Either I’m going crazy, or I just had the most bizarre dream

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gsilver
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13 May 2006, 1:03 pm

I just had the most bizarre sequence of dreams in my entire life.

Sometimes, when I am very tired and am trying to get to sleep, I have “sound dreams” in which I perceive myself as awake, but hear strange sounds of unknown origin, often of a person (or persons) talking about some random subject.

The strange thing about that is that I can never hear anything at all in my actual dreams (though even without any auditory feedback, I still perceive any dialog that might be present, much in the same was as my regular thoughts).

This morning, I had something similar to those “sound dreams”, but much more vivid.

Last night, I got to sleep far too late (around midnight) and woke up around 5:00 AM, unable to get back to sleep. I watched 3 episodes of Lost on my laptop (hoping I would fall asleep while watching it), before finally getting up.

About two hours ago, fatigue overcame me, so I went back to bed. This is when the sequence of dreams started. The entire sequence between lying down and getting up was about one hour and twenty minutes. Normally, it takes me an hour simply to get to sleep, so it was very strange to have any dreams at all during this time.

In every one of these dreams, I perceived myself laying on my bed, feeling very tired, and trying to get to sleep (exactly where I was and what I was doing), but unable to move, aside from opening and closing my eyes and looking around the room, until each incident was over. I am unsure of the timeframe, but there was a larger amount of percieved time between lying down and the first dream than all of the rest combined.

In the first, I saw a 1.5 inch long bug crawling down my pants leg onto the bed. It was also about one inch in diameter and very pale. My reaction to this was that the apartment probably had a bug problem, and I would call an exterminator after I got up. Moments later (I must have woken up, but there was absolutely no transition. I didn’t even blink), I sat up and examined where I saw the bug last, and saw nothing. I laid back down and tried to get to sleep.

The second was a typical “sound dream”. I don’t recall what I heard, but this was the point I realized that I couldn’t move during these incidents (even though my surroundings seemed identical, and I thought I was awake).

The third I perceived someone sitting on my bed (physically felt it. The sense of touch is also absent in my normal dreams). The person said something to me, stood up, turned to look at me and continued speaking mentioning someone in the other room, then went out the door. After the person left, I was able to move again.

After this, there were several more “sound dreams”, each with a transition where I went from being unable to being able to move, but other than that there was no other indication that I was asleep. I also had two regular (but short) dreams in this time. For the regular dreams, I did perceive myself falling asleep and waking up.

The final two “sound dreams” were the most vivid. I remember hearing a group of voices saying things like “is he awake?” and “shh!”. In the final dream, I heard some loud breathing directly above me. After hearing this, I immediately sat up.

I’m still very tired, but because of this whole incident I don’t want to try to get back to sleep for now.


Here’s the thing that makes this even more weird: When I was very young (5-6), I had a dream much like the third one, where a very strange looking person entered my room (the person looked vaguely like my sister), and dug into my back with long and sharp nails. Like today’s incidents, there was no transition from the sleep and waking states, other than the hallucination leaving and ability to move returning.


Am I going crazy, or did I just start dreaming before falling into a deep enough sleep state?

Has anyone else experienced anything like this?



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13 May 2006, 1:30 pm

Gsilver, your story is very interesting. As a kid, I had these kinds of dreams all the time. So it's probably related to AS, and you're not crazy.

As a kid, I once had this recurring dream. I was dreaming that I was lying in my bed in my own room. Every detail in my dream looked exactly as it does in real life, down to the geometric pattern on my nightlight and the logos on the drawer handles; however, the chandelier in my room did not. Instead of looking normal, it had spikes and barbed wire extending in all directions. Also, it was swaying and spinning around, making quiet howling noises in the process. All I could do in my dream was lay in my bed, and stare helplessly at the ceiling; I couldn't even get under the blanket or even close my eyes. This seemed to last for hours, even though the dream probably wasn't that long. Even when I woke up and saw the "normal" chandelier, the feelings of helplessness and fear still continued, oftentimes until the next day's bedtime.

Every morning when waking up, I never noticed any transition either. There seemed to be no changes in state between sleep and waking, not even opening my eyes. The only giveaway that I was no longer dreaming is that the chandelier in my room looked normal. Before I realized that those were only dreams, I spend hours and hours thinking how the chandelier, which was essentially an object of colored glass and wrought iron, could transform itself so radically in a matter of minutes. Needless to say, I had constant nightmares about it.



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13 May 2006, 1:48 pm

The thing about these dreams is, surely you must be mightily relieved when you wake up and come to your senses?

All the dreams you've posted seem normal to me. Don't know if there's anything particularly Aspie about them, except I wonder if we have more nightmares. I know most dreams I have are on the nightmarish side.

My recurring dream is that I'm on some sort of high building or other structure, and about to fall. However, I never do and am always saved from falling (and certain death) one way or another. Except for the last dream which I remember, which was this week (I don't always remember my dreams).

I was holding on to a giant helium balloon, greater than my own mass, and was levitated up and up, until I was a mile off the ground. The balloon then burst. Then... well, I woke up.



ion
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13 May 2006, 1:56 pm

gsilver wrote:
Am I going crazy, or did I just start dreaming before falling into a deep enough sleep state?


You don't dream when in deep sleep, you only dream when you're sleeping lightly, and you do most of your dreaming just before waking up.



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13 May 2006, 2:15 pm

Since we're talking about dreams in general, I might as well post what I wrote last November:

Early dreams: (1st 10 years or so)

1. I think that this was the earliest dream I remember: I was in the house, and I noticed a strange light down the hall (in the far bedroom). Inside the room, I see David (who was one of my friends at the time (and the only one I even remember from back then)) and someone else (forgot who) playing... but the whole room was on fire. They seemed not to notice the fire. I screamed at them to get out, but there was no response. After failing to get their attention, I run out to the kitchen where I find my mom working. I scream at her about the fire, but then I suddenly realize: I had no voice. The dream ended with me panicking and the roof of the room that was on fire collapsing (the house was made in a “L” shape, so you could see the outside of that room from the kitchen). Also, in this dream, I realized that I could never actually hear anything in dreams, but in most of them I was able to know what was being said if any dialog occurred.

2. This dream started with me swinging around like Tarzan in the jungle. At one point, I find a giant cage (bigger than any house I’ve ever lived in), and inside, there was a girl. I talked to her for a while, then spent a while looking for exits, and failing to find anything. I woke up at that point. Now here’s the thing that really made it memorable: Over the next several nights, the dream continued, each time we talked a lot, yet the girl became more frail each time. In the final dream I came back to the area and found that she was dead. After waking up, I actually cried. (and I think that it was for the first time, after being a baby (and my parents said that I hardly cried at all when I was a baby))

3. This one was really silly, but it freaked me out for a while. Near my grandmother’s house, there is a public pool. The pool had some large drains in the sides, and I never could figure out (at the time) how exactly they worked. One night, I dreamt about going to the pool. After getting to the pool, I got pulled into one of the drains. The dream then switched to an overhead view, and I heard some bizarre singing in a deep voice. The voice was saying things like “The 100 man Kersplot”. I guess that I’ve always been afraid of water after nearly drowning when I was a kid.

4. "The freeze gun". I think that I described this one in one of my earlier posts (on IGN). Anyway, this was an incredibly freaky and continuing dream that was shared by me and my brother (possibly my sister also, but I never talked to her about it. I didn't find out that my brother shared it until many years after the sequence ended and we had a random conversation about dreams). Anyway, me, my brother, and my sister were the three main characters in this dream. Somehow, we managed to get a freeze gun (I don’t remember how, but I do remember the big wooden crate it was in), and ended up being chased by some group. In the second to last dream, we had tracked down the leader of this group (some crazy old man) to his home. There, we ran into a trap in the garage, and it ended with the three of us being killed by “acid sticks” falling from the ceiling. In the final dream, it was just the old man sitting on his porch, half asleep, and laughing. Beyond the yard, there was simply a black sea of nothingness (yet the yard itself was well lit).

Later dreams (about 10-20)


5. “The Land of Z”. This was a sequence of rather epic dreams taking place in “The Land of Z”. These dreams only occurred when I was at my grandmother’s house (my dreams were always a lot more strange there), but for a while, I had exactly one per year. They started as light fantasy fare, but slowly but steadily got darker. In the final dream, the Land of Z had been destroyed, and I was killed by a sinister looking giant lightning bolt throwing cat wearing a collar with a “Z” emblem. I don’t remember much of the details (beyond that cat), but while these dreams were going on, I was really interested in the story (and it actually continued year to year)

6. The “movie dreams”. These were a sequence of completely unrelated dreams that all took place from a third person perspective. I don’t really remember any of them (except one about a subterranean civilization of mice), but for a long time these were the kind of dreams I had most of the time. They were usually very long, continuous. (oh, and unlike the rest, they didn’t always end with someone dying)

7. “The Mansion”. This was a lengthy sequence of dreams that I think was corrupted by the game Silent Hill. The dreams started out in a simply enormous mansion, where the laws of physics seemed not to apply (I could float around sometimes, fly in others, and occasionally gravity was reversed). The building itself also seemed to be alive, and it was never the same twice. Even within a single dream the layout could change drastically. After playing Silent Hill, the place had changed considerably, and the whole place felt filled with taint and evil. In the last dream, the mansion was literally tearing itself apart, and I barely made it out. I think that outside, there was some form of crystal hidden in one of the outside pathways. At that point, the corruption was beginning to flow over me. The dream ended when I shattered the crystal.


Recent dreams (20 to present)

8. “The Face of Death”. This dream took place in some sort of medieval castle. It wasn’t a very long dream (maybe a few minutes), but it still managed to make a huge impact. I wandered around for a while, then noticed I was being followed by a strange figure. I ran towards an inner room, and suddenly the figure appeared in front of me. It took off its mask, and my body suddenly caught on fire. The flames didn’t hurt, but I quickly disappeared into nothingness. The sensation of nothingness was one of the most bizarre things I have ever felt... and I think that I liked it.

9. “The Giant Tree”. I know that I wrote a very detailed description of this one, but the details are foggy now. Anyway, this dream featured a journey from a courtyard (at the top of a mountain), to a central area with an enormous tree, to a city (where the buildings grew smaller as I got closer to them), and a giant demon statue at the end. After reaching the statue, I turned around, and the entire world began to change. The buildings in the city fell apart, around the tree there were small demon statues everywhere (and all the vegetation was dead/dying, including the giant tree), and the ground gave way beneath my feet. Once I had reached the top of the tree and climbed up to the ledge to return to the courtyard, the tree itself crumbled into pieces and was replaced by an enormous demon statue. At the courtyard, I was swallowed up by the earth itself.

This year:

10. I had this dream about a month ago, and the details started getting cloudy from the moment I woke up, so aside from being recent it wasn’t particularly memorable. Anyway, it was another 3rd person perspective dream. It started near a medieval city, where a knight was riding his horse, but lost control of it. The horse eventually ran off a cliff, bringing the knight with it. The knight then found himself wearing peasants clothes and in the middle of a busy town. He then soon learned of two people who oddly looked very similar to himself: A “paragon of virtue” and a ruthless and sadistic thief. Somehow, along the way he learned that this was the result of some fragmentation of his consciousness, and the world before him was one of many paths his existence would take, should he choose so. Much of the dream focused on the former knight assessing the impacts of the two facets of himself that were now in human form. In the end, he decided that the damage done by the thief was more severe than any benefit provided by his other half. The dream then warped back to the beginning where he had just lost control of the horse. The horse again ran of the cliff, and the dream ended after he hit bottom.

(I think that I dream about death too much)



jellynail
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13 May 2006, 5:19 pm

Gsilver, I know what you're describing in your original post. They're called night terrors. There's some sort of resource at nightterrors.org, but I haven't really checked it out myself and I don't know how good it is. Googling "night terrors" (with quotes) might turn up better links. The basic idea is that the brain isn't equipped to move directly and immediately from a full-on dreaming state to a fully awake state, but that this is what it tries to do sometimes, anyway. The result is a temporary (temporary, in this instance, can mean twenty minutes or longer, or mere seconds) mental state that exists somewhere between the two. Partial or total muscle paralysis (not including autonomic functions like breathing or heart beating, of course), strange phantom perceptions (hearing speech is very common), feelings of being watched or a presence being nearby, and time appearing to flow either unusually quickly or slowly (some poor souls have perceived this sort of thing as going on for hours) are all common symptoms of night terrors. They are surprisingly common; most people have this happen at least once in their life. Some have them fairly regularly. Fatigue, stress and a lack of quality sleep seem to increase their likelihood.

The most interesting hypothesis I have heard about the spooky people and presences often sensed during these night terrors is that they are "alternate yous," semi-independent ego structures that are vying for control of your body while your normal ego is still sleep-subdued! Or, of course, maybe they are demons trying to possess you like people used to think.

Thanks for the great collection of dreams you posted! I've loved hearing other people tell me their dreams all my life; it's what got me interested in psychology in the first place. I could go on listing dreams for hours, but instead, let me share something arguably worse than your own experience, to make you feel better:

I once had an obnoxious series of "false awakenings" (when you wake up within a dream, to a new dream); there were several in a row, each in a different bed I had actually slept in before. Each time, I would "wake up" and sit bolt upright in bed, and then I would "wake up" again and be lying in a different bed, where I would sit up again and everything would repeat. The "awakenings" each only lasted a split second. I was just barely starting to realize what was happening when I woke up in real life, immediately sat upright in my bed, and, since I was in the bottom bunk of a bunk bed at the time, smacked my forehead into an overhanging piece of wood. I fell backwards just as quickly and got to enjoy another five minutes of dreamless unconsciousness.


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gsilver
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13 May 2006, 5:50 pm

jellynail wrote:
Fatigue, stress and a lack of quality sleep seem to increase their likelihood.


That sounds about right.

Today was my first day "free" after a particularly grueling 2 months of grad school (a bad experience with Paxil made it so that I accomplished approximately nothing in the first half of the semester, and this week was when all the final projects were due)


I think that this was the 2nd time I've remembered a night terror episode (beyond the basic "sound dreams"), but that I've had others. My mom has told me about a few instances in a hotel room where I would sit up in the middle of the night and I would not remember it.



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13 May 2006, 6:13 pm

Movement during the night (including briefly opening your eyes and looking around) that is not remembered upon awakening is qute normal, particularly at a young age. Staying in place while you sleep is learned behavior. It certainly was for me! I needed rails alongside the bed until I turned five.

It's kind of good that you wrote this stuff down. There's something called "state consciousness:" you tend to remember things that happened to you when you are in a similar mental state, and forget other things. For example, when you get drunk, you tend to remember what you were thinking about the last time you got drunk, even if you can't remember that during normal consciousness. So, intense as the experience might have been, you are probably already having a hard time remembering just what it was like, because it happened in such an unusual mental state. Doesn't seem like the sort of thing you'd forget easily, though, does it? :)


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Arthur
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14 May 2006, 1:58 pm

I used to be on an antidepressant, I'm not sure exactly which one (maybe it was Paxil?) and when I forgot to take it I would sometimes have a weird feeling in my ear like a silent explosion or something, especially when I was trying to sleep. I would have what seemed to be a non-stop dream from when I fall asleep right to when I wake up. I'd wake up very stiff and tired, though I'd be the same as usual later in the day. The dreams where very intense, (I'd say drug-like but since I've never taken drugs I can't be sure) and I'd have the most intense and creative daydreams. I'd also feel sick, in a way that's hard to describe, all I can say is that it was unpleasant.

I could not take naps, because I would end up in a horrible paralized-yet-wanting-to-wake-up state, in which I would have repeated dreams in which I thought I'd woken up. Worst of all if I'm sweaty, because when I'm sweaty my dreams all involve big bugs crawling all over the place (because the trickling of sweat feels like bugs crawling over the skin, I guess)

The weird thing is that I've been off the medication for over 2 years now but my sleep still seems to consist of nothing but dreams. I still can't nap too much, because of the whole wanting to wake up but not being able to thing.



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14 May 2006, 10:00 pm

Arthur, you've given me a lot to talk about here. (Dreams are my original "obsessive interest," so I'll try and restrain myself.) To begin with, the effect of drugs on sleep is a little outside my sphere of interest, and I don't know much about Paxil, but I would love to hear more about these intense visions of yours, in all the detail you can muster, and if I can think of anything to say to help, I will.

Your explanation of sweat leading to bug dreams is quite rational, and not uncommon at all. However, your post seems to suggest that you are aware of your physical body to an unusual degree while you are asleep. This isn't normal. (A little bit is; being aware of a need to urinate while you sleep and being able to wake up before you pee in the bed is one example of the exceptions to this rule. So is waking up because you hear your children screaming.) This indicates to me that you are not entering into a normal, deep sleep. The dreaming part of sleep (REM sleep) is usually the most restorative and restful part, so having lots of dreams is not a bad thing in and of itself.

You try and go to sleep, and then when you are asleep, you are disturbed to be asleep and try to wake up. Doesn't this sound silly? Not being able to move your real body is a normal part of sleep; try to accept it. Maybe if you paid more attention to your DREAM body, you would pay less attention to your REAL body, and be able to move deeper into a more restful form of sleep.

Think about that the next time you go to bed. You should know that you can sort of "program" yourself with lots of different ideas and instructions before you go to sleep. There are innumerable different ways to use this little ability. For you, just saying "I will pay attention to my dream body" fifty times before you go to sleep may be helpful, although you should not expect instant results from this technique.

Other common uses of self-programming before you go to sleep include saying "I will dream I can fly" if you would like to have a flying dream. Also, if you are having repeating nightmares about a dragon, you might say "I will try and make friends with the dragon" or "When I see the dragon, I will have a magic sword and kill it." Some repeating dreams are nothing more than a sort of bad habit, but it is widely accepted that a repeating dream element can indicate that your subconscious mind is trying to communicate some (possibly unpleasant) truth to your conscious mind. For this reason, trying to engage dream characters in dialogue is thought to be a healthier approach than simply killing them. But children sometimes can't readily grasp the value of this line of reasoning, and even for adults, sometimes you just want the d*mn dragon to go away. (Note too that anything in a dream can be engaged in dialogue, if you think of this option; dogs, snakes, swarms of bugs... their responses can be surprising....)

I recommend you give up napping entirely and try to get a solid eight hours of sleep at night, or at least at the same time each day. Instead of napping, try one of the many different forms of meditation. I could outline for you with a very basic method, if you like. It will work even if you think meditation is a bunch of new-age bull****, and it will not conflict with any religious teachings known to me.

Please ask for any more information you wish, but please be as specific as you can. I don't particularly want to sit here rambling on for hours about everything I know about dreams and sleep, even though I rather enjoy it. :D I DO have other things I should be doing on my day off....


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15 May 2006, 11:56 pm

It probably is indeed sleep paralysis and night terrors. I've had both and also other weird sleep/dreaming experiences. Mine got a bit better with time. Maybe yours will too. It's less scary once you know what they are. I have lucid dreaming all the time and now that I know what it is I sometimes even enjoy it.



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16 May 2006, 12:18 am

Hey jellynail, do you have any information on what might be termed out of body travel? I used to play around in my imagination as I was drifting off to sleep. I would imagine that I could travel outside my body to different places on earth. Without any effort at all I would find myself looking through my imagination at cities that would present themselves to me in intricate detail. VIVID intricate details. I would find myself in odd spots, the top of a church steeple, on a small seaside peer, or flying through the air. I could then say to myself, okay where am I? I'd find a few clues or landmarks to allow me to know what country I was in. It is highly doubtful that this was a REAL experience, but it was very entertaining. Have you heard of such pre-sleep experiences?



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16 May 2006, 4:47 pm

anandamide wrote:
Hey jellynail, do you have any information on what might be termed out of body travel?

Only that they are normally referred to as out-of-body experiences, commonly abbreviated as OBEs (or sometimes OOBEs). Some people are convinced these experiences are actual perceptions of reality (basically a form of ESP), either in the past, present or future. Although I am reluctant to state conclusively that this NEVER happens, I consider the vast majority of these experiences to be nothing more than people discovering the power of their own imaginations.

People who have OBEs and claim they are some new form of mental/psychic experience generally seem to have very low regard for their own imaginations and dreams. Your own insistence that the experience you described was VIVID (emphasis yours) would imply that you do not think your imagination is capable of being vivid. Rest assured, you or anyone else can imagine things with a vividness that would make normal waking reality seem like a pale phantasm of something else. But western society generally pooh-poohs paying attention to the imagination or dreams, and the ability to properly visualize is very commonly underdeveloped in people.

Likewise, the fact that the thoughts don't seem like something you would normally imagine or dream about signifies nothing unusual. For a dream or any thought to seem so strange that you find it hard to believe your own mind conceived it isn't unusual at all. The subconscious mind might have its greatest influence over us while we sleep, but it certainly doesn't stop trying just because we're awake.

Anytime someone says of one of their own thoughts, "It seemed too [whatever] to have come from my own mind," the simplest explanation is always that the person has underestimated the power of his or her own mind.

I can recommend the book Put Your Mother On the Ceiling by Richard De Mille to anyone looking to develop the power of their own imagination. The book is aimed at young children (it is designed to be read aloud by teachers in a classroom setting), but it is not useless for adults. Vividness, again, is the main reason. You might not have a problem with imagining a yellow elephant, for instance, but can you imagine the elephant in realistic detail? Large as life? How it feels, sounds, even smells? Many people could use practice with this sort of thing. Also, the book deliberately presents some ideas such as "imagine you are breathing underwater" or "imagine your legs can come off" that some people find unpleasant or difficult to imagine. The book helps people with imagining these things and overcoming their fears. You might even discover something you weren't aware you had a problem thinking about.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn't mention hypnagogic (alternately spelled hypnogogic) imagery, although this doesn't sound like what you described. This can occur at any time before sleep, while trying to sleep, but especially when the mind is still quite active but the body is ready for sleep. Hypnagogic imagery typically starts out as a simple image performing a repetitive action. You might see two kids playing on a teeter-totter, for example. Alternately, you might see an array of squirrels walking at an angle down your field of vision, moving out of view and being replaced by identical squirrels at the top of your field of vision. The behavior is very simple and repetitive at the beginning, and slowly gets more complex, as does the imagery. (You might see squirrels wearing identical but different-colored hats, then some of the squirrels are carrying bags and some are playing flutes, then some of the squirrels are dancing down while others are marching....) Provided the person doesn't slip into normal sleep, the imagery generally loses its repetitive nature after a while and becomes more like a normal dream, although it usually retains its visually dynamic character. Sound, music and conversation may be imagined, or might not. People normally will feel able to alter the nature or content of the images at any point, but usually don't want to; they find the process interesting, and want to just watch and see how things develop. People can maintain the hypnagogic illusion by an act of will, but will tend to fall into normal sleep otherwise.

A similar experience called hypnopompic (the only accepted spelling) imagery can occur when waking up from sleep. This imagery tends to be a continuation of the last dream. It is usually less vivid and dynamic than hypnagogic imagery, and thus isn't talked about or studied as much.


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jellynail
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16 May 2006, 4:55 pm

(Double post deleted.)


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16 May 2006, 9:14 pm

Well thanks, that's interesting. Those illusions you describe fit perfectly with my mother's experience. When she gets really tired she always sees a big gray ball coming toward her, that slowly gets larger and larger until it takes over her vision, then disappears. When mom first told me about this experience I thought suspected she might be a little bit schizoid. Now I know it's normal.



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17 May 2006, 9:25 am

anandamide wrote:
...When she gets really tired she always sees a big gray ball coming toward her, that slowly gets larger and larger until it takes over her vision, then disappears. When mom first told me about this experience I thought suspected she might be a little bit schizoid. Now I know it's normal.

Actually, that doesn't sound like hypnagogic imagery, either. Particularly in that it disappears. Hypnagogic imagery is more like a split second of a Peter Gabriel video, repeating over and over, and slowly turning into the entire video. (Well, maybe not THAT dynamic....)

What the gray sphere might be is simply your mother's eyes adjusting to the dark in a different manner from how they do when she's not so fatigued. Her eyes might be dilating & shrinking again after she shuts them, and the reslutant black/grey pattern is resolved in her mind as an image of a sphere. If this is the case, going to bed in absolute darkness or while wearing a sleep mask might prevent the effect.

Another possibility would be that they are a phosphene pattern--like the little "fireworks show" you get when you rub your eyes or blink real hard. (When I blink real hard, I see an image of my own eyes looking back at me, usually blue on red. Scared myself that way a few times when I was little....) I don't know about the grey color, though; phosphene patterns are normally brightly colored. Perhaps color-blind people see grey phosphene patterns; I'm not sure.

If your mother's grey sphere is indeed a hypnagogic image, it's an unusually boring one. I know that depressed people and, yes, some schizophrenics can have particularly boring and uneventful dreams. It could possibly be a schizoid hypnagogic image, but I doubt it. Again, remember that the imagery is usually intriguing to the person seeing it (some do find it annoying or even disturbing), and normally increases in complexity over time (provided the viewer doesn't lapse into sleep) instead of fading away.


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