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[Tom]

brings a new meaning to phone sex.

[calenlass]

I have, like Lunchy, always been rather afraid of looking around me or out a window and noticing things that should not be there. However, we moved into a house a few years ago, and it creeks a bunch at night when the air comes on. Sometimes there are footsteps that run up and down the hall! I usually count eight feet, and sometimes in the morning the carpets in the hallway are all messed up!


And then in the morning I'll get knocked over again as Oscar and Nabisco tear past me again and skid to a stop and collapse on each other with biting teeth and rabbit punching back feet and mess up the carpets I've just straightened.

[HellStorm]

I completely believe in spirits and ghosts. I think that people are only afraid of them because it can't be explained with science, and therefore it shouldn't happen. I've had a couple experiences both recently and not.
The first one was when I was about 4/5 (I only have vague memories of this, alot is from my parents telling me what happened) I was living in Indonesia at the time, in a house that had only just been finished. We had had a quinine tree in the garden, and much to the disapproval of the villagers, it got cut down. They all believed that it was haunted, as our house had been built on a muslim burial ground, and it was where all the spirits would go and sit or whatever, mainly one woman was seen, sometimes others with her. Anyway I was asleep in my room, and my parents were sitting in the living room watching TV. I went in there and told them that I had a lovely dream that a pretty lady was tickling me, and I woke up and she was really there. When I was asked what she looked like I said that she had pretty long hair, and she was wearing a white dress with blue bits on it. They dismissed it as an overactive imagination, and sent me back to bed. It was only after that that we found out that muslim women were buried in white dresses with blue around the neck, sleeves and around the bottom.

The second was a couple years ago now. We were at a mates house doing ouija as we thought his house was haunted and decided to check it out. Anyway we started and couldn't make any sense out of it. After a few minutes we decided 5 more minutes, and if nothing happens we'll give up. After a couple of minutes it started moving, to start with going in slowish circles around the board and then it started going back and forward straight across the board. We all let go and the glass shot off at the wall. We expected it to smash, but instead it smacked into the wall and got lodged into the brick work.

And last, in the house I'm currently living in when I'm in my room (which happens to be one of the oldest in the house) I can feel someone there constantly. Not someone terrible like there out to get me, but a nice person. Like if I'm upset or whatever I can feel them trying to calm me down, or if I'm sleeping I can always hear someone breathing.

[onewheelwizzard]

A lot of that kind of stuff has happened to my mother.  She sets off anyone who is supposed to be "psychic" and they can tell things about her that they can't about other people.  She also has had a number of dreams about things that have later come true, and she's been visited in her dreams by her dead father on several occasions (interestingly, so were several of her siblings, and they all had the same kind of dreams for the same period of time, and then, about a year after he died, they all had the same dream of him saying goodbye and haven't dreamed about him since).

Here's my take on it ... if ghosts are "hallucinations" that have no substrate in the objective physical world and no scientifically measurable signature, and instead reside entirely within the private subjective realities of the people who see them, that does not make them "not real" and it also does not mean that any of the phenomena reported as "ghostly" is necessarily untrue.  The separation between our minds and each other, and between our minds and the world around us, is not really as strongly defined as it seems.

[RedLion]

This isn't really related to ghosts per se, but still kind of odd.

I have a propensity for awakening just moments before a phone rings or an alarm goes off. It's not a conditioned response thing to wake up at a certain time, because I rarely set alarms. It's only when I do set one that I wake up a few moments before it goes. Same for phones. It's not always, but it's often enough to be kind of disconcerting, that I'll wake up and get my bearings, and about 5 seconds later the phone will ring. It happens too often to just be coincidence.

Anyone know anything about this? It's confused me for a few years.

[onewheelwizzard]

That happens to me too, and every time I talk about it all my friends mention that it's happened to them before too.

I just figure the brain is able to set its own alarms.  Makes me wish I were better at it ... as it stands, I can safely get up at a time I need to within a few minutes of an electronic alarm maybe a third of the time, depending on how much sleep I'm getting.  I imagine it's something that can be practiced somehow and gotten good at.

[jodizzle]

I have never had a ghostly experience and I guess I don't really think about it all that much.  I don't not believe in them, and I find it all rather interesting!  I enjoy reading other people's ghostly stories though!

[CamusCanDo]

Not exactly ghost related but things like this make me smile:

http://www.tribune.com.ng/22052008/news/news2.html

[imapiratearg]

Is that shit real?

[Boro_Bandito]

I have, like Lunchy, always been rather afraid of looking around me or out a window and noticing things that should not be there. However, we moved into a house a few years ago, and it creeks a bunch at night when the air comes on. Sometimes there are footsteps that run up and down the hall! I usually count eight feet, and sometimes in the morning the carpets in the hallway are all messed up!


And then in the morning I'll get knocked over again as Oscar and Nabisco tear past me again and skid to a stop and collapse on each other with biting teeth and rabbit punching back feet and mess up the carpets I've just straightened.

I think you solve your own problem in this one. Its probably the cats. Having lived in a basement for some time, I come to know how things sound above me. Often in the middle of the night for the longest time I would hear what sounded like people walking back and forth upstairs, or a quick burst of movement that sounded like someone running from the bathroom down the hall to the steps leading down to the split foyer. After a while I realized that its the cats, who at night are more active than in the day (at least mine are) and are usually tussling with each other. Now, I have one cat who is literally 15 pounds, huge girl, and two others who like to pick territory fights. If they move quick they can sound a lot like footsteps, which were what I was hearing. If they're messing up the carpet in the morning, who's to say they aren't at night as well? Unless of course you keep em caged at night, then you're probably screwed.

[0bsessions]

Anyone know anything about this? It's confused me for a few years.

That's a rather simple internal clock mechanism. It's merely simple mind over matter. Your brain knows it needs to be up and will generally kickstart you into gear.

[tania]

how do you explain waking up before the phone rings? not trying to be flippant or anything, i'm genuinely curious because this happens to me pretty often as well and i don't have any kind of explanation for it.

[Boro_Bandito]

maybe you wake up in the middle of the silence between phone rings and only think the phone just started ringing when you truly hear it for the first time.

[RedLion]

maybe you wake up in the middle of the silence between phone rings and only think the phone just started ringing when you truly hear it for the first time.

Nah. Because it usually happens at least 2 minutes after I wake up until the phone rings. I'll sit up, rub my eyes and start to get out of bed, and it rings. Happens at least three times a week, at random times of the night/morning.

[dennis]

maybe you wake up in the middle of the silence between phone rings and only think the phone just started ringing when you truly hear it for the first time.

Nah. Because it usually happens at least 2 minutes after I wake up until the phone rings. I'll sit up, rub my eyes and start to get out of bed, and it rings. Happens at least three times a week, at random times of the night/morning.

This is called confirmation bias. People will tend to remember things that confirm their preconceptions, namely, that you tend to wake up just before the phone rings. If you were to keep a journal and mark down every time it happens, as well as when it doesn't happen, and the timeframes involved, it would probably show that it's just coincidence. This is just a natural human tendency--remember the things that are significant.

---
Also, a lot of ghost sightings (and alien abductions), and it seems, many of the ones in this thread can be attributed to the phenomenon of night terrors, that is, when you become conscious before your body does. I've had this experience many times, and oftentime it ends quite spookily, where I see an apparition or feel a presence and hear a voice just before the rest of me wakes up. If you don't know what happened to you, you can invent all sorts of things to explain what happened (see pareidolia). This is the reason why a lot of ghost experiences happen to people in bed. They're basically dreaming while awake.

[dennis]

I have, like Lunchy, always been rather afraid of looking around me or out a window and noticing things that should not be there. However, we moved into a house a few years ago, and it creeks a bunch at night when the air comes on. Sometimes there are footsteps that run up and down the hall! I usually count eight feet, and sometimes in the morning the carpets in the hallway are all messed up!


And then in the morning I'll get knocked over again as Oscar and Nabisco tear past me again and skid to a stop and collapse on each other with biting teeth and rabbit punching back feet and mess up the carpets I've just straightened.

Hee!

[MadassAlex]

Also, a lot of ghost sightings (and alien abductions), and it seems, many of the ones in this thread can be attributed to the phenomenon of night terrors, that is, when you become conscious before your body does. I've had this experience many times, and oftentime it ends quite spookily, where I see an apparition or feel a presence and hear a voice just before the rest of me wakes up. If you don't know what happened to you, you can invent all sorts of things to explain what happened (see pareidolia). This is the reason why a lot of ghost experiences happen to people in bed. They're basically dreaming while awake.

I've had that experience too. It's the most terrifying thing, but in retrospect it's really cool, too.

However, the term is "sleep paralysis". Night terrors are a different thing altogether. Four of the major differences are thus:

1. Night terrors generally cannot be recalled.

2. During night terrors, your body isn't actually paralysed, so many people thrash about.

3. Night terrors generally occur in young children. There's disagreement about the age group, but different sources say anywhere from 3 years old up to about 8 years. It's incredibly rare to experience night terrors after that stage. Sleep paralysis, on the other hand, generally doesn't occur at all during childhood and kicks in at some point in adulthood.

4. Night terrors occur in stages three and four of NREM (non-rapid-eye-movement) sleep. Sleep paralysis happens during REM sleep and can ONLY happen during REM sleep, because that's the only point where you're paralysed. The theory behind that is that REM sleep is where you do most of your dreaming, so the body locks itself down so you don't act it out.

Sleep paralysis is actually relatively common. Most people experience it at some point, but probably only once. Some unlucky/lucky (depending on how you look at it) have it frequently. In fact, I believe my older brother suffers from it almost every night, but he's so used to it that he can see the fantasy of his dreams superimposed over the real world, viewing both at once. Fucking trippy.

Human sleep patterns are absolutely fascinating imo.

[onewheelwizzard]

I woke one of my close friends up and accidentally gave them a night terror once.  It was one of the freakiest things I'd ever seen ... she was more scared than I've ever seen a human being be, like balls fucking terrified, for 2 seconds, and then she came out of it and didn't even realize it had happened and was asking me what was wrong 10 seconds later.  It was like the part of her that knew what fear was woke up before the rest of her and freaked out, and then the rest caught up and was like "what's up?"

[dennis]

I've had that experience too. It's the most terrifying thing, but in retrospect it's really cool, too.

However, the term is "sleep paralysis". Night terrors are a different thing altogether. Four of the major differences are thus:

My mistake. I've historically gotten the two conflated and confused. Thanks for correcting me.

[calenlass]

I've always heard a lot of bumps in the night, but I realised long ago that they were auditory hallucinations. I do think it's quite funny, though, that auditory hallucinations tend to start right about the same point you get tired enough for your imagination to start acting up.



Also, onewheelwizard, I have found in recent years that I am capable of far more while still not conscious than I ever would have thought possible. Like, when I was younger my mom would wake me up for school, and I'd have dreams about putting my uniform on and then wake up and realise I'd not actually done it, but it wasn't until recent years that I had people tell me they startled me when I was sleeping or tripped over me or something and I carried on some sort of conversation with them or (in one case) was up and half out of the room before I fully woke up. It's kind of cool to know my subconscious has such an intact survival instinct, if that's what it is.

[MadassAlex]

I know a dude who can eat while he sleeps.

I am challenging all of you to beat that.

[Dissy]

I know a dude who can eat while he sleeps.

I am challenging all of you to beat that.

I have been rudely awoken several times by my father and flatmates in the kitchen cooking something.  The first two time I nearly got a baseball bat to the head because I was talking to myself, and in different tones of voices, they thought someone had broken in.

[tania]

a guy i was kinda sorta dating in high school had a little brother who had somnambulism, only he wouldn't walk around, he would RUN as fast as he could. like, at three in the morning we'd both wake up to the sound of him just tearing through the house and up and down the stairs. and he'd be all "yeah, he just does that sometimes in his sleep, don't worry about it." fucking eerie as hell.

[imapiratearg]

I don't know whether or not to feel bad about laughing at that.  My brother sleepwalks occasionally, and once, my mother found him walking out to the kitchen trash can in the early hours of the morning, sleepwalking, claiming he had to go to the bathroom, and was seconds away from pissing in the garbage.

We still pick on him for this.   

[MadassAlex]

Okay okay, you guys win. Slightly.

[jodizzle]

I went to a small boarding school and they house girls and boys in the same house (with very strict rules of which part of siad house we were allowed in of course). Anyway, it was just across the oval form the school and one of the guys woke up one night standing in the school courtyard, with no idea how he got there. that was pretty awesome.

[Boro_Bandito]

imapiratearg, my brother used to do exactly that. I don't know what it is about the trashcan, I guess the brain is rewired in sleep to switch the kitchens and bathrooms of houses.

[onewheelwizzard]

I guess I was just really unlucky then ... I sleepwalked once in elementary school or something and I peed in my shoes.

[RedLion]

I'm assuming you guys sleep-talk then? I have a habit of just sitting up and shouting random words like "DUCK!" and then curling up again without another word.

(I feel like maybe I've brought this up before...eh.)

[calenlass]

Guys I was not talking about sleepwalking and sleeptalking, and I was hoping people would recognise that. Sleepwalking has nothing to do with external stimuli.

[jodizzle]

I am awesome at sleeptalking.  One tme I said to Loxley: "what kind of animal are you? Nothing...lobster...........Lobster pillow".

I think that is the best thing I have ever said in my life, including when I am awake.

[RedLion]

Guys I was not talking about sleepwalking and sleeptalking, and I was hoping people would recognise that. Sleepwalking has nothing to do with external stimuli.

and yet, I was.

 

[jhocking]

I've long been prone to both talking and moving around while sleeping. I don't think I've ever full-on sleep walked though, rather stuff like lashing out and smashing things next to me.

Back when I worked at a camp, one morning I rolled over and rambled out some long and elaborate plan to improve the world by changing the calendar or something. Unfortunately I had been talking in my sleep, and when I actually woke up an hour later I had no recollection of my little speech, and nobody else in the cabin understood anything I said other than that it had something to do with improving the world by changing the calendar or something.

[calenlass]

Guys I was not talking about sleepwalking and sleeptalking, and I was hoping people would recognise that. Sleepwalking has nothing to do with external stimuli.

and yet, I was.

 

Incidentally, I wasn't addressing just you. Also incidentally, my first post on the subject (sort of) was kind of an aside in response to something onewheelwizard said and I was hoping it really wouldn't derail the discussion from the topic at hand.

[Lunchbox]

If we're talking about sleepwalking, one time my boyfriend's step brother woke up on the side of the road about a kilometre away, with his pillow and blanket.

I'd be creeped the fuck out.

[tania]

maybe people wanted to talk about sleepwalking. i'm sorry?

[Lunchbox]

I do not mind that we are talking about sleepwalking! This thread is for generally creepy stuff, I think?

[imapiratearg]

But sleepwalking and sleeptalking can be humorous at times!  It is not creepy!

Apparently, I talk in my sleep on occasion.  I also move around a lot in my sleep.

[tommydski]

I try not to sleep with another person who I am not having sex with because I can literally roll over and fuck basically anything in the same bed as me. Most nights I wake up intertwined with a pillow. I don't know why I do this but some people have commented that I do display some symptoms of Hypersexuality and I pretty much put it down to that. Sometimes situation force me into sharing beds and I'll do basically anything to avoid it. Some people think I'm being weird or shitty (especially men) but I'm actually trying to avoid sexually assaulting them in my sleep.

There have definitely been occasions in the past whereby I was sharing a bed with a female and have woken up whilst already having sex with them, despite having no intention of doing anything of the sort when I was awake. I think I've been extremely fortunate that the couple of women this happened with actually found me attractive and wanted to have sex with me anyway or I could find myself in all sorts of legal hot water and justifiably so.

[tania]

the only thing i've ever done that resembles sleepwalking or talking or whatever is that the last few nights i've been having these really intense terrifying dreams that i guess cause me to flail around, and i keep waking myself up by injuring myself. last night i elbowed my nighttable and knocked my plant over and before that i kicked my wall so hard i thought i had broken my toe. it sucks! maybe if anyone has experience with this kind of thing they can give me advice, or something, i mean i am starting to consider sleeping on the couch if this keeps up because i am tired of injuries.

[Dissy]

I try not to sleep with another person who I am not having sex with because I can literally roll over and fuck basically anything in the same bed as me.

Johnny, I think you should bring a sleeping bag to Tronno, and sleep on the floor.

[imapiratearg]

Don't you mean Tommy??

 

[tommydski]

Johnny C will accept my demonic seed and like it.

[jhocking]

I should try that excuse with my fiancee. "Sorry bout that, I can't help it, I'm a sleep-humper!"

[0bsessions]

I actually used to have that problem and it still crops up slightly at this point. I am a recovering sleep-humper.

[tania]

somewhere, at this moment, john cameron has just gotten a very cold chill down his spine and doesn't know why

[Liz]

I have a tendency to cling to whatever is in my bed, including pillows and other people, but I have never gone so far as to have sex with them. So I think I'm doing alright.

Also- I don't want to cuddle with you anymore Tommy.

[tommydski]

My guess it that it's pretty easy for a guy but quite difficult for a girl to initiate.

Don't get me wrong, it doesn't happen a lot. Just occasionally.

[sean]

Guys, mind if I go back to sleep talking for a second, I have a funny story.

So one time my family was playing some sort of trivia game while my uncle was asleep on a chair in the same room. At one point a question is asked but nobody can figure it out for a few seconds. Then, my uncle, in his sleep, gives the correct answer.

It was fucking hilarious.

[Tom]

what if you were being had?