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Seeing Something When You Wake Up In The Night

Mr_Hermolle

Mr_Hermolle

Devoted Cultist
Joined
Oct 19, 2007
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131
Perhaps the easiest Fortean experience to ascribe a rational explanation for - ie 'you were dreaming', 'you were having an episode of sleep paralysis' or 'you were having an hypnopompic hallucination' - but it still doesn't take away from the weirdness of the experience. I imagine they're fairly common - but has anyone else experienced waking up in the night and seeing something?
Here are both of mine - as I remember them.
1) Autumn 1977. 5 years old at my grandparents house.
I was having a nightmare (about Sesame Street of all things) and suddenly woke up, hugely relieved it had all been a nightmare. I opened my eyes and I still remember the sense of what I can only describe of 'dismal shock' at seeing a figure stood at the end of my bed. The figure appeared to be dressed in some kind of monkish cowl with the hood up. It was standing mostly in profile to me but I could see into the hood and saw there was no face, just a blackness. The figure didn't seem interested in me - or even to have noticed me. It didn't move and was looking toward the window. I pulled the covers over my head and solemnly promised I would never open my eyes at night again.
I never saw the figure again, and this kickstarted my interest in all things Fortean. As I grew up I reluctantly began to attribute this figure to a nightmare - perhaps sparked off by the public information film Spirit Of Dark Water (though I have no memories of watching it at the time)
It was a spooky house though - an atmosphere persisting through the 20 years or so I knew the house. My aunt found the house creepy when she was a kid, and shortly before she died, my cousin told my aunt she was convinced the house was haunted and had seen things as well (dont know if it was the same figure I saw though).
2) A flat in Hove - 2007 or 2008.
I woke up - it was summer as the room was light - so maybe about 5am or so. I opened my eyes, and much to my utter surprise, there was a black sphere of curling smoke slowly rising in the corner of my room. It seemed I watch this sphere of pulsing smoke for a good few seconds. I remember feeling quite awake and quite surprised that the image didn't instantly vanish. I watched it rising and as it approached the ceiling it slowly faded away.
In contrast to the fear of the first experience, I remember being delighted, and actually said 'hello' to this sphere as it rose.
Again, the house had an odd atmosphere to it, not helped by finding in the attic a load of old crutches, a life-size supremely creepy baby doll and a load of old newspapers from the 1950s. The first paper I picked up had an article about the survival of occultism in the present day, and referenced the murder of a farm worker in a possible occult ritual (quite a famous case though the details aren't to hand). My flatmate complained of an overwhelming smell of perfume in his room at night, and his sister, when visiting, thought she glimpsed an old woman in the windows of the flat downstairs which was empty.

As Fortean experiences go, pretty mundane, and a rational explanation to both can be easily ascribed, but sometimes I wonder.
Anyway, anyone else seen something, or thought they had, when waking up from sleep? Be interesting to note any similarities in reports.
 
Mr_Hermolle said:
As Fortean experiences go, pretty mundane, and a rational explanation to both can be easily ascribed, but sometimes I wonder.
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Great post. Not at all mundane, and these kind of accounts are the lifeblood of the forum. Although rational explanations should be considered, a "rational" explanation is not always the correct explanation; in many cases it is a way of avoiding the real questions. Weirdness sometimes happens, perhaps more often than we realise, and we don't have the answers. Personally, I think there is a lot of mystery attached to dream and intermediate states. Reductive materialism attempts to explain this away with psychology etc., but reductive materialism does not have the answers either, and personally I don't think we should pander to reductive materialists by being embarrassed by the genuinely anomalous experiences that we may have.
 
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SimonBurchell said:
Great post. Not at all mundane, and these kind of accounts are the lifeblood of the forum. Although rational explanations should be considered, a "rational" explanation is not always the correct explanation; in many cases it is a way of avoiding the real questions. Weirdness sometimes happens, perhaps more often than we realise, and we don't have the answers. Personally, I think there is a lot of mystery attached to dream and intermediate states. Reductive materialism attempts to explain this away with psychology etc., but reductive materialism does not have the answers either, and personally I don't think we should pander to reductive materialist by being embarrassed by the genuinely anomalous experiences that we may have.
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Agree with every word you say. Absolutely.
 
staticgirl said:
I have noticed that often these creepy figures are at the foot of the bed rather than anywhere else in the room and I wonder why.
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I've noticed this too. A friend of mine, when he was 18 and not asleep but reading, looked up and saw a hooded figure at the end of his bed. He said it made a kibd of shushing motion with hus finger to his lips. Then vanished. He described it as a life changing moment.
 
I remember waking up one night about a year ago and seeing some smokey mist above my head slowly forming into a face with flowing hair, not really scary but definitely unsettling. At the time I put it down to the medication I was taking for insomnia and sleep deprivation. I have not experienced anything similar since.
 
Mr_Hermolle said:
I was having a nightmare (about Sesame Street of all things)
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Brings to mind the famous Muppet Dream that's been mentioned before on'ere -
(Notably, the last time you mentioned Sesame Street!)

The Muppet Dream

It's a long and interesting account of an encounter with scary Muppets that had fangs.
 
That muppet dream was sinilar in feel to my Sesame Street nightmare indeed. Puppet shows of the 1970s were irredeemably nightmarish. Zippy from Rainbow also used to give me cause for concern. Weirdly the programme which always had a great sense of wrongness to me was benevolent old Fingermouse.
 
When in hospital last week I don’t think the head was fully functioning. I was sound asleep when the nurse came in to do the obs’. Normally they speak your name which would usually wake me, this time the nurse touched me on the side. That woke me but I was confused as to where I was, as I then looked up there was the figure leaning over me in the dark.
Well I jumped! the nurse frightened the bejesus out of me and similarly when I started she jumped back.
We laughed about it afterwards but for a moment I really thought that something paranormal was visiting.
 
I don't have anything as exciting as the accounts so far here but I once woke up in the night to see a spider that wasn't there.:oops: It was one of those hateful gigantic ones. I was about to scream when for some reason I seemed to realise it wasn't real. Maybe because it was dark and so I couldn't be seeing anything but that still seems pretty switched on. I wish I was that alert when awake during the day.
 
Min Bannister said:
I don't have anything as exciting as the accounts so far here but I once woke up in the night to see a spider that wasn't there.:oops: It was one of those hateful gigantic ones. I was about to scream when for some reason I seemed to realise it wasn't real. Maybe because it was dark and so I couldn't be seeing anything but that still seems pretty switched on. I wish I was that alert when awake during the day.
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I think I may have recounted this before, but when my first wife was heavily pregnant with one of the kids I woke knowing that there was a giant spider in the bed. Now the first Mrs T63 wasn’t one to fall apart at the sight of a spider but this spider was humongous and I knew she would go into early Labour if she saw it.
I slipped out of my side of the bed and on my knees worked my way around the bed, hand under the quilt feeling for this spider. I went down my side, across the bottom and had worked my way up her side of the bed when I realised she was wide awake.
”What are you doing” she said, which was when reality sank in and I came to my senses.
I made my poor excuses, got back into the bed, but confessed to the lot in the morning. Whereupon she roared her head off and found it very very funny.
 
Tempest63 said:
I think I may have recounted this before, but when my first wife was heavily pregnant with one of the kids I woke knowing that there was a giant spider in the bed. Now the first Mrs T63 wasn’t one to fall apart at the sight of a spider but this spider was humongous and I knew she would go into early Labour if she saw it.
I slipped out of my side of the bed and on my knees worked my way around the bed, hand under the quilt feeling for this spider. I went down my side, across the bottom and had worked my way up her side of the bed when I realised she was wide awake.
”What are you doing” she said, which was when reality sank in and I came to my senses.
I made my poor excuses, got back into the bed, but confessed to the lot in the morning. Whereupon she roared her head off and found it very very funny.
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My ex once woke me up by walking our toddler round the bedroom, y'know, bending over and holding her hands above her head.
He was saying 'Good girl! Well done!' and so on.

I told him not to be so daft and to put her back in her cot, whereupon he threw her across the room onto our bed. :omg:

It wasn't Junior, it was his pillow. :roll:
 
Have to say that on waking in the night and seeing something strange, and this has happened to me, I'm with Scrooge when the ghost of his former parter Jacob Marley appears:

"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.
"I don't." said Scrooge.
"What evidence would you have of my reality, beyond that of your senses?"
"I don't know," said Scrooge.
"Why do you doubt your senses?"
"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"

:chuckle:
 
This has happened to me a few times, all over the course of a few months, perhaps five years ago.

The first was the most memorable: I woke up looking into the corner of the room, where two walls meet the ceiling, right above me. In the darkness there appeared to be a fuzzy, slightly darker shape hanging there. To my dismay it looked a bit like a huge spider. I stared for a few seconds more and realised it was not quite spider-shaped, and in fact was the size and shape of my hand, fingers curled slightly inward like a spider's legs, hanging upside down from the wrist area. It didn't move but it seemed alive - again like the impression you'd get from a spider sat on a wall watching you. I stared for another few seconds, fully expecting my brain to stop playing its trick and the hand-spider-shadow to resolve itself into a perfectly normal shadow cast by the room's geometry. When it didn't, and I realised I seemed to be fully awake, I leapt out of bed, flicked the light on, and grabbed the steel metre rule that lives at the other end of the room. There was nothing there, of course, but it didn't stop me checking under, in, and around the bed anyway.

In the following months I also awoke to see a hole in the ceiling into the loft, and a giant cockroach sat on a wooden beam intersecting it. On another occasion I saw a mask-like face* materialise out of shadow, hovering just below the ceiling. But for both of those they either disappeared or I fell back asleep.

Never had anything like that before or since, as far as I remember, so I have no idea what was going on for that few months.

*it looked a bit like Moses, as depicted in South Park, but shadowy dark blue-grey in colour.
 
Some of these experiences sound very much like some of the things I ‘saw’ when I used to suffer sleep paralysis. (I think I’ve written about it before on this forum. I rarely get it now, but from about 2000-2012-ish I used to get it a few times a week. I was on a low dose of valium then and think it may have been something to do with that but thinking that didn’t actually help with the terror of the experience).

But one childhood experience wasn’t related to SP at all. It happened when we’d moved into town into the house none of us liked. I’e written about that before too: it seemed to suffer a permanent brown-out even in summer and the year we were there ran through the Long Hot Sumer of ‘76. It had a very dark sort of atmosphere besides that. The stairs and the little box room which I slept (badly) in were particularly nasty.

Anyway, my mother spent one night in the hospital so I went to sleep with my younger sister in her room, which was also where my mum slept. (My parents marriage was exceedingly rocky and so my mother and sister had one room, my father and younger brother had beds in another and I had the box room).

I woke up for no real reason and saw my mother standing by my sister, bending down to check on her. She seemed made of out sparkly black and white which then became more solid. I was comforted and went back to sleep.
 
Fanari_Lloyd said:
I woke up for no real reason and saw my mother standing by my sister, bending down to check on her. She seemed made of out sparkly black and white which then became more solid. I was comforted and went back to sleep.
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That sounds like a crisis apparition. o_O

I take it your mother recovered and came home?
Did you ever mention your vision to her? It'd be great to hear that she'd dreamed of popping over to tuck your sister in. :)
 
escargot said:
That sounds like a crisis apparition.
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I’ve heard of them yes. Not at the time, though.

I did mention it yes although it’s so long ago I can‘t remember what she said. As she’d had a few experiences of her own, she definitely didn’t mock it.

She was fine. It was a very routine thing and these days she’d be out the same day. But general anaesthetic always did make her a bit sick so I expect she was zonked out.

When she died in 2020 my sister woke up with her arm reached out to someone and said she dreamed that mum was standing there reaching out to her so maybe she was checking on her for a last time.
 
I'm positive I related this story many years ago, but cannot now find it.

My bedroom in the house I grew up in was on the top floor, at the side of the house. The room had a light beige coloured blind - and at night, when the neighbour's bright garage light was on, a complex and gently moving pattern of shadows would be cast by the branches of the trees in between us. I found this relaxing to watch - and often fell asleep doing so.

One night I woke, still quite early - having fallen asleep while reading, and with the bedside light still on. The two students that my mum used to take in for a bit of extra cash were in the room to the side of me - I could hear them chatting quietly, and the sound of their radio on low. It wasn't spooky at all. In fact, it was all quite cosy and comforting.

As I leaned over to turn the light off I was distracted by the pattern on the blind. The neighbour's garage light had clicked on - but the familiar shadows looked somehow odd. The intertwining network of branches, and their usually gentle movement, looked off in a way I couldn't quite fathom, and probably wouldn't have been able to describe. As I stared at the pattern, trying to work out what it was that seemed different about it, the web of shadows appeared to gently break apart into individual parts, and then - after floating around apparently at random for a second - their movement began to seem more 'directed' as it were, as if they were intent on forming a new pattern.

As utterly bonkers as it now seems, as the movement advanced I began to realise that the picture being formed was the Thalia and Melpomene masks (the comedy and tragedy masks, used in theatre and drama) - and a particularly malevolent looking interpretation of the same.

At the point when the pattern would finally click into its final form, I shut my eyes - having convinced myself that it would be a really big mistake to be there at the finish.

Now, I'm convinced that this was some sort of waking dream - which is why I rarely even contemplate it in a paranormal context. However, to this day I would swear that, at that point, I was wide awake (although, I suppose everyone does - and that's what makes such experiences so powerful).

I have an ambivalent memories of that house. Everyone loved it - my parents took in students, and then did B+B on a very modest scale to make ends meet, and visitors would fall in love with the place. And I loved it too, but in the way that you can still love someone who occasionally has extreme mood swings - because that's how I felt about the place. The house was rumoured to be haunted - but I don't believe any of the family experienced anything that you might describe as a ghost. However - everyone agreed - in a very pragmatic and non-woo kind of way, that something was not always quite right. And nowhere was that tendency to mood swings more apparent than it that particular bedroom.

There's a longer story there, but that would be for another thread.
 
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Spookdaddy said:
I'm positive I related this story many years ago, but cannot now find it.

My bedroom in the house I grew up in was on the top floor, at the side of the house. The room had a light beige coloured blind - and at night, when the neighbour's bright garage light was on, a complex and gently moving pattern of shadow branches would be cast by the branches of the trees in between us. I found this gently moving pattern relaxing to watch - and often fell asleep doing so.

One night I woke, still quite early - having fallen asleep reading with the bedside light on. The two students that my mum used to take in for a bit of extra cash were in the room to the side of me - I could hear them chatting quietly, and the sound of their radio on low. It wasn't spooky at all. In fact, it was all quite cosy and comforting.

As I leaned over to turn the light off, I was distracted by the pattern on the blind. The neighbour's garage light had clicked on - but the familiar pattern looked somehow odd. The intertwining shadows of the branches, and their usually gentle movement, looked off in a way I couldn't quite fathom, and probably wouldn't have been able to describe. As I stared at the pattern, trying to work out what it was that different about them, the web of shadows appeared to gently break apart into individual parts, and then - after floating around apparently at random for a second - their movement began to seem more 'directed' as it were, as if they were intent on forming a new pattern.

As utterly bonkers as it now seems, as the movement advanced I began to realise that the picture being formed was the Thalia and Melpomene masks (the comedy and tragedy masks, used in theatre and drama) - and a particularly malevolent looking interpretation of the same.

At the point when the pattern would finally click into its final form, I shut my eyes - having convinced myself that it would be a really big mistake to be there at the finish.

Now, I'm convinced that this was some sort of waking dream - which is why I rarely even contemplate it in a paranormal context. However, to this day, I would swear that, at that point, I was wide awake (although, I suppose everyone does - and that's what makes such experiences so powerful).

I have an ambivalent memories of that house. Everyone loved it - my parents took in students, and then did B+B on a very modest scale to make ends meet, and visitors would fall in love with the place. And I loved it too, but in the way that you can still love someone who occasionally has extreme mood swings - because that's how I felt about the place. The house was rumoured to be haunted - but I don't believe any of the family experienced anything that you might describe as a ghost. However - everyone agreed - in a very pragmatic and non-woo kind of way, that something was not always quite right. And nowhere was that tendency to mood swings more apparent than it that particular bedroom.

There's a longer story there, but that would be for another thread.
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Here's your original post in the Theatre Icons thread
 
SimonBurchell said:
Here's your original post in the Theatre Icons thread
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Bloody hell. I spent ages looking for that. I'd assumed the thread had been disappeared during one of the old clean ups.

Edit: The only difference appears to be that I don't mention having already been asleep in the first telling. But I had a nightly habit - and still do - of reading, falling asleep, waking, reading a bit more, falling asleep etc. My memory is of having woken in the familiar position of sitting up slightly on the pillows, with a book lying open on the duvet just in front of me.
 
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Spookdaddy said:
I'm positive I related this story many years ago, but cannot now find it.

My bedroom in the house I grew up in was on the top floor, at the side of the house. The room had a light beige coloured blind - and at night, when the neighbour's bright garage light was on, a complex and gently moving pattern of shadow branches would be cast by the branches of the trees in between us. I found this gently moving pattern relaxing to watch - and often fell asleep doing so.

One night I woke, still quite early - having fallen asleep reading with the bedside light on. The two students that my mum used to take in for a bit of extra cash were in the room to the side of me - I could hear them chatting quietly, and the sound of their radio on low. It wasn't spooky at all. In fact, it was all quite cosy and comforting.

As I leaned over to turn the light off, I was distracted by the pattern on the blind. The neighbour's garage light had clicked on - but the familiar pattern looked somehow odd. The intertwining shadows of the branches, and their usually gentle movement, looked off in a way I couldn't quite fathom, and probably wouldn't have been able to describe. As I stared at the pattern, trying to work out what it was that different about them, the web of shadows appeared to gently break apart into individual parts, and then - after floating around apparently at random for a second - their movement began to seem more 'directed' as it were, as if they were intent on forming a new pattern.

As utterly bonkers as it now seems, as the movement advanced I began to realise that the picture being formed was the Thalia and Melpomene masks (the comedy and tragedy masks, used in theatre and drama) - and a particularly malevolent looking interpretation of the same.

At the point when the pattern would finally click into its final form, I shut my eyes - having convinced myself that it would be a really big mistake to be there at the finish.

Now, I'm convinced that this was some sort of waking dream - which is why I rarely even contemplate it in a paranormal context. However, to this day, I would swear that, at that point, I was wide awake (although, I suppose everyone does - and that's what makes such experiences so powerful).

I have an ambivalent memories of that house. Everyone loved it - my parents took in students, and then did B+B on a very modest scale to make ends meet, and visitors would fall in love with the place. And I loved it too, but in the way that you can still love someone who occasionally has extreme mood swings - because that's how I felt about the place. The house was rumoured to be haunted - but I don't believe any of the family experienced anything that you might describe as a ghost. However - everyone agreed - in a very pragmatic and non-woo kind of way, that something was not always quite right. And nowhere was that tendency to mood swings more apparent than it that particular bedroom.

There's a longer story there, but that would be for another thread.
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That house sounds great. :)
More please. :pipe:

I like the theatrical implication of the masks.
Reminds me of a client I had in a job where I'd visit people's homes. She told me about things going on in the house that intrigued her when she first moved in.

Not scary, but odd. One was when she was bending down to take some baking out of the oven, and noticed a pair of legs and feet standing beside her. The legs were in white stockings and the feet in golden curled-up slippers like Aladdin's.

As she was handling a hot tray she had to concentrate on putting it down safely so it was 30 seconds or so before she could investigate, by which time Aladdin was gone. She was sure she would have seen him in full costume if she'd dropped the tray and looked up.

She later learned that the house had been owned by theatrical people. It might have gone a bit Rentaghost. :chuckle:
She wasn't afraid.
 
When the kids were small I used to sleep very lightly (unlike my ex, who would be snoring beside me whilst sick bugs broke out all over). One night I woke up flailing because I had felt something brush my face. I sat up in a panic and he woke up whereupon I explained that something had touched me on the cheek.

He told me I was dreaming and to go back to sleep, which I eventually did, although I didn't believe I really had been dreaming.

In the morning there was a gigantic moth huddling under the fold of my pillow case. It must have fluttered over my face in the night and woken me (fortunately I don't mind moths, and finding it was the best 'I told you so' moment of my marriage, apart from the time the clutch fell out of the car).
 
Spookdaddy said:
Despite a distinct lack of actual card-carrying ghosts - there's quite a lot to cover. All somewhat neatly tied off by the experience of some Irish visitors. I'll work on it.
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In my experience there's no need to pin it on a card-carrying ghost. Some places are just weird. :nods:

Also, some people are weird, or they attract weirdness. If they're cool with it there's no problem.

My house was weird long before Techy rolled up but I feel it appreciates his acceptance of its eccentricities.
 
escargot said:
In my experience there's no need to pin it on a card-carrying ghost...
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Absolutely. Although I've had what might be called 'spookier' experiences, I think most - possibly all - could be subject to other explanations. Apart, that is, from the single most inexplicable experience I've ever had - which didn't really possess any of the paraphernalia one might usually associate with such an alleged experience.

It's not really relevant here, but I've covered it elsewhere - I think what was the original telling is on the Eerie East London thread (post #12).
 
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