Sleep Hallucinations: Things That Go Bump In The Night

photo of a woman in bed experiencing hypnagogic hallucinations

Do strange images of geometric shapes, people or animals appear out of nowhere as you lie in bed at night? Perhaps you’ve heard voices or noises which can’t possibly be real?

If so, it could be that you’ve experienced what’s known as sleep hallucinations.

Despite leading to the occasional leap out of bed in sheer terror, they are usually harmless. And many people experience them at some point in their lives – including me.

My nocturnal flying geometric manifestations

As a child, multicolored geometric shapes would regularly swoop across my bedroom, just as I was drifting off to sleep. I remember simultaneously marveling at them and wishing them away so I could sleep in peace.

It doesn’t happen so often nowadays, but once in a while, I’m still prone to my mathematical manifestations.

Perhaps I should be grateful for my geeky hallucinations – especially compared to the disturbing experiences some people have.

What are sleep hallucinations?

Sleep hallucinations are imaginary experiences that happen during the transition between being awake and asleep, and can feel confusingly real.

They are also referred to as hypnagogic hallucinations if they occur while you’re falling asleep, or hypnopompic hallucinations if they happen while waking up.

The hallucinations are usually visual, such as seeing shapes or figures in the dark. But they can also involve your other senses.

The hallucinations can be vivid and frightening in some cases. If you see a giant creature in your room or hear a scary voice, it’s understandable that some people will jump out of bed and turn the light on to check what’s going on!

image explaining that hypagogic hallucinations occur while falling asleep and hypnopompic hallucinations while waking up

How many people have sleep hallucinations?

A commonly quoted statistic in medical articles comes from research conducted in 1996. The team interviewed 4972 people in the United Kingdom by telephone. They found that 37% had experienced hypnagogic hallucinations. And 12.5% had experienced hypnopompic hallucinations.

In 2000, another team of researchers surveyed 13,057 people and found that 38.7% had experienced hallucinations at some point during the day or night. 24.8% of the sample had experienced hallucinations at sleep onset, and 6.6% upon waking.

A sign of Narcolepsy

For some people, sleep hallucinations can be a sign of narcolepsy. Narcolepsy is a sleep disorder which involves sudden daytime episodes of:

  • Unexpectedly falling asleep
  • Sleep paralysis
  • Hypnagogic hallucinations

If you have these symptoms, it’s important to seek medical advice.

Symptoms

The main symptom is seeing or hearing things while falling asleep or waking up that aren’t real.

Researchers believe that the most common type of hallucination is visual. However, it’s possible to experience hallucinations that correspond to any of your senses:

  • Visual – such as geometric patterns, shapes or light flashing. Sometimes complex forms like animals or people.
  • Auditory – voices talking, phone or doorbell ringing, music, hissing, humming or whistling.
  • Olfactory – pleasant or unpleasant smells.
  • Tactile – insects crawling on the skin, rubbing, stroking, tapping or tickling sensations. Perhaps also feeling weightless, distortions in the body, flying.
image of a woman in bed with patterns and animal forms around her

Not the same as nightmares

Telling the difference between dreaming and hallucinating isn’t always obvious in the moment. But sleep hallucinations are not the same as nightmares.

When you wake up from a nightmare, you’ll know you were asleep (even if it takes a little while to come back to reality).

Sleep hallucinations, however, can feel like they are really happening. You know you’re awake, but you’re not convinced it’s merely your imagination playing tricks on you.

Coexisting with sleep paralysis

Sleep hallucinations sometimes happen during an episode of sleep paralysis.

During sleep paralysis, you might be unable to move your body in bed, which in itself is often frightening.

The hallucinations that accompany it can range from seeing a presence in the room to seeing and feeling a creature sitting on you.

Causes

The International Classification of Sleep Disorders manual suggests two causes related to brain function, though also states that more research is needed:

  • An intrusion of dream imagery onto wakefulness.
  • A lack of stimulus leading to the visual cortex in the brain creating images.

Health websites, such as healthline.com, suggest that sleep hallucinations can be caused by other conditions, such as:

  • Sleep disorders like narcolepsy or sleep paralysis
  • A medical condition or medication use
  • A mental health disorder, such as schizophrenia
  • Substance abuse

Risk factors

According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, they are more common in children and young adults. Women might experience them slightly more often than men.

Some factors are thought to increase the likelihood or severity of the hallucinations, including:

  • Drug or alcohol use
  • Anxiety or stress
  • Mood disorders like bipolar disorder or depression
  • Insomnia
  • Epileptic seizures

Research shows that fragmented sleep is associated with more hallucinations

In 2021, a team of researchers published an interesting study of sleep hallucinations (you can read it in full on nature.com).

Based on an online survey of 10,299 people, they found that poor sleep is associated with the occurrence of hallucinations – a point already confirmed by previous studies.

However, they further showed that fragmented sleep, i.e. regular wakings, is related to hallucinations. And that fragmented sleep is also related to the content, frequency, duration, and associated distress.

Interestingly then, people who had better sleep had less negative and less disruptive hallucinations when they did have them.

So the more you have them, the worse they might be. It seems to me to be a good motivation to tackle any factors you know that make you wake up more often in the night.

Treatment

Do you need to see a doctor?

If you’re experiencing anxiety or losing sleep because of regular sleep hallucinations, it’s a good idea to speak to a doctor or sleep specialist.

They would ask you about your hallucinations and look at your medical history and other factors like medication and lifestyle. They might decide that an overnight sleep study is needed to find out more.

They would also look at the possibility of another condition causing the episodes. And if they find one, give you the appropriate treatment.

Worried about your mental health?

If you suddenly start having hallucinations, it’s understandable that you might question your mental health. This is a point I’ve seen raised in the comments below many times, so you wouldn’t be alone in thinking something was ‘wrong’ with you.

It’s worth noting that if it only ever happens when you’re in bed trying to sleep, there’s a good chance it’s harmless sleep hallucinations. Perhaps it’s a sign you’re under a lot of stress lately, for example, but it might not be an indicator that something is wrong beyond that.

Having said that, if you have hallucinations during the day, or other symptoms that are making you feel anxious or confused about your mental health, then it’s a good idea to talk to your doctor. And if you’re still not convinced the nighttime hallucinations are benign, talk to your doctor to get a professional opinion.

If this line of thinking feels relevant to you, there’s a good article on psychologytoday.com in which a clinical psychologist talks a patient having sleep problems rather than a schizophrenic illness.

What can you do to help reduce them?

Here are some ideas which might help keep the hallucinations at bay:

  • Get an adequate amount of sleep every night. Try to stick to a regular sleep schedule and don’t allow yourself to become sleep deprived.
  • Avoid recreational drugs.
  • Eat a healthy diet and drink plenty of water.
  • Try to reduce your stress levels.
  • Try using a soft night light in the bedroom. This might help fill the space that your brain uses as a blank canvas.
  • If you tend to have auditory hallucinations, listening to music, radio or a podcast in bed might help.
  • If you find yourself focusing on visual hallucinations, try to re-focus your mind on something else. Breathing exercises or muscle relaxation can keep your brain occupied.
  • If it’s overwhelming, turn on a light and get up for a while, do an activity you find relaxing, and then try to sleep again after 10-15 minutes.
  • Several readers have said in the comments below that wearing a sleep mask helps them.

Hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations are a normal part of life for many people. Once you’ve ruled out any serious illness or disorder, you’re left to deal with the experience in two ways.

First, try to adapt your lifestyle to make sure you do everything possible to sleep well. Second, relax and try not to worry about things that go bump in the night.

Your thoughts

Do you ever experience hallucinations when falling asleep or waking up? What form do they take?

Feel free to describe your experience in the comments below and share any ideas you have about dealing with them.

1,718 Comments

  1. I had a dream about 3mos. Ago. Started off as a positive experience then turned a little murky ands i had a sense of confusion about the elements of the dream that were positive. This confusion rather quickly turned into a sense of terror. suddenly a creature appeared down the hall way Of my apartment. It was crawling quickly along the wall and ceiling towards my room but instead of it coming in it crawled into an air register. This was very terrifying Bc i DO have air registers built on the wall and ceilings. At this point I could swear I was wide awake. But felt like i could not move. I struggled – awake – looking at the ceiling trying desperately to move. Then i felt I had minimal mobility but was able to move my arm onto my partners face. She want waking, I clearly remember being so desperate to wake her up to help me that I most definitely remember my hand on her face squeezing her cheeks together. Next morning I said sorry for waking her up so rudely by squeezing her face and she was completely puzzled. She said I woke her up unintentionally because I was making noises and sounded like I was in distress. She said she woke me up bc she knew I was having a bad dream. She claims we talked a few sentences then went to bed…a few sentences being 2 or 3 spoken sentences each. I was zero recollection of the events. The creature was so real. Any help out there ?

    • I know this may sound crazy but Trust me this happened to me almost every night for months I was afraid to even go to bed but I noticed what helps this all disappear instantly is if you yell out the name “Jesus” and I ALWAYS woke up it was very hard to call out his name but I eventually got the words out. I don’t know if you believe in Jesus or not but I promise it worked every time!

      • This is actually what I do to. It’s so hard to speak. I usually try force out “I command you to leave in Jesus name.” The ‘thing’ disappears and I wake up

  2. What has been happening to me lately is when I’m almost asleep With my eyes closed, I’ll see a flash of a grotesque face or arms reaching out to grab me. I’ll yell and reach out to push it away. Then I’m fully awake and too afraid to close my eyes. I don’t see things while awake in the dark, only when I’m dozing off!

    • I’m no doctor but I have recently read a couple of John Sanford books on dreaming. He is a christian, but his view on psychology and dreaming is eye opening. You may find it helpful to get to the bottom of the reason for the hallucinations. It may eventually help you stop having them, but our minds can be extremely active. I have experienced many forms of hallucinations my entire life, but I’m usually not afraid of them anymore. Now I realize that most of it is from a deeper part of my mind.

  3. I have only had this once, recently. I am 68. I woke up laying on my stomach and raised my head. There beside my bed was an older lady dressed in old fashioned clothes. In front of her was a short skinny little man dressed in an old fashioned suit. They were talking although I could not hear them. I raised my head and shoulders off the bed a little and blinked and they were still there. I watched them. They both seemed to notice me at that point and glanced down at me. I wondered what they were doing in my room Just after that they seemed to shrink into a big circle that moved toward the wall and continued to shrink until it disappeared into an old oval picture of my grandma as a child that hangs on the wall across from my bed. It was really weird. I don’t think I was dreaming about anything connected to that scene. I wondered if maybe they were from an earlier time and somehow our times merged for a few moments. The lady was dressed up in a fine dress with a high collar, long sleeves and a large hat as if dressed to go somewhere. She was a large imposing woman and the man was much smaller and very slender. Never had this happen before or since, although it was only a couple of months ago.

  4. I recently had two or three of these hallucinations just when I was opening my eyes in the morning I would see a vivid colorful object in front of me moving to the wall and then moving to the end of the wall and then disappearing. This morning I saw a round vivid pink object that was right in front of me and it moved in warp speed to the opposite wall and when it went to the end of the wall it disappeared.

  5. geometric shapes with me too. the shapes dangled in mid air above my bed. unusual thing is that the shapes were always a skeleton of line segment. no curves no circles no spheres. i wonder why it was so…

  6. I have had many night time experiences including lucid dreaming, lucid non-dreaming (a very profound experience), sleep paralysis, hypnogogic and hypnopompic experiences, the continuation of dreams while awake in the proper settings, and more. The neuroscience literature is now actively exploring these phenomena and making startlingly discovery. For one, it is a major oversimplification to state a person is asleep or awake. The brain is vastly complicated with distinct “modules”, that can each independently be in different states of activation, producing different mental phenomena. I started practicing yoga around age 22. I first learned certain postures, then breathing exercises, then short meditation techniques, and then the corpse posture (performed while laying down in bed at the end of a session) which put me in a deep state of relaxation. For about 3 years, I would practice this sequence for about 1-1 and 1/2 hours in the late afternoon. Done properly, this can put you in a very relaxed, tranquil mood. During this time, I occasionally would go into a light sleep during the corpse posture and would experience hypnogogic experiences of awesome and ethereal natures. I became aware that my usual awake personality was only a small and highly biased part of my total mental life. In the innumerable studies done in these areas, one fact stands out: your reaction to and the type of experiences you have is strongly dependent on your state of mind when you go to sleep as well as your belief systems (conscious and more importantly unconscious), your sleep environment, and more. A good introduction to some of these phenomenon and the working of the brain is a book I read several years ago: Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain by David Eagleman, a renowned neuroscientist at Stanford University. Another book I read several years which is a good introduction and instruction manual for lucid dreaming is Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self, by David Waggoner. All these phenonemona when used properly, can be of great mental, spiritual, and physical benefits to yourself and those around you.

  7. I’ve only started having this.. I’m 51 and been under huge stress. I have it both before I sleep and when I wake up. Its like I open my eyes and I’m in a strange room and I don’t recognise any of it. Or it’s my room and the walls have been moved? Doesn’t sound terrifying, but it is. I thought I was going mad as I don’t have anything like this through day, other than being exhausted. I dread nightime. Years ago they thought I had ms as the discs at back of my eye are pale, but eventually said I didn’t. I’m sure mine is caused by stress and going through the menopause? Has anyone else going through stress or menopause had this?
    So glad to read I’m not alone in this!

  8. I thought I was alone. I wake up every single night and see images of people standing near me or looking at me! I will wake up and see a little boy sitting next to my mini fridge, a man smiling at me , snakes, spiders all over dangling in front of me , a women in the corner of my room . So many things that scared me and reading this makes me feel so much more normal that I’m not alone !

    • I remember when I was young I had what I called “pictures”. I would feel awake, but there were things there that no one else could see. I saw a giant beetle coming down on me, a silhouetted man in a fedora, and ballerinas. Thankfully, it stopped as I got older. Like you, I’m glad I’m not the only one who has experienced it.

    • me too. I have avoided sleeping because I felt someone leaning over my bed, not to mention I saw a man hanging like by a noose on the other end of my room and he slowly rotated… not gonna lie, I cried. I was extremely terrified. Other times its hands reaching out of y closet or some massive animal crawling along my floor. Last night it was a slender man looking fellow who was pulling my door shut… needless to say I hate the dark because of these things.

      • I also have experienced this, and it is very unsettling. I am only 14 and my parents have helped me, and I hope that the visions don’t continue. Three expirences I have had, some who last for 3 nights in a row, have caused me to be afraid of the dark.

        1: Footsteps. I have heard what sounds like several people walking around just outside my bedroom door. (I keep it closed and you’ll see why later) This auditory hallucination was one of the least frightening because I assumed it was my cat, which later was proved incorrect. This also did not effect my sleep.

        2: An assortment of noises and words. I was awoken at two in the morning to a very loud and unusual clanking in my vent. This was followed by an hour of footsteps above me (I sleep in the basement) Birds at 3:00 AM, crickets, drawers and chairs being moved, beeping, and my father’s voice, asking me if I was awake. I was terrified and began to stare at my door, when my entire room dissipated and words appeared in my peripheral vision, which I could not read. None of these things were real, but the feeling I had was so terrifying that I Cried. This lasted for an hour and a half or more, and I lost a lot of sleep.

        3: Shadow Figures. This Hallucination has affected me very deeply, and occurred over a period of 3 days. One night (The first) I was awoken by a nightmare, only to see a silhouette of a girl eerily standing at my door, which I had left open to allow some light in until I fell asleep( my dad would turn it off after then) I just sat and stared at it for an hour, then cried until my parents came in to see what was the matter. This time, the figure just stood there but, the second night, I was awoken again, and the figure stood for a while, I tried to dismiss it because I had seen it before, but then it began to walk towards me. I screamed and my parents, Once again, were able to come and help me. The third night it came to me in a horrid dream, it was swiftly moving and rapidly getting older around my bed. I was awoken by the nightmare only to see more people moving outside my door. I lost lots of sleep and still feel paranoid in the dark.

        After each of these occurrences I have felt very nervous during my waking hours. I still fear going to sleep because the last one just recently occurred. Days afterward, getting a good night’s sleep is a gift. I am not sure if it is a problem or not, but i’m glad to see i’m not the only one

  9. I have woken up hearing bumps or tapping and footsteps, like someone visiting outside a window. It startled me, but I’ve begun to realize it must be a hallucination. I realized this when I spoke of this to my grandfather and he admitted back to me that he hears the doorbell ring and wakes up in the middle of the night. He wakes up at 3 every morning, whereas I have woken up at various times, sometimes 2, 3, or just after 3. For this reason the “witching hour” had become a topic of interest as I had great feelings of fear upon waking to these sensations.

  10. I used to get this every night. I still do occasionally. I would “see” people that were clearly dead, or I would see people that triggered traumatic memories. A few times i tried to turn and face the wall to try and go to sleep but I would think that whatever I’d imagine was standing next to me, breathing on me, about to reach out and touch me. It was horrible. I found using led lights helped until I stopped “seeing” them every night. I wish I found this website earlier though :)

  11. I used to have this when i was younger, i would see lines, text, the shape of the eye of horus, tiny spirals floating and the worst one for me was floating spiders. It makes me shiver even remembering it. And i was too scared to go back to sleep in case i would wake up again and have the hallucinations, so i just kept my eyes open but that seemed to make it worse, because the more i stare into soace, the more the floating spiders would multiply in front of my eyes. And one night it got so bad that everywhere i looked i just saw spiders, i couldn’t look at my mom’s face as there was a spider on her forehead, and i made the mistake of looking down at my own torso and seeing a large spider sitting on top of it. Worst night of my life but weirdly after that it all stopped. I think these events lasted about 3 years.

  12. I dread going to bed at night! Last night I woke to see a monkey (yes, a monkey) hovering over my window, with something rolled up and gritting it’s teeth at me. I have seen ghoulish looking things coming out of my closet door, weird colours, dots all over the ceiling, etc. I am extremely exhausted.

  13. I’ve been experiencing this for as long as I can remember, I’ve never known how to explain it but I’m glad I googled the sentence I did. It makes so much sense, I have MS and brain lesions because of it

    I’ve been experiencing this excessive daytime sleepiness since I was like 14? My parents always blamed it on everything that popped into their head, but it’s not just being tired, whenever it happens I physically cant keep my eyes from rolling back into my head. It happens a lot on the bus home from college, my mum will text me asking where I am so she can extimate when to have dinner ready, and in my head I’ve typed out a cohesive reply and sent it, but then I drift back 20 minutes later and I’ve typed out a sentence of nonsense and not sent it.

    I’m forever dreaming that there’s hundreds of spiders in my bed and I fly out trying to avoid them, only to turn on the light and see nothing. One night I dreamt that there was a cat stuck behind my headboard, and my parents found me at 4am trying to pull my king-size away from the wall trying to rescue it, shouting the whole time.

    I remember when I was 8, I was staying at my grandparent’s with my sister and we were sharing the same bed because we were both still young and there was no other options. I woke up at something like 3am and had a conversation with an old woman sitting in the corner of the room, looking for her ring. I can vividly remember this happening, but I always thought I was just remembering a dream. But the next morning, my sister confronted me and started shouting at me, because I woke her in the middle of the night, my eyes open and apparently lucid, asking her to help find the ring for the lady standing in the corner and terrified her.

    It happens all the time, and my parents always thought I was just having nightmares, but then it happened last year on a family holiday. We were staying in a little villa in Tenerife, the type that was part of a big apartment complex surrounding a pool, and my sister and I were sleeping on pullout beds in the living/dining room.
    I remember a figure crawling from a huge hole in the ceiling, and over a table, till it stood at the foot of my bed. It then started speaking to me, and I can’t remember what I said, but then I remember my sister sitting up and looking over at me, talking but I couldn’t hear what she said. Suddenly all the lights are on and my mum’s sat on my bed, asking me what happened; apparently my sister woke up and saw me sat up in bed, talking to something at the foot of my bed.
    She asked what was going on, and I apparently turned to her and said “he’s got it all now, he’s taken it” and she starters freaking out because she thought someone had broken in. Apparently I started shouting at her in a voice that was uncharacteristically deep for my own, at which point my mum came running because she thought there was a man shouting in our apartment and that we were being burgled.

    The thing is though, every time this happens, I remember all of it, I’m able to describe things about what happens that I couldn’t have known had I been asleep or sleepwalking. And when it happens, it just feels like I’m dreaming, apart from I’m sat upright in bed, in my bedroom, talking to someone about something mundane.

    However recently, they’ve gotten a lot more vivid and violent; I had a “dream” the other night that was far too graphic to share, and it honestly frightens me because if what happened in the dream was real and I was in fact sleepwalking and acting it out, the consequences would be horrific. Yet I also convinced that I haven’t left my bed, I sort of set up a weird maze of obstacles on my floor so that if I was sleepwalking I’d trip.

    But recently these “dreams” have started getting really violent, which they haven’t ever been. Last night I dreamt that someone had my pinned against the wall by my neck and was choking me, and I woke up face down in my bed gasping for air and crying my eyes out. I don’t want to see what happens if they get worse, but I don’t know how to raise the issue with my consultant, we’ve always assumed it was Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and bad sleep hygeine even though I’ve done all of the courses and it’s not that.

    I don’t know what to do

    • Be honest. That’s the only thing anyone can do that’s ever helpful. If you’re afraid of what you might do in your sleep you need to express that to those who sleep around you and whoever is trying to help you. I’ll try to be very clear here. You know better than anyone else the situation you’re in. To the point you can’t accurately describe it to others so you have to be the one to take responsibility for that knowledge. Do not put yourself or others in a dangerous situation because you’re afraid to take control. This is your mind. You are both the programer and the spectator. It sounds to me like it’s time to stop watching the nightmare and seek help to put yourself back in the drivers seet. I hope you get back on top ✌?

    • Wow, this is so interesting.
      I was “misdiagnosed” with MS almost 8 years ago. I have multiple deep white matter lesions on the brain, but after extensive testing with top of the line drs in NYC we have ruled virtually everything out. Now I just go every 2 years for an updated ct scan to make sure the lesions are not spreading.
      My symptoms abated for a long time. Everyone thinks I was nuts for saying it, but I truly believe in mind over matter, and felt quite possibly that my very tangible symptoms could have been exacerbated by the actual thought of having MS.
      Though this past summer I woke up around 5 am, and thought I was having a stroke, I’m only 32. I saw bright colors when I rolled my eyes, and thought I heard an audible popping noise in my head. I tried to get out of the bed but felt that dropping feeling, so I stayed still until it all went away. I went to my nuero we did some testing and ruled out stroke. I did not go back for a ct scan like she requested because I try to limit how many of those I do in a certain time frame. Nothing else occurred, until last night. I dozed off at 11pm and woke up to an old woman in a yellow shawl standing over me, I’ve never seen “shadow people” or any of those other things that come up in a google search. This scared me more than anything. I googled the correlation of “night figures” and aneurysms, and ended up here. I don’t believe in spirits, or ghosts, or anything supernatural, but I cannot get this figure out of my head.
      I wonder if there is any other research on brain lesions and nightmares or what ever you could call this

  14. I suffered from this in my late twenties and early thirties until my boyfriend literally was at his breaking point from me waking up screaming and scaring him to death. I would typically see bugs or spiders in the bed and would be – what to me felt like 100% awake – convinced they were real and there. It would happen monthly, sometimes more and started to escalate over time. I finally asked my doctor about it when I started to see figures looming over the foot of my bed. I could handle the bugs but this was terrifying. I’m posting this because this helped me and it’s worth a shot. I saw a homeopathic doctor and they gave me a dose of I believe some kind of cobra snake venom. I don’t have the name still of what I took but it worked. I have had maybe one or two episodes since but it’s been years now since I took this and I feel very much cured. You don’t have to live with this.

  15. mine are always really sinister to be honest. I’m quite stuck on what to do because of how bad they can be sometimes. A good example of mine occurred around 5am last night (warning this could scare some of you)… I must’ve woken up and been asking this thing I was seeing in my room who it was for a minute, according to my friend who was with me at the time, I grabbed him and started screaming bloody murder. I remembered screaming for dear life, this evil looking demon like creature crawling towards me mumbling and bones cracking, whilst this dark black figure lingered behind just observing. I was beyond petrified. my friend claimed he saw this too but I feel as if Id just scared him into believing something was there by my manic actions and intense shrieking and crying for whatever it was to go away.

    I honestly dont know what this could come under, my night terrors last a minute or two but this went on for nearly 10 minutes all together according to my friend, and quite frankly, I am too scared to sleep tonight.

  16. I have had this since I was a child. When I was a kid I had a huge Mickey Mouse holding out his hands and stars arched from one hand to the other (now it’s called a fathead) anyway. I would watch the stars dance and move before falling asleep. Now what I see mostly is lights in a grid on the walls and ceiling and I am sure that it is the true reality when I am in the state. Other times I have seen giant glow in the dark spiders on glow in the dark webs, or other bugs climbing up my wall. Once when camping I woke up to a large bang and the planets were colliding together and exploding in wondrous lights and fireworks I was sure that my bf would wake up to see it to. A few weeks ago I woke up to see claw marks gouged into the walls that was freaky.

  17. I have both sleep paralysis and hallucinations ,and they both suck let me tell you. When I sleep and dream,alot of times I become conscious of the fact that I’m dreaming, at time it can be fun to explore . But sometimes I’m not in control, im stuck in this dream trying to wake my self up . Usually my face is stuck to the floor in these dreams, in real life it’s the pillow. Then the room begins to slowly fill up with water and I end up drowning, a few times not just one ! Untill I finally wake up sweaty sometimes with out air ,it freaks me out to the point I almost can’t fall back to sleep . The hallucinations are disturbing as well, I usually see a huge rat or hairy spider right in front of my face. I always jump up yelling I never get used to it . Also see bugs and spiders walking on my walls ,the clothes from my closet moving and dancing as if being worn by ghost ,its super freaky .

  18. Sometimes when my alarm goes off in the morning and I open my eyes I see what looks to be a spider crawling on the wall but there’s never anything there. Usually only happens if I’m startled awake though.

    • I saw something similar but it was while trying to fall asleep and now it is actually disturbing because now Um seeing something in lights going upwards l

    • Upon waking in the night or going to sleep I see black taratulas, sometimes shiny black ones, other times furry ones. They appear only for a few seconds. Moving slowly across the wall only to fade away. It doesn’t happen every night, but it’s been happening for years. I used to get up and search the room but now I don’t bc I realize they’re not real. If they were real, the vision would not fade.

      I am a 72 year old married female. I stopped drinking alcohol and smoking in 1990. I have insomnia. Recently I read that metoprolol (for blood pressure) can cause hallucinations. I’ve been taking it since I was 45. I plan to talk with my doctor about the meds I take and the hallucinations. One time, my doctor gave me hydroxyzine to help me sleep but it caused a hallucination so I stopped taking them.

      I hope this may help others.

  19. I have been trying to find an article explain what I feel for a while but i couldn’t find a write words to write on a search bar, I have been taking sleeping pills for a long time now almost a year , I was taking them before for couple years and I quite and then I’m back again , at first I used
    To take couple pills and rest ,then it didn’t work after a while so I took more and more then I started combin 2 different sleeping pills to make me sleep faster and deeper, at the beginning I didn’t experience anything as I put my light off and go straight to bed , after sometime as of now I take the pills dose which is too high and it take quite sometime for it to kick me in bed so I stay up watching movies on my iPad while the room is dark and shortly after 10-15 minutes I start seeing weird things in the dark not around me but on my own body my own hands and fingers something like wires ,bugs around my hand ,breaking fingers,nails coming off and on of my hands many visual hallucinogens and it makes me so scared I get my phone and opens flash light and I see nothing then I put off flash light and I start seeing it again , it’s very disturbing and scary , I tried to quite sleeping pills and sleep normally but doesn’t work sometimes I try and I end up sleeping late after hopless trial and take the pills and finally sleep and wake up tired , I also try to decrease my dose which is 10 pills a night but I feel it doesn’t work or maybe I don’t give it a time to do so, I also experience some memory shortage after taking the pills and lack of speaking , It sometimes take me a good 20 or 30 minutes to reply a text message from a friend at night because I’m lost and I don’t know what to say and keep re-read the text to make sure it’s correct some othertime i ignore and I don’t reply because I don’t know what’s going on , o catch up myself texting my bestfriend last weekend at night out of the blue telling here that I’m depressed and I wanna suicide and she got
    Crazy and called me but I was sleeping next morning she is telling me o read the text and I don’t know why I said that , yes I’m having some difficult times and depression and I think about that a lot but I never thought I would text someone and tell them that.. I’m so scared and know what to do

    • This is a side effect of sleeping pills. I would suggest you see a doctor 10 pills to put you to sleep seem excessive.

  20. I have had hallucinations since I was in elementary school . I am currently 15 and they are so bad , they use to be worse and some nights they get that way but I haven’t had them In a way to that extreme . I hallucinate music when it’s not there , someone calling my name, voices or mine talking and suddenly getting loud startling me . I usually at night when I’m trying to sleep (I have insomnia ) can see figure or things in the corners of my eyes but when I look nothing’s there . I’m so paranoid of sleep paralysis I will never sleep on my back and continuously have to whisper quietly one word to myself or move a finger when I’m trying to sleep to make sure I can still move . This has been all I can remember all my life and I’m so glad to know I’m not crazy . Recently my sister has said I talk in my sleep and I will wake up crying out of no where or when she talks to me when I’m half asleep I will say such weird things that make no sense and I think to myself that was so weird or think it’s not and when I’m fully awake remember it and cringe . I’m afraid of the dark because I can’t see what’s in it and I feel like someone’s with me and am afraid I will see more things so I usually sleep with a lamp on or a little light . I know this fear is irrational and that these hallucinations aren’t not real but trust me if I could stop them from Happening I would . These two past years I’ve been sleeping on my sofa to scared to go to my room because that’s where most of these happen. When I was smaller I was so terrified of the dark but shared a room with my sister my mom would force me to turn of the light and I would cover myself with my blanket including my face , crumble myself up , facedown on my pillow and cry or think of something else usually never sleeping . My hallucinations will happen when I haven’t slept at all due to my insomnia , before I sleep, during , after . Basically the only time I feel safe sleeping is in the day time . Also other hallucinations I have are dark figures or jump scares or shadows , like two days ago I seen a weird face slowly moving towards me while I was in the middle of sleeping . These weird hallucinations effect me so much I get mini heart attack’s over little normal things when not hallucinating and am extremely PARANOID to the extreme where at night I have this fishtank that’s reflective and I think I will see someone in the hallway looking at me so I cover it with a blanket . Another weird thing I do is go around the house before it gets dark just before it’s about to and close all the curtains perfectly and turn on all the lights like in my room or kitchen . This became a normal thing to me I never thought anyone else suffered from it and i just need advice and suggestions or similar stories because this is not the way to live i can’t take this i can’t describe it to anyone else , have never talked about it to anyone else and today when I stumbled to this article I knew god had heard my prayer .

    • I have experienced these things as well since I was a child. I am 35 and need a night light I do not like the things in the shadows. I too suffered from Insomnia for a vary long time. Maybe ask your doctor for a sleep study let the doctor know how much it effects you.

  21. Hello,

    All of this is new to me, I am 48 years of age and within the last few months I’ve been suffering from waking up discombobulated/hallucinating. I fall asleep at all times of day without any warning, I’ve started snoring so I quickly started think sleep apnea but now with the excessive tiredness, falling asleep at the drop of a hat and all, I’m wondering if I’m suffering from narcolepsy or hypnogogic hallucinations. I don’t know what’s going on but I can say, I”M TIRED. As a child I use to sleep walk, I would wake up thinking ants were crawling all over me, even now sometimes I get pain in my legs and a feeling that there is someone in the room with me. I need advice, I have contacted my doctor in hopes to get a referral to have a sleep study done, I’ve had one in the past and I was said to have a mild case, not enough to need the CPAP machine.

  22. I have experienced this off and on throughout the year. Some instances have been more of a full experience, whereas others only lasted for a fleeting moment. I have no control over the things that I see. I notice that it only occurs when I transition from sleep to wake. For example, I was fast asleep in the middle of the night and I opened my eyes to see a ghostly looking octopus figure hanging from a thread on the ceiling. I had already had an experience a couple of times before so I wasn’t as alarmed. I just watched as it faded away. I am writing this now after seeing a spider like spiral on the wall after waking up from a deep sleep. It has been a month or so since my last “vision”, if you will. My last vision was a full person standing in the corner of the room. These visions are very irritating to both my partner and I because I usually end up screaming “wtf is that?” Or I’ll wake him up and say “look!” He thinks I’m crazy. I am very well aware that these visions are abnormal. I do have insomnia and I tend to sleep when I’m exhausted and I don’t feel like a crazy person and I’d like to believe that I don’t suffer from dimentia. After all, I am able to recognize that they are just hallucinations. Even though they feel so lifelike in that very moment

  23. This happens to me alot. But I don’t hear things, and I don’t see objects. I just see strange lighting in my room and it’s not coming from anything, it happens to me when I wake up in the middle of the night. For instance last night I woke up and blue lights were on the walls and ceiling moving all around. It took about 20 minutes before I could get back to sleep. I sat up on my bed and everything.. I hate it it freaks me out. Makes me feel crazy. Because like I said there is absolutely nothing in my room at night that would be throwing this blue glow on the walls and ceiling… my windows have thick dark brown curtains that even during the day the sun barely shines through.

  24. Hi everyone! So years ago i would see spiders or bugs like some stated in their comment and i would wake up like WTF!!! Now, i find when i am super stressed out, i am seeing people. It’s nkt as scary because they are people i know and am close with or have just met. I live on campus and this does not happen while i am on campus, (maybe because my roommate is in the room with me??) but when i come home, i usually go to bed late and wake up super early for work at 6am and i wake up mid sleep sitting up in bed thinking a friend or family member is sitting near me in a chair near my bed or standing there. My first reaction is to make room in the bed for the to be comfortable. If i don’t snap myself out of it not being real, I’ll wake up multiple Times freaking out trying to make them comfortable or wanting to walk them to the door so they can go home. Real thoughts run through my mind like, it’s late, they can’t drive home, I’m tired, I’ll just push over so they can sleep with me. It drives me insane and i will talk to my doctor about this. I am glad others relate and i pray my hallucinations do not get scary like others. It sucks but I’m glad it’s people i know and not strangers. I am going to try a night light!

    • OMG! It’s taken me years trying to research these scenarios and so glad I came across this post. For almost a decade now, I’ll wake up and it’s like I had a friend sleeping over but they aren’t next to me so I get up looking for them to come back to my bed if they want (except I never see the person) and then a few years back it changed to someone was coming over so I would tidy up my room to make room for them to sleep in my room!! I’ve only hallucinated bugs under 10x but COUNTLESS times for the person in my room!! And it’s not like a nightmare or anything but once I finally realize I was just dreaming/hallucinating I’m like wtf go back to bed/so tired. Not sure if that made sense but anyway, I relate!

  25. The last month I’ve been having issues with insomnia. And the last two weeks I’ve been having these strange sleep disturbances. I would call them hallucinations. I’m either just falling asleep or just waking up when it happens. But it wakes me up briefly. Earlier today I tried to nap because the insomnia is destroying me. I had repeated hallucinations that would wake me up briefly. I would be confused. One example was that I was laying in the same spot, my husband was next to me on the couch except he was sitting forward looking back at me talking to me about something. That’s when I came to thinking that we were actually talking about something. He wasn’t sitting forward looking back at me when I came to. He was laying back. I was able to come to enough on this one particular incident that I told him what I had just experienced. I had probably had a 6-8 of these in the short time I tried to nap. Sometimes I am holding something in my hands or reaching for something. When I wake I’m still reaching out or hold my hands like I’m still holding on to something. It’s truly unnerving and confusing as sometimes I don’t know what is real and what isn’t.

  26. I now know what the heck I’m seeing at night before I fall asleep. It was really starting to freak me out. I’ve seen everything from an older woman floating around my room to seeing a demon by my bed. I’ve seen the Grim Reaper – sickle and all. It can be ridiculously terrifying as a person starts to think “why is the Grim Reaper here; am I going to die? Is he here to take me with him? Stupid I know, but that’s what goes through your mind.

    I was scared to tell my wife as I didn’t want her to think I’m crazy. These visions don’t appear any time else other than just before I fall asleep. If I was mentally ill it would be all the time which it is not.

    Again, thank you for the information as it has put my mind at ease big time!

  27. Last night my 7 year old son started shaking in his sleep. I asked him if he had to use the bathroom. He did but on return to bed, he couldn’t settle down. During a 15 minute experience he went from calm almost sleeplike to panic several times. He verbalized that it is painful when the sizes don’t match? I asked what he was talking about and he said it was hard to explain. He was obviously seeing something and was scared of it. I put the tv on to distract him and eventually he calmed down and fell back asleep. He is on the second day of prednisone for Asthma related symptoms so I acquainted this to the medicine…steroid hallucinations. This morning I asked him if he remembered what happened. He said he did. I asked him to explain. He said he can’t. I asked if this happens often, he said it did sometimes. Note, when he was younger he would sleep walk to the bathroom, then get confused and have short crying fits. He has never verbalized seeing anything before. It was a really scary experience last night. Glad that there is some explanation and truth to his actions last night.

    • This has happened to me since I was child. I would start to see or feel an image that should fit through another image. Usually like a foam roller and something else is supposed to go through it and it would frustrate me. Then suddenly it would feel like my body is shaking, trembling. (now older my husband says I do start to tremble like a seizure but it is not a seizure) It would be hard to breath, so I learned to sleep on my side before sleep. Making sure my head was secure so I don’t smother. I learned that it is sleep paralysis. Not sure why it starts with that feeling of a shape that does not fit. It is really irritating, the shape thing and it is hard to explain.

      I have also seen an image of my hand size above my actual hand. Never happened when I was a kid but now it happens often. I have also heard voices or someone scream my name, this wakes me up out of it. I have heard whirling sounds like slabs of metal sheeting being waved back and forth. Like the fake thunder sound in school plays?

      Anyway hope this helps. I hope this is not what is happening to him, but if it is hope it helped. No one believed me as a kid.

    • Hi. Did this happen around 60-90 minutes after falling asleep? Did it happen over a series of nights? If so it is probably night terrors which happen in non-REM or NREM sleep These are not nightmares (REM sleep) and can be very scary for parents! They go away after a while and are harmless.

  28. My husband seems to be prone to hallucinations when he has been under sedation for a medical procedure. Recently, however, without having been under sedation, he claims he hears the phone ringing, me talking, etc. For example this morning he said, someone kept calling throughout the night. I told him I didn’t hear the phone ring and I’m a very light sleeper. Actually my cell phone and house phone are next to be while I sleep. Also, I don’t use sleeping pills so my sleep entirely natural. I checked his phone and mine and the land line – no calls. He’s angry with me claiming I’m lying about the calls and trying to make him crazy. He does take sleeping pills and has been taking the same RX for several years. I told him perhaps he should get checked and maybe he needs a change. He’s also displaying signs of dementia, but his cognitive tests indicate no dementia. I also suggested he could have been hearing a neighbor on their phone outside. But, he’s insistent.

    • Hi
      Sorry to hear you’re going through what sounds like a challenging time. Have you tried speaking to your own doctor about this, to see what advice they might have for you to deal with the situation, especially if you suspect signs of dementia, and he’s getting angry with you about what you say?
      Regards
      Ethan

  29. Three times a week I wake up at night after a deep sleep and see a swarm of bugs on the walls near my head wherever I sleep towards. I hit the wall thinking I can kill or capture one but nothing. They just fly away into the walls. I sometimes think it’s paranormal but I can’t be sure. Maybe I’m just losing it or still dreaming some nightmare.

    • I have this same things…I see spiders and others things crawling in the ceiling.
      I clean my eyes and it still there until I turm on the light
      ..I be to scare to open my eyes until day light…Is there help for this crazy stuff

  30. My son has had this for years and he is only 8 years old. I feel Terrible. It makes him so tired the next day and he has to go to school. They say sleep deprivation makes it worse but he can’t get more sleep because it always happens. He does go a few months of nothing but then it starts all over. He usually sees spiders, snakes. Sometimes fish, beetles. He’s completely awake and talks about them. He remembers everything the next day. He does have anxiety and stresses easily so maybe it’s that. i just wish he could sleep than he could perform in school better and maybe not be so stressed out

    • Hi Christina
      Thanks for your comment, and sorry to hear your son is having these difficulties. Have you spoken to your family doctor about it? Perhaps they can offer some helpful suggestions. I think if as that age, he’s stressed, sleeping badly and his school work is suffering, it’s a good idea to talk to a professional about it.
      In the mean time, try some of the suggestions in the article. Perhaps try a soft night light to see if that helps. And perhaps try establishing a familiar pattern where you spend time doing something relaxing, calming and enjoyable with him in the hour before bed.
      Regards
      Ethan

    • This is what I have and I also have anxiety. At night I see things, usually people and can communicate with them and recall them the next day and I can’t get any sleep either. My mother said I’ve been talking to people in the middle of the night since I was 5. Like your son I can’t get much sleep but I have found not eating sugary foods (dessert) before bed helps as well as getting a night light. Reading a book before sleeping also helps. Also avoid any noise which may wake him up during the night. I have no clue why this happens but I have had it for 17 years. I hope he gets better

  31. Okay, the fact I’m writing this at 3:30 is an indicator of how much of a problem this has become for me. This has been happening for a year or 2 now, I’ve been afraid of the dark for as long as I can remember, when I was just starting to out grow my primal paranoia at around age 9, when I went on holiday to Disney land. It doesn’t seem like a place to develop a phobia but they used to have ride/experience called alien attack or something, it had a 14+ age ‘recommendation’ with warnings only in the map and I was a tall kid.

    it involved being strapped into a chair during this sci-fi show and the gimmick was that mid way there was an accident with the teleporter and this man was spliced with a (already nightmare enducingly grotesque) alien, this happens all why you are strapped into a chair with extreme speed grade rollercoaster grade impossible to get out of harness. Naturally the lights go out and the creature escapes, and I can assure you that this being Disney they went the whole hog to convince your 4 remaining senses that this horrifying demonic monster is only inches away from your face.

    Ever since then I have felt the compulsion to avoid total dark at every cost, and I’m pretty easily startled when I wake up and that has not been a problem for the past 13 years, but 2 years ago we had to move House and things have changed, the light in my room is right above my face, even with all the lowlight bulbs and dimmer switches in the world I defy you to sleep with it on.

    Due to the houses layout keeping the lights on in the hallway does nothing and there are no available outlets for a night light (I have extensively looked into this) the best solution I have is to keep the TV on and set a timer, but i can only believe this has been interfering with my sleep cycle, because lately when I try to fall asleep, I suddenly get this compulsion to open my eyes and don’t even know I’m doing this until I’ve done it.

    That’s when I see it, almost every night I see it, for the briefest of seconds I can see it as clear as it is day. At the beginning I always thought it was a spider, depending on where I was looking and the distance between the background, it could appear to be at least a foot long and it terrifies me to my core, but naturally it would fade away, leaving me to wallow in my irrationality.

    I’m naturally colour blind so I assume it would not so bad if it was colourful but the situation is what it is, and it has been getting gradually worse, the last couple of months going back to about march I think, the same as every night I try to get some rest when suddenly opening my eyes, the (just for naming purposes I have been calling it the shade, which looking back was probably f****** stupid idea) has appeared to have what I can only describe as an uncountable number of legs and for those few seconds I’m scared worse than if it was a spider the size of a cat hanging from my ceiling.

    Sometimes when I see it at an angle or the corner of my eyes it stays locked like that, so when I try and look at it dead on the shade moves out of focus and looks almost like it is charging right at me, only to disappear before it gets its chance to reach me, I know that sounds insane and paranoid and I know exactly why it happens but still that is how it feels.

    The one time there was a real spider on the ceiling, really through me off, it was by far smaller than the shade but with a black body on a white ceiling at 1am what was I suppose to think? When it refused to fade away into my imagination was one of the most fear inducing experiences of my life, although paralyzed with fear and unable to cry for help, I had kept a torch near my bed just for this occasion.

    I feel bad now because I’m sure the spider had no I’ll willing and was busy just spidering like a spider does, but I killed that thing like rabid deranged bloody ape. I have since painted the ceiling black and it could be riddled with spiders for all I know (I’m never gonna check) but i can still see it no matter what is behind it, after that whenever I see the shade my rationale becomes numb and it no longer feels just like something in my imagination, even thought that is what it has to be.

    A few months ago the shade stopped looking like it was on the background and more like it was floating in the air, like it could be a mile away or but an arms length, for the few seconds I see it there is no way to tell, and it has gotten more vivid, it legs no longer look like legs but more like tentacles or even thorns, like a cross between an octopus and sea urchin. Again I’m not sure but I think it has a brown tinge and woody texture, like if you looked at a bouquet of dried petal less flowers from straight.

    I am 100% sure that this is just my brain trying to somehow process the situation by making me villify and demonize it, instead of making it seem like a formless shadow it is giving it a biological appearance. But the last four days have been the worst, I’m not sure how long my brain has been trying to form this image but since Saturday the shade has had eyes, distinct blue eyes, distinct blue human lifeless eye’s, I don’t know if this is really true or intentional of my brain and as stephen king as this sounds, but they are the same as my eyes.

    I genuinely feel like I’m losing sense of reason and reality and I am definitely going to seek professional help, but now that it has cold dead eyes it feels like it was watching me, before I could see its eyes how long has it been watching me? Tonight my eyes did that thing where it looked like it was moving, when I saw it charging at me I screamed like never before. We had to apologise to the neighbors 2 house down, i am in no way a religious person but I thank whoever the F*** that this creature faded away.

    as I type this a few hours after this happened I’m still shaking and at this point it hurts, I know I’m not going to sleep again tonight and don’t know when I will again, I’m scared that this has been happening and I let it get to this point, I’m scared that this happened tonight and I am scared about what will happen next and how much the shade has grown by then. Although I don’t have a job at the moment I can’t work like this, how the hell would I build or maintain a relation when I’m like this, i just know that I’m going to be jumping at every single little thing around me, just 5 seconds of 86400 seconds a day is ruining my life.

    This is not a cry for help, my mother is going to make sure I’m getting just that, but writing about this and putting everything out there makes me feel kinda better.

    • Hi Jessica
      Sorry to hear you’ve been having such a horrible time sleeping. I think it’s a good idea that you speak to a professional – perhaps some counselling can help you deal with your fear of the dark, and find ways to cope better with the things you see.
      You say there’s no outlet for a plug in your room for a nightlight. But if you have the TV on, surely you have a socket – meaning you can either change the TV for a nightlight in the evening, or put a multi-socket adapter in. Can you also get battery powered night lights, so that might be an option worth exploring.
      Regards
      Ethan

  32. So this just started a few nights back again, I’m laying in bed in the dark and it looks like someone has a lazor light and turns it on and off shining it in different directions randomly, I see it out of the corner of my eye or sometimes right in front of me, different colors, blue, green and sometimes red but not to often. I also will be laying there and I see a reflection/shadow of what it looks like a cell phone with screen light dimmed, I actually thought my husband was on his phone most of the night, it’s like I can see the screen if I look over or look up and see a shadow and her the clickly click sounds of touch screen or keys, so detailed and vivid at times, so am I going crazy, maybe I’m dehydrated, stressed, exhausted or well I’m not sure, I do take mild sleeping aid sometimes to help me sleep but just over the counter med and it has never affected me before.

  33. In the last few months I’ve begun having strange experiences as I am half between waking and sleeping (at night). The “scene” is always black and white. Once the image was of two or three young boys, one standing right next to my bedside, with a paper airplane, playing without any regard for me, the two others playing farther from the bed. Before that one, I’d felt myself in another part of the house, sometimes at the kitchen counter but more often in the garage. The last time I “saw” the latter, I was terrified, wondering who had brought me out there on a gurney, in the winter snow (garage is stand-alone). I try and convince myself I am in my bed, but all the shapes are quite clearly the exact shapes of what we keep around the walls of the garage. Another time, I “saw” my boyfriend standing a few feet from my bed, and I was terrified because he was out of town at the time.

    Also, when he is away, I am sure I can hear several people talking out in the living room, Can’t understand the words, but it is neither radio nor television. I’ve learned these are just things that happen to me. I was not in great health a couple of years ago, but I fell backwards down a long flight of stairs, sustaining a traumatic brain injury, amnesia of that and for the first two weeks in hospital. There are even things I’ve forgotten that actually occurred before my fall. Is this kind of thing just a part of my continued recovery from the TBI? Or aging? I get plenty of sleep, and these things occur less frequently when I abstain from refined sugar. I try to only have sweets. one serving twice a week. I also talk in my sleep, have had sleep paralysis since I was a child, and had a savage infection last year treated at first with an antibiotic that made me sleepwalk, cook something in the microwave, and seem to pantomime playing the piano lying on the bed. I’m just worried I may have a problem when no one’s in the house but myself and the cat. I have, however, realized that I am safe and usually try to stay calm. But there have been times when I am so upset that my heart pounds so hard in my chest, I’m afraid I’ll have a heart attack. My doctor can’t see me for five or six weeks.

  34. Hi,

    I am glad I have found your website.

    I suffer from Epilepsy. What I have found is- when I DO NOT TAKE MEDICATION, and prior to ever been diagnosed with epilepsy and being prescribed with medication, I get the following:

    – Visual disturbances (seeing things on TV monitor, on walls etc). This happens mostly after I wake up from sleep for a minute and then it goes away, but it also happens before I fall asleep. I have also noticed it’s happening during the daytime (weird things, like seeing figures staring at me or going past me on the tv monitor when it’s switched off).

    I thought I was going nuts- until I realised it was something to do with my brain activity- because whenever I take my anti epileptic drugs, I get none of this? So it all must be linked right?

    It’s so freaky.

    • Talk to your dr but it is almost certainly linked. Visual hallucinations in epilepsy are very common and there’s a type of epilepsy that only happens at night in which it’s really common. Usually geometric shapes moving about. May have to do with the brain’s visual cortex firing when it has no external stimulus causing images to appear real. If it’s not happening when you are taking your medicine the likelihood that it is linked to your epilepsy is extremely high.

  35. FEW HALLUCINATION STORIES AHEAD BY ME

    Im 16 right now but I’ve been hallucinate like this since I was 10 and i’ve had some pretty scare things.
    I had two in one night a few days ago. BUT these only happen when I have either my phone light or laptop light is on low (i listen to music when I sleep), the dimmest of lights will cause me to hallucinate, If I can see everything in my room clearly in the dim light this is when I will hallucinate.

    lately I’ve been getting lots of spiders in my room and I hate spiders so every night I would look around for any before going to sleep and on that night i woke up slight but it felt like I was in a dream and as i looked to the right I saw a large black figure of a spider crawling from the far side of my room and up the wall to where my head was, I quickly sat up and jump out of my bed to my bedroom light and turned it on standing there looking around for a few minutes before going to bed. then on the same night I had another one where it was more sound than visual this time, I was facing the other way from when the shadow of the spider was and as I was laying on my side I woke up again but felt like a dream and I thought I could hear female voices talking about spiders or something I dont quite remember this one and yet again I sat up and got out of bed to turn on the light to look around.

    I also remember the first time I had hallucinations at age 10, I was still in my old house and I had the biggest room. I had my bed in the far corner of the room so basically I could see every corner and inch on my room from my bed, and yes dim lights caused it to happen. so when I was hallucinating I saw black heads pop out from my curtains and standing in front of my bed looking at me and I remember just waving at them confused before getting up to turn on my light.

    Another one was when I was 11 and still in my old house and of course dim light again. I was sleeping on my side facing the wall and as I woke up I saw a black figure of a man I think, it was very skinny and it was just sitting there on the corner on the roof above me but this time it jumped at me and I of course quickly jump out of bed to find nothings there.

    Another one I remember was when I was 13-14 I think and I was in my new house by then and I was laying on my back my phone dimmed again and woke up again feeling like a dream and half asleep and i looks down at my curtains in front of me and saw a lady standing there she look to be from the 70’s and as I was looking around I saw arrows covering the curtains and the walls in front of me so this time I was to afraid to get up to my room light because she was right next to it so I just turn on my phone light fully and looked around.

    so yea those are the ones I remember. I know most of you are probably saying ‘Just turn off your phone or laptop light fully so it wont happen’ see thats a problem because when I do turn the lights off fully I think theres somethings in the room with me since I cant see anything so being able to have the light on dim I can still see around the room. I dont know maybe theres like some kind of story behind these or conections maybe you could help me?

    • Hi Savannah
      Wow reading your response makes me feel kinda weird. I’m 29 now and I’ve had these experiences for most of my life. Now I’m older I remember them better when they happen. I too have had the scary black figured man at the end of my bed. It’s almost like he’s an old highway man. And I’ve seen the lady once, a few years back just stood there. I have things floating by my head and things trying to get my dogs. It’s awful and I’ve now excepted it just happen. No one really gets it when I try to explain. My partner just tells me to go back to sleep but I don’t think they get how scary it is for us. Take the other night, I had a medieval lamp floating near my bed…
      Anyway thanks for sharing.
      Hope you sleep better
      Verity

  36. For some reason I got to sleep but wake up like 15 minutes later and I see scary things like a big spider jumping on my face and I jump up and run down the stairs every time and it happens 3 times a week, I’m only 15 years old.

  37. This happened only twice, last night it was swarm of flying insects penetrating the mosquito net I was sleeping in, actually they had penetrated it was scary
    I dont know whether I woke up from sleep because of this incident or when I open my eyes I saw this incident??? then I asked someone to switch on the light and fan to make it go away it lasted only few seconds
    The truth is I literally saw those insects with open eyes

    Second experience was when I saw a BIG SPIDER running in the ceiling and going away.

    Both events happened when the light was switched off , weird thing is I saw it literally when I switched on the light as well and those images lasted for few seconds.

    Praise be to God for I always know when I call for help my Lord Jesus answers.

  38. I have been having trouble sleeping for the past few months. When I try to go to sleep, I keep seeing these black figures of people just standing by me, watching me. This one time I felt this hand randomly touch me, rubbed me. Only has this happened to me once, I heard this voice start crying. This used to happen to me all the time when I was little. This is the first time it has happened in a long while. I actually am having an episode as I’m writing this. It’s good to know that I am not the only one having this problem.

  39. I’ve recently just started having these type of odd dreams. I was sitting on my couch this morning and I fell asleep only to be waking up by a face of a black man looking at me. I jumped up and rushed to my phone to call my boyfriend to tell him what happened. Just terrifying to me. I also suffer from depression, hypothyroidism, anxiety attacks. It just recently got worse after my breakup with my boyfriend. I don’t know…it’s weird.

  40. I’m on dylasis 3 days a week 4 hours each time.One day last week I went to sleep during dylasis as I go at 5am.when I woke up I saw that my nurses there had purple hair. When I told them they of course didn’t. I went back to sleep and when I woke again I saw purple again! Now today a week later it happened again, I woke up and saw purple and green! Each time I woke up I saw purple and green.. Am I going crazy? Is there something wrong with my eyes? Please ,what could explain this?

    • Hi Cindy
      It’s hard to say if it’s a sleep hallucination, though it sounds like it could be if it’s only happening when you wake up. If it’s really stressing you out, speak to your doctor about it for some reassurance.
      Regards
      Ethan

    • Good gracious Cindy – same here with dialysis. Same time, same amount of hours. In my case, people were appearing above me. Then, they were appearing in orange colored clothing. There was even one time I was able to briefly control it and I saw an orange and black super sports car – for a brief second. It all started when I started dialysis 8 weeks ago.

      What also happens are perfect geometric patterns and designs that scroll down, or appear as a full view pattern just before I wake up. HATE THOSE!

      I can’t take any of it

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