Did She Really Confirm My Hallucination?

[yoohoo]

Another thing that has happened to me a lot, is seeing people or other things at night when I'm in bed. Everyone tells me I'm dreaming but I always feel as awake as I am writing this right now. There seems to be plenty online about the hallucinations you experience when you are just about to go to sleep or just woken up but one night I had one that was (unless a very bizarre coincidence) confirmed by a woman a few thousand miles away.

When I was a little younger, I used to wake up and find myself in what looked like a castle tower, sometimes. I don't know why I would dream of them as I don't really have much interest in them. I would wake up in that scenario perhaps a handful of times a year and it always looked the same. Once I even woke up to find I was in the dog den watching my dog. How strange. Thankfully after a few moments these scenes would fade and I would be back in my bedroom in my bed and what a relief that was!! Thankfully (touch wood) I've not woken up to a strange scene for a few years now and I hope I never do. I think it mainly only used to happen in my last house (which I'm sure was haunted due to the rather strange stuff that used to happen).

What seems to have replaced waking up in these un-nerving scenes, is seeing people etc in my room. They tend to appear either whilst I'm trying to get to sleep, or when I have woken up but I usually feel a presence and when I look towards where I feel this, there is often someone standing there. At first I used to scream the house down, waking my poor partner up in the process and getting a telling off for waking him up. Of course switching the light on would show nothing was there and my partner accused me of dreaming. Which I knew I wasn't as it felt so real.

After a time, because I was experiencing it so often, I would just look away when I saw them. Most people just stood there, the odd one would be doing something and one even said something as he ran off. Apart from one, who I recognized as my great grandfather, everyone else is a stranger so I have found it rather bizarre how my mind can make me hallucinate complete strangers. They always look so real as though a real person is stood there and I can make out their clothes quite easily. Most have disappeared by the time I look the other way and look back but the odd ones are still there. The most recent one (this week) I had was of a baby girl which was laid down on top of the bed (as though someone had placed her there) and once I noticed her, she flew off in the same position and faded away as she went towards the wall. I actually hadn't had one of these experiences for many months before the baby one happened.

But the one that got me wondering is one that happened a few years ago. I have an online friend who lives in America who has some abilities (we used to keep in contact via email) but I hadn't heard from her for a while. On that particular night, I was laying in bed as usual when I spotted a black cat the size of a domestic cat, sat in the corner of the room watching me. I thought how weird that I'm seeing an animal. This was the first ever time I had seen an animal in the room as it's always humans. I was watching it for a while and it was still watching me; didn't move its head at all. So after a while I turned over and then looked back expecting it to have disappeared but it was still there, watching me. I watched it for a while longer before going back to sleep. The next morning I looked online about what a black cat symbolizes (wondering if there was any meaning to it) and it symbolized good luck. I hoped it meant I had some good luck coming. I logged in to my email account as I always do every morning and found an email in there from my friend from America, the one with the abilities. I can't remember the exact wording of her email but it basically mentioned that she could sense there was some good luck coming my way. Now how on earth did that happen? After that, it got me wondering about what I really see in my bedroom at night. Or was that some form of telepathy between us both? It's almost as though she confirmed what I had seen that night. Or was it just a major coincidence that I hadn't heard from her in all that time and yet we both mentioned something very similar.

I'd actually forgotten about that experience until I read my notes on it. I'm so glad I decided to start making notes when I have unexplained experiences. I have no idea if I ever did have any good luck after that.

 

[henry]

did the email mention the cat and, had you had a run of recent bad luck ?

 

[yoohoo]

The email never mentioned the cat and I don't remember having had a recent period of bad luck before that. Even if I had, she certainly wouldn't have known about it

 

[catseye]

So maybe it was a coicidence? Your friend mentioning luck after you thought you'd seen a black cat?

To some people a black cat signifies bad luck (rehoming centres say that black cats are the hardest to rehome, because of this). Maybe it's your mind putting two and two together.

An interesting phenomenon, 'seeing' people in your room. As I fall asleep I often see a procession of faces, nobody I know, just flashes of loads of different faces. I like to think they are characters in forthcoming books...

 

[yoohoo]

Maybe it was a coincidence but to me it feels like a pretty good one considering she had emailed me out of the blue. When I had typed in about black cats online, it mentioned about them being good luck so that's why I tied it in to what she said.

It's surprising really what our eyes let us / trick us in to seeing. Your flashes of different faces reminds me of one night when I saw a few images put together as though I was watching a little movie (just showed a house with a gate, I think a dog and someone in the garden), with my eyes open before I went to bed.

 

[henry]

I fall asleep I often see a procession of faces, nobody I know, just flashes of loads of different faces

i used to have this exact experience frequently, i think its not uncommon ... for a while i constructed a little ritual around it

 

[henry]

... I don't remember having had a recent period of bad luck before that. Even if I had, she certainly wouldn't have known about it

might be useful to look over sent emails (if that was primary means) to that party and judge objectively whether you had given that impression on most recent contacts ? sometimes subtext can creep through and a wise reader can pick up on very subtle cues the writer may not have even realised they had encoded in the text

 

[Krepostnoi]

As I fall asleep I often see a procession of faces, nobody I know, just flashes of loads of different faces. I like to think they are characters in forthcoming books...

That's been mentioned on a few threads, and it's something that used to happen to me, too. The difference being that in my experience and that of the other posters, the faces seemed somehow malevolent.

i used to have this exact experience frequently, i think its not uncommon ... for a while i constructed a little ritual around it

That sounds intriguing, Henry, might you be willing to tell us a little more about the ritual?

 

[henry]

in fact reading through the body of your post again im struck by a couple of things but mostly the word accused, any relevance ?

 

[catseye]

That's been mentioned on a few threads, and it's something that used to happen to me, too. The difference being that in my experience and that of the other posters, the faces seemed somehow malevolent.

That sounds intriguing, Henry, might you be willing to tell us a little more about the ritual?

Interesting that you've experienced the faces as being malevolent. Mine seemed completely neutral, in fact a lot of the time they were engaged in other activities and didn't even seem to 'see' me.

 

[Krepostnoi]

Interesting that you've experienced the faces as being malevolent. Mine seemed completely neutral, in fact a lot of the time they were engaged in other activities and didn't even seem to 'see' me.

In my experience, the faces all seemed to meet my "gaze", often seeming to turn to face me in order to do so. I use inverted commas, because my eyes were usually closed at the time. They were malevolent to the point of being genuinely quite disconcerting - I hesitate to use the word, because it has connotations to belief systems which I don't share, but "demonic" describes them well. I ended up quite stressed and insomniac for a while, in a state of "don't think of the white bear", at which point of course they would begin their strange parade. Way back when, while I was still lurking there, I actually found a thread in which one poster suggested asking the faces what they wanted. As if by magic, they stopped appearing.

 

[luvpixie]

I sometimes get the faces too. I live in a house with a large cemetery just beyond the front garden and always wondered if it could be the faces of the people buried there coming for a visit. I always get up and make a cuppa if I get an angry/evil stare.

 

[amarok2005]

If one see faces with one's eyes closed, I'd say they were hypnogogic images. That's a strange kettle of fish. In ordinary dreams, however weird, the little dream characters I see act like characters in a movie -- they're in the middle distance from "me" and are going about their business. Hypnogogic people will be standing near to my POV, doing or saying inconsequential things, then suddenly they'll look straight at me and shout something vaguely threatening, like "Are you ever going to stop that?" Sometimes they'll even grab me by the shoulder or throat. It's very disconcerting, like having an image on TV suddenly yell at you and climb out of the screen!

It's hard to describe just how startling the "hypnogogic people" can be. I'm semi-asleep (the very definition of hypnogogic), and all I'm thinking, if that's the right word, is "ho-hum. Dream, dream, dream, boring." but then the vision will turn to me with an awareness that an image my mind is generating just should not have. When one attacks, he/she "looks" to be just the distance they would appear in my waking vision if a physical person was there. And I can feel their hands on me! Shocks me completely awake every time!

 

[Ulalume]

In my experience, the faces all seemed to meet my "gaze", often seeming to turn to face me in order to do so. I use inverted commas, because my eyes were usually closed at the time. They were malevolent to the point of being genuinely quite disconcerting - I hesitate to use the word, because it has connotations to belief systems which I don't share, but "demonic" describes them well. I ended up quite stressed and insomniac for a while, in a state of "don't think of the white bear", at which point of course they would begin their strange parade. Way back when, while I was still lurking there, I actually found a thread in which one poster suggested asking the faces what they wanted. As if by magic, they stopped appearing.

Oh yes, those nasty things! I've written about my experience with this before. It was quite horrifying and it's what helped drive me to therapy. When the therapist said the images were coming from my own subconscious, I was skeptical, because I couldn't imagine my own mind was creating something so awful. However, the other option was that the images were coming from somewhere outside, and, upon consideration, that seemed even more unlikely.

I haven't had one of these hypnogogic experiences in years, thank heavens.

Less alarmingly, the state in which reality combines with dreams can produce some interesting (and amusing) results. A sort of mysterious hyper-reality. A recent example is when our electricity went out during a storm one night. I walked past my sleeping son with a flashlight and he woke up just enough to take notice of this. He was still dreaming, though, so instead of his mom, he saw a random boy from his class wandering through his room with the light.

 

[catseye]

If one see faces with one's eyes closed, I'd say they were hypnogogic images. That's a strange kettle of fish. In ordinary dreams, however weird, the little dream characters I see act like characters in a movie -- they're in the middle distance from "me" and are going about their business. Hypnogogic people will be standing near to my POV, doing or saying inconsequential things, then suddenly they'll look straight at me and shout something vaguely threatening, like "Are you ever going to stop that?" Sometimes they'll even grab me by the shoulder or throat. It's very disconcerting, like having an image on TV suddenly yell at you and climb out of the screen!

It's hard to describe just how startling the "hypnogogic people" can be. I'm semi-asleep (the very definition of hypnogogic), and all I'm thinking, if that's the right word, is "ho-hum. Dream, dream, dream, boring." but then the vision will turn to me with an awareness that an image my mind is generating just should not have. When one attacks, he/she "looks" to be just the distance they would appear in my waking vision if a physical person was there. And I can feel their hands on me! Shocks me completely awake every time!

I wonder if they are somehow related to the 'hypnic jerks', when a limb suddenly twitches and jerks you awake? Which become linked in to dreams - I remember once dreaming that I was show jumping, and as the horse took off over the jump I 'jumped' myself awake. Did my brain construct the whole 'show jumping' scenario in order to give my body a reason to twitch, or did the twitch happen and my brain construct the show jumping in a flash in retrospect?

 

[EnolaGaia]

I wonder if they are somehow related to the 'hypnic jerks', when a limb suddenly twitches and jerks you awake? Which become linked in to dreams - I remember once dreaming that I was show jumping, and as the horse took off over the jump I 'jumped' myself awake. Did my brain construct the whole 'show jumping' scenario in order to give my body a reason to twitch, or did the twitch happen and my brain construct the show jumping in a flash in retrospect?

If you were dreaming at the time it wasn't a hypnic / hypnagogic jerk. Hypnic jerks occur as you're falling asleep and / or while you're in the non-REM phases of the sleep cycle. Dreaming occurs in the REM phase, which leads to either consciously waking or surfacing long enough to roll into the next cycle.

In other words, hypnic jerks occur when descending into sleep, and dreams occur when surfacing from a sleep cycle.

During REM phase, motor control is typically disabled or disengaged so the brain's activity doesn't trigger muscular activity.

The show jumping example strikes me as a dream occurring near the end of a REM phase, when the brain / motor actionability is restarted. As such, I'd say it's reasonably safe to say it was brain-triggered rather than twitch-triggered.

 

[catseye]

I wasn't really properly asleep though while I was 'dreaming' this dream, Enola. I was lying on a sofa running a bit of a temperature and just falling in and out of a light doze during the day. Don't know if that makes a difference, of course.

 

[EnolaGaia]

I wasn't really properly asleep though while I was 'dreaming' this dream, Enola. I was lying on a sofa running a bit of a temperature and just falling in and out of a light doze during the day. Don't know if that makes a difference, of course.

OK - it could have been a hypnic jerk alongside a hypnagogic vision. That works, too ... However, in this case you weren't 'dreaming' in the strict sense. This pre-sleep version doesn't offer the brain-motor disconnect clue (like the REM version) that suggests which may have come first.

 

[amarok2005]

Having endured just about every hypnogogic, hypnopompic, night-terrors, sleep-paralysis event known to Man, I'm wondering if psychologists and sleep-studies know that much about them. For instance, I'm convinced images wander through one's mind throughout the sinking-into-sleep period -- but one never remembers them unless something happens to wake one, like a "twitch" or an external noise. I remember one vivid instance when a Porky Pig-like character dressed like a sergeant was addressing a line of soldiers. Suddenly the pig jumped away from the recruits, ran straight up to my POV, and slapped me on the cheek! At that same instant, a huge insect buzzed by my ear. I woke, remembered the pig and the soldiers sequence, and realized there'd been a line of clowns marching by before that -- and cops chasing a burglar before that -- and two women talking over tea and biscuits before that -- an endless series of little skits that accompanied the whole descent into slumberland. I'm pretty sure they're there every night, but not remembered, unlike most real dreams.

I think that because every time a car door slamming or someone shouting has woke me before quite dropping off, I could remember "the passing show," and I've never recalled anything like that if I fell asleep without interruption.

I also read somewhere that the most common "jerk" is the semi-dream that you've toppled off something and are trying to break your fall. It certainly is with me. The "freefall" feeling is quite vivid and terrifying!

 

[catseye]

I don't get the 'exploding head' thing, but I do get sudden flashes of light if there's a loud noise outside just as I'm falling asleep. I'm sure it's just another form of hypnogogic thingie, but it's quite startling when it happens!

 

[EnolaGaia]

I don't get the 'exploding head' thing, but I do get sudden flashes of light if there's a loud noise outside just as I'm falling asleep. I'm sure it's just another form of hypnogogic thingie, but it's quite startling when it happens!

The 'exploding head' (pseudo-)auditory blast occurs around the time you slip over the edge into a sleep state, and (for me at least) it correlates with a dramatic hypnic jerk.

For some folks this suddent 'blast' is a pseudo-visual flash rather than a pseudo-auditory noise.

At this early phase of slipping off into sleep it seems the mind doesn't discriminate among sensory inputs. I, too, have had environmental noise show up as visual static or flashes. This sort of 'treat something else as visual' effect has happened to me when physically poked or touched as well.

 

[Frideswide]

At this early phase of slipping off into sleep it seems the mind doesn't discriminate among sensory inputs. I, too, have had environmental noise show up as visual static or flashes. This sort of 'treat something else as visual' effect has happened to me when physically poked or touched as well.

This sounds related to my experience of syaesthesia. Just that it's almost constant rather than in a specific situation.