I keep on seeing things in the middle of the night!!?

Question

I really don't know what's up with me! I keep on seeing things in the middle of the night, I think I must be half asleep or something. How do I stop it? Like I'll wake up and swear I see spiders climbing up and down the walls and I'll turn the light on and nothing will be there, and last night I looked up and there was a hedge infront of my face that slowly merged into the wall! It's really crazy but it has started happening a lot recently. I haven't been watching anything about spiders or hedges before i go to bed! Also when I think I see spiders I start to panic and sort of have a mini panic attack or something, it's really horrible. Any suggestions how to stop this please? I'm not on any medication and I don't smoke the funny stuff!

Answer 1

You may be half conscious and half dreaming or some combination of the two. I think that I'm lying in bed awake trying to go to sleep and wonder why my husband tells me to roll over because I'm snoring. Naturally, my state doesn't alarm me too much but yours sounds like it scares you. If I were you, I'd talk to my physician about it and see what he/she says especially because of the mini panic attacks. You can also try varying your bed time habits as well as your pre bed diet. If I were you, I might try some Sleepytime Extra tea with Valerian in it before bed. It helps me with frazzled nerves and gets me into a calmer state for bed. You may also want to try to not have any caffeine after five in the evening as caffeine can cause sleep disturbances.

If you begin to get more vivid images or they become really troublesome or you experience more symptoms then you should definately have some medical tests done. I think that it's important to track weird symptoms before I go to the doctor and give the doctor a copy of your symptom list with as much detail as possible.

Answer 2

Crazy? No. Troubled? Yes. Other than trained specialists, no one can give you a concise answer, so you should tell you're close ones that you're having this experience. From what I can tell, it seems like you're seeing an internet persona - Slender man. It's a made up creature, that was born in a forum thread about mythical beings. It has become somewhat of a phenomenon on how ghost stories are born. It has similar characteristics to the ones you described. Remember - IT'S NOT REAL. Also, if your dog doesn't pay attention to this being, so should you. If someone can sense danger - it's a dog. They can smell trouble a mile away. It's probably a hallucination of some kind. Check your diet and medication, if you're taking any. And keep it cool. Remember - IT'S NOT THERE IF THE DOG IS CALM.

Answer 3

I had an experience of seeing cockroaches and fairies. Really weird. But, then I had a hemotoma. I just can imagine how horrific you are feeling. But don't be hard on yourself. I believe a neurologist will help you get to the root of the problem or direct you to the right physician. Even after a year since the accident, I am still seeing neurologist because of damages to the brain. I don't see cockroaches and fairies any more, but I didn't even tell my family. Too much! I hope this will help. Oh, yes, I see a psychiatrist for panic disorders with bipolar. So, you see I'm a mess, but a happy mess!

Answer 4

Once I saw a disembodied head seven feet off the ground float down the hall towards ME!
I simply said to The Universe "Enough of that!" and simply slept in bed with my eyes closed at night from then on.

Answer 5

you could've been hallucinating

Answer 6

Are u on any meds? Maby its what you are eating or drinking before you go to bed. lots of sugars make you see things, I had that prob. before, I stoped eating a certian way and it stoped! good luck

Answer 7

certain medications can cause weird dreams, stress can also play a part in nightmares. Or your house could be haunted.

Answer 8

I am no expert on this, and most of the questions I answer tend to be under "Cats". And I have never had the experiences you are describing.

But I'm wondering if you are a very deep sleeper, and I'm wondering at what times of the night you are waking with these sensations. Because I suspect you are waking out of REM sleep, which I believe is dreaming sleep, and bringing some of your dream with you into waking time and space . . . and then the dream dissolves.

I want to keep asserting that this is no area of my expertise, but I do believe that sometimes a dream has such punch -- such horror or such scariness or such sweetness or such immediacy -- that we waken to cope with what it presents us. Wouldn't you WANT to be awake to cope with a suffocating hedge? And if there were spiders crawling the walls, don't you want to get up and run the hell out of that room? So the images are very immediate, and you are waking yourself up. Your emotions are appropriate to the dream, and it takes you a transitional moment to adjust to the much more mundane reality of your room.

I don't think you are losing it at all. You sound perfectly fine to me.

The thing I wonder about is the images you are experiencing when you sleep -- the ones that are waking you. I personally am a very deep sleeper, and as a child in the midwest, slept through violent storms. I don't remember my dreams, but I have read that most dreams are "weird" in terms of the images they juxtapose, and there is nothing unusual in their being horrible, like a dream of someone we know covered with blood and gore and walking toward us with their head under their arm. Because dreams deal with highly personal symbology, we can in our sleep, experience an image like this and be unphased by it, because the symbology is real, but the image is not.

But there have been times in my life when my dreams, like yours, have wakened me with the images fresh and hard to shake, and feelings of dread or terror or longing. In one case, when I was in a terrible situation from which I could not extricate myself, I dreamed that my mother -- dead at that time for 8 or 9 years -- came to me to discuss how we could solve this problem. Though I wakened at the usual time the next morning and went about my usual routine, I felt more asleep than awake for the next six hours (though I had taken no medications or alcohol or, certainly, no drugs), and the emotions of the experience hung with me for days.

But with me, at least, the key to the periods when I have had weird and memorable dreams -- which I never tried to unravel, but simply experienced and let them be -- was that they came during times of emotional duress or transition or when I was in the throes of critical decisions: When I was separated from my husband; when I was in a terrible situation and could not figure out how to get out of it; when I had critical shortages of money.

And that makes sense, because of course, just because you sleep doesn't mean that you quit mulling your problems or your worries. Instead, you start to mull them in the highly personal language of dreams. And sometimes when you hit a certain point in your mullings, something critical -- who knows? You or your images waken you.

For all you know, you have dreamed of spiders a thousand thousand times, riffling through your hair or walking down your lip having emerged from your nose. How would you know? The image didn't waken you, so you have no idea. But THOSE spiders on THAT wall wakened you, maybe because of what they meant in the context of that dream on that night of your life.

But if you are in a time of decision or transition or adjustment or even crisis, or if you have something that is tugging at you emotionally, maybe the hedges and the spiders are telling you to find someone you can trust and have a few conversations with them -- or even with a mental health professional. Just someone who is skilled with the kind of conversing that will help you bring it out of you and see it for what it is, so you are fully conscious of it, and it doesn't trouble your sleep so much.

And if you aren't upset about anything whatsoever and you are absolutely sure about that, go see your doctor and let him weigh in on it. There can be physical factors that affect sleep and dreams -- apnea being one I know of, and I'm sure there are others.

Bad dreams, scary dreams, are a part of life. They happen to everyone. And the transition time between sleep and waking, when the sleep you come from has been fraught with revolting or terrifying images, can be a scary time. And it probably means something that you can resolve when you are awake, so it doesn't take icky forms when you are asleep. They also pass. They don't mean that you should start packing for the looney bin or hook up with a $200/hr psychiatrist with a leather fainting couch and a thick Germanic accent.

You are all right. Question yourself a little about where you are at in your life. Then find the friend or rabbi/minister or therapist or physician who can quash this stuff, so you get all your sleep without problems.

Answer 9

that was me, I was just watching you sleep you are lovely

sorry