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Hypnagogic Voices

_Lizard23_ said:
..I And was awoken a further THREE times by the sound of someone saying my name, the one I introduce myself as (it's not my full name) in a strangely androgenous, calm but firm voice just by my right ear.

It definitely seemed to be coming from outside my head, a real voice, not a thought, and the intonation was exactly the sort you would use if you were trying to wake someone up quickly but without scaring them half to death...

I've had the same experience quite a few times, but mainly on falling asleep rather than waking. The voice is as you describe it, neither male or female, almost generic and is said, softly but firmly and coming from a place I would locate as next to my left ear.

I am in the habit, when falling asleep, of 'watching' my thoughts drift by without attaching any feeling or emotion to them, and as a result I get a lot of hypnogogic hallucinations, but they generally don't have sounds attached to them, and are, as far as I can make out, either completely mundane (staring at a bus stop), utterly nonsensical (dipping my finger into a jar labellled 'Ptweego') and very occasionally prophetic (seeing an old friend I then bump into the next day, or get a phonecall/email from).

I also used to hear a bell..it sounded like the triangle percussion instrument and would sound three times regularly. Not had that happen for a while, though I've got a sneaking suspicion that, were I to ask it to come back..it probably would... ;)
 
The voice is as you describe it, neither male or female, almost generic and is said, softly but firmly and coming from a place I would locate as next to my left ear.

Ditto when i hear stuff. Mine are kind of distorted too, like it's being spoken over an old radio, recorded and drenched in reverb. And i can remember it happening, but almost never remember what they were saying afterwards. :?
 
I have recently come across this post and found it fascinating......I have researched my whole life to come up with an explanation for the voices i experience however to my dismay i've yet to find anything similar. Maybe someone in here can advise? Most of the voices people have spoken of have been clear and while'st being tired, working, waking or drifting off to sleep.

The voices i hear hit at the strangest times, usually while'st im in a quiet place or if im concentrating (drawing, reading etc.) Sometimes while'st there are people around in busy places like supermarkets or city streets but not as often as when im concentrating.

It'll start with a basic emotional feeling, like anger, happiness, sadness, loneliness, glee or joy something just very basic. Now i know it sounds a bit crazy and is hard to explain but i'll try my best.... These feelings arn't my own! I know how i feel at any given moment. relaxed usually when i'm concentrating. These feelings are best described, i suppose like when your around a living someone who is depressed or upset you start feeling depressed or up set same if the opposite is tre if there happy and joyful it rubs off. Only there is most of the time, like i said, no one around, except me.

These feelings are then usually accompanied by a change to my energy levels and i dont mean like getting sleepy or after you've been for a run. I mean, like all the molecules in my whole being and mind have been slowed down or are moving really fast. (negative feelings, usually fast. Positive, usually slow.)

The sound of the voices with the slow positive feelings are quite disturbing. I can only describe it as Charlie Browns teacher..you know '' mwah, mwah, mwah, mawah.'' Like listening to a conversation between people in another room through a thin wall with static background noise and in mega slow motion.

Now the fast voices are also incoherent and come with quite negative feelings, i also get the static background noise but the voices are somewhat harsh, loud and aggressive or panicked that i actually come out of my calm state and start to experience my own type of overwhelmed panic, on top of whom ever or what ever else's feelings, i am also changeling.

So after an event i can normally work out what has been said not through any discernible word but through the feelings i've experienced. I can interprete if it was man or woman or child. If it was young or old. Why and how they felt the way they did.

I do apologise for use of the words, they/them. I've used the tear due to a loss on how better explain myself with out confusing you all anymore than i already have.

so.... are these dead people im channelling or am i completely bat shit? Any ideas?
 
I'd be very wary of getting a psychiatric evaluation, particularly if what's going on isn't really causing that much of a problem for you.

AFAIK there is no way anyway for a psych to know whether what you are experiencing is hyponogogic or something else, assuming they could and it was something else, the likelihood of getting effective let alone trouble free treatment might not be that high.

If you get diagnosed with something, regardless of how flaky the circumstances of that are, you will never be able to get rid of that diagnosis.
 
I had thought about the advice i was given and looked into it however i am jubious in trying out the whole phycotherapy thing, mainly due to the things you've mentioned in your post. Thank you for the different point of veiw on the situation.
 
I'd be very wary of getting a psychiatric evaluation, particularly if what's going on isn't really causing that much of a problem for you.

AFAIK there is no way anyway for a psych to know whether what you are experiencing is hyponogogic or something else, assuming they could and it was something else, the likelihood of getting effective let alone trouble free treatment might not be that high.

If you get diagnosed with something, regardless of how flaky the circumstances of that are, you will never be able to get rid of that diagnosis.
That is good advice.
I mistrust the psychiatric profession because of their willingness to medicalise everything, and once they've got their claws dug in, they don't tend to let go.
 
Just playing devil's advocate here, but I have also seen people with mental health problems being drawn in by the paranormal brigade and it certainly didn't make those people'e mental health any better...... And incidentally, psychologists are not psychiatrists ( a common misconceptions ), and psychotherapy is a very specific form of treatment which is not the likely first route for anyone.
 
AFAIK there is no way anyway for a psych to know whether what you are experiencing is hyponogogic or something else, assuming they could and it was something else, the likelihood of getting effective let alone trouble free treatment might not be that high.

The person posting did say they were hearing these voices when they were awake, not in bed. I hear things all the time when I am waking up, but never have when I'm awake, it isn't the same thing. Hearing voices doesn't bother you until it bothers you, by which time it might be too late. I can't see how having a psych evaluation can haunt you badly forever compared to maybe getting treatment for something that might affect you and other people quite badly.
 
Some of what the poster described reminds me a lot of some of the lesser known symptoms of migraine, that aside, it does seem to be becoming more established as a concept that people can hear voices without there being any serious mental illness present.

We have a thread around here somewhere on hearing your name called which the search can;t turn up, also there's an interesting page by Mind on the subject.

Many job applications will ask about mental health history. Getting a diagnosis means having to choose between lying or disclosing each time. That isn't something I would wish on anyone.
 
I'm unsure if that's a very recent development or if they often just ask anyway.

It's not like you can do anything about it if they do ask as disputing application form content is going to kill any chances you had of getting sifted.
 
Well if they are asking anyway, they will be brought to book soon, as it is against the Law. So even if it was a problem before, it won't be so now.
 
Just nodding off last night and I hear a voice whisper the word 'Cable' in my ear. That's got to be one of the most random hypnagogic comments I've had in a while. It also had a strange delay on the delivery like I was hearing the word twice with a very small overlap.
 
... It also had a strange delay on the delivery like I was hearing the word twice with a very small overlap.

Do you mean something akin to a 'stutter' or immediate and overlapping 'echo'?

This is interesting - I don't recall mention of such an audio effect in others' reports, and it's never happened in my own experience.
 
Do you mean something akin to a 'stutter' or immediate and overlapping 'echo'?

This is interesting - I don't recall mention of such an audio effect in others' reports, and it's never happened in my own experience.

Yes, that's exactly it! The first was slightly quieter with the second overlapping echo louder.
 
Yes, that's exactly it! The first was slightly quieter with the second overlapping echo louder.

Two years later I can now report having experienced this stutter / overlap myself.

This occurred in the second of two similar wake-up episodes that seemingly provide a clue about when such voices do or can occur. Neither episode, strictly speaking, was purely hypnagogic / hypnopompic, because both occurred in 'mid-sleep'. Here's the background ...

I have my phones configured so that there's no ringing from my bedroom phone. The two other phones in other rooms ring loud enough to rouse me from sleep only if the bedroom door is open. If the bedroom door is closed the other phones' ringing can be heard only faintly - faintly enough that it won't wake me if I'm asleep, but just enough that I'll notice it if at least semi-conscious.

The door-open version is standard for overnight sleeping. The door-closed variation is used for my all-too-common daytime naps, so as to avoid interference from (e.g.) spam / scam caller-bots.

Episode 1: 2 Weeks Ago

I'd turned in for the night at 0100, with the bedroom door open. Subjectively, I was sinking into sleep when the phone rang. I wasn't dreaming when I heard the sound of the phone ringing. I awakened and got out of bed immediately. It was an important call from a different time zone that lasted hours. When the call ended I was shocked to see the time - it was at least an hour later than I'd thought. However, a cross-check of the phone log revealed the call had come circa 1 to 1.25 hours after I'd gone to bed, rather than the few minutes I'd perceived.

NOTE: I know from experience it consistently takes circa 15 minutes for me to wind down and drift off into sleep, regardless of how tired I am.

The point is that I'd been awakened by perceiving the (external; actual) sound of the ringing phone less than an hour after slipping into sleep.

Episode 2: Yesterday

I was taking a daytime nap, with the bedroom door closed, starting at 1500. Subjectively, I was asleep and lightly dreaming when I heard a pair of voices call my name, each voice calling the name once. The voices were out of synch, so that the second began while the first was in midstream - causing what I believe to be precisely the 'stutter' / 'echo' effect mr_nic mentioned above. I got up immediately, and a check of the phone log indicated I'd awakened circa 70 - 75 minutes after dropping off to sleep.

The point is that in this case I'd been awakened by perceiving the (subjective; transduced) calling of my name presumably triggered by the much fainter sound of the phones elsewhere.

The meta-point is that I was awakened by subjective perception of the actual phone ring tone when I shouldn't have been able to make it to the REM sleep phase yet, but awakened by subjective perception of secondary / translated voices when I was within my REM phase.

Same stimulus, different points in my sleep cycle, yielding distinct subjective perceptions ...
 
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I woke up this morning to the sound of my parents talking;

'Well you'll just have to wait for them to call back'
'I hope I don't have to wait all day'
'Well there's nothing else you can do about it'

And then the sound of the hallway cupboard drawer being shut.

What's going on, I thought, then, it's quite dark today. I looked at the clock, it was 5.30 am.

No one was up or talking. It wasn't a dream it was voices.

V. Weird.
 
t'other day when bringing home my shopping (mainly booze, must've been thirsty when ordering it) I heard a loud and lungy COUGH from behind me. The seats are down so nobody can hide there and I was alone so it was a little creepy.

Mystery solved when I reached home; a case of cider had toppled over and fallen against the inside of the boot hatch, which I had to catch quickly. I'm assuming this made the coughing sound.
 
t'other day when bringing home my shopping (mainly booze, must've been thirsty when ordering it) I heard a loud and lungy COUGH from behind me. The seats are down so nobody can hide there and I was alone so it was a little creepy.

Mystery solved when I reached home; a case of cider had toppled over and fallen against the inside of the boot hatch, which I had to catch quickly. I'm assuming this made the coughing sound.

Are you sure it wasn't Bill from Enfield?
 
Yes, that's why he coughed.
 
Sorry to dig up an old thread, but just an observation from my own experience. Whenever I hear these 'conversations' it always sounds like the same group of three or four people. Often like they're meeting up to plan something. One I often hear seems to be a woman in her sixties: I remember her once exclaiming to a younger guy in the group "What are you doing here?!". Couple of days ago I heard a woman in her thirties trying to organise something with an older guy: "I need this for the hill..".
 
Sorry to dig up an old thread, but just an observation from my own experience. Whenever I hear these 'conversations' it always sounds like the same group of three or four people. Often like they're meeting up to plan something. One I often hear seems to be a woman in her sixties: I remember her once exclaiming to a younger guy in the group "What are you doing here?!". Couple of days ago I heard a woman in her thirties trying to organise something with an older guy: "I need this for the hill..".
How do you know how old they are?
 
Get these too, either just before I fall asleep or If I am not quite awake in the mornings, for me its usually voices from work and I guess it is the brain organising memories, but yours sound more interesting...!
 
My own experience of hypnogogic voices has seemigly been been premonitions of deaths

In the early 2000's I was dropping off to sleep one evening when I heard my dad's voice say "*Brian Wilson's died" *name changed but it was the name of one of his friends who was still alive at that time
I was woken by the voice but I lived on my own, my dad was at his own home 2 miles away. I then went to sleep and thought nothing more of it, other than it was a bit weird.
Until, about 2 or 3 weeks later I returned from a holiday and one of the first things my dad said to me when i saw him was "Brian Wilson's died"
I remembered that I had dreamed/heard this a few weeks previously but didn't tell my dad until a few weeks later.
"Brian" had been a close friend of my dad when they were growing up but they had kind of drifted when they got married, had kids etc - his name was mentioned by my parents but not regularly.
The "premonition " if that's what it was just seemed really random at the time.

One night between 15th & 20th of August this year. while I was on holiday, as I was dropping off to sleep I heard someone (unknown speaker) say "Queen's dead" - I am not claiming to be psychic or anything as she was an old lady, however it was a similar timescale to the previous voice that she actually died.

Which brings me to this morning.
I was woken eay by a voice I recognised saying "Our Debs* died this morning "
*Name changed again, but "Debs" is the sister of the owner of the voice and "Debs" is the family's pet name/nickname for her

"Debs" is fit and well and reasonably young.
I am related to her by marriage and I don't want anything to happen to her

I suppose I should update in a few weeks or so.
Aldo,I must say I hadnthoconnected the other two time until today
 
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