Seeing People at night

Lots of people suffer similar phenomena. This clearly accounts for most so-called ghost sightings. As in: "I woke up in the night to find this hooded figure standing over me" and all that kind of thing!

I started having the more common, miniaturised hallucinations as a small child, along with "out of body experiences" (which are actually lucid dreams associated with sleep paralysis). It all stopped, probably around the time I started school, made the odd reappearance around puberty, then came back with a vengeance when I was in my early 20s. This time it was the whole thing: sleep paralysis, hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations, lucid dreams, false awakenings, you name it. I still get the whole syndrome now, 50 years later, but it fades a lot with age.

My first full SP attack terrified me utterly. The hallucinations I have in the paralysed state are usually tactile (touch, often painful) and proprioceptive (floating or being thrown around the room). There was no internet 50 years ago, and I couldn't find any reference to it in the nur sing school library, where I was studying for my finals. I somehow got through my exams, in spite of the endless sleepless nights, and spent my staffing year in the hospital's neuro unit, doing their specialist course. It was only then that I came across a single paragraph in a neurology textbook referring to the phenomenon, and was reassured.

Apart from those early episodes, when I hadn't a clue what was going on, the only one that's ever spooked me was when I appeared to have woken up in a visually entirely different room from the one I'd gone to sleep in. That was more than 40 years ago, and has never been repeated. I'm fairly sure it was down to the combination of being overheated - which will trigger most SP-related effects in me - and sleeping in total blackout conditions.

The whole syndrome tends to be strongly hereditary, though it always has to start somewhere, of course. My father, his mother and one or two of his siblings had it too. It's completely harmless and isn't a psychiatric illness.

I have a similar history, Ann, and also live alone. I don't, however, think it's a psychiatric condition in my case because of the incidence in my father's family, none of whom ever showed any signs of mental illness. (Several did, however, show signs of narcolepsy, which can be connected with SP.)

On the other hand, it has sometimes occurred to me that the whole sleep paralysis syndrome might be a distant cousin of schizophrenia. Both seem to arise in the temporal lobes of the brain, with some input from the limbic system in the primitive midbrain. Both are quite strongly hereditary. And average age of onset for both is mid-teens to mid-20s.

That seems to be where the similarities end. I've never heard of any informed medical opinion making the connection - if you don't count ill-trained GPs hearing the word "hallucination" and jumping to the wrong conclusion. I've also had extensive contacts with SP sufferers, mainly on-line, and have never come across one who mentioned schizophrenia or any other mental illness, except as a misdiagnosis. Finally, I've volunteered for the past 7 years with the mentally ill, many of whom have schizophrenia or schizo-affective disorders, and none of them has ever mentioned SP. On the other hand, I've never asked any of them if they have SP, as the role of the volunteer is limited to "active listening" rather than scaring clients by suggesting other conditions.

I have been having this issue for awhile. But the past few weeks it has happened almost every night. I wake up, see someone standing over me or beside my bed. I scream, sit up, blink my eyes and it slowly fades away. Sometimes I jump out of the bed, waking my husband up. I feel like it's eventually going to give me a heart attack, as it takes a long time for me to calm down, and usually a long time to fall back asleep. Mostly because I am scared it will happen again. It mostly happens within the first hour of falling asleep, but there has been times were it happens more then once per night. I question is it real, and my husband just can't see it or do I scare it off before my husband wakes up and realizes what is going on. It has gotten so bad that my boys upstairs have heard my screams and came running down. I feel like I am going crazy, or that I am loosing my mind. I realize that these have been posted awhile ago, but because it has been happening so frequently lately, I am desperate for answers.

Hi there, I have the exact same issue. I fall asleep and within an hour I wake up screaming seeing somebody standing over me. One time I was scared, I screamed, I ran out of bed and accidentally hit my head on some kind of furniture in my room. That's when I decided it was time to see a doctor as this could get dangerous.

I went to a doctor than a psychologist and a psychiatrist and I was diagnosed with "night terrors" (also known as "sleep terrors"). Normally this is common when you had it as a child, or sleep walking, but I've never had either before. I'm 39 now and it started about 10 years ago.

In Australia the doctors prescribed me Temazapan which i took right before bed. It has a short shelf life so I wouldn't wake up drowsy. I noticed I started to recognise signs when it was going to happen like the evening before going to sleep I would have to look twice as I thought I saw something. I only took it when I thought I was going to have one which was very hit and miss.

Since coming to the UK I was taken off it and instead prescribed an anti depressant (Fluoxetine) after a sleep study which confirmed again I had "night terrors". I was quite upset that I had to take medication every day to make it stop however I find that fluoxetine has managed to keep most of them away.

I sometimes have one after a big meal just before sleeping.

The reason it happens within the first hour is because your body is trying to go into a sleep cycle. Apparently there are four levels you go down when you go to sleep and with night terrors that final level where everyone else is normally naturally paralysed by the body whilst we have "high arousal" thoughts, but we're not.

Hope this gives you a bit more information. I'm very happy to chat to you more if you want to find out more.

Hi Carole,

This is nothing to worry about, and you can put aside all thoughts of intervention from the spirit world.

I'm a former neuro nurse, and have also had sleep paralysis and related phenomena for over 50 years. I've researched the whole area, especially over the past 25 years, when internet access became freely available.

What you're describing is clearly related to sleep paralysis (SP). There are several different possibilities, which I'll go through below:

The most likely explanation is that you were in a state of SP every time this happened, but without being aware of it. Not everyone is aware of being paralysed during these episodes. Many of us have a kind of hallucinatory "dream body" which we can move. Some of us (including me) are aware of both "bodies" - the real one paralysed on the bed, and the other one moving around. However, many people are only aware of one or the other. This could account for you thinking your eyes were wide open, when they're normally shut during SP.

Since about half of people with SP also hallucinate during episodes, this would explain your seeing these faces, as well as hearing the footsteps. I also hallucinate during SP, but my hallucinations are mainly tactile (touch). However, the thing about hearing running footsteps at the start of an episode rings a bell, as I often get that too. Incidentally, SP hallucinations can affect any or all of your senses.

Another explanation is that SP episodes frequently evolve into lucid dreams - i.e. dreaming while awake. This often happens to me. Although my SP hallucinations are only auditory or tactile, once I get into the lucid dreaming state I start seeing people around my bedroom too. However, there's usually something wrong with the room. Often it's the outside light that's wrong (wrong time of day) and sometimes the entire room is reversed.

Finally people with SP often experience another kind of sleep-related hallucination. This is where you wake quite normally, not into SP, but you can see something or someone quite clearly. I used to get these a lot when I was young, but not so often these days. I was more likely to see miniature items of furniture, but I would sometimes see full-sized human figures. When this happens, the "visions" tend always to appear in the same visual field. Mine used to be dead-centre, but it sounds as if yours always appear to the left.

I always find a good way of checking whether these scary "people" are really there is to look somewhere else in the room and see if the image stays in the same place in my field of vision. However, there are exceptions to this rule, and the hallucination can stay where you first saw it. The scariest exception is when you appear to wake up in a completely different room from the one you went to sleep in, and can actually look around it! Fortunately, this is very rare. It's only ever happened to me once, when I was sleeping in a totally dark room - something I usually avoid.

I think this covers all the possible explanations, all of which are SP-related. It's worth noting that quite a lot of people experience the last one without ever having had an episode of SP. It's generally thought that this accounts for a lot of "ghost sightings".

Not many scientists have interested themselves in SP and its related phenomena, in spite of the fact that 5% of the population are estimated to have it. However, those that have studied it think it may be triggered by electro-magnetic influences - but only in people who are susceptible.

This might explain why your neighbour's son sleeping on the other side of the wall experienced something similar. There could have been some anomaly of the wiring running in the wall. In my own case, I always had my most severe SP-related episodes when sleeping in my parents' house, which was about 50ft away from overhead high-tension cables.

If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to post them here, or send me a private message via this site.

Thank you Lily for your reply. None of it seems to make sense, the faces come from nowhere and are not connected to any dream. So what is in my head to make them appear ?

Re the bedroom next door similarities, when we moved to that house as a new build, mum said that back room had a bad smell in it. Just that young man's head was so ghostly being surround by a bright halo of light, I'll never forget how it curiously looked over me.

After seeing the dark face the other night, last night I was afraid to sleep in the dark so kept on a small dull lamp, I felt more safe. Not that the faces are harmful, just they freak me out so much t the point of being petrified.

There was also an out of body experience when I was about 31 . I was diagnosed with rheumatic fever which as you may know can damage the heart. We were visiting friends and sleeping on their living room floor, me, my partner and our small son. I remember looking down from the corner of the ceiling, looking down on the 3 of us. Suddenly I was woken up by my heart flapping away like birds wings were inside. I was convinced I had slipped away then came back to life.

You are no doubt thinking theres no way I'm going to convince this woman its down to chemistry, I'm sure it is but when I think rationally, it's logical to dismiss that these sightings could be spirits, but then these experiences are so real and frightening, I feel I cannot dismiss the possibility.

I have another story bordering on telepathy whilst going into death maybe, but I won't bore you with that one.

You may have gathered from my words that the fear I get at the time of the facial visions disturbs me so much that I lean towards the spiritual word.

Thank you for your time.

Carole

Carole, I certainly understand the fear you feel. When I had my first SP hallucination, at age 23 in 1967, I was so terrified I hardly slept for weeks. I was in the run-up to my final nursing exams, and I honestly don't know how I managed to pass. It was only a few months later, while doing a post-diploma course in neuro, that I discovered a single paragraph in a neurology textbook that offered an explanation.

I think your answer shows a basic misunderstanding of what I was saying - or maybe I didn't explain myself properly. The things we experience in SP-related episodes are largely unrelated to our normal nightly dreams. Although it's been proved in the laboratory that SP arises from REM (dreaming) sleep, other factors come into play in these waking episodes.

It's long been known that the unconscious mind provides the material for normal, sleeping dreams. (And it's been proven many times that we all dream, whether we remember our dreams or not.) Likewise for lucid dreams or the hallucinations associated with SP. But there's another element in these cases: we're wide awake when they're happening. I'm sure you wouldn't disagree with that statement!

However, since these episodes arise from REM sleep, the unconscious is still fully on the loose - which it never is in our normal waking state. This means there's a communication between our conscious and unconscious minds, which almost invariably results in the production of terrifying images. These often relate to ghost stories, horror movies or alien abduction accounts in the West, as these tie in with our culture. In cultures where there's a strong belief in the world of spirits and demons, the hallucinations can be even more terrifying. (Another reason to set aside your fears about the "spirit world".) Unfortunately, that's how the unconscious operates in most people. Very few SP sufferers report pleasant hallucinations.

I'm not going to tell you about my own tactile hallucinations, apart from saying that they're often extremely painful, and still have the power to briefly terrify me even now, after all this time. After a few seconds I'm able to remind myself they're not real and we've been here before, which takes the fear - but not the pain - away. Incidentally, the reason I'm not going to describe them is that hallucinations tend to be "catching" among people who have SP. That's another example of the workings of the unconscious mind.

The truth is that you and I are being ambushed only by our own unconscious - though I admit that's quite scary enough. It might help to read up on the Freudian concept of the "id". This primitive part of the unconscious mind exists in all of us, but tends to get free rein in those of who have SP - which, incidentally, is caused by a harmless minor glitch in the temporal lobes of the brain. Unfortunately the id - a bit like a naughty child - is rarely on the side of its host, and likewise is best ignored.

Concerning apparent "out-of-body" experiences, these too are part and parcel of the SP spectrum. I didn't mention this in my earlier post as you hadn't, and I didn't want to scare you further. I had a lot of these when I was younger, and was often able to check up on what I'd seen in these experiences (by going up ladders and checking the ceiling, tops of cupboards etc.) In every case the reality was different from what I'd seen. The British psychologist and physiologist Sus an Black. more (hoping to avoid being modded here!) has done similar research with the same results following apparent out-of-body experiences after smoking weed - which is a potent trigger. You can find it on-line.

The bottom line is that the more you give in to your perfectly natural fears about the spirit world (and I'm not saying it doesn't exist) the more you'll feed the negative elements of your unconscious. This means your hallucinations could get more frequent or more frightening.

I'm still here - in this thread or via PM - if you have any more concerns. I'd hate someone else to go through what I did 50 years ago. There was no internet in those days, and my one attempt at reaching out for help led to me being hauled in front of the hospital's head psychiatrist, who threatened me with instant dismissal from my training if I ever mentioned it again.

lily,

I do get what you are saying. At the moment I'm finding sleeping with the dull salt lamp on quite comforting as I only see these faces in the dark.

I can accept that it's my own brain conjuring up these images from where ever they are manifested, but accepting won't stop the the terrifying fear I get when I see a face looking over me. OK like you I could think to myself, its just chemistry, but the fear seems to last some time after the event and I can't shake it off. At some point I will say to myself don't be silly and sleep in the dark again.

But for now I'll continue with the lamp until I feel ready to do so.

I think that's a reasonable way to deal with it. In the end, it's only the passage of time that makes it easier. Once you've had this thing for a few years without anything bad happening, you realise it's harmless. You can get used to anything!

And in any case, you might not be stuck with it for life. Most people have the odd one-off episode of SP-related phenomena without it coming back. But even if you turn out to be one of the 5%, like me, it's really not the end of the world. Also, it tends to decline with age.

I note you touched on telepathy in your original post. I believe there's an explanation for this too. I actually believe in telepathy and similar phenomena - well, in principle, though I believe most cases are just coincidence. I've had a few experiences myself, as well as surprisingly detailed predictions in dreams. In the latter case, this was when I was keeping a dream journal every morning, so it wasn't down to imagining I'd had the dream after the event. None of the predictions were earth-shattering, just very accurate dreams about minor events that would then take place during the day.

I think everybody experiences these things. The difference is that people with the SP brain glitch are more sensitive to them, which means we REMEMBER them. Those who don't have our sensitivity tend to be alarmed by this kind of thing, so they push it out of their mind and forget it completely.

Don't worry about any of this. I've made it to age 75, having had SP with some pretty alarming hallucinations for well over 50 years, and nothing has happened to me so far.

By the way, SP is quite strongly hereditary, though all gene mutations have to start somewhere. In my case, my father, at least two of his siblings and my grandmother all had it. It might be worth asking around in your family. But be careful who you ask, and how. Some uneducated people think it's a sign of insanity!

i,ve seen some weird people looking at me,the other night there was a man who looked as if he was kneeling looking at me, he dissappeared after 2 seconds.