Seeing Something When You Wake Up In The Night

[Ghost In The Machine]

I’ve only ever ‘seen’ a hooded figure in my first sleep paralysis episode which was many years ago. Then there were three. Three hooded figures in red robes were pulling me out of bed and I knew if they pulled me downstairs and out the door I would be ‘gone’. I was struggling like mad as I felt myself being pulled and deliberately banged my ankle against the wall which allowed me to wake up, heart thundering and all panicked.
The hooded monk seems to be so ubiquitous in ‘waking up’ scenarios and also ghostly sightings. It was written about in the Dyfed Enigma but must have been explored since then.

Not a sleep paralysis one, but one of my kids lives near a place where a "hooded monk" figure is regularly reported - on the street maybe a few hundred metres from his place. The city had monasteries and a friary and all sorts but none in this particular area of the city. Someone else in our family has seen this several times but they're a bit of a costume historian and they said it's not actually a monk at all, that they saw, but more like the standard 18thC "highwayman" - big coat, as opposed to a hooded cloak. I thought it was interesting - the difference between a "ghost" being seen by randomers and then by someone who knows how to reconstruct historic clothing!

Hoods, cloaks, shrouds all a part of our culture's ambient sound, I guess, what we imagine as "creepy"?

My relative's experience did make me wonder how often people may interpret what they see as summat closer to some trope when in fact it's something else (or another trope).

 

[escargot]

LOL ah it wouldn't work on the kids of murderers...

Again, must disagree.

 

[Robbrent]

I've had this happen to me a couple of times first one was a man with long black hair wearing a denim jacket standing in the doorway of my bedroom I shot out of my bed fists flying he stepped back and disappeared. 2nd time the same man sat up beside me in bed which was heart attack inducing I remember saying what do you want he was answering but I couldn't hear a thing. Last one I turned over in bed and there was a little girl about 2 inches from my face I sat up she's chatting away but again I can't hear anything. So I'm thinking none of these are sleep paralysis as I have been able to move. I think I'm attracting the buggers

That's really interesting especially that it looked like they were trying to communicate with you but could not (makes sense really when you think about the mechanics of speech) and the guy in modern clothing we don't see enough of this, when statistically we should see more ghosts (if that's what they are) in modern clothing as there has never been as many people alive and dead and never so many buildings

Like someone has said I would research the history of your house and who has lived in it since it was built (not so easy with newer properties as a lot of the records are sealed )

 

[Kate In The Desert]

He was glowing in the dark - in fact he sort of resembled a three dimensional black and white TV picture.

The above quote from Zeke Newbold's post has prompted me to tell my tale here, because the figure I saw when I awakened also looked like a three dimensional black and white TV picture.

I was about 12 years old, and it was a warm summer evening at the family home. I woke up in the middle of the night from being too warm, and I sat up in bed to put aside the blanket and rearrange the sheets, when the door to my room opened.

There stood my mother, but not as she was in real life that night. In addition to looking just like a black and white TV image, mom was not in her nightgown as I had seen her before bed. Instead, she was wearing a lovely sleeveless dress with which I was very familiar. The floral pattern of the dress was usually shades of pink and lilac. Now it was in shades of grey.

She didn't seem to really be my mother. I called out, "Mom!" but she didn't respond. She didn't even seem to be looking directly at me. Slowly "mom" turned around and walked out of my room.

I was terrified, and hid under the sheets until morning. That woman was lovely like my mom, but definitely was not my mother.

 

[Mr_Hermolle]

On the occasions I've woken in the half-light to a shadowy (and initially sinister) hooded silhouette type figure...in my half-sleep/half-awake state I try to remain logical and relaxed in order to process it.

It invariably turns out to be something innocent like my dark jackets or hoodies on the corner hat/coat stand or open wardrobe forming the dark, hooded shape. I'm never quite aware if I detect movement. When I was younger this would be really unnerving, but with age I've learnt it has a logical, scientific basis so is less perturbing;

'Hypnopompic hallucinations occur while a person is waking up, and hypnagogic hallucinations occur while falling asleep. In 86% of cases, hypnopompic hallucinations are visual. They often involve seeing moving shapes and colors, or images of animals or people. Between 8% and 34% of these hallucinations involve sound'

It's almost like a waking form of pareidolia - although the shapes and patterns tend to initially have a sinister aspect to them.

As most of my experiences involve dark jackets/clothing with hoods - I wonder if this is a common explanation of the description of a hooded figure which is regularly sighted? (and are others experiencing moving shapes/forms/figures for a sustained period of time?)

Even when you know perfectly well what it is, one of the most frightening things in the world to see is a jacket carelessly flung over the back of a chair when you wake in the night.

 

[escargot]

The above quote from Zeke Newbold's post has prompted me to tell my tale here, because the figure I saw when I awakened also looked like a three dimensional black and white TV picture.

I was about 12 years old, and it was a warm summer evening at the family home. I woke up in the middle of the night from being too warm, and I sat up in bed to put aside the blanket and rearrange the sheets, when the door to my room opened.

There stood my mother, but not as she was in real life that night. In addition to looking just like a black and white TV image, mom was not in her nightgown as I had seen her before bed. Instead, she was wearing a lovely sleeveless dress with which I was very familiar. The floral pattern of the dress was usually shades of pink and lilac. Now it was in shades of grey.

She didn't seem to really be my mother. I called out, "Mom!" but she didn't respond. She didn't even seem to be looking directly at me. Slowly "mom" turned around and walked out of my room.

I was terrified, and hid under the sheets until morning. That woman was lovely like my mom, but definitely was not my mother.

A poster on'ere shared a bizarre account of one night when their mother glided into their bedroom, as if on skates, and hid behind the curtains. On investigation, no Mother was found. She was asleep in bed. Poster was dreaming.

 

[merricat]

I’ve only ever ‘seen’ a hooded figure in my first sleep paralysis episode which was many years ago. Then there were three. Three hooded figures in red robes were pulling me out of bed and I knew if they pulled me downstairs and out the door I would be ‘gone’. I was struggling like mad as I felt myself being pulled and deliberately banged my ankle against the wall which allowed me to wake up, heart thundering and all panicked.
The hooded monk seems to be so ubiquitous in ‘waking up’ scenarios and also ghostly sightings. It was written about in the Dyfed Enigma but must have been explored since then.

I am intrigued by the red robes and what they might relate to, symbolically. I had a spate of dreams over 20 yrs ago about a group of boys wearing the same. They were creating/drawing lines in the earth with long sticks which turned into crimson ribbons. They seemed to communicate by 'speaking out' diaphanous white butterflies or moths. These were definitely dreams though, and inspired this very early collage..

 

[SimonBurchell]

I am intrigued by the red robes and what they might relate to, symbolically. I had a spate of dreams over 20 yrs ago about a group of boys wearing the same. They were creating/drawing lines in the earth with long sticks which turned into crimson ribbons. They seemed to communicate by 'speaking out' diaphanous white butterflies or moths. These were definitely dreams though, and inspired this very early collage..

View attachment 78151

AAAAAGH!!! AAAAAGH!!! AAAAAGH!!! THEY'RE COMING!

Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Phew. All under control. Please see this dream I had a while back.

 

[merricat]

AAAAAGH!!! AAAAAGH!!! AAAAAGH!!! THEY'RE COMING!

Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Phew. All under control. Please see this dream I had a while back.

That would make a fantastic film or series!

 

[Steev(still)]

Reading back over this thread, I was fascinated to see experiences of 'sleep spiders'. I get these nasty little fuppers all the bloody time. I wake to see a "negative spider" running around on my pillow or duvet, or on the wall. It's white, enormous, and usually makes me engage in vigorous slapping until my brain catches up and I realise it's a product of my just-waking mind.

I'm sure I read a thing once that this was a common hallucination, and the reasons for it, but it eludes me at the moment.

 

[merricat]

Reading back over this thread, I was fascinated to see experiences of 'sleep spiders'. I get these nasty little fuppers all the bloody time. I wake to see a "negative spider" running around on my pillow or duvet, or on the wall. It's white, enormous, and usually makes me engage in vigorous slapping until my brain catches up and I realise it's a product of my just-waking mind.

I'm sure I read a thing once that this was a common hallucination, and the reasons for it, but it eludes me at the moment.

I have only experienced one spider episode, and that was around 10 yrs ago, waking in the dead of night to see a rather large one hurtling towards my face from a thread attached to the ceiling above my head. As I fixed my eyes on it, it quickly retreated back up the thread. Can't recall what happened next, I possibly fell back to sleep. Nothing there the next day..
It did feel very 'real' though, it seeming to recognise that I had noticed it. An odd one!

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

Re-reading this, I'm thinking we have a whole different vocabulary for describing what we see, now.

The only full body apparition I saw was in the early 1970s. And can remember trying to explain it to my dad, later, and all I could think of was that the man was not solid but made up of pinpricks of light/colour, like in a comic. Now, we'd say it was pixellated.

In the case of the thing I saw, it was made up of pinpricks of coloured light, though, not greyscale as others have described. It was not solid but fairly close to solid. Although what I recall after all these years is probably more a recounting of a memory of me re-telling it not long after, then over again whenever asked for a ghost story. Rather than me actually genuinely recalling it firsthand. This was not long after I'd fallen asleep, or when I was about to fall asleep... though as it shocked me so much that when I turned my face away to not see it, I banged my head of the metal headboard and had a bruise next day to prove it. I remember thinking "Oh so I wasn't asleep, then" as the banging my head didn't wake me up. I simply remained awake.

The "Cheshire cat" style see-through cat we saw only a few years ago - husband and I both saw it - my kids keep saying it was a shadow or nothing or a trick of the light. But again, it wasn't entirely solid, but almost so. And again, pinpricks of light or a pixellated image a bit like early CGI, if anything. It was very clearly there and yet also not entirely there. Oh and that morphed from a shadow to a pixellated image kind of thing. It was a shadow against one background, (the road), and a see-through cat when it hit the grass verge. I wasn't asleep although I was tired. Husband was driving so I'd like to hope he was also awake. But it changed from a "shadow" figure to a "pixellated" more recognisable figure, as we watched it. I've seen plenty of accounts since of shadow ghosts - humans and animals - but never one where it shifted from a colourless/black/greyscale shadowy blob, to something that more closely resembled whatever it was, as it was being looked at.

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

I am intrigued by the red robes and what they might relate to, symbolically. I had a spate of dreams over 20 yrs ago about a group of boys wearing the same. They were creating/drawing lines in the earth with long sticks which turned into crimson ribbons. They seemed to communicate by 'speaking out' diaphanous white butterflies or moths. These were definitely dreams though, and inspired this very early collage..

View attachment 78151

What a brilliant image. Love it.

Hooded figures have often been sort of spiritual/liminal, eh? Monks, Robin i'the Hood, then later, hoodies. In the 18thc and 19thc, red cloaks were seen as hopelessly provincial, a standard piece of clothing worn by rural women in particular. Later, we think of 1960s' Hammer Horrors. Most recently, The Traitors.

Maybe hoods because they are inherently creepy - throwing the face into shadow? They also have no gender. They hide the clothes underneath which would give you clues about the person. They're a quick way to make people look the same (so, cultish)..?

 

[merricat]

Re-reading this, I'm thinking we have a whole different vocabulary for describing what we see, now.

The only full body apparition I saw was in the early 1970s. And can remember trying to explain it to my dad, later, and all I could think of was that the man was not solid but made up of pinpricks of light/colour, like in a comic. Now, we'd say it was pixellated.

In the case of the thing I saw, it was made up of pinpricks of coloured light, though, not greyscale as others have described. It was not solid but fairly close to solid. Although what I recall after all these years is probably more a recounting of a memory of me re-telling it not long after, then over again whenever asked for a ghost story. Rather than me actually genuinely recalling it firsthand. This was not long after I'd fallen asleep, or when I was about to fall asleep... though as it shocked me so much that when I turned my face away to not see it, I banged my head of the metal headboard and had a bruise next day to prove it. I remember thinking "Oh so I wasn't asleep, then" as the banging my head didn't wake me up. I simply remained awake.

The "Cheshire cat" style see-through cat we saw only a few years ago - husband and I both saw it - my kids keep saying it was a shadow or nothing or a trick of the light. But again, it wasn't entirely solid, but almost so. And again, pinpricks of light or a pixellated image a bit like early CGI, if anything. It was very clearly there and yet also not entirely there. Oh and that morphed from a shadow to a pixellated image kind of thing. It was a shadow against one background, (the road), and a see-through cat when it hit the grass verge. I wasn't asleep although I was tired. Husband was driving so I'd like to hope he was also awake. But it changed from a "shadow" figure to a "pixellated" more recognisable figure, as we watched it. I've seen plenty of accounts since of shadow ghosts - humans and animals - but never one where it shifted from a colourless/black/greyscale shadowy blob, to something that more closely resembled whatever it was, as it was being looked at.

I am fascinated by these pixellated' or at least indeterminately dotty visions, the cat especially! Have you seen the old one about a lady who witnessed a cat drinking from a puddle, which quickly became one dimensional and fell over..only to disappear? Not sure if my memory has the exact right details there, however.

So we have the pixellated beings (many recorded long before pixels were a common enough concept), the stick men and cloaked beings. All seemingly common enough that we might consider them a feature of 'the lesser-seen everyday'.

I once saw a garden ornament in an unusual, afternoon light situation (glare). It was a one dimensional black cat, possibly placed to scare birds or other cats away, featuring a sparkling blue collar. Caught off guard, it absolutely stunned me; it certainly appeared 3D to me, surrounded by a halo of small sapphire lights, hovering inches above ground. It seemed to emit a low, fuzzy, electrical sound. My skin even prickled.
It's interesting to note that a very slight shift in perception can create what I would tentatively call a slight aural hallucination, accompanied by an almost imperceptible electrical tingle on the skin. A moment where you might find yourself temporarily suspended between what appears to be a familiar, fixed reality and a somewhat more fluid one...

It was only an effect of the light in my case, but for a few seconds there I thought I might have experienced my first encounter with an Alien Small Cat ...

 

[Paul_Exeter]

Re-reading this, I'm thinking we have a whole different vocabulary for describing what we see, now.

The only full body apparition I saw was in the early 1970s. And can remember trying to explain it to my dad, later, and all I could think of was that the man was not solid but made up of pinpricks of light/colour, like in a comic. Now, we'd say it was pixellated.

In the case of the thing I saw, it was made up of pinpricks of coloured light, though, not greyscale as others have described. It was not solid but fairly close to solid. Although what I recall after all these years is probably more a recounting of a memory of me re-telling it not long after, then over again whenever asked for a ghost story. Rather than me actually genuinely recalling it firsthand. This was not long after I'd fallen asleep, or when I was about to fall asleep... though as it shocked me so much that when I turned my face away to not see it, I banged my head of the metal headboard and had a bruise next day to prove it. I remember thinking "Oh so I wasn't asleep, then" as the banging my head didn't wake me up. I simply remained awake.

The "Cheshire cat" style see-through cat we saw only a few years ago - husband and I both saw it - my kids keep saying it was a shadow or nothing or a trick of the light. But again, it wasn't entirely solid, but almost so. And again, pinpricks of light or a pixellated image a bit like early CGI, if anything. It was very clearly there and yet also not entirely there. Oh and that morphed from a shadow to a pixellated image kind of thing. It was a shadow against one background, (the road), and a see-through cat when it hit the grass verge. I wasn't asleep although I was tired. Husband was driving so I'd like to hope he was also awake. But it changed from a "shadow" figure to a "pixellated" more recognisable figure, as we watched it. I've seen plenty of accounts since of shadow ghosts - humans and animals - but never one where it shifted from a colourless/black/greyscale shadowy blob, to something that more closely resembled whatever it was, as it was being looked at.

That is exactly what I once saw; "pinpricks of coloured light,"

So i was working a seasonal job in a backpacker's hostel here in the UK*. It was an old building dating back a couple of hundred years. A woman from Plymouth had stayed a told us she had seen the manifestation of a male in his 30's (-ish) enter the female-only dormitory she was staying in but when she went to confront him he had vanished (first floor, window shut, no other way out).

I went back to work there a couple of years later. The dorm in question was at the top of the first flight of stairs and so the door was visible from the entrance hall. I happened to be passing and looking in that direction and noticed the dorm door was wedged open (against fire safety rules). At that moment I saw swirling pinpricks of multicoloured lights that where shaped like a human of normal proportions but which were denser in the centre (chest area) and which was both see-through and yet a distinct form.. They moved swiftly from right to left across the door as a person would entering the dorm.

I looked to check if there were any obvious light sources that might have caused a reflection and I put it down to perhaps lights from traffic being reflected somehow from the front windows off a surface on the ground floor but then surely this would repeat itself? It was very odd experience, so brief and yet I have a clear mental image of those swirling lights. Just wish someone else had seen it, too.

*PM me if you want the location, have to be mindful of revealing too much personal information

 

[merricat]

That is exactly what I once saw; "pinpricks of coloured light,"

So i was working a seasonal job in a backpacker's hostel here in the UK*. It was an old building dating back a couple of hundred years. A woman from Plymouth had stayed a told us she had seen the manifestation of a male in his 30's (-ish) enter the female-only dormitory she was staying in but when she went to confront him he had vanished (first floor, window shut, no other way out).

I went back to work there a couple of years later. The dorm in question was at the top of the first flight of stairs and so the door was visible from the entrance hall. I happened to be passing and looking in that direction and noticed the dorm door was wedged open (against fire safety rules). At that moment I saw swirling pinpricks of multicoloured lights that where shaped like a human of normal proportions but which were denser in the centre (chest area) and which was both see-through and yet a distinct form.. They moved swiftly from right to left across the door as a person would entering the dorm.

I looked to check if there were any obvious light sources that might have caused a reflection and I put it down to perhaps lights from traffic being reflected somehow from the front windows off a surface on the ground floor but then surely this would repeat itself? It was very odd experience, so brief and yet I have a clear mental image of those swirling lights. Just wish someone else had seen it, too.

*PM me if you want the location, have to be mindful of revealing too much personal information

That would have been quite a spectacular thing to see! My mental visualisation of this would make an incredible artwork - those colours....interesting that the denser area was in the chest. Reminds me of something I have read somewhere about the solar plexus and OBE's. I once dreamt that I was leaving my body and a luminous 'rope' attached me to a group of other people, emanating from my solar plexus. Imagine if you had witnessed someone's OBE, or a being from another dimension or time.
I would strongly doubt reflections or lights from traffic, considering the detail involved.

Do you mind me asking, how you felt at the time, and immediately after witnessing it? Would you describe positive or negative emotions associated with this vision? I ask because it really does sound quite wonderful.

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

That is exactly what I once saw; "pinpricks of coloured light,"

So i was working a seasonal job in a backpacker's hostel here in the UK*. It was an old building dating back a couple of hundred years. A woman from Plymouth had stayed a told us she had seen the manifestation of a male in his 30's (-ish) enter the female-only dormitory she was staying in but when she went to confront him he had vanished (first floor, window shut, no other way out).

I went back to work there a couple of years later. The dorm in question was at the top of the first flight of stairs and so the door was visible from the entrance hall. I happened to be passing and looking in that direction and noticed the dorm door was wedged open (against fire safety rules). At that moment I saw swirling pinpricks of multicoloured lights that where shaped like a human of normal proportions but which were denser in the centre (chest area) and which was both see-through and yet a distinct form.. They moved swiftly from right to left across the door as a person would entering the dorm.

I looked to check if there were any obvious light sources that might have caused a reflection and I put it down to perhaps lights from traffic being reflected somehow from the front windows off a surface on the ground floor but then surely this would repeat itself? It was very odd experience, so brief and yet I have a clear mental image of those swirling lights. Just wish someone else had seen it, too.

*PM me if you want the location, have to be mindful of revealing too much personal information

That sounds like what I saw, except for the fact I was only 12 or so, so I didn't take in the finer details of where the dots of light were denser, or anything like it. And I don't remember whether the pinpricks of light were moving or stationary. Have never thought of this before, except for just now reading your account but... when I say the thing I saw was in a bedroom at the back of the house (so no streetlights, no cars going past), most people reading it would assume it was a street in a village, town or city and a house like most others with other streets at the back of the house, but in fact it was a bedroom with no road, lane or street behind it or close to it, whatsoever. There was an acre of wooded land directly behind it and beyond that, a field. So nothing whatsoever to generate any kind of light to reflect off anything or give any life to something reflective or shiny. It would have been pitch black out of the window in that room. The nearest streetlights or parallel lane was half a mile away and out of sight because of the orchard full of trees between us and it and then the trees in the field beyond.

Utterly nothing to create light, reflect it or explain seeing a form made up of light.

Thanks for posting - it's made me realise this.

 

[Ghost In The Machine]

I am fascinated by these pixellated' or at least indeterminately dotty visions, the cat especially! Have you seen the old one about a lady who witnessed a cat drinking from a puddle, which quickly became one dimensional and fell over..only to disappear? Not sure if my memory has the exact right details there, however.

So we have the pixellated beings (many recorded long before pixels were a common enough concept), the stick men and cloaked beings. All seemingly common enough that we might consider them a feature of 'the lesser-seen everyday'.

I once saw a garden ornament in an unusual, afternoon light situation (glare). It was a one dimensional black cat, possibly placed to scare birds or other cats away, featuring a sparkling blue collar. Caught off guard, it absolutely stunned me; it certainly appeared 3D to me, surrounded by a halo of small sapphire lights, hovering inches above ground. It seemed to emit a low, fuzzy, electrical sound. My skin even prickled.
It's interesting to note that a very slight shift in perception can create what I would tentatively call a slight aural hallucination, accompanied by an almost imperceptible electrical tingle on the skin. A moment where you might find yourself temporarily suspended between what appears to be a familiar, fixed reality and a somewhat more fluid one...

It was only an effect of the light in my case, but for a few seconds there I thought I might have experienced my first encounter with an Alien Small Cat ...

View attachment 78403

Thing about the cat is, if I was the only person to see it, or husband was the only person to see it, either of us would have been convinced, the whole rest of our lives, that it was a tiredness hallucination and by now, i'd probably not even remember it. The fact we both saw the same thing simultaneously means that shadown cats that morph into see-through cats really can happen (and I will always know he saw it as I made him recount back to me what he'd just seen and I didn't prompt him in any way although he can never know whether I truly saw it, as from his POV I was just saying "OMG that's what I saw!").

I can't remember the physical response to it, that "someone walking over my grave" feeling probably happened but I do't recall. I do remember us feeling quite excited, if anything, and the rest of the way home saying the f word a lot. F., did we really just see that? F! I think if it had been a headless horseman or something more exciting as a ghost than just a cat, we wouldn't have found it so funny.

Interesting thing is, I constantly get that "someone walkig over my grave" feeling now - nerve damage from long covid lol. Happens with no warning, this prickling sensation usually on one side of my body, and unprompted by anything. It's so creepy.

 

[Paul_Exeter]

That would have been quite a spectacular thing to see! My mental visualisation of this would make an incredible artwork - those colours....interesting that the denser area was in the chest. Reminds me of something I have read somewhere about the solar plexus and OBE's. I once dreamt that I was leaving my body and a luminous 'rope' attached me to a group of other people, emanating from my solar plexus. Imagine if you had witnessed someone's OBE, or a being from another dimension or time.
I would strongly doubt reflections or lights from traffic, considering the detail involved.

Do you mind me asking, how you felt at the time, and immediately after witnessing it? Would you describe positive or negative emotions associated with this vision? I ask because it really does sound quite wonderful.

I have walked through woodland at night and worked nights in hotels etc. and like to think I don't spook easily or jump at every shadow. But in this instance my reaction was one of shock and the thought that came to mind was "[Swearword!] I've just seen a ghost!". I stood there for a moment watching the door intently and then went up to investigate. So my mood was positive but I was also slightly taken aback at the sheer everyday-ness (or mundanity) of the situation.

Then the rational bit of my brain kicked in and started to come up with the reflection theory etc. But I always kept a close eye on that area and didn't see it again (the door was frequently left wedged open as guests would not want to lock themselves out whist going to the bathroom etc). Have to say the way those pinpricks of light were swirling in amongst each other made me think of atoms or the movement of stars in a galaxy but sped up. It was only after the event that I remembered the woman who had claimed to see the ghost going through that door. Perhaps it was just a light reflection but I was left with sense of the lights being in front of the door as opposed to being reflected onto them,