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 see “ghosts” at night. They are there at my bedroom door or at the foot of my bed and it seems when they realize I’m watching them they leave the room, always by the door. This started about 4 months ago. I’m driving my husband crazy because I’ll sit up, grab him and yell at the ‘ghosts’ to get out. I dread going to bed because this has gone from a once a month thing to a three times a night thing.

  2. I really need help. I’m so exhausted. My hallucinations have got worse. Mine are pure fear and the hallucinations are so convincing. I react to them. When I have them I have to first go through the questions like is it real? Then when I realise I am reacting to them , i often flick the light on in my sleep and do what I need to and then when I’m coming around a bit it takes me so long to convince myself that it wasn’t real. I’ve seen me too terrified to go back to bed.
    How can I make this known to my doctors who are very hard to convince. I need help

    • Hi Jes
      Thanks for your comment, and sorry to hear you’re having a hard time sleeping because of this. I think the best thing might be to suggest to them what you think it could be. Say you’ve done some research and your symptoms seem exactly like sleep hallucinations. That will hopefully help them take you seriously, as it shows you’ve already looked into it.
      Regards
      Ethan

  3. 18 year old here, I frequently hear complex music or voices before I fall asleep , probably a couple times a week, the notes said this usually happens in older people, anything I should be worried about?

    • Hi Nick
      If it’s only happening just before you fall asleep, I don’t think you need to worry about it. If it happens at other times during the day, that would be more cause for concern.
      Regards
      Ethan

  4. Last night I dreamt I was on a small island with ‘others’ (not sure who). They all jumped down from the island and walked towards the shore. When I jumped down I was caught by the wind and blown around the sky over the beach. I was suspended in the air for a short time totally unable to move. Suddenly a force started to shake me up and down violently mid air. I then felt a pair of ‘hands’ grab me very hard around my ribs. The experience was so real and when I woke I was in a state of complete terror. I have never experienced anything as real and as frightening in my life. I can still feel the hands on me now, hours later. I have had the usual scary dreams but never experienced a ‘tactile nightmare’ and hope I never do again.

  5. I’ve had these for years, since I was a teenager. Just as I’m going to sleep I’ll see a man standing over me, then I’ll scream, my husband and kids have had to put up with it for years unfortunately, now they are all used to it. Once I ran out of the bedroom trying to get away from it still asleep, but obviously misjudged where the door was and my arm was black & blue the next day.

  6. I came here to see if I can find answers.
    I am aware of astral projection and I have tried it many times.
    Search it up because it is very similar to this.
    Anyway. When I fall asleep during the day mostly I hear things like. Doors slamming shut. Front door opening. Voices sometimes and sometimes when I open my eyes there is weird patterns on my eyes. To the point I can’t see the room properly only these shapes.
    Like last night for example. I was seeing a bright yellow orb light which was close to my eyes and then it burst like a firework and that kept going like a loop of the same thing.
    Partly some of it I believe is astral projection and the other half I think could be this hallucination thingy. :)

  7. I had regular occurances (2 a week at least) where I would wake up in terror thinking that there was someone in my bedrooom. It would be an object that my imagination had turned into a person and my waking up and shouting would annoy the heck out of my bf. I found that wearing a mask and drinking a pint of water before bed both helped. I changed my job from teacher to something less stressful and now only get them once per week.

  8. I have just began my nqt year so I am stressed but I keep seeing children in my sleep as I wake to start with I thought it was my son but now that the image is clearer I realise it’s. not was starting to worry when I read this article I feel better as I know from an MRI I have leisions on my brain good to know not so crazy well no more than the rest of the world! What can I do to stay relaxed at bed time .

  9. I’m 31 and have these experiences too. I’ve found some of the images or events happening are symbolic. I used to wake up thinking there was a snake in my bed, which would freak me out of course. This happened when I was stressed about the questionable loyalty of a friend and hadn’t confronted them about it.
    Last year I saw I giant squid on the ceiling but that was stress from my illustration class (I had to draw a squid).
    I also “come to” during the night and realise I’m not only awake, but talking to someone. I don’t know who these people are supposed to be, or what I was talking abou. I don’t know what causes this one. Any suggestions?

    • Hi Anthony
      Thanks for your comment. I think the waking up and talking might be just you taking some time to fully wake up, with your sleep state still partly there, merging from one to the next. I wouldn’t worry about it!
      Regards
      Ethan

  10. I too have frightening hypnopompic hallucinations of spiders when I wake during the night. I can completely eliminate the hallucinations if I wear an eye mask.

  11. I see so many talk about this as something they are ‘suffering from’, which puzzles me as I have always thought about it as opposite. A cinema-like experience before drifting off to sleep. I have experienced Hypnagogic hallucinations for as long as I can remember and in fact until recently I thought that everyone experienced it upon falling asleep.
    I see vivid shapes, colours, weird animals, humans with monsterlike faces and half-men/half-beast creatures. It happens almost every night, and has for years (that’s why I thought it was normal:) I have however never been afraid (jolted a few times over snakes or the feeling of falling,) but I immediately understand that it is nothing to be afraid of. As a lover of fairytales and stories the hallucinations have instead been a wonderful and almost magical experience that I hope will never fade.

  12. It’s awful I dont no if these are real or my medication. BIt for a fee months now the as been a little girl in my bedroom I wake and she’s there stood next to my tv close to my bed I ask her what she wants but she disapears. Tonight I had been asleep about 20mins and I suddenly woke and the was a tall man stood near my tv close to my bed I said hay what ya doing and he vanished. It this me is it real or is it my medication. Everything seems so real.

    • Hi Lucie
      Thanks for your comment. It depends what the medication is. You could mention this to your doctor and see if they can advise you if the mediation is causing it. If not, it could be a sleep hallucination you keep having, in which case, try the tips in the article to see if they help.
      Regards
      Ethan

  13. As a child, I would have rather frequent leg kicks while falling asleep. More recently, I’m over 50, I have been experiencing rather frequent and scary events while trying to fall asleep. I know I am awake still. I close my eyes and then it begins shortly thereafter. I see what appear to be, black ink spots taking different forms. I’m not sure what other colors are present. I also always hear a very loud swoosh sound that starts in my left ear and goes into my head or through my head to my other ear, not sure. It happens quickly out of nowhere and is very loud and disturbing. Last night, I opened my eyes to see if it would happen with them open, I don’t recall if it did, but I know I could not make out anything in the room. It was pitch black. Normally, I can make out some shadows of the door or some other objects. I closed my eyes again and it started again. I was trying to see if these ink-like blobs were forming any distinguishable images, but I don’t recall if they did. I can only say what I am experiencing is loud and frightening. I am on two different meds which I have been on for over a year, so I’m not certain if they would be contributing to this phenomena. I don’t like this at all.

  14. I’m so glad I’m not crazy. Or maybe I am but at least not alone. These visuals at night have been happening to me as long as I can remember. I often see a human figure and it remains intact until I shoot up in bed and turn the light on and it is actually clothes on a chair. I see faces often usually in wall hangings which are usually flowers or decorative in nature..again turning the light on they go away. My ceiling fan above my bed scared the crap out of me the other night when the light cover came down off the fan as if it was a hidden camera and went back up into the fan as a sat up in bed. Crazy, right ? I could go on, there have been so many crazy things at night. I’m used to it by now but it still boggles my mind why it happens and what is going on. I have been on blood pressure medication for several years and I am wondering if this is a side effect.

  15. This is a very refreshing read. I too have experienced visual and tactile episodes that will wake me up suddenly and have become frustrated with the situation due to the incident keeping me from falling back to sleep. I have experienced geometric shapes, feelings of insects, and appearances of people in my room. I never thought too much about it because I could usually talk myself down from discrediting a very real looking person in my room until I can realize that it is in fact just my chair or a coat hanger for example. What I can bring to this discussion about me to reassure others is that I’ve realized the two incidents that bring upon these episodes.
    I work as a firefighter working a 24 hour shift schedule in a high urban area that leads to very infrequent and broken sleep due to emergency responses, which leaves me exhausted at times. I encounter these episodes when either I am completely exhausted or when I am at the fire station. I very rarely get a good night sleep at the fire station and I never really experience these episodes when I am home having uninterrupted sleep. These hallucinations that wake me up at night that start very real and soon become realized for what they are happen for me only at the fire station where I very rarely have a perfect nights rest.
    This is a good read that makes me realize that it is not just myself that is dealing with this experience. I understand it for what it is and I have become better and quicker at identifying it when it is occurring, which in turn brings me back to sleep faster.

    • I am a nurse and work 13 hour night shifts three nights a week. We have a disabled daughter, and caring for her is a 24 hour a day job. Our stress levels are constantly high and we seldom ever get to sleep through the night. My hallucinations occur upon awakening, now every time I wake up, and consist of spiders, faces, people, shapes. My mind takes objects that exist and turns them into scary things; decorative items on the walls are frequently seen as frightening faces. The worse hallucination occurred several days ago, I opened my eyes to see a group of people standing/sitting in the hall. When they became aware of me they turned and looked my way; and seemed to be talking badly about me. I purposely closed my eyes three times before they disappeared. It was a threatening and scary experience. I am not psychotic and have no mental deficits or known mental illnesses, but I’ve been worried that I might be losing my mind. This thread has done much to quiet my fears and I now have something to go on to perhaps resolve this issue. I’ve been reluctant to go to the MD, afraid that he would automatically assume that I am having visual hallucinations related to psychosis. Thanks for sharing your experiences, everyone. I know I feel better now.

      • Hi Leigh
        Thanks for your comment. I’m glad you found the article and comments helpful. Sometimes knowing you’re not alone makes a big difference. It sounds like it’s possible the stress and probably sleep deprivation from shift work and caring is part of the problem. There’s no harm in talking to your doctor about it, but I’d also see it perhaps as a warning sign that you need to find a way to give yourself some respite from time to time.
        Regards
        Ethan

  16. I have these and I kind of like it. When it happens, I know what I’m seeing isn’t real. So it’s rather enjoyable and a bit of a hoot. Sometimes I see (in the dark) what appears to be a swirling electrical field or something around my uncovered arm. If I reach out to touch it, it gets disturbed, like touching swirling water. Cool as hell. I was attributing it to one of my prescription medications perhaps. I am definitely not psychotic. My sleep patterns vary, and some nights I get more sleep than others. I don’t see anything in colors, always in a dark room. I get them both when I fall asleep and when waking in the middle of the night. I just go with it. If I start experiencing headaches out of the ordinary, I may get a brain scan to check for lesions. Otherwise, I’m going to chalk them up to meds and/or funky sleep patterns.

  17. Thanks for this article. I’ve been suffering from this for years. For me it always happens as I’m drifting off to sleep. Usually I will jolt up out of bed in a panic because I can see spiders falling from the ceiling on to me. Sometimes it will be a snake somewhere in my bed that I’m frantically searching for until I realise what I’m doing and my husband asks me what am I doing?
    On 3 occasions it has been a person sitting next to my bed watching over me. That is scary and honestly until reading this I thought that it was a spirit, thankfully it has only ever happened a few times.
    I find that I don’t experience this happening as often as it used to, I’m 36 now and maybe only experience it once a month or less. It used to be very frequent in my teens and twenties.
    After reading through the responses I find it really interesting that so many of us all experience hallucinations of spiders, surely this isn’t a coincidence, I would love to find out more about it.
    I think you are right and that stress triggers it, last night I had one of the scary ones where I seen a man next to my bed. I had gone to bed upset and stressed after finding out my cousin is on life support and maybe that is why it happened. From now on i’am going to write down when it has happened and what is going on in my life that might have triggered it.

    • Your experiences are so similar to mine! I’m 22 and had these hallucinations for years, more often then not i will wake to see spiders all over my room or 1 giant spider on my bedroom floor, it scares the living day lights out of me but i have learnt to tell myself its not real and manage to calm down. I also had a snake one once, it was on my pillow and i chopped it in half for some reason and one half went under my pillow which caused me to frantically search my bed until i snapped out of it a few minutes later. The most frightening ones i have had was not recognizing my boyfriend and i would be terrified of him to the point i would be crying and thinking a dead person was walking around my room but after a minute or so i snap out of it and go back to sleep. My ex had a fright once when i woke him up kicking my legs and screaming as i thought a spider was lowering itself onto my face haha. I love reading other peoples experiences as i never really knew what they were. I have always been a sleep talker and used to rummage in my wardrobe when i was young whilst i was asleep but it just seems to have stemmed from that. I may do the same as yourself in regards to the journal, there must be a trigger for it, just a case of finding out what.

  18. I’m glad it’s not just me! I always wondered if what I experience was a form of sleep paralysis, but I’ve always been able to move. They’re not too frequent thankfully, but I do have auditory and visual hallucinations sometimes. Strangely enough, only visual when I’m waking up and only auditory when I’m falling asleep.
    I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes and see things like an old man, a woman, a camera tripod once (no idea what that’s about). Once I thought I had a spider on my face and pulled a muscle leaping out of bed! When I’m falling asleep, it’s always the voice of someone I know and I can never remember what they’ve said.
    The visual ones have only ever happened when I’m stressed or upset, and the auditory ones happen at random and are more frequent. It all only started around a year ago. I’m just glad I’m not the only one!

  19. I’m in a particularly stressful time in my life and I’ve started to have auditory hallucinations before falling asleep. Sometimes it’s a dog barking, a baby crying, a family members voice yelling my name. Random noises that scared me and I thought I was loosing my mind. This was really reassuring to read. Last night however after I layed down I had a very vivid dream that my boyfriend got up out of bed and had a conversation with me. I woke up right after that but was freaked out to find him asleep. The dream was so real I thought I was already awake. Maybe a lucid dream. I’m definitely going to try relaxing more before bed.

  20. I have been having scary hallucinations as I wake up. It is nearly always near the window and uses the form of something that is already there, and then morphs into something else. Because I can see the shape in the darkness that is already there, it scares the crap out of me that I can then see it move/morph into something scary that is coming to get me. This makes me feel petrified, sometimes jumping out of bed with my heart hammering and I have to turn the light on to satisfy myself there is nothing bad there. It is horrible and obviously I don’t always look forward to falling asleep. I had them as a child too, and for much of my adult life. Because I can see the object already there, it scares me because I know I must be awake/semi awake and that’s why I feel so frightened when I see the cad shape move or morph because I know I’m awake, so it is worse than a nightmare. I also have nightmares and very vivid dreams that I always remember. Sleeping is exhausting sometimes!!!

  21. As a small child I recal believing their were viscous animals and/or monsters at the end of my bed, under the covers so id sleep with bent knees , this lasted for years. Now if I sleep in dim light I see spiders, always spiders , swinging on their web towards me. Seems to be getting worse , not helped by the fact that recently I have actually had a spider , very quickly reeling its way down to me whilst sitting and a few weeks ago awoke to one next to my head. Also found a dead one under my f ing pillow.??????

    • Hi Lila
      Thanks for your comment. I can understand how that must have made things even worse! It’s one thing to see spiders, but another to know that sometimes they actually are real! I guess in your case, the best way might be to find a way to make peace with spiders and not be worried by them.
      Regards
      Ethan

  22. Thank you for this article. I am writing this in fact just after several episodes and deciding to read about what I may be experiencing online, so it is very nice to see sun an in depth write up on something I have tirelessly tried explaining to friends and family members who have never experienced this before. It’s interesting you mention the triggers, as I feel most of my episodes happen either when I am worried about something, like sleeping through my alarm when I have to be up for work in the morning, or if I am feeling a larger than normal amount of stress. I suffer from asthma, and just last night I ran out of my inhaler and missed out on any available walk in clinics, and as opposed to going to emergency and waiting for hours I decided to try and wait until the morning to head to the walk in. I have now woken up three separate moments to seeing figures or hearing loud noises, one being a loud crack in the hardwood leading me to think there was an intruder in the house, and then two where I thought there was a person in my room. As I was having difficulty regulating my breathing throughout the night, I am curious to know if the asthma is the cause of this specific episode! Also, very neat hearing every one else’s stories. I am 24 and can remember going in to my parents room as a child because I didn’t like the images I could make out in the grainy blackness, and once I was in there room I would just lay in bed half asleep trying to decide if I wanted to make out the images I could see or shut them out. Dreaming is always a very involved experience for me as I tend to remember in great detail anywhere from 3-6 dreams a night, some of which I document and turn in to short stories. As well, I suffer on seldom occasions from sleep paralysis, the reoccurring image being a dark haired girl in the room walking towards me and holding me down. Always terrifying as it happens, and is the one thing I really do not enjoy about what can happen at night. But, the biggest sleep disruption definitely has to be the part of waking up and feeling/seeing a presence or hearing sounds. Hoping to be able to get a handle on this so I can function at work a little better. Anyways, this was enlightening; I will bring this up with my doctor when I get my prescription refilled today!

    • Hi Alexandria
      Thanks for your comment and I’m glad you found the article useful. I know many readers have said they find it difficult explaining their sleep problems to others, especially where things like hallucinations are concerned. It’s possible the asthma was connected to the problems you had that night, especially if it left you feeling anxious. Hopefully speaking to your doctor will have helped, and they gave you some good advice and reassurance.
      Regards
      Ethan

  23. I have had severe anxiety for about a month. 3 days ago, I was in the car with my mother and I put in my headphones (the music was pretty loud as usual) and when I took them out I heard a ringing in my ears. The ringing hasn’t stopped and it’s been 3 days. I looked it up (unfortunately) and found that I could have tinnitus. However one of the comments said that if you listen really closely you could hear voices. This scared me so bad because my father was a schizophrenic-delusional and I am terrified of turning out like him. Since then the noise has increased and I worry more. I don’t know if I’m hearing voices or not because sometimes it sounds like murmurs, rings or hissing. My hearing has become heightened and I can hear EVERYTHING. I’m in such distress and I haven’t been to sleep in 3 days. I am so terrified that I could become schizo.

    • Hi Gabby
      Thanks for your comment. I can understand your concern considering the family history, but I think it’s important to try and keep perspective on this. There’s a clear reason you started hearing the ringing – the loud music. And if you listen carefully and intently enough to any sound, or tinnitus even, most people would eventually kid themselves into thinking they can hear something else beyond the sound. My advice would be to try to both speak to a doctor about your hearing to make sure you haven’t done any damage to your ears, but at the same time try not to focus on it too much. If you finds yourself listening out for voices, do somethign else to distract yourself, and preferably something that doesn’t involve more music or sound.
      Regards
      Ethan

  24. Hi, there are periods when I find trouble sleeping, I fall asleep and wake up moments later to see weird things on my wall or ceiling. like a cluster of black dots moving from the wall to the ceiling and disappearing, a white or red orb of gas moving across the ceiling, sections of the wall like in the corner with dark stains. It always disappears quickly, and at first I was scared but realized it’s from my mind. Is this characteristic of the hypnagogic hallucinations you’re talking about? A friend suggested there may be something stimulating these sights, like vibrations, strange electrical phenomena, the configuration of the room creating illusions, the fact I had radiotherapy on my brain etc.

    • Hi orlybabe
      Thanks for your comment. Yes, what you describe sounds just like sleep hallucinations, so I wouldn’t worry about it being anything more serious. If you find it disturbing, try the ideas in the article, but perhaps the best thing you can do is to not focus on them as much as possible.
      Regards
      Ethan

    • Hi Orlybabe,
      I find a similar situation also. It only happens every so often. Last night I was having a hard time getting to sleep, when I woke up from a nightmare about an hour after I must have fallen to sleep. I opened my eyes to clearly see a pinkish coloured jellyfish like creature moving up from over my bed just off to the right of me. It was moving just like a swimming jellyfish, had short but condensed tentacles that were reminiscent of how meat comes out of a mincer. There were hundreds of short grub like things of the same colour all over the ceiling also. The jellyfish ‘swam’ up to the ceiling then floated across to the top-right corner of my room, my view of it was obstructed by a large Chinese lantern I have hanging from my window. As it was floating accross it was disappearing along with the grubs. I sat up to check if it had gone after I couldn’t see it. I actually thought it might be some alien energy beings of some sort that feed off the negative energy of the nightmare, or some other dimensional creature. These sort of awakenings have happened quite a few times but not always in the same appearances. I do wonder if they are real in some way, as I feel very much awake and aware of the strangeness of these things. And I also watch in the directions they go feeling like I am fully aware and amazed at seeing these “energetic beings”.

  25. Very recently I’ve found myself on the very edge of sleep, before rapidly snapping awake to be greeted by often times black and white visions of people. Sometimes it’s a rapidly shifting and fluid image, swapping from one person to another with different expressions and sometimes even sounds. However the vision I had tonight (which prompted me to find this article) was of a scene of two young boys dressed as though from the late sixties outside of a cottage-like house playing. The strange part about this vision was that I saw it as though it was being played through an old style movie projector (jittery images with poor definition) and it was played like an old home movie (bad camera work and too close, close-ups of the boys). Strager still I felt as though I recognised the house and the boys despite only being 20 myself and unfamiliar with footage of this type. I really want to uncover the mystery behind this mystery image, and hope I’ll get another chance tomorrow night, so fingers crossed!

  26. Tonight I was laying in bed in the dark and I don’t really remember falling asleep. All I remember is that I was trying to fall asleep and having a hard time. I have a Samsung Galaxy phone and I must have gotten a notification because the Led light starting flashing. Well as the light started flashing I all of a sudden saw hundreds of random words all over my ceiling. The best way to describe it was like if someone painted random words all over the ceiling with an invisible ink that could only be seem with a blacklight and my phone flashing was the blacklight. I started to try and focus and see if they would go away and I was just tripping but as I focused I was starting to see them even more clear so I sat up and grabbed my phone to stop the light. I don’t really know what to think about this. Hopefully it’s nothing serious.

  27. Thanks for this article. My son who is 9 has recently been experiencing these as I did when I was a child. I do have type 1 narcolepsy, I’m now wondering and worrying if he will develop this too and had inherited it from me. He’s showing no signs of daytime sleepiness at all in fact I often think he’s allergic to sleep! I guess it’s a waiting and seeing game as mine didn’t manifest until my teens, I really hope it doesn’t :(
    In the meantime I will help him by using some of the relaxation techniques and hope they are short lived

    • Hi Louise
      Thanks for your comment. I wouldn’t stress too much if he’s showing none of the signs. Sleep hallucinations are very common, so although I imagine it would be tempting to wonder if he will have the same sleep disorder as you, there’s every chance he won’t. Keep an eye, of course, and if his sleep starts becoming disturbed, speak to your family doctor about it. And in the meantime, helping him find ways to deal with the hallucinations is a positive step.
      Regards
      Ethan

  28. i have seen a few different images over the last couple of months…first of all a man at the end of my bed who drifted up thru the ceiling…thought it was a ghost!!…person again at the side of me then drifting back…next time was a loft hatch with a ladder nd snake around it! moving up it…then a angel/butterfly type thing flapping above me after a really bad dream…now it was a devil character wagging its finger at me!…hadnt even done anything wrong!…i used to see things when i was a child but never since until now…i am now 51…i am stressed as my mum has alzheimers so thats very difficult but to honest i have had worse times in my life and it didnt happen then???…seems odd.

  29. I’m 52 and I’ve been having hypnogogic hallucinations since I was 12…I didn’t know what it was called until my early 40’s , started to get them Everynight , 2 or 3 sometimes more episodes a night , I would see a person, multiple people, vivid distinct recognisable beings, family , acquaintances, standing at the end of my bed or leaning right over me staring me right In the face, standing on my hubbys side of the bed, in the doorway, leaning over my hubby- I’d jump out of bed, calling out and turn on the lights, scaring the hell out of my man- thought I was going insane…this was when my three babies were 2, 5 and 7 years, we had our own intensely stress filled business, my poor hubby, I realise how much he absolutely loved me, because it meant both of us were sleep deprived and he never gave up on me, he suggested we try a psychiatrist and he promised me he would never let anyone take me away, lock me up in a nuthouse or do anything I wasn’t 100% okay with, saw this wonderful woman told her my story and she causally said ” you’re okay, are you a creative person ( I’m a graphic designer, signwriter, artist and used to work in advertising for a decade ) you’re just having hypnogogic hallucinations, you’re not crazy heaps of people have them”, wrote me a script for sleeping pills to try and re-construct my “sleep architecture” so I would not have the long “before falling asleep period” – just go bang straight to deep sleep. It worked for several months but then I don’t know if I got used to the sleeping tabs plus I didn’t want to be on them so I simply just stopped and tried living in the HH world.
    In my teens, early twenties, it was the same hallucination – a being, a tallish black curly haired slender man, standing at the end of my bed, next to my bed or bent over leaning right above my face looking at me while I was sleeping, sometimes I thought I could see him smile, sometimes just staring straight at me, most times his face was not clear, his nationality not exact sometimes I thought he was black but then I’d see him white or pale grey, Mr black curly hair only came once or twice a month in my teens … and I would call out to him, or jump up to reach out to him, spring out of bed to run to him if he was standing in my bedroom doorway, my school friends loved sleepovers With me, my hallucinations were nighttime entertainment, Mr BCH never used to scare me as such, sometimes startle and unsettle me, make me curious but not frighten me and I could remember each detail of every Hallucination straight after it happened and for Days thereafter .
    My girlfriends said I would talk out loud to him -Mr Black Curly Hair, they say the funniest was when I asked him “had he been out yabbying?”… sat bolt right up in bed, reached my arm out as if taking something from him then lay back down and went to sleep.
    And it didn’t just happen in my bedroom, the HH would happen wherever I would sleep.
    At the age of 18, I was away visiting friends with my first serious boyfriend we had gone to bed late, he said I started to doze then I said “hey” out loud and reached up with both arms as if running my fingers through someone’s hair… Mr BCH’s curly black hair it was, it freaked my boyfriend out because it was the first night we had been away all night together and I never told him about my sleep hallucinations episodes because I thought he’d think I was a nutter.
    From a very young age I sleep walked, one time all the way down to my oldest sisters house at the end of our street, another time down to the big shed that housed my fathers prime movers crawled inside the cab and went to sleep in the bunk,… I was 3 years old when the sleep walking started.
    I’ve also always had vivid cinematic amazing dreams that I remember completely when I wake up.
    I notice that if I eat or drink tea or coffee in the two hours before going to bed, I can have anything up to 5 hallucinations, so I go to bed hungry. If I’m upset or worried about something to do with one of my children, I will have threatening hallucations which scare me.
    If a client has gotten me riled up at work or upset, unsettled me I will have angry phyisical hallucinating that night.
    When my elderly mum was very sick for a long time and had to have major surgery plus long stay in hospital, my HH were of her – i’d jump out of bed to reach out to her or call her name out loud .

    • Hi J
      Thanks for your comment and for sharing your experiences in such detail. It seems you’re quite a sensitive person, and that what happens during the day and evening affects your sleep. As you say, it’s good to control things that affect your sleep such as food. But also, maybe doing some relaxation exercises before bed could help to prevent the stresses of daily life from interfering with your sleep.
      Regards
      Ethan

      • Thanks Ethan, I will try relaxation exercises… I get regular deep tissue massage and I noticed that when I am holidays We spoil ourselves and have Thai massage every second night and I can go the whole 3 weeks and first week home without a Hypnagogic H, so you may be on to something with trying to relax completely before going to bed … one day when money falls out of the sky I want to be like in the movies where your own masseuse comes around and massages your stress away right before you go to bed .

  30. So this happened for the second time today; the first was 3 months ago. It was simple: I woke up, opened my eyes thinking it was real, but everything seemed blurry. I tried to move out of bed, but suddenly I was back in bed in the same position. Now, I realized that had been a dream and thought that this time it was real. Again, I tried to get out of bed, but I was snapped back to being in bed with my eyes closed. This repeated 5-6 times before I focused all my strength on moving my hand, which finally woke me up. I was terrified because every time I tried, I ended up in the same situation. I wondered: is this it? Will I even really wake up? My experience wasn’t as long and detailed as what others have mentioned, but I do sometimes have lucid dreams. They don’t have a lot of details or control over movement; I just go with the flow of the dream and alter stuff according to my liking. Is it possible that this is just the beginning since I’m only 20 years old?

    • Hi Andrew
      Thanks for your comment. Perhaps sleeping with a nightlight could be helpful, to give you brain something to focus on when you wake up. You might also like to check out my article about sleep paralysis, as there are lots of tips in that one that could help you in case it happens again. Try not to allow yourself to be scared to sleep though – it’s good to stay positive and try to see every night as a fresh start.
      Regards
      Ethan

  31. So I’m not as “special” as I thought.. I often jolt awake (as I’m falling asleep) to a large spider hanging over my face. Im out of bed squatting the air, whilst my husband searches the bed lol he thinks I’m nuts meanwhile I’m still freaked out.
    I also sleep talk/walk & twitch. Usually all when I’m extremely tired.

    • Omg this is wierd bc I have had the same thing happen to me numerous times … at least 4 different occasions. Last night it was that large spider and it seems real . I jumped out of bed heart racing looking for it. This cannot be a coincidence we see the same thing. I never even think about spiders.. you would think you would hallucinate things that are on your mind. This is weird.

  32. As a young child I found falling to sleep really difficult, especially in the summer months when bed time was still light and the curtains were thin! As a young adult my sleep patterns were far more regular and I never had a problem dropping off to sleep. I am now in my 50s and find that sleep often eludes me once more. I do sleep eventually and am not worried about it, but it is a pain!
    This got me thinking about my experiences as a young child (of about 4,5 or 6). I would hear voices in my head as I tried to sleep, sometimes chattering really , really quickly and then becoming unbearably slow and drawn out. It was horrible. No words, just the sound of a voice. I sometimes also felt that my tongue was too big for my mouth. It was not a choking sensation, just very uncomfortable.
    Reading your article, brought to mind the visual hallucinations that I had forgotten about! I saw geometric shapes in the darkness in many colours, and sometimes heads of creatures with sharp teeth, or monsters with evil grimaces.
    The landing light was always left on outside my bedroom door which created an electric glow in the gaps. This too became a scary experience for me as the door seemed to morph and melt. I was terrified of this and would close my eyes when it happened. I was so scared that it would still be there when I opened them.
    I haven’t thought about these strange childhood experiences for a number of years until tonight trying to get to sleep. Thought I would Google to see what came up! Your article has answered my question about what these experiences were all about, so thank you.
    I have also experienced sleep paralysis just once! This happened when my first child was just a few days old and I was very sleep deprived. On this particular morning whilst lying in bed, a dark, menacing shape of a man (or so I thought) came into the room and filled most of the space around me. It was a large, dark, black presence. It pressed me down onto the bed so I couldn’t move and I felt that I was suffocating. I tried to call out but I couldn’t speak. I was totally convinced that it was REAL! I was amazed not to die! It seems funny now but at the time it was truly terrifying.
    I was very interested to read about hallucinatory smells connected to sleep, as this is also something which I have experienced. The first time it happened, I was 7 months pregnant with my second child and on holiday in a rented cottage. I woke up with a start and smelled intense burning. Adrenaline kicked in and I leapt out of bed in search of the fire. Over the years, this has happened occasionally but over a period of a few months when I was in my forties, I would leap out of bed every few weeks or so with the smell of burning in my nostrils. I once ran towards the window to try to get out! My brain, however, would often work out what was happening before my body did, so I would be jumping and running about knowing that there was no fire but not able to stop straight away.
    Thanks once again for a very interesting article.

    • Hi Gill
      Thanks for your comment. I’m glad you found the article interesting! Did you also see the one about sleep paralysis?
      It was interesting to read about the hallucinations of burning – I can imagine that must have been quite worrying at the time. It’s a good job you didn’t go diving through the window!
      Regards
      Ethan

  33. This week I’ve experienced some strange sensations. I have before in the past as well, but never so close together, so frequently. Perhaps I’ve been eating too much chocolate as I just received a lot for my birthday, and I think it interrupts my sleep possibly being the cause of these hallucinations?
    This week I have felt the presence of a non existent cat jump onto my bed, I’ve been awoken to loud noises, like a machine noise though I can’t name the machine, it sounded like it was right beside my head or in my head. I have felt myself spinning, I opened my eyes and saw grass, like I was flying / spinning around a backyard that I didn’t recognize. I wasn’t on any ride, it was just me going up and down round and around, which was fun for a moment but I couldn’t control it / stop it and then I got scared and wanted to wake up but I couldn’t scream. I woke up a moment later.
    This morning I woke up to the feeling I can only describe as a light ball being bounced on the bottom of my bed, or maybe it was a hand tapping the bed … there was nothing there.

  34. I always thought my house is haunted but then it followed me to my hostel in colleague then university. I’ll never stay inside my room alone, but when i put my guard down, it appeared itself as a boy without facial features wearing orange bracket shirt talking in strange language or a women with long black hair without body lying on my bed. Sometimes in washroom when i glanced through the mirror she’s behind. Once i brushing my teeth, it walk pass my back in split second in dark shadow; i throw away my toothbrush, done! i’m going to bed. If i’m alone, no matter day or night i’ll make sure front door unlocked so i can escape. Once i walked down the alley to the washroom at the hostel, she standing there besides the water machine with no lower limbs and the fluorescent light burnt out but the alley was red. Then i got my courage out of no where, i stopped running i wanted to take a good look of her face. No facial features, black long hair with white shirt. I dare not going to washroom alone. With company, we walked down the same alley together, she no longer there, the fluorescent lamps shining bright.. man whispering beside my ear just the moment when i think i’m falling asleep; once spook me enough when i feel something trying to take control of my body including my breath, left me to bring all my belongings and sleep with my friend for days before moving back to my own room.. Nevermore….

  35. I moved into this flat 3 months ago. Apparently the previous tenant was growing weed upstairs in the bedroom. I soon began to see black wriggly shapes when opening my eyes in bed. This past weekend I think I was hallucinating as I could see spiders on the walls when I opened my eyes…they disappeared within 5 to 20 seconds. Do you think I have inhaled it from the spores?

    • Hi Patricia
      Thanks for your comment. I think it’s extremely unlikely! It sounds just like hypnagogic hallucinations to me – I wouldn’t put too much thought into any spores flying around.
      Regards
      Ethan

  36. I am 22 right now.I just had it for the 4th time in past 5 months. It’s always like a pressure on a chest or on a stomach from some person(everytime i can see some different person) which does not allow me to breath for a while. It’s always happen when I sleep in the night.I don’t know how to stop them.

  37. Good to kno I’m not the only one. Havnt known whether to tell the doctor. I wake up sometimes few times a week somtimes won’t haopen for a bit. But I either see spiders or a kind pattern like string floating from ceiling. It is strange and can be worrying and the spiper things ain’t good I hate spiders. They’ve landed on my pillow before now! Well not really obviously but u guys know what I mean

  38. thanks so much for this article. We thought we were the only ones. We are about 13 years old. And when we were about six years old and four years old. That’s when it all started. We would see shapes in our room ispinning and moving and taking form of humans or animals. One of us would see skeletons. my name is gracie and my friends name is rylie today we had a conversation about dreams and slowly started slipping into the subject of what seems to be hypnogogic hillusinations. we both experienced sleep paralysis. and i often slept walk. we both became so used to it that it wasn’t scary anymore. my scariest experience is when there was a man in my room humming and telling me to follow him i would see very weird shapes and figures as well as animals and rylie expeirienced the same thing i’m very glad for this article because now that i have thought about it after so long of not even realizing it was very scary and now we both feel better that we aren’t the only ones. rylie would see messages such as gibberish words or roman numerals and every time she tries to read them they would disappear. i would often find myself talking to them or myself about trying to convince myself that it wasn’t real even tho i was young i seamed to believe they were my friends it hasn’t happened to me in about 4 years but now learning and thinking about it i feel like it’s going to happen again. rylie experienced it about 2 months ago. when she felt dizzy and num and saw numbers switching on the clock. we would often see the shape of hands or demonic figures on the wall in our rooms. one night while i reading late in bed i was trying but it seemed like my mind went blank and suddenly there was no words on the pages of my book. then i thought it was completely normal so i just refocused and the words came back. again thank you so much. and glad we had the chance to share our experiences with you in a safe environment where others have experienced it and do not think we are crazy. sincerely, gracie and rylie

    • Hi Gracie and Rylie
      Thank you for your comment and for sharing your experiences and thoughts. It was very interesting to hear how you’ve managed to accept it, and are no longer afraid when you see things. I think that learning to stay calm about it is perhaps the most important way to cope with the strange events. So it’s great that you’re doing that.
      Regards
      Ethan

  39. Hi Ethan – Thank you for your article! I have been trying to figure out what is happening to me. I have been having auditory hallucinations when falling asleep and sometimes when waking up. As if those weren’t troubling enough, when I take a nap or sleep for a short time and wake up, I experience extreme confusion, anxiety and depression. This is coupled with a very strange feeling in my ears (I have Meneire’s Disease) and I feel as if I am going crazy!! All of the feelings begin to dissapate after I sit up and some times passes – anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour to recover. ANY idea as to the cause of this?? It is ruining my life!

    • Hi Terry
      Thanks for your comment. Sorry to hear you’re having these problems – I can understand why it would be worrying for you. It’s possible that the combination of sleep hallucinations – if that’s what it is – and the Meneire’s is causing you additional confusion. I think the best thing is to mention it to your doctor and see if they can help at all. Perhaps try avoiding napping if it’s that bad, assuming you can avoid naps. It might help you sleep more fully at night, also then avoiding waking up from short sleeps.
      Regards
      Ethan

  40. So for many years I have that state when waking or falling asleep. My eyes actually flutter like they are trying to open. Mine usually starts with a bright white dot that grows than I see faces. I see people I recognize that have passed. I have even had them yell my name and sometimes even yell mom. BUT with all that said (because I do enjoy my visits) this morning I actually had a vivid image of a woman and there was subtitles in a different language. VERY STRANGE. Hence why I found this very informative article. Thanks for sharing.

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