

I’ll look and see at the center of my field of view, this black mass that looks like a spider or something moving and wriggling around quickly. “It usually happens when I’m over fatigued and get woke up suddenly in the night.

Learn more about hypnopompic hallucinations here. If a person is about to wake, he or she could have a hypnopompic hallucination. When people are just on the edge of sleep they might experience hypnogogic hallucinations. Both of these have to do with hallucinations occurring as people enter or exit sleep. Hypnopompic hallucinations are often mentioned along with hypnogogic hallucinations. Some cases however have been linked to seizures, neurological infections/conditions, narcolepsy or sleep apnea. These hallucinations usually are benign and don’t meant there is a serious underlying issue. Usually the person will hear the same lyrics or notes over and over again. The objects are usually moving.Īuditory hallucinations often include someone calling your name, children laughing or playing or many times music. You will know you are awake during this hallucination and usually the object will just slowly fade. It may be a spider but the spider will have 20 legs for example. Visual hallucinations usually consist of simple forms such as circles, symbols, bugs, animals or people. They are very realistic but may appear distorted. These visual and auditory images are very vivid and may be bizarre or disturbing, many times appearing as bugs, spiders, animals or people in the room. You may hear sounds that are not there and see visual hallucinations. Certain medications, drugs, and alcohol can make these hallucinations more likely to occur, too, she adds.Hypnogogic hallucinations are visual, tactile, auditory, or other sensory events, that occur at the transition from from sleep to wakefulness. Or, according to sleep specialist Angela Holliday-Bell, MD, it could be tied to a condition like insomnia or mood disorders like depression or bipolar disorder. That could be something as seemingly innocuous as struggling to fall asleep (perhaps due to stress or anxiety), having an irregular sleep schedule, or pulling an all-nighter. More generally, anything that throws off the pattern of your circadian rhythm (aka your body’s 24-hour sleep-wake cycle) can also be a culprit.

Varga, “but in some conditions, namely narcolepsy, that transition can be much faster.” “Normal physiology is such that REM sleep should take 60 to 120 minutes to occur from sleep onset,” says Dr. One explanation is that they may occur more frequently in folks who experience a quicker dive right into REM sleep (aka dream sleep), shuttling through the earlier stages of sleep too hastily. The short answer: Science doesn’t fully know yet why certain people tend to get them (or get them more often), and others don’t. And it gets its name from the transitional state of consciousness in which it happens, called hypnagogia. Varga, MD, a physician at the Mount Sinai Integrative Sleep Center. Varga, MD, neuroscientistĮntirely distinct from a substance-related hallucination or a hallucination tied to a mental-health condition, a hypnagogic hallucination “occurs in the transition from wakefulness to sleep, either right at the time of initially falling asleep or in the middle of the night, if you’re briefly roused from sleep,” says neuroscientist Andrew W. “A hypnagogic hallucination occurs in the transition from wakefulness to sleep, either at the time of falling asleep or in the middle of the night, if you’re roused from sleep.” -Andrew W. “People occasionally feel as if something is touching them, or they could have a physical sensation like floating or falling.” “Most often, these are visual hallucinations-like, seeing moving images, shapes, faces, or scenes-but they can also be auditory or tactile, as well,” says clinical psychologist and sleep specialist Shelby Harris, PsyD, author of The Women’s Guide to Overcoming Insomnia.
