It’s called hypnopompic hallucination.
Unlike with sleep paralysis, you can move and talk while still seeing it and it will last a few seconds up to a minute which can seem like an eternity.
It usually fades as soon as you turn on the light, but for some very few people it does not and persists even after turning on the light.
Here’s an example of someone who often experiences these and has started recording themselves: https://youtu.be/bEMGZNvETMQ
Why YSK: because it’s very scary and unsettling when it happens and since you can move you don’t believe it’s sleep paralysis and can’t explain it. This might explain many of the “monster or spirit at the foot of my bed” sightings that we often hear mentioned in horror podcasts.
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.
Aren’t human brains fun? So kind of our brains to show us everything terrifying that it can cook up and place into our lived reality just to fuck with us.
It’s ridiculous! The terrors were so regular that they became interesting and funny stories I’d share with my friends. Very much thought of “my brain” as a spearate being from me because it sure wasn’t on my side. Rude.
I know my brain is like at least 70% memes, but nooo, it’s gotta be the horrors in sleep paralysis. Always gotta be the horrors with those damned things. How much funnier would it be to wake up to like a confused Travolta or a doge in your living room.
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.
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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.
Your cats have some explaining to do.
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’m relieved to know that covering your eyes prevents you from seeing things.
But seriously though, I’m glad you got it figured out because that sounds horrifying.
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
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.
I lived in my parents’ basement for a little over a year after college. During that time I had weekly (give or take) dreams that people were coming downstairs to watch me sleep. Often accompanied by sleep paralysis where I wanted them to leave so bad but couldn’t do anything. Terrifying stuff. That was 7 years ago and it hasn’t happened since I moved out.
Makes you wonder about mold or carbon monoxide from basement appliances.
It’s funny you mention mold. Though I was dealing with complete chaos when I experienced regular sleep paralysis, it’s worth mentioning that the place had a lot of black mold.
Oh dude, yeah. The documented symptoms of mold exposure are mainly respiratory, but if you were already under a bunch of stress and your body is getting further stressed by toxic air… Could explain it.
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Do you guys ever have that thing where you are almost asleep then feel like you’re falling? That scares me everytime.
These are called hypnic jerks.
They were just asking a question there’s no need to call them that.
I also watched House MD.
I knew of someone who had this but refused to acknowledge it and instead assumed that god was talking to them.
Thus how religion was born.
And now some people don’t count as people
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’ve had it a few times. Most times have been pleasant. I saw my deceased grandparents and it made me feel happy. Sleep paralysis isn’t always scary. And one time I induced it while I was going into surgery. That was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced
I absolutely need to know more about that last part.
Sorry for the late reply. I was in high school when this happened. I had to get my stomach scoped. While they were getting ready to put me to sleep they asked if I wanted to do laughing gas. I said sure. I had never tried it and it sounded fun. While they were doing this I thought to myself that I wanted to try to force myself to stay awake and see if I could do it. Or at least make a mental note of everything that happened to me and observe it. The laughing gas started to kick in and I started to laugh uncontrollably. One of the nurses hadn’t seen it used before and couldn’t help but laugh at my non stop laughing. I don’t remember an IV so I think the anastesia was administered with the laughing gas. Time started to get strange, everything slowed way down. A tingling sensation was spreading across my body. This tingle turned into sharp jabbing pains as if I was being stabbed by thousands of tiny needles. At the same time sounds around me started sounding echoing and distant. I was starting to panic so I decided I should let the doc know. That’s when I realized I couldn’t move. I could barely move my eyes. I also realized I was still laughing. I couldn’t speak either. I tried to scream but the only voice that actually screamed was the one iny head. I was terrified and everyone else in the operating room seemed to be happy. The pain from the tingling was getting worse and my ears were ringing so loud I couldn’t here anything. I felt like I was stuck in a black room with 2 windows to the outside world (my eyes). It felt like an eternity I was stuck like that. In reality it was probably less than 10 minutes cause the procedure hadn’t started yet. I tried to force myself to fall asleep but couldn’t. I started to wish I could just die cause that would be better than the hell I was in. Then blackness for a split second.
The next thing I knew I was in a different hospital room crying and super nauseous.
