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Usual Story: Ghost At The End Of The Bed

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I have always been bemused that ghosts are reported as turning up at people's bedsides. To me it seems perfectly logical that the person was either just falling asleep and misread the surroundings and external stimulae or had just woken from a dream and retained the image with the eyes now open.

Now I am not so sure.

Last february I was lying awake, trying to get off to sleep despite my husband's snoring. I was lying on my left side, facing my husband. Without movement the small figure of what might have been a female figure suddenly appeared, standing at the top of the bed, next to my husband and looking ahead at the wall. As I looked for just a few startled seconds, I only took in the very bright light it emitted and the appearance of a cloth round the head and shoulders. The rest of the figure was obscured by the bed.

Not unaturally I dived under the covers then woke my husband for some comfort. I asked him to check my heart rate which was thumping as I had never woken from a dream in such a state of fright.

About three or four days later it happened again on the same side of the bed. I'm convinced I was awake. This time the figure was blurred but appeared to be facing me directly across the bed. Same routine, I woke the husband, very frightened.

I decided either this was what I believe is termed a hypnogogic experience, (a dream experienced moments after falling asleep?) or pressure on the side of my eye causing a Migraine-like flash of light that my confused brain tried to make sense of.

A week later I was on my back in bed, trying to fall asleep again! If you are married to a snorer, I need say no more. This time there was no light coming from the 'visitor'. In a bedroom that was absolutely black I saw the figure of a fat, middle-aged naked man with close-cropped hair take a few steps towards the end of my bed, looking straight at me all the while. Nothing blurred or mystical about this guy! I let out an enormous scream. No need to wake the husband this time.

So I could forget the Migraine, eye-ball pressure theory, this was hypnogogic then.

On March 9th my mother phoned to say that she had been waiting a few weeks to confirm some tests she had undergone. Sadly, she had terminal cancer and would not have long to live.

A friend, who is involved in spiritualism thought these visitations were linked with my mother's distress that she was experiencing during that time. When she was dying she said she had 'seen herself' standing at the end of the bed looking back at herself. This was in daylight.

I do not think this has a bearing, but my husband's first wife died in our bedroom (of cancer) six years ago.

Classical response can only be:"You were dreaming, mate", but the odd thing is that I have never experienced anything like it in 52 years.
 
I've had what is I suppose is the standard "hypnogogic" experience of seeing faces hovering above the bed whilst I think I'm still awake, but your experience seems something else.

I have always been envious of my very level headed twin brothers experience (before he fell asleep as his partner was, you guessed it, snoring!) of having the figure of a child enter their room and come and stand at the side of the bed. On another occasion he reported the bedroom door opening, again he says whilst he was awake, and the figure of a woman looking around the door. He didn't find this threatening as it felt to him as if it was a mother checking on her child... :confused:
 
It has happened to both my husband and myself on separate occasions.

One afternoon the other half was in the bedroom watching telly. He suddenly gave a shout. Of course I went running in wondering what the hell had happened. An understandbly shaken hubby said that a woman with long red hair had appeared at the end of the bed, she turned and walked through the wall.

Some months later I woke to find a man with a check shirt standing next to me. To say it made me jump is an understatement. :)

Now both these events could have a natural reason as I'm still in two minds about it.
 
Off-topic - Augusta, move heaven and earth, do anything, but get your husband into a sleep center so he can be prescribed with an apnea machine. My husband and I both sleep much better since he got hooked up. Snoring is caused by a failure of the muscles in the airway to keep the path clear. Basically, you stop breathing for awhile, then you wake up a teeny bit and snore, then you breathe loudly for awhile, then you fall back asleep, your airways collapse, and you stop breathing again. The machine forces air into the airways so you never stop breathing.

He sleeps better because he isn't constantly waking up to breathe. I sleep better, not only because the random chainsaw in the bed next to me has been replaced by white noise, but because I am no longer jerking awake in a panic because the love of my life isn't breathing which means he's dead.

Meantime, deploy those elbows to keep him alive and your sanity intact. A properly placed jab can cause him to change to a more favorable position and break the cycle long enough for you to get some sleep.
 
Check shirt? This rings a bell. Please someone tell me I'm sane. I remember my mother, ages ago, reported seeing the apparition of a man in a check shirt in her bedroom. Years later I read (who knows where?) that the men in check shirts were a fairly common form of visitation (like hooded figures, a form of archetype, I guess). Anyone else heard of this?
 
Edward Bungalow said:
Check shirt? This rings a bell. Please someone tell me I'm sane. I remember my mother, ages ago, reported seeing the apparition of a man in a check shirt in her bedroom. Years later I read (who knows where?) that the men in check shirts were a fairly common form of visitation (like hooded figures, a form of archetype, I guess). Anyone else heard of this?
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Haunted by lumberjacks?
 
Augusta - what makes me think this is a bit of an odd example of a hypnogogic hallucination is that you could easily scream and move. Most people, AFAIK, have some level of paralysis, and will at least 'start' when they react to such a thing (such as when you trip up in a dream, and you wake yourself up with a jerk).

Was the transition between seing this thing and diving for the covers smooth? Did it feel like waking up or anything?
 
Check shirts?
If I remember correctly, didn't John Keel in the mothman prophecies hallucinate a man in a check shirt standing by his bed whilst having a bout of pneumonia?
 
Edward Bungalow said:
Check shirt? This rings a bell. Please someone tell me I'm sane. I remember my mother, ages ago, reported seeing the apparition of a man in a check shirt in her bedroom. Years later I read (who knows where?) that the men in check shirts were a fairly common form of visitation (like hooded figures, a form of archetype, I guess). Anyone else heard of this?
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Yes. He's also known as The Grinning Man :)
 
Hey, that was my first post on this board. Thanks everyone. I feel I have come home.

As to bedroom visitations, my hypnogogic experiences mainly involved typical little people, fairies, goblins, etc. (In my teenage years). They seemed more real than reality when seen, but afterwards you think, "Wow! I wish I could see them again."

But of course, you can't.

Are there sterotypical visitors that you can classify as hypnogogic?

ie. check shirt man, hooded figure, goblin?
 
My sister has had these experiences before. The 'old hag' syndrome, but she is paralysed. She has seen things bending over her bed and not been able to move at all.

Frankly I think I'd seriously mess myself if it ever happened to me.

The worst that's happened to me in my sleep is something smacking me in the face, making my nose bleed, while in a deep sleep. Nothing paranormal just my daughter who was in my bed that night and having a nightmare.

Oh and hi Edward :hello:
 
and the appearance of a cloth round the head and shoulders.
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I hope it wasn't the sister of this guy. You haven't watched a videotape with a creepy Japanese woman on it lately have you?
 
Seriously though, I realised a while back not to underestimate just how vivid hypnogogic hallucinations can be.

Many years ago I was in hospital after a minor op and I woke in the night to see the door of my room ajar and the grotesque face of an old man peering through it. I tried to yell but it took a few seconds for me to be able to, and by then the door had shut.

This totally freaked me out and I didn't want to go back to sleep, but after a while I got so tired and I'd relaxed a bit so I dropped off again. Then I awoke to see a figure stood at the bottom of the bed, an old man again but I somehow couldn't register the face so I don't know if it was the same one. Again it took me a couple of seconds to be able to yell, and by the time I did he'd walked out of the room.

I was so freaked by this point that I sat up for several hours, until a nurse opened the door and scared me so much that I started screaming. I told her what had happened but she insisted that she could see my door from the nursing station and no-one had been in, and that there was no-one on the ward who was confused and could have wandered in by mistake.

For years I was convinced that those events actually happened, even after I learned what sleep paralysis was. Now I think it probably was just a rare case of having too episodes in one night, probably agitated by unfamiliar surroundings.
 
reply to Giant Robot

I have to say it felt just as if I was lying there, awake when the image? appeared. I was not paralysed nor felt as if I had screamed in my sleep and woken myself up.

For all three, it really FELT like I was awake.

The figures occupied the correct space visible from the angle I was lying at. I even got my husband to recreate the man while I lay on my back and I could see exactly the same proportion of man to bed!

There was no story line, no build up. I was not terrified by these unremarkable figures. The third one did make me scream because he was taking a few steps towards me. ( oh, and the fact that he was naked and fat!)

I can truthfully say I have never had sleep disturbance like this before or since.
 
Just a quick thanks to Peni

Thank you for your thoughtful advice Peni. He's never been very noisy, and it comes and goes. Don't worry, the poor guy does get the elbow treatment - works a treat, for five minutes.
 
Edward Bungalow said:
Hey, that was my first post on this board. Thanks everyone. I feel I have come home.
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Gooble,gobble,gooble,gobble...we accept him,we accept him...one of us,one of us:)

As to bedroom visitations, my hypnogogic experiences mainly involved typical little people, fairies, goblins, etc. (In my teenage years). They seemed more real than reality when seen, but afterwards you think, "Wow! I wish I could see them again." But of course, you can't.
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I know what you mean. I saw many weird things when I was young. On an intellectual level I can certainly entertain the possibility that they were simply figments of my imagination (I don't think it's required of you to be any kind of genius to do that), but on a very primal level I will always know them as real - realer than real, in fact.

Are there sterotypical visitors that you can classify as hypnogogic? ie. check shirt man, hooded figure, goblin?
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What do you mean?

Edit: And, yes, thanks for that info., Peni. I think I'll look into that for my girlfriend.
 
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Bannik - Thanks for assimilating me so quickly. I hope I didn't give you indigestion:)

Elffriend - Hi.

Bannik - What I'm struggling to say is - Augusta's original post raises the interesting question - How can you tell whether a bedroom visitation is hypnogogic, or something other?

I was just wondering if there was a typical hypnogogic experience, and whether the brain had a catalogue of stereotypes from which it plucked a vision to present to us. ie -the check shirt man would seem to be from such a catalogue, whereas the fat naked man with cropped hair (sounds like me!) does not.

Am I making sense?

Sorry, I spend half my waking life trying to make sense of weird things, only to confuse myself even further . . .
 
Edward - Am I correct that when you say 'stereotype' you mean 'archetype'? The first time I read about an encounter with a shadowman I figured it was a one-off fluke. Then I read dozens of others. Many experiences were recounted on the Art Bell show, while many were given here and on other websites. Perhaps, the fat, naked man appears here and there and just nobody thinks to share their experiences of him. Maybe all it takes is one report to get the ball rolling. But, then, maybe some "archetypes" have more personal, rather than collective, significance.

And, no, you don't give me indigestion. ;)
 
I might have an explanation...

Last night, I tried a little experiment. Same scenario, husband asleep, me awake on my left side.

I willed myself to keep awake and stared into the darkness. After about ten minutes I suddenly saw a dark haired man in a ribbed sweater facing me across the bed.

I gave a strangled 'glup' sound in my throat, (waking my partner) and DISTINCTLY felt myself wake up with a jolt.

I think I fell asleep with my eyes OPEN -which would explain why the brain translated the very blurry image of the far side of the room into something it could identify most readily - a human.

Prosaic or not, this explanation is still fascinating in that so many of us have experienced exactly the same thing. 'They' never have their backs to us, nor sit in the corners of the room, but come and stand over us. Because it is an hallucination, there is no sound track.

Has anyone heard a voice?
 
What's the difference between a stereotype and an archetype?

I've seen a shadowman, too. Three of us did. He bounded across the road as we turned a corner while driving to Penzance one evening. Why are all these things fleeting? It leads me to think they must be hallucinatory.

Can you have a shared hallucination?

Also, I wonder if, in broad daylight, you can wander around and slip into a sort of trance, and from there have a hypnogogic experience.

Augusta - I often have auditory hallucinations as I drift off to sleep. Perhaps you cant have the visionary and auditory at the same time.

What fun this message board is. I wish I'd never started, I'll never get any work done.
 
Edward Bungalow said:
What's the difference between a stereotype and an archetype?
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It's hard to explain - as are so many things - but my understanding is that a stereotype is a certain image one has in his or her mind about a certain group, which is an over-simplification or just plain innaccurate.

An archetype is a symbolic image that appears in dreams, visions, hallucinations, etc. that is thought to be shared by all human beings that "resides" in the collective unconscious.

A shadowman may, for example, be said to be symbolic of a person's fear of that unkown part of himself or, perhaps, that part of himself that he is ashamed of.

That's just one possible interpretation of course.

Edit: And, as far as I know, the "collective unconscious" has never been proven to exist. The idea originated with Jung.
 
when iwas about 10 years old i awoke at home to see a man stood beside my bed facing away from me wearing dark trousers and a check shirt i thought i may have still been dreaming so i went under the duvet for a few moments he was still there! iscreamed for my mum and he remained motionless beside me until my mum came in and switched on the light he immediatly dissapeared!

i thought little of this untill recently i have been doing some research and have found many we sites that refer to him from all over the world.

Does anyone know any more?
 
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Slightly different to the nature of these posts (but still about a figure at the end of the bed):

Many years ago, my Grandma woke in the morning to see a figure (looking like one of her aunties) standing at the foot of her bed, staring at her. There was no sound or movement - she just stood there, as clear as a bell, staring down at my Grandma.

Shocked by this apparition, Grandma dived under the covers.

When she plucked up the courage to look, the figure had gone.

Grandma woke up Grandad to tell him what she'd seen.

She'd only just finished describing what she'd seen when the phone rang. It was one of her relatives, phoning to tell her that her aunt had just died...

My Grandma told me this story, and she was not the sort of person to make things up.
 
My mother once helped to lay out a neighbour who'd died of a lingering illness. He'd been rather neglected in his last weeks by his family and had suffered a lot.

He wasn't a demonstrative man and his pain often made him grumpy, but my mother felt sorry for him and had often popped round with a hot drink and helped him eat when he was left alone in the house.

The night after he died, she woke in the night and saw him apparently standing beside the bed looking down at her. She said, 'What are you doing here, Bill?' (or whatever his name was) and turned over to go back to sleep, to find 'Bill' standing on the other side of the bed, beside my father, still looking at her!

She says she that felt 'Bill' was saying 'goodbye and thank you' in his quiet way, so she said, 'Goodnight Bill!' and closed her eyes, and when she opened them, he was gone.

Yup, she was probably fast asleep and dreaming.

My wider family though hold a belief that the dead come back to greet us in our sleep, so as not to frighten us, just the once!

It's happened to me. Who knows?
 
Probably Just Dreams And Delusions
Originally posted by Mythopoeika

...

She'd only just finished describing what she'd seen when the phone rang. It was one of her relatives, phoning to tell her that her aunt had just died...

...
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Such stories are all very well and if you care to reproduce any of the actual phenomena under scientific laboratory conditions, approved by 'The Amazing Randi,' then there's a million dollar prize waiting.

Come on then! No takers?

See, that just prove such things can't really happen. :D
 
My elder daughter is a professional clairvoyante and met one of Randi's representatives on British TV. She repeatedly offered to be tested for the prize but he wouldn't answer her!

She'd love to give it a go - nothing to lose. She doesn't believe he'd part with the moolahs no matter how well anyone did, and if she failed miserably it wouldn't bother her. Like most peeps with a belief in psychic powers, she feels that they aren't testable in the same way as are say musical or mathematical abilities.

When I stopped worrying about phenomena and started enjoying them I became a happier person.
 
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