So I ran across this phrase in another thread, and I realised I’ve had a couple of these in the past, one in particular I still get ridiculed by my wife for.
I ‘dreamt/hallucinated’ whatever you want to call it, that there was a midget standing by my bedside staring at me with ill intent. The completely out there thing about it though was that he was dressed like an old fashioned longshoreman/dockworker. As in a wool beanie, overall’s, big steel toed boots, etc.
I made the mistake after starting awake and being really shaken by it, of telling my wife that I saw a midget dockworker :dubious: So now from time to time, she starts a conversation with remember when you saw… :mad:
So anyone else care to share their …uhmm…interesting experiences of this type?
One time I stayed home sick from work, and went to take a nap in my bed. I hypnagogic hallucinated that my youngest son had come home early from school and I could really feel him crawling up towards me on the bed. The mattress sunk down with his knees and everything, I swear. Then I remember that the door was locked and he didn’t have a key, and I woke up.
I have tended to first hear faint rustling or growling sounds, then I’m suddenly pounced upon by a big fuzzy wild animal.
Years ago, this kind of thing scared the living shit out of me. Eventually, I learned that nothing terrible happens, and those sleep paralysis things ceased to alarm me.
But wait, there’s more: I’ve read everything I could find on-line about sleep paralysis. I guess I must be an unsuitable specimen, as I’ve never been abducted by space aliens yet. But I have another symptom that I’ve never seen mentioned anywhere: Immediately afterward, my whole body seems profoundly relaxed. Even my mind is a near-total blank for about a minute. This state of feeling limp and rubbery actually feels very good, and lasts for about 18 hours, well into the following day. Does anybody else experience it this way?
The room was on fire, part of the concrete ceiling had collapsed, and I was trapped under the concrete and couldn’t move from the neck down. As the flames lapped over my body, I was panicking and thought I was going to die. Then I realized that I couldn’t smell smoke. Knowing that it wasn’t real helped me get through the next few minutes as it slowly faded away.
I’ve also had evil leprechauns try to kidnap me by luring me out of my room with annoying flute music. Those short gray bastards are pretty cunning.
Mine are almost always that someone has broken into the house and is coming into my bedroom. A less frequent one is a mouse in the bed - I can actually see it running around on the bed, then I wake up (and surprise! no mouse).
You know, this thread kind of makes me wish mine would change up a little bit - the same one is getting kind of old.
When I was young, I had a frequent manifestation of…well, I’m not really sure how to describe it. A creature made of sound is the closest I can think of.
More recently (post 9/11, specifically) I had two instances in which black beams (like metal beams, not lasers) were punching through the walls of my room, filling the room up and pinning me down.
I had two dreams, about a month apart, wherein there was a figure sitting on the bed right next to my head… staring down at me with an incredibly wide, malevolent smile. I can still see him quite clearly.
Mine weren’t threatening. Usually I hh’d that I would “flow” out of a partially opened window and levitate into the sky and then fly around. It used to scare me because I was afraid of the effect stopping suddenly, causing me to crash-land. But, once I knew what hh’s were, I decided to see how much I could do when hh’ing. I tried to do stuff like swooping and barrel rolls. This usually caused me to wake up.
Once I drastically reduced my caffeine intake and got on a more regular sleep schedule, the hh’s stopped.
I’ve had two, which are pretty pedestrian compared to some of the others above. The first one was at my sister’s house. I was lying on my side and felt something push me in the middle of my back. When I turned over, there was a man wearing a pilgrim hat standing by the side of the bed. He gradually faded away.
The second time was in my apartment. I opened my eyes and saw a woman standing by the bed, with long black hair hanging in front of her face and her arms stretched out toward me. I was in the midst of a J-Horror thing and had recently watched Ringu and Ju-On, so those images were fresh in my mind.
I’ve had hundreds – I have them just before I fall asleep whenever I am overtired. A few of the most memorable:
[ul]
[li]A little ghost girl standing beside my bed – she was about eight years old, wearing an old-fashioned long nightgown, and glowing with a bright light[/li][li]A video camera (like a building security camera) mounted in the corner of my bedroom ceiling[/li][li]A giant, beautiful vase of colorful flowers sitting on a table in my bedroom[/li][/ul]I also frequently wake up in terror that something is wrong with my hands. I know that they are injured in some way, and they hurt or I can’t move them. Occasionally I look at them and they are bloody or broken, but mostly by the time I’m able to look at them the hallucination has started to fade. Now I usually have a second or two of terror, and then think, “Oh, it’s that hallucination again.”
Once, after a dental procedure where I had nitrous, as I was coming out of it (which happens fairly quickly after you start breathing regular air) I had a vision of Ed Begley, Jr at the foot of the dentist chair.
St. Elsewhere had just finished its run so it wasn’t as completely random as you might imagine, but still. I didn’t even like that show.
I saw a man in a black broad-brimmed hat standing outside my bedroom window – my second-floor bedroom window. One time, the ceiling light fixture turned into some sort of space ship and was zipping all around the room. Another time, there was some sort of horrible, malevolent presence in my closet. I was in a heart-pounding panic over that one!
Mostly people I know standing next to my bed, sometimes talking to me. There was also a time when I woke myself up because I was sure I had an important homework project due the next day that I’d forgotten all about. (It involved braiding yarn).
The creepiest one, however, came when I was mostly feeling awake. I’d swear I heard someone shout “ROSIE!” Loud and clear (and cryptic).
I have periodic issues with sleep paralysis but I have been spared hallucinations, for the most part. Usually it’s waking up over and over again and my life depends on waking up but I never know when I’m really awake.
I did have one auditory hallucination once. Just a woman’s voice, about a foot from my ear, that said, ‘‘Hello.’’ I have such vivid and horrifying nightmares that I can only hope that imagination is never manifest in some creeptastic hallucination like those described.
I think only with sleep paralysis, and on my back (like if I’m falling back asleep in the morning) and always vague, mostly auditory. I hear someone entering the house/apt/room like talking in another room, doors opening, and then creepy lurking horror just out of my field of sight.
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