The most common and dramatic hallucinations are those that occur immediately before bedtime or immediately after, or just while lying down.
Of course, dreams are also false perceptions observed during sleep; however, since we are not awake, they are usually not considered hallucinations. Likewise, during our ordinary rest, we sometimes indulge in all sorts of fantasies. But this play of imagination is usually voluntary and is not considered a hallucination.
Sleep-related hallucinations usually occur during waking moments immediately before or after sleep. Take, for example, the case of a young anthropology student who later became a famous scientist.
In 1964, while a college student, David Hufford encountered the terrible Night Strangler. Exhausted by a bout of mononucleosis and preparing for his final exams, Hufford went into a room he rented off-campus one December and fell into a deep sleep. An hour later, he shuddered and woke up to the sound of a door opening - the very door that he himself locked and bolted before going to bed. After that, Hufford heard footsteps from the door to the bed, and felt the presence of evil. The young man was seized with horror, he could not move a single muscle, his wide-open eyes froze.
Without warning, the sinister creature, whoever it was, leapt onto Hufford's chest. The ribcage shrank under the pressing weight. It became difficult to breathe. Hufford felt a pair of hands grab his neck and begin to squeeze. “I thought I was going to die,” he says.
At this moment, the force that did not allow Hufford to move, as if it had disappeared somewhere. He jumped up as if scalded and ran several blocks to the student dormitory, where he took refuge. “Why, it's a mystery,” he recalls with a strained laugh, “but I didn’t tell anyone about what happened” (Bower, 2005, p. 27).
This incident, which happened to Professor Hufford while he was a student, illustrates several common phenomena in such situations, including hallucinations and sleep paralysis. Some people experience auditory or visual hypnagogic hallucinations just before falling asleep.
Usually they feature people's faces, landscapes, various scenes. These can be pseudo-hallucinations (which, although they seem real, the person does not perceive as real) or true hallucinations (taken seriously). Typically, hypnagogic hallucinations are static images.
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They can appear during the day, in moments of fatigue or nap, as well as with a lack of external stimuli, or they can overlap with what a person sees in reality. Such hallucinations are relatively common, with 37% of the population experiencing them frequently. Similarly, in a half-asleep state just before waking, a person may experience hypnopompic hallucinations. As a rule, they repeat fragments of recent dreams.
Sleep paralysis is a dramatic condition associated with sleep in which a person is unable to speak or move immediately before falling asleep or upon waking up. Sometimes he feels that "there, outside" someone or something is there, but he can neither move nor shout. At such times, visual, auditory, or tactile hallucinations are common.
From a physiological point of view, when we sleep, our body is temporarily immobilized, and skeletal muscles (those used for movement, gesture, and speech) are temporarily paralyzed. That is why we are not trying to put into practice what we see in dreams. In a state of sleep paralysis, the brain wakes up, exits the neurophysiological state of sleep, but the body remains paralyzed for a very short time.
At this moment, a person is fully aware of himself and his surroundings, but cannot move and speak, and sometimes also experiences hallucinations similar to dreams. Sleep paralysis, as well as hypnapedic and hypnopompic hallucinations can be terrifying for an uninformed person.
Many people experience sleep paralysis only a few times in their lives, but with those who have certain sleep disorders (narcolepsy), this happens more often. It is possible that the many encounters with ghosts, aliens and angels that have occurred around the world at various times are in fact cases of sleep paralysis and the terrible horror experienced at the same time.
