My mom (who isn’t given to believe in this ghost stuff) says she once woke up in the middle of the night and was sure that he late father was standing “at the end of her bed.” She “felt” that it was him, but she was too scared to look and kept her eyes closed.
My dad, a deep sleeper, was asleep the whole time.
Now here’s the weird part: My mom says that she called her brother the next morning (he lives in another city) and told him what happend. He claims the same thing happend to him that night.
If it wasn’t for the fact that I happen to know these people (my mom and my uncle), I wouldn’t think twice about it. And I was willing to accept that my mom’s brain was paying tricks on her. And that my uncle was influenced by my mom’s story and thought something similar happen to him.
I am a person who won’t believe without evidence. And, frankly, the people on TV who claim they seem ghosts doesn’t impress me because I don’t know who they are. But when I heard this story from my mom, I had to re-asses.
I’m still not convinced. I think I’m still firmly in the Carl Sagan camp (ala “Demon Haunted World”). But it did change my view a bit.
NoGoodNamesLeft, (like the name, BTW) I’d rule out the lucid dreaming option as you state you could see the time quite clearly and I think I read somewhere that when you’re lucid dreaming clocks tend to give indistinct times.
What you experienced sounds a lot like what I described here. I get it a lot when I’m overtired. I once saw an old chinese woman in a black hood moving her arm in a sweeping motion over her head – a little like the movement you described. The fact that I knew she was Chinese even though I couldn’t see her face proved that it was a waking dream.
I think this is a very good point. When things are imagined, you tend to experience the imagination, rather than really get involved, such as talking or getting up.
Personally, I would have thrown an absolute tantrum getting up on my feet ready to defend myself and my wife, if I were totally awake. If I was still slightly asleep, I think I would tend to sit there longer and think about the witch/lady and observe the time, things like that.
Let us know if you see the lady again. Then we’ll talk.
Actually, it’s a hypnopompic hallucination as it occurred in the process of waking up. (A hypnogogic hallucination occurs when falling asleep.) Your body is awake, but parts of your brain are still dreaming. It results in hallucinations, but the conviction that you were fully awake. It’s a fascinating phenomenon. There is a lot of speculation that it is responsible for most ghost and alien abduction stories.
When I was in bootcamp, one night and had to get up and go pee. I woke up with this sensation, slid out of bed, put on my shower shoes, and ran to the bathroom. I ran straight past firewatch, and starting peeing in the urinal. The firewatch came over to me, looked at me and said “Shouldn’t you be awake?” I woke up in bed having to pee. I ran into the bathroom and the same guy was there on firewatch. I had done the exact same process of getting up without messing up my rack, and putting my shower shoes on.
The very fact that the vision is anyway associated with sleep is the big clue that this was a hallucination.
How come no one is ever wide awake when these things happen? Or have verifiable witnesses?
“We were having dinner, when we all saw a dwarf jumped out of the cupboard, ran across the dinner table and into the oven…”
“We were playing softball, when a headless dinosaur meandered across the field…”
“We were having sex, when…”
Peace.
“We were watching Friends, when pale and unearthly skinny people started speaking in one-line bursts whilest making all sorts of ludicrous faces and… wait a second. That was just the show.”
I had an experience like this just a few weeks ago. I was lying on the couch in my living room late one night watching TV. I was facing the doorway to the kitchen and the only light was from the TV.
A movement in the kitchen caught my eye and I very clearly saw the figure of a man walk across my kitchen. He took about three steps and then sort of just faded away. I could see details, right down to the collars and buttons on his shirt. Even odder was the fact that his head was just about even with my kitchen chairs and I couldn’t see his lower legs because he seemed to be walking *through[/] the floor, as if he was walking on a lower level than the floor.
The man was only visible for a few seconds and after he disappeared, my reaction was, “Oh wow, I’ve seen a ghost!” and then I promptly fell asleep.
I realized the next morning that if I had been fully awake, or awake at all I would have completely freaked out after seeing that. If I’d really been awake, I probably would have jumped off the couch screaming for my husband and turning on all the lights in the house. I defintely wouldn’t have fallen right to sleep.
At the time, I thought I was wide-awake but apparently I wasn’t. It sure seemed like I was though. I guess I just dreamed it all.
Okay, I hate to admit but I am a little freaked out. Did anyone have a nightmare because of this? This made me remember my childhood nightmare of trolls in the old man’s window next door. I blocked that out of my mind for 16 years. Thanks!