A few days ago, I woke up, lying on my side, to some crazy raspy groaning noise behind me. My eyes were open, and I was looking at the wall next to my bed. At first, I got scared that it was a hard drive crashing out or something, so I tried to jump up and get to my computer–but I couldn’t. After about a minute or so of thinking, “wow… this is sleep paralysis?”, my body freed up and all was well. One thing I was wondering, though, was what that groaning noise was.
Have people been known to hear things during sleep paralysis, instead of seeing the “sitting ghost” thing? I was lying on my side, so I couldn’t have seen it. Or was it me still snoring while I was awake?
I’ve heard auditory hallucinations are common in sleep paralysis. I always hear people entering my apartment and room and rummaging about in preparations to massacre my paralyzed body.
A similar phenomenon can occur when falling asleep. As your body falls asleep but your mind remains awake, one can expect to hear all sorts of cool screaming sounds and the obligatory people-calling-your-name-out-loud.
