Thread: Hypnagogic hallucinations?

Originally Posted by nick818

Hello, I am curious to if I am experiencing hypnagogic hallucinations. Almost always before i fall asleep, I enter this state where my train of thought goes off the wall. Like I'll regain full consciousness and be like wtf was i just thinking? Sometimes I hear sounds and things, but mostly my thoughts are random and ill find myself having conversations with myself

I get that when i try to WILD, and never get the "HI" or as you know them hallucinations. This is a sleep state similar to "HI" but like me, maybe you dont get the HI, its nothing to worry about.

It's probably just that you're falling asleep, and the logical side of your brain is shutting down. Similar to how in dreams, you don't really question the weird scenarios you find yourself in.
(Unless you're lucid).

I've never had problems before falling asleep like this, but sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night and see someone or something standing there. It's usually a person I know and they look as real as ever. I'll look away and they'll slowly disappear. They usually disappear in a digital type pattern, it's hard to explain. If anyone else has experienced theses hallucinations please post about it. Thanks

I love when that happens. I will catch myself thinking of the strangest crap when I'm just starting to fall sleep.

You are in stage 1 sleep, NREM. At the time, you brain is going through a constant state of alpha waves. You begin to have almost daydream like thoughts before you enter into a deeper state of sleep. But, unlike daydreams, your brain is actually preparing to enter a full night of sleep. Thoughts and ideas are being uncluttered from a days worth of sensory experiences! Through the uncluttered process, your brain might depict some of the discarding to you through a...what I like to call, "almost-dream."

You're in a hypnogogic state: your thought patterns are different just before you go to sleep.

Like thinking sentences in peoples voices that don't even make sense. It's hypnogogia alright, but not hypnogognic imagery/hallucinations.

I get hypnogogic imagery: I'm sure you could to. Just gently focus on images in your head as you're going to sleep: they will shift and change and do mental things just like your stream of words

Just relax and watch them go by and switch and change. They will get more and more complex and vivid. I love it.

Modest, I get this sometimes if I get up directly from a dream. Even if I'm up and around, I might see objects for up to thirty-ish seconds. My long-dead cat followed me from my dorm room into the bathroom and meowed a couple of times and then just faded out.

Originally Posted by buckybadger010

Modest, I get this sometimes if I get up directly from a dream. Even if I'm up and around, I might see objects for up to thirty-ish seconds. My long-dead cat followed me from my dorm room into the bathroom and meowed a couple of times and then just faded out.

i dont know if that's awesome or creepy

I know this well!! Sometimes, like some of the people that have written here, I will think ''what was THAT all about?!" Sometimes I see weird horrific faces, abstract shapes, but generally deformed strange faces is common for me. At one point I was able to control it so well, I was able to speak to an ex-boyfriend at the time, and explain what I was seeing. Like a film unfolding in front of me.....amazing!

I was going to bring this topic up, myself! I've experienced different variations of this.

When I go to sleep and close my eyes, after a while I find myself seeing faces - sometimes scary faces, like witches, cthulhu, etc - sometimes moving, changing from one image to another. I have no problems focussing on those and sort of making up what I will see next.

At other times, it's rooms - like classrooms or bedrooms - which I see in perfect 3d and I can look around freely. If I try to focus, though, they usually fade and disappear altogether.

A different kind of this occurs when there's noise around me - if I doze off while watching tv or on the bus. My thoughts go in weird directions, following a trail of thought - like false memories or little plots, even - until I'm awakened by an outside noise and I'm like "What the HELL was that?", because it's usually something absurd.

The weirdest one yet, though, happened to me a few days ago. I'm trying to do RC's whenever I remember to, during the day. I noticed that in dreams, the image is MORE 3D than in reality. Like, when you look at your hand in waking life, the background behind your hand is out of focus - and in dreams, it's all IN focus, and the depth can be amazing. Not always, because if there's too much light, the whole image is rather obscure - but when it's 3D, it's 4D. So anyway... I was in my kitchen and did an RC, only to notice this weird three-dimensionality. And I woke up instantly, realizing I'd barely gone to sleep. I had a few instances of just *hopping* into a dream as soon as I close my eyes - a full-blown dream, with full awareness of my dream surroundings, with DC's around me and vague false memories of how I got there.

Originally Posted by IndigoGhost

I get that when i try to WILD, and never get the "HI" or as you know them hallucinations. This is a sleep state similar to "HI" but like me, maybe you dont get the HI, its nothing to worry about.

I get this, and HI. Sometimes at the same time. My train of thought. I don't know. One time I caught myself pondering this:

"Do bananas procreate?"