That's what I woke up to this morning.I opened my sleepy eyes and there's Jesus, yeah the Jesus Christ Jesus, propped up with a pillow, beside me, in my bed, reading a book. I immediately kicked out my feet towards his, 'Get your dirty sandals out of my bed, dude!' and then he evapourated.
I fell back to sleep.
For several months, I've been having hypnopompic hallucinations: vivid hallucinations that occur when I'm waking up.
The first one was waking up and seeing my late cat sitting on my bedside table. She was so real looking. I reached out my hand, 'hey there Buzz' but my hand went right through.
Since then, I've woken up many more times to Buzz and to other cats, a big beautiful chocolate lab, a goat, a tray of curries in little silver dishes and other mundane things. I've woken up, cuddled up to a mountain lion, a grizzly bear walking past my bed and a woman with silver hair looking down at me. Most excitingly, I awoke to a bull charging at me causing me to scuttle across my bed to avoid getting pwned!
These hallucinations also take the form of sensations. I've felt a hand on my shoulder, being covered by a blanket but the weirdest so far has been the feeling of my mattress moving as if someone had just sat on the edge of my bed. That one freaked me out a bit!
I can imagine how these hypnopompic hallucinations could be very disturbing to some people, or lead people to believe in ghosts, visitations from other worlds or the afterlife, or other paranormal weirdness and perhaps even convince people they have found God... after all, I woke up with his son in my bed. ;-)
From what I gather, not too much is known about hypnopompic hallucinations, except that about 12% of people have them and that they are more common in people who have sleep disorders (which I don't think I have). I suspect it's just a side effect of the citalopram (antidepressant/ssri) that I'm on.
Whatever the cause, I think this phenomenon is very interesting and I welcome it, ie, I don't suffer from hypnopompic hallucinations, I enjoy them.
I'm very impressed that you are enjoying these hallucinations rather than screaming in terror. If you wake up next to a silverback gorilla, give his back a good scratch, he'll enjoy it.
ReplyDeletehaha!
ReplyDeleteOh wow. I think that's an interesting way to start the day, though some visitors could be quite scary. Hell, many people wake up staring right at something scary - well, the married ones anyway!
ReplyDeleteI love to hear about other people's dreams. I sometimes have hypnopompic hallucinations(although I never knew that they had a name).
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