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The Three Knocks

Zombigirl85

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
May 10, 2018
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3
I would be grateful for anyones insight into something that keeps happening to me.
Usually occuring in the morning, around 6-8am, not every morning, perhaps maybe 3 or 4 times a month. I will be woken sharply by three abrupt, fast and very loud knocks. They sound exactly the same as when someone knocks on my front door which is wooden framed with glass panels. It is a very distinct sound and i have listened for noises in the house or tried re-creating the noise with other possible solutions but as of yet i have been unsuccessful. My room is right next to the front door so there is not time for someone to knock and run away as i would be able to see anyone running down the drive and i live on a quiet cul-de-sac that doesnt lead to anywhere else so doesnt get used as a throughfare for people. My only conclusion i am left with is that perhaps there is a paranormal/supernatural or sub conscious psychological explanation. I would greatly appreciate any insight into what this could be or if anyone else experiences this. Thankyou☺
 
It's a very well known experience, and has been reported a number of times on here..including by me. If you google it you'll find many webpages dedicated to it.

In my own particular case it was my later mother who for months if not years would claim she was awoken by a knock at the door...despite my constant checking and reassuring her there was no one out there.

Evidence it's a hypanogic/hypnopompic hallucination (one that occurs to the brain coming into/out of sleep): i was sitting in teh living room with her when she dozed off, she woke with a start insisting the phone was ringing. Of course being in the same room with her i knew it wasn't. She believed it but objectively it simply hadn't happened.

Evidence it may not be: one day when she was away in hospital i heard it myself at aroudn the same time of the morning she always claimed to.


Several weeks ago I had the doubly odd experience of hearing the knock, being so convinced it was real and may be the post man with an expected parcel, that i dashed intothe front upstairs room to see if there was anyone out there..there wasn't. Returning to bed but now fully awake 5 minutes later the knock came for real..and it was indeed, this time, the postman. The imaginary knock has woken me in anticipation of the real one.
 
I would be grateful for anyones insight into something that keeps happening to me.
Usually occuring in the morning, around 6-8am, not every morning, perhaps maybe 3 or 4 times a month. I will be woken sharply by three abrupt, fast and very loud knocks. They sound exactly the same as when someone knocks on my front door which is wooden framed with glass panels. It is a very distinct sound and i have listened for noises in the house or tried re-creating the noise with other possible solutions but as of yet i have been unsuccessful. My room is right next to the front door so there is not time for someone to knock and run away as i would be able to see anyone running down the drive and i live on a quiet cul-de-sac that doesnt lead to anywhere else so doesnt get used as a throughfare for people. My only conclusion i am left with is that perhaps there is a paranormal/supernatural or sub conscious psychological explanation. I would greatly appreciate any insight into what this could be or if anyone else experiences this. Thankyou☺

Maybe it is the ghost of a dead Avon Lady
 
It's a very well known experience, and has been reported a number of times on here..including by me. If you google it you'll find many webpages dedicated to it.

In my own particular case it was my later mother who for months if not years would claim she was awoken by a knock at the door...despite my constant checking and reassuring her there was no one out there.

Evidence it's a hypanogic/hypnopompic hallucination (one that occurs to the brain coming into/out of sleep): i was sitting in teh living room with her when she dozed off, she woke with a start insisting the phone was ringing. Of course being in the same room with her i knew it wasn't. She believed it but objectively it simply hadn't happened.

Evidence it may not be: one day when she was away in hospital i heard it myself at aroudn the same time of the morning she always claimed to.


Several weeks ago I had the doubly odd experience of hearing the knock, being so convinced it was real and may be the post man with an expected parcel, that i dashed intothe front upstairs room to see if there was anyone out there..there wasn't. Returning to bed but now fully awake 5 minutes later the knock came for real..and it was indeed, this time, the postman. The imaginary knock has woken me in anticipation of the real one.
Yes, i did try and find similar stories but none of them seemed very specific so the advice and opinions given to them werent very helpful. Its how i found this site in fact and decided to do my own post in the hopes that being more specific would help accumulate more useful responses, like yours☺
 
My first thought was Exploding Head syndrome. I get it sometimes where I experience a loud bang and/or blinding flash. It's very disconcerting!

Interesting, perhaps the knocking is a form of this

The hypnagogic / hypnopompic phenomenon currently labeled EHS:

http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/exploding-head-syndrome.115/

... is something that's long- and widely-known.

The experience is described as producing sensations / perceptions taking a variety of forms. I've experienced it for decades, and the perceived effect isn't always the same.

For me, the most 'raw' and dramatic version is most often an abrupt percussive pseudo-aural noise to which my body reacts automatically with a spasm or jerk. Other folks seem to typically perceive it pseudo-visually as an abrupt flash.

Sometimes it's a less violent stimulus to which a particular interpretation (e.g., knock at the door; a doorbell) is already attached at the point of initial conscious recognition.

I've noticed over the decades that the former (raw) version correlates strongly with falling asleep (hypnagogic phase), whereas the latter (interpreted) version correlates just as strongly with waking from sleep (hypnopompic phase).

Another thing I've noticed over time is that much of my sometimes lucid dreams' content consists of allusive / metaphorical derivations of recent or important thoughts and memories. This is why I tend to accept recent research results suggesting dreams are what the sleeping mind's eye catches or translates from memory re-wickering itself overnight.

Putting these subjectively-distilled factoids together, here's my current working theory ...

The raw version seems 'raw' because I'm not yet asleep, hence not yet rummaging through memory and to some extent not yet capable of associating a raw stimulus to a particular interpretation (from memory). This is why the hypnagogic version is a naked, un-parsed perceptual 'blast'.

Conversely, the interpreted version gets 'interpreted' because I'm already adrift in the memory re-wickering workshop, and any novel stimulus gets associated with something readily available therein. This is why the 'interpreted' (hypnopompic) version registers as (e.g.) a phone ringing or 3 knocks at the door, even though there's no demonstrable evidence that was the stimulus.
 
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I am sometimes awakened by the sound of an alarm clock going off. However, this is on days I don't have the alarm set and in fact I haven't had an alarm for the last few weeks because it broke. It still wakes me at times though.
 
I am sometimes awakened by the sound of an alarm clock going off. However, this is on days I don't have the alarm set and in fact I haven't had an alarm for the last few weeks because it broke. It still wakes me at times though.

This 'phantom alarm' business, hmmm. When I'm on early-earlies with a 5am sharp get-up, after about a week I wake up naturally at 5-5:15am on my days off when the alarm's not set. Not amusing.

Also, when I first had an iPhone I was woken early one Sunday morning by the alarm and sprang out of bed convinced it wasn't really my day off and I'd overlooked a shift.

Checked my diary, nope, I wasn't in and anyway the alarm had only gone off once and I couldn't remember setting it. All very disconcerting.

Eventually I worked out that I'd left the radio on all night and the alarm sound came from the farming programme, wherein the reporter was staying in a caravan with seasonal fruit pickers to investigate their living conditions. Phew.
 
I would be grateful for anyones insight into something that keeps happening to me.
Usually occuring in the morning, around 6-8am, not every morning, perhaps maybe 3 or 4 times a month. I will be woken sharply by three abrupt, fast and very loud knocks. They sound exactly the same as when someone knocks on my front door which is wooden framed with glass panels. It is a very distinct sound and i have listened for noises in the house or tried re-creating the noise with other possible solutions but as of yet i have been unsuccessful. My room is right next to the front door so there is not time for someone to knock and run away as i would be able to see anyone running down the drive and i live on a quiet cul-de-sac that doesnt lead to anywhere else so doesnt get used as a throughfare for people. My only conclusion i am left with is that perhaps there is a paranormal/supernatural or sub conscious psychological explanation. I would greatly appreciate any insight into what this could be or if anyone else experiences this. Thankyou☺


Yes, I have experienced this and posted about it here not so long ago. Three sharp knocks waking me up in the early hours of the morning. Not regularly but as you say 3/4 times a months. It happened on and off for about a year or so and I always found the sound to be internal rather than external. The best explanation I can come up with is Exploding Head Syndrome as others have already suggested. I can also add that since I have read up on this, the three knocks have almost entirely subsided and now hardly ever occur...
 
I have also posted about my knocking experiences as a child in a thread. I'll try to find it now and return with a link.

I posted a TL;DR version on a thread I started called "The Knock": http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/the-knock.29720/#post-711377

And there are more stories about the knocking and banshees on this thread: http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/banshees.6478/page-3#post-570453 (including a longer version of mine).

Edit: Just to top it all off, just as I finished posting that our hamster made a huge banging noise on the side of his cage and I almost just shit myself.
 
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I would be grateful for anyones insight into something that keeps happening to me.
Usually occuring in the morning, around 6-8am, not every morning, perhaps maybe 3 or 4 times a month. I will be woken sharply by three abrupt, fast and very loud knocks. They sound exactly the same as when someone knocks on my front door which is wooden framed with glass panels. It is a very distinct sound and i have listened for noises in the house or tried re-creating the noise with other possible solutions but as of yet i have been unsuccessful. My room is right next to the front door so there is not time for someone to knock and run away as i would be able to see anyone running down the drive and i live on a quiet cul-de-sac that doesnt lead to anywhere else so doesnt get used as a throughfare for people. My only conclusion i am left with is that perhaps there is a paranormal/supernatural or sub conscious psychological explanation. I would greatly appreciate any insight into what this could be or if anyone else experiences this. Thankyou☺

Has anyone else heard it? Can you record it? It would be helpful if we could figure out if it external or internal to your head basically.
 
If you have a mobile phone, you can get an app that records the sounds of your sleeping. If you set it to record any sound, it will record the knocks if they are not in your head. If there's no sound, it's all in your dreaming mind. If there is sound, maybe it's an animal? Not the first time a bird has pecked at my window.
 
If you have a mobile phone, you can get an app that records the sounds of your sleeping. If you set it to record any sound, it will record the knocks if they are not in your head. If there's no sound, it's all in your dreaming mind. If there is sound, maybe it's an animal? Not the first time a bird has pecked at my window.

I had one of those apps on my iPhone, scared myself silly. The idea is to record sleep-talking as it starts recording only when there are sounds so you don't get big gaps. It recorded mainly me snoring and farting but there were also noises of the cats fighting and, AND, someone walking about in heavy shoes on bare floorboards. Nobody here wears shoes in the night and we have carpets.
 
I had one of those apps on my iPhone, scared myself silly. The idea is to record sleep-talking as it starts recording only when there are sounds so you don't get big gaps. It recorded mainly me snoring and farting but there were also noises of the cats fighting and, AND, someone walking about in heavy shoes on bare floorboards. Nobody here wears shoes in the night and we have carpets.

Oooo-OOOH!
Call yourself a Fortean? Go on... have another go.
 
Maybe it is the ghost of a dead Avon Lady
Or else, gods help us, Jehovah's Witnesses from beyond the grave, who are compelled to walk the streets, never knowing rest, till somebody answers the door and says "Yes, I would like to know more about Jehovah's wonderful promise".
 
Or else, gods help us, Jehovah's Witnesses from beyond the grave, who are compelled to walk the streets, never knowing rest, till somebody answers the door and says "Yes, I would like to know more about Jehovah's wonderful promise".


Like these 2?

 
Usually occuring in the morning, around 6-8am, not every morning, perhaps maybe 3 or 4 times a month. I will be woken sharply by three abrupt, fast and very loud knocks..

Have you got any gadgets in the house timed to activate at that time like central heating, the fridge, cooker, kettle etc?
Example- I used to be woken every morning about 8 by the sound of a rocket but it was just our gas central heating boiler kicking into life.
And when I was a young kid I used to be woken in the middle of the night by faint footsteps in my room til I realised I'd pee'd the bed and it had soaked through the mattress to plop on the floor-plop-plop-plop..
 
Have you got any gadgets in the house timed to activate at that time like central heating, the fridge, cooker, kettle etc?
Example- I used to be woken every morning about 8 by the sound of a rocket but it was just our gas central heating boiler kicking into life.
And when I was a young kid I used to be woken in the middle of the night by faint footsteps in my room til I realised I'd pee'd the bed and it had soaked through the mattress to plop on the floor-plop-plop-plop..

That's maybe a little more information than we required!
 
Houses make noise as they shift, expanding and contracting, as day and night temperatures shift. Humidity and temperature can rise and drop rapidly due to atmospherics conditions, and closely joined timbers rub as they shift and the friction can be sudden and dramatic. I have a finely-tuned night-ear, having had small kids here for many years now, and since they've gone and the house is quiet at night, I notice every knock, click and clunk. It's always due to atmospheric adjustment. My wife (a non-practicing buddhist) said she felt there was a presence in her room, which may be one reason why why she moved away from the house. I've felt no sense of dread despite every night producing the noises, often at the same time of the late night when the temps drop quickly and also early morning when the temps hit their coldest and then dawn as the sun starts to push a bit if heat back in.

But then I don't believe in spooks, so that might be my cognitive armour.
 
And when I was a young kid I used to be woken in the middle of the night by faint footsteps in my room til I realised I'd pee'd the bed and it had soaked through the mattress to plop on the floor-plop-plop-plop..

Either you had a very thin mattress or an enormous bladder.
 
Baltar and Cotton socks, at least it'd drown any bedbugs.
I think Skinny raised a good point saying houses make noises, for example when the sun comes up they must start expanding and creaking.
PS- I just remembered, we had a squirrel running around in our loft once right above my bedroom and when it woke in the morning it'd start playing with its nuts which sounded like a poltergeist in action, and I used to ask it questions on a "one knock for 'yes', two knocks for 'no' basis, e.g.-
"Will I be lucky in love?"---KNOCK KNOCK
"Will aliens take over the world?"-- KNOCK
"Will the BBC start re-runs of 'Blakes Seven?"--KNOCK KNOCK
"Does the woman in the chip shop fancy me?"-- KNOCK KNOCK
 
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Baltar and Cotton socks, at least it'd drown any bedbugs.
I think Skinny raised a good point saying houses make noises, for example when the sun comes up they must start expanding and creaking.
PS- I just remembered, we had a squirrel running around in our loft once right above my bedroom and when it woke in the morning it'd start playing with its nuts which sounded like a poltergeist in action, and I used to ask it questions on a "one knock for 'yes', two knocks for 'no' basis, e.g.-
"Will I be lucky in love?"---KNOCK KNOCK
"Will aliens take over the world?"-- KNOCK
"Will the BBC start re-runs of 'Blakes Seven?"--KNOCK KNOCK
"Does the woman in the chip shop fancy me?"-- KNOCK KNOCK

Wow you had a psychic squirel in your attic! That's worth a headline in one of those papers.
 
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