’ve kind of got used to it now, our local fox population is thriving…
Mountain lions too. My sister’s husband and his dad heard a woman screaming bloody murder one night down by the creek. They drove down to save her but never could find anyone. Same thing happened again a week or so later. Turns out, a mountain lion and a woman can sound much the same when they’re perturbed.
I have woken up to the sound of someone breaking into my room. Let me tell you, nothing gets the ol’ adrenaline pumping quite like that does.
During what I refer to as my ‘college years’ I lived in an apartment complex that was literally just off the campus; I wasn’t in college, but I had so many neighbors who were that I felt like I was getting smarter by osmosis or something. Or stupider, perhaps.
At the time I hadn’t fully unpacked. I’d set up my workbench (a large dining table that has seen better days) in my room, had piles of boxes on either side of it, and due to space considerations, my futon was under the workbench. This led to several nights of me sitting up, conking my head, and lying back down again very quickly, but I digress.
So, I’m sleeping there, when suddenly I hear the sound of glass breaking and a startled “Oops.” My window! And voices. A few seconds later a guys voice whispers something like “Ah, she won’t notice.” THEN, the table starts wiggling as someone climbs through the window! AaAAAAA!
I roll out of bed, snatch the nearest weapon at hand, brandish it threateningly, and yell, “GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!”
The (large, muscular) jock standing at the foot of my workbench blinks at me, then yells “WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN MY GIRLFRIENDS APARTMENT!?”
Yelling ensues.
My roommate busts in (through the door) with a golf club, which prompts the intruder to start cussing about that slut taking on two guys (in more colorful language); campus security, alerted by the ruckus, show up (even though they’re not technically supposed to leave the campus); in short, the whole complex is up in arms. The guy is drunk off his ass; I’m surprised he’s able to walk.
Finally the cops show up – in retrospect, it was only a few minutes (this time of night, they’re never far from the college :rolleyes: ) – cuff and stuff the intruder, and come in to take my statement. I explain as best I can. As he’s nodding and jotting down notes, he asks, “So… why are you holding a lightsaber?”
Doh. “Well, I was trying to grab the baseball bat, officer, but it was dark and I was tired.” :smack:
Turns out that the dudes girlfriend lived in the next building over, same apartment. So I guess it was an honest mistake, right?
The demograpic in my neighborhood has slowly changed over the years. It is not uncommon now to hear a random gunshot, police siren, sheriff’s helicopter and several car alarms going off. In a single night.
Suffering from a sleeping disorder, it’s rare that I actually fall into a deep sleep. But when the compressor goes out in your Kenmore Coldspot refridgerator, it sounds exactly like the Aliens have finally landed.
In your kitchen.
And they’ve holed up inside a major appliance.
The vegetable bin, to be exact.
You’ll be okay, though.
Because you’ll be armed with your son’s Official Daisy Red Ryder BB gun.
When we first got maried, my wife and I lived in a garden apartment at the top of a whole complex of apartments built into the side of a hill. The wiring in this place was pretty old and tricky (which is my story and I’m sticking with it). Our area gets thunderstorms every few months (just like where you live probably does) and being ath the top of this hill, we’d get some pretty awesome displays of lightning and thunder.
The kicker was that lightning passing somewhat closely over the building would cause a big increase in static electricity. The increase was enough to set off the apartment’s doorbell, due to its poor wiring (lack of ground?). Now imagine you are in your home with a thunderstorm raging outside. Suddenly, when the storm is at its most violent, your doorbell rings like this:
“Bzzzzzzzz- Kracka-BOOM!!!”
“Honey, someone’s at the door. Could you get it please…?” :eek: 
OK, mine is really wimpy compared to these. One summer I was sleeping in a tent. In the wee dark hours of the morning, a Great Blue Heron flew directly overhead (I’m talking maybe 3 feet overhead) and croaked as it did so. For those of you who have never heard the cry of a heron, it sounds SCARY. Like a 4-year-old being murdered. It was hours before I could sleep again.
The worst story:
My 92-year-old mother was living with me. One morning, when it was still dark, she went into the bathroom without turning on the light. She went to sit on the toilet, and missed. I was sleeping in the next room, and was awakened by the sound of her body hitting the tile floor. I was in the bathroom within seconds; she was lying on her side with a pool of blood under her head. I told her not to move, I put a rolled-up towel under her head, and called 911.
There was nothing immediately life-threatening about her fall, but it set off a chain of events that, three days later, took her life.
Aww, that’s sad, panache45. 
I wasn’t asleep when this happened, but it was night, and I was alone, so it was skeery.
I had a creepy neighbor when I was young and single. He’d stare at me every time I went out in the yard. Not a mean stare, but not a comfortable one, either. He was probably 30’s and a druggy and just not right, you know?
So one night, I’m in my living area, which is a big long room with the kitchen at one end, the dining area in the middle, and the sitting area at the other end. The couch faced away from the kitchen to better define the areas, and face the tv. After a day of being stared at by creepy neighbor, I’m sitting there about 11pm snacking and watching tv. I hear this gosh-awful crashing, scratching sound at my kitchen window. I jump up, convinced creepy neighbor is breaking in to rape and kill me! I dashed to the window (best defense is a good offense, right? and there was a buncha knives right there, too) and pulled the cord to open the blinds! To find…
My calico cat hanging on the screen by her claws where she’d jumped up to chase bugs. Damned cat.
That’s one of the reasons I’ve always liked having cats. I can now blame night-time noises on them and go back to sleep.
I do have one incident which happened to me in college and scared the absolute crap out of me. I was living in an off campus apartment at the time with one other guy, and due to the fact that it was off campus and in Virginia I had recently purchased a pellet gun that was designed to look like a Beretta 92 .
Now this pellet gun was powered by those little CO2 cartridges and not long after I had purchased it I notice that one of the warnings said that you should always remove the cartridge when you are done shooting because it’s bad to leave the pressurized cartridge in there for too long. Of course, like an idiot, I forgot to do this one time and left my loaded and pressurized BB gun sitting on top of my computer tower aiming towards the adjacent wall when I went to sleep.
Of course you can probably guess what happened next…I woke up at about 2 or 3 in the morning to the sound of a HUGE bang in my room, whereupon i jumped out of bed and grabbed the pistol without even realizing that that was what had made the noise. At the time it was still pitch black and I had no idea what had made the sound, and eventually ended up going back to sleep. The next morning I looked around to see if I could figure out what had caused it and noticed a lovely large hole in the wall next to my computer where the gun had discharged. Had it been a real gun there’s a very good chance it would have gone through the wall and hit my roomate, whose bed was directly on the other side. Needless to say I was unable to practice safe gun handling after that because the cartridge blowing out broke the gun and I haven’t gotten another one since.