You Should Know

I’ve had this happen.

I was dreaming there were all of these people in my living room. It was some kind apocalyptic scene that brought them there.

I was standing in my living room, suddenly found myself in my bed in a sleep paralysis like state. I was confused, colors were swirling on the ceiling.

I heard the voices in the living room and I made my way in there. I had that physical feeling that comes with sleep paralysis.

The people were all around the room staring. I screamed “Leaaaave!!!” A woman who looked a lot like my mom said to me, “There’s nothing left out there. There’s nowhere to go.”

It was like I was instantly punched back to reality with this extreme feeling of fear and anxiety.

It took me about 20 minutes to get ahold of myself and awhile longer to even come close to believing I wasn’t completely insane.

I used to deal with sleep paralysis pretty often when under a lot of stress and I could tell it came from a similar place. It was a wild and terrifying experience.

At one time I had sleep paralysis so often that I learned to ride the wave kind of like a psychedelic drug. Not perfectly, but I had some success.

This happened to me consistently for about 9 years.

The instances were terrifying if I was stressed out. I'd see people in my room screaming at me, people just floating silently watching me sleep, spiders on the wall and ceiling, snakes falling on me, to name a few. One day I looked at my camera roll and found a picture of the empty corner of my room from 2AM, it freaked me out, but then I remembered I was tring to capture a shot of the spider webs full of snakes I thought I saw. Sometimes I'd be across the room from my bed in a full panic, turning on the light switch. It was wild.

If I was not stressed, it would be innocuous things, like a chair that wasn't supposed to be in the room, or pipes in my ceiling. One time there were gnomes showing me the tiny, glittery door to their world! Weird shit, but not scary.

Then I started antidepressants and they all stopped. Turns out night terrors, or waking terrors as I called them, can be a sign of depression. Who knew? I just thought my brain was a bitch, but she just needed happy pills.

It’s interesting to think that people who have seen “demons” or been visited by ghosts may have experienced something like this. In times before modern science, there was probably no other explanation.

I was either experiencing this or something similar to it. I was waking in the night and seeing things in the dark that I was sure was there. Really terrible things. A person standing in the corner of my room, something crawling on the ceiling.

I did some reading on the subject and decided to try a sleep mask for a few days. The whole time I wore it I never experienced the visions again. So after that test I decided to get blackout curtains because it was the light bleeding in from a streetlamp that was contributing to the hallucinations.

I knew of someone who had this but refused to acknowledge it and instead assumed that god was talking to them.

I remember when I woke up early in the morning for school, and played with a portable console while waiting for my mother to cook breakfast. A few minutes later, I realised I never had a console in the first place, and it vanished into thin air.

Do you guys ever have that thing where you are almost asleep then feel like you're falling? That scares me everytime.

I've had sleep paralysis exactly once, but since I knew what it was I found it an extremely interesting experience and studied it while I could.

I can't imagine the terror of not knowing what's going on.

I thought I woke up once to a sound of a dinner party going on in another part of my house, with glasses clinking, people talking and some sort of music in the background. There's no one at home except my SO and my cats lol.

Our brains love to play tricks on us lol

I used to have sleep paralysis almost daily for a while while working a particularly stressful job. I would see and hear people who weren't there. Usually it was benign and I knew it was happening, so I just tried to keep myself calm. Only a few times have I had what I think is the hypnopompic hallucination, but until now didn't now the word for it. I was always aware when it was sleep paralysis since I was literally paralyzed. This other instance I most definitely woke up in the middle of the night. A small amount of light bled through our black out curtains and I was hallucinating a horrid, giant scorpion monster on our ceiling/walls. I knew it couldn't be real but it still scared the shit out of me. I just tried to keep calm and close my eyes like the sleep paralysis episodes and it went away after a little bit.

finally people are talking about hypnopompic hallucinations, never seen too many mentions of it before despite it happening to me a couple of times

Holy shit! This has happened to me before! I woke up from a nightmare and the creature was I my room with me.

I think I had this happen, though not in a scary way.

I used to live with my father in the country in the summers and one summer day I was woken up by him saying, “Get up and get dressed, we’re going into town.” It was probably 7:30 or something, but I did as I was told, threw on some clothes, and went and sat waiting for him. I figured while I got dressed he had wandered back into his room for whatever reason.

Later, my stepmother gets up and is surprised that I’m in my shoes and clothes so early in the morning. “What are you doing dressed?” “Dad woke me up and said we’re going into town.” “He’s in bed asleep…”

It was the first time I remember experiencing a hallucination.

Oh man, this has been me sooo many times. There have been some memorable/ embarrassing quotes from me

Like some others in the thread, I get this occasionally. For me, without fail, it's seeing hundreds of spiders crawling over the walls, ceiling, and/or bed - I've sometimes violently tried to throw the covers off myself to get them away!

Really unsettling, and it happens so infrequently that I'm never prepared for it at all.

Y'all have it rough. When this happens to me, it's pretty much always:

1. I have a dream that there's a spider in my bed
2. I startle awake, and see that there is a spider in my bed
3. I stare at the spider until it fades out of existence

I’ve had this for as long as I can remember. Normally it’s with something like. It’s or snakes, but occasionally I’ll see a figure in the doorway, or think there something standing or floating by my bed.

It’s rather annoying, especially for my wife since I usually have to turn on the light fire my brain decides it’s ok.

Oh awesome, I already deal with sleep paralysis on a semi-regular basis, now you’re telling me there’s yet another thing to worry about? 😭

I can't remember ever experiencing something like this..? Is it possible to forget about it, like a dream? Barely ever remember dreams. Or maybe some people don't experience these hallcinations?

Oh that's what that is 😅 I have that a bunch - was hard to describe as it's not sleep paralysis. It's often.... confusing... and occasionally disturbing but I'm a bit used to it at this point. It is so weird how it persists until the lights come on

I sat bolt upright in the middle of the night one time talking to the wall, kinda grumpily, and my partner was really disturbed.... trying to explain to her that the customs officer wanted something didn't really help that much.

Seeing bed bugs all over my whole body and everywhere in a grungy motel was pretty disturbing. And a hooded man in the corner, staring, during the middle of the night in a new persons' bed.

Huh I wonder if this is what happened to me a few weeks ago. I "woke up" I was sitting in my bed and there was this large squirming mass in my closet. It's hard to describe but think millions of worms. It was moving towards me. I moved to the other side of my bed and could see things moving on the floor. These worms were also coming through the (concrete) walls. I then shot awake screaming while waking up. Turned on the lights and saw nothing. It is the strangest and scariest thing I've ever had happen while sleeping