Who was in my room last night?

Factual Questions
1

Ok, I’m going to go ahead and put this in GQ, 'cause I will be posing a good number of questions in this story.

Normally, I’m not into paranormal type-stuff, though I have never been partial either way to the subject. I always thought the earlier episodes of “The X-Files” were good, but have never really had an opinion on wether ghosts and the like actually exist. I have always been on the fence. I suppose it could happen, but it could also be total bunk.

That said, here’s what happened to me last night.

I was sleeping in my bed with my wife as we normally do when I woke up at 1:41 am. (I distinctly remember noting the exact time on the clock.) This in itself was not abnormal. I’m somewhat of a light sleeper-and will often wake up at various points during the night. This time, I made an adjustments to my pillows, and the blanket then rolled over. That’s when I saw what looked like the figure of a woman standing at the foot of my bed. I saw it, and it took maybe a second for my mind to catch up with my eyes, at which point I involuntarily jerked in startle. My arms and my legs both just jerked sharply. The figure was of normal female size and stature, and had curly, (almost wiry) hair. The face didn’t look like anybody in particular, but I didn’t really look for long.
‘She’ was sort of transparent, but still there. ‘She’ kind of looked like she was embossed. I could almost see the ‘raised’ parts had highlights, and the ‘lowered’ parts seemed to be darker. I could sort of see thru her (the closet door, and the corner of the room), but I could still see her too.
There was no “beams of light”, or “heavenly harps” or much else of anything you’d see on TV and in the movies. The figure was standing there with her arms just slightly out to the sides -not quite raised, but not at her side either. Her head then began to turn in an upward arc. Like she was looking to the left, then her head rolled up and over and she was then looking to the right.
It was the movement that changed me from startle to border-line fear.
I quickly turned my head to the side and shut my eyes tightly. I figured my eyes weren’t adjusted correctly, and some shadows from outside were casting in a weird way and it looked like a woman standing there. So I clenched my eyes a few quick times and looked up again. When I did, the figure had already begun to fade. My first thought was, “oh good it WAS my eyes”, because I couldn’t really see her anymore. As I looked for a second or two longer, I could still make out her outline and that’s when I realized it was still there, just more difficult to see than when it moved (like it was in the process of fading away). It continued to fade very quickly and was totally gone. I turned and noted the exact time (A habit I picked up several years ago, noting the time of strange noises outside in case it turned out to be a car or house break-in or something.)

I then went back to sleep.

This morning, the ‘event’ is still going through my mind. What did I see? I was pretty sure at first, it was just light casting oddly, but light has never done that before in my room. Also, we have horizontal blinds in our room, so I figure light seeping through would give the appearance of horizontal lines.

A search on Google this morning turned up a LOT of ghost stories that take place with the phrase “standing at the foot of my bed”. It seems to be a popular choice for ‘ghosts’, which leads me to believe it’s probably more of some sort of sleep related disturbance (hence why people are in bed), probably mixed with some recolection of hearing one of these stories form someone else. (“If he saw a ghost at the foot of HIS bed, then when I see a ghost it’ll probably be at the foot of MY bed, too”) Y’know what I mean? Lots of ‘total believers’ seem to be ready to welcome me to their little club.

So I turn to dopers. I’m looking for some evidence from the ‘grounded’ side before I believe I was visited by another life form who found something interesting in just watching me sleep. No message from God, no mission from God to rid the world of anything, no communication whatso ever, just to watch me sleep. (Wouldn’t ghosts have something better to do with their time?)

So I ask: has anyone here had any similar experiences? And I guess this is a real “out there” question, but does anybody know what I saw?

2

I think you may have seen an energy form. I am a believer, definitely.
How long have you been living in your house? How old is the house?
It might be worth it to do some research on the history of the house and its former occupants. I think you’ll have a better chance of finding an accurate answer that way.

3

I would say a lucid dream or waking dream, but I would have thought that closing your eyes and looking again would have made her disappear, or be a totally different person.

Did you look at her well enough to recognize if she changed?

4

Whoa, OK… that seems pretty scary. I haven’t had any such experiences before so I won’t be any help. But I’m definitely interested in any explanations that will come up here on SDMB. I, for one, would not have been able to go back to sleep after seeing something like that! :slight_smile:

But I’m curious to know one thing, ** NoGoodNamesLeft **, roughly how long did this experience last, say, from the moment you woke up and saw the figure till the moment it disappeared?

5

You probably imagined it. Since you told your story, I’ll tell you mine.

I was on vacation from college at the time, so when I woke up one morning at about 6:00, I just adjusted the blanket, rolled over, and turned over/fluffed up the pillow, preparing to go right back to sleep. When I turned over the pillow a small blue man, about 5 inches tall, in a nice black suit, with a head shaped like a big nose, ran out from underneath my pillow and stopped on the bed in front of me. He looked at me for a minute, then sprinted back underneath the pillow. I sat all the way up and started throwing the pillows off the bed, inspecting everything and everywhere, trying to find the guy. I knew I saw him. I couldn’t go back to sleep, even. After a minute or two, though, the rational side of me came back and realized that sometimes sleep does weird things to your brain, and just opening your eyes doesn’t mean your brain is completely awake yet.

I can pretty much guarantee you that there was never any little blue nosehead guy hanging out underneath my pillow.

6

A waking dream. You synaptic pathways were clogged with overlapping information. Your subconscious, really quite proud of the work it was currently involved in, was unwilling to give up the path. Your subconscious became quite irked at this event, but was too drowsy to sufficiently make a valid argument.

7

Google ‘hypnopompic hallucinations’ or ‘hypnagogic hallucinations’ and see what turns up. Might be what you’re looking for.

8

The house is actually an apartment, and I have lived there for 2 years or so with no prior ‘visions’ or anything like that.

The previous tenant moved out to live with her daughter, but then moved back to the building (but a different unit though) She lives down the hall now.

As for if she changed, no, I don’t think so. I din’t look that long, when it moved, I kinda got scared.
My thoughts kind of went like this:
“Someone’s in my house!”
quickly changed to
“That’s weird, look what the light is doing; that looks like a person”
quickly changed to:
“Holy shit it moved”
quickly changed to:
“My eyes aren’t adjusted, let me clench them”
quickly changed to:
“Oh, good I was imagining it”
quickly changed to:
“Hang on, I can still see the outline…it looks like it’s gone now, -phew, what ever it was, it’s over now”

9

I saw something like that once about 8 years ago. I opened my eyes in the middle of the night and saw a man standing in my bedroom. He looked at me for a second and then turned around and walked out of the room. I saw him as clearly as I would have seen anyone in the dim light of my bedroom at night. I spent several minutes sitting up in bed wishing I had the phone in my room so I could call 911. During this time I realized that the dog was still sleeping soundly at the foot of the bed which was unlikely if someone was in the house. Finally, baseball bat in hand, I left my room to go for the phone. By the time I got to the phone I felt too silly to call 911 since it was obvious that the doors were still locked and no one was in the house. I didn’t sleep anymore that night.

I think that I just happened to open my eyes in a middle of dream and it took a minute to go away. I am too much of a chicken to believe anything else.

10

I’ve got one for you too. A month or so ago I dreamed that an ex girlfriend called me from the airport and was only going to be there for 15 minutes and I needed to call her. I jumped out of bed and ran outside in my boxers in the POURING RAIN to get my cell phone out of my truck (It’s the only phone I have) and then realizing what an idiot I was.

(shakes head ruefully)

11

I’m surprised you were able to simply go ‘back to sleep’ after this had happened. Didnt you wake your wife up to tell her what you had just seen ? I know I bloody would if I just thought I’d maybe seen a ghostie ! :eek:

12

The whole thing was maybe a minute. Not long at all. Maybe less, but I can’t be sure how long exactly.

It wasn’t hard to go back to sleep, cause I definately felt out of danger. I saw it sort of ‘fade out’ the second time I looked up, and dismissed it as “yeah, I saw lights and shadows make a weird shape like a person, the same way clouds can look like a bunny rabbit”. Y’know? I didn’t believe it was a ghost at all, so once it was over, I felt OK to go back to sleep. I guess in the back of my head, I could have been thinking “even if it was something weird, I can go to sleep now and start pretending it didn’t happen”

13

I was in your room last night.

Thank you for the bullion, the VCR, your cash, & the secret of the 3rd word ending in -gry you had in an envelope in your safe. :smiley:

If I saw anybody in my room at night, it would be “Reach For The Tazer & The Hunting Knife” time. :dubious:

14

Every so often while I’m waking up I’ll see a spongy looking coating on the ceiling of my bedroom. No explaination why but one morning (after waking up in the same room for a few years) I looked at the ceiling and saw brownish pattern that looked like it had been painted on with a sponge. I remember thinking, boy I never noticed the ceiling was painted that way. After looking at it for a bit it faded out, similiar to the way you describe your lady friend. I’ve seen it probably about 3 times and even though I now KNOW that my ceiling is in fact white, it will persist. It has never simply vanished in a blink, each time it has faded out gradually.

15

I lean towards somethig like this being the answer, but the only problem with this explanation (and that of the ‘hypnopompic hallucinations’) is that I didn’t feel tired. I felt quite awake in fact. Like I said in my OP, I tend to sleep light through the night, and will often wake up when I am rolling over or need to adjust the blankets. Nearly every time, I can quite alert, and not very hazy, groggy or cludy-minded. I mean, I don’t feel that way, but maybe that’s part of the ‘mind-trick’ this type of episode can perpetuate.

16

Hallucinations are things of the mind, and so the mind that created them cannot detect they are false.

I once (while in Ranger School and operating on very little sleep) my childhood home in the middle of the Florida swamp. It was perfect in each and every detail. After all, every memory I had of the place was being used to project the false image.

Spooky as heck, although I KNEW it was fake, it looked so perfect.

Certainly your case is different, but it just goes to show you the brain has a mind of its own.

17

I once had a similar disturbing waking dream, helped no doubt by a high fever I was in the middle of.

I woke up in the middle of the night (around about 3am or so) somehow convinced that I would die in an hour or so. After of few minutes of panicked muttering (which woke my roommate and later confirmed that it wasn’t a dream) I got out of bed. Fearing that if I woke up my roommate (I didn’t realize he was already awake) he’d die too, I got dressed, peed into the kitchen sink (cause the bathroom was attached to our shared bedroom) and decided to see how far I could drive before death hit me. About ten minutes into my drive I finally convinced myself that I wasn’t going to die…just really, really sick from the fever.

I also had the person at the foot of my bed waking dream as a tiny kid once…I can still remember it very well…

18

My opinion, it was in your head. The human mind is so powerful, it can play some pretty whacked out jokes on you, especially during sleep. And this vision was a very simple one too. Your mind could definately manage to trick you in this way.

If this same thing happened again and again, then I would not rule out a ghost. At this point from the info you gave though, I would give no relevance at all to the supernatural.

19

I’m a skeptic by nature, so I’m very much leaning towards the waking dream thing. I myself once saw a tiny gargoyle sitting on an A/C vent in my bedroom.

In other news, the Butthole Surfers song “Who Was In My Room Last Night?” will now be in my head for the rest of the day.

20

The only thing I have to add to this is a “Me too.”

I jerked awake one night and sat straight up. I saw a woman standing at the foot of my bed who seemed startled by me seeing her. She dropped away into nothing (just like Obi-Wan Kenobi when Darth Vader kills him). I turned on the lights and looked at the foot of my bed expecting to see a pile of clothes, alas there was nothing.

I’m not one to dwell on nightmares or whatever that would be called so I just went back to sleep. It’s a fun story to tell though when others are recounting their own ghost stories. Kind of like right now.