Loud Sound or Flashing Light... only in my head?

[fuzzy96]

have you noticed any missing time lately??????

perhaps the aliens were back for a visit

[jdm2857]

Do you live near a railroad crossing?

[millich]

Then can I call mine "The Hypnapompic Auditory Hallucinations.'

Which is exactly what I'd say tattoyu is having. Hypnopompic and hypnagogic hallucinations are auditory and visual hallucinations which can occur as one is drifting into deeper stages of sleep. They are not related to seizures or psychosis. They are normal for a certain percentage of the population and may come and go.

For a little over a year, I experienced the auditory type. I woke being absolutely 100% sure that I'd heard the doorbell ring. It hadn't nor had anyone else in the house heard it. That morphed into being sure I'd heard someone running in the house during the night. That one disappeared after a couple of months as mysteriously as either of them began. They haven't come back.

Tattooyu - do not panic. More likely than not, your lights and sounds will disappear on their own.

[Reine]

Ok, I'm going out on a limb here, and not that I neccessarily believe this, but, I am an avid reader and ( here goes) have read about astral travel. What I have read that sometimes when re-entering your body after a night of astral travel there is sometimes a loud bang, especially if you are pulled back to your body suddenly. I am not weird ( although I'm sure it may be up for debate) but I have in the past have been woken up by a loud bang and had read this somewhere and it does get you to wondering

If I could get by with it and post this as a guest I would.

rosiefrosie, Welcome to the weird club I'm not weird either but some people may think that we are. I also read about astral travel and believe that we do travel every night.

[Rustyolddude]

Ok, I'm going out on a limb here, and not that I neccessarily believe this, but, I am an avid reader and ( here goes) have read about astral travel. What I have read that sometimes when re-entering your body after a night of astral travel there is sometimes a loud bang, especially if you are pulled back to your body suddenly. I am not weird ( although I'm sure it may be up for debate) but I have in the past have been woken up by a loud bang and had read this somewhere and it does get you to wondering

If I could get by with it and post this as a guest I would.

I think I recall Shirly MacLaine talking about this some time ago.

[jnk]

have you noticed any missing time lately??????

perhaps the aliens were back for a visit

I think an alien abduction would be a cakewalk for me. I survived two sleep studies!

[fishhead]

oh, by the way jnk... the mother ship called and said it's time to put your toys away and come in for dinner.

[jnk]

oh, by the way jnk... the mother ship called and said it's time to put your toys away and come in for dinner.

Sorry. I couldn't hear. I was wearing my aluminum-foil hat.

[jweeks]

Very rarely I see just a flash of light or two while falling asleep, but that's usually accompanied by a hypnic jerk. I haven't experienced the two together. Anybody have any idea what that is? Being an anxious person, I immediately thought it might have been some type of seizure. I'm a little freaked out.

Hi,

Seeing flashes of light is not all that uncommon--lots of people see that. A common cause is a high energy cosmic ray particle passing through your retina. The particle doesn't have enough mass to hurt you, but it triggers one of the vision cells to fire. The particle will then continue on its path without even slowing down.

-john-

[kteague]

About the visual flashes - just make sure you don't have something going on with your eyes needing treatment. High eye pressures can cause strange things. I explained away all my shooting stars when I closed my eyes, and the fireworks shows when I rubbed them. Since I found out my eye pressures were in the 40's and was diagnosed and treated for glaucoma, they are negligible.

About unexplained beeps... Several years ago I changed the battery in my smoke detector after hearing the warning beeps, but the beeping continued. Little did I know those newfangled things called cell phones also beeped when the battery gets low.

A friend once called apartment maintenance, worried about the distressed chirping baby bird somehow trapped in her ductwork, explaining to them it seemed in the wall not far from the stove vent pipe. This time it WAS the smoke alarm low battery warning.

Don't know what your sounds are, but I remember reading others' similar accounts, and the sleep stage transitions explanation was what they were leaning toward. If there are answers, sure hope you find them. If not, hope you are able to relegate the sounds to a place of minimal influence.
Kathy

[Rebecca R]

I vote for the smoke detector battery or telephone batteries being low.

[timbalionguy]

I have heard sounds in my sleep every once in a while, for years. Most often, it is a bell or a similar sound. A single, clear ring. As of late (the last few years), it has typically been a more electronic sound. I have a lot of electronic gear in my house, and so a piece of gear making a sound would not be unusual. But, except in one case (a smoke detector that would only give a low battery beep when the temperature fell at night), it has always been something unknown. Once or twice, it has sounded like someone knocking at the front door. (No doorbell) And once, a loud explosion. The explosion sound was very fast, like what you might expect from a high explosives blast. I do live close to several things that could experience an explosion like that, but there was nothing like it that happened.

It is infrequent enough that I don't know if CPAP therapy has had any effect on it.

[tattooyu]

I haven't read up on this thread since I posted and am always amused by all my friends on here. You guys are great. Since posting last, it has happened only a couple of times, and I am just writing it off as a hypnopompic auditory hallucination with the possibility of astral travel.

From what I've been able to figure out so far, each time this happens I am having a very lucid dream in which I do feel like I'm traveling astrally (from the descriptions). Even if there is no spiritual significance to it, "it is what it is". No harm, no fowl (right Rooster?).