Hypnagogia: A Bridge to Other Realities

It was this page that lead me to understanding what my halucinations were in the line up towards REM sleep.
That was 5 years ago, and now I have a great little community of 50+ people on facebook that discusses these topics IN-DEPTH.

You are NOT alone with these experiences.

Come join us in the 'Lucid dreaming - for serious lucid dreamers' group on facebook.
The more the merrier!

It's really comforting to scroll through all of these stories and see that other people have the same experiences as I do. They started when I was young, but were very are occurrences. Oddly, as a child I was more prone to sleep walking than to sleep paralysis, interesting to see how that has made a complete 180. Anyway, as a child I used to run screaming to my mother after having night terrors, or what I thought were hauntings. Dead relatives and friends would show up in my room, and I would just look at them until they left, and I was able to move once more. Frequently I would dream that a mask that my mother kept in her room would come looking for me, and bite my throat open- killing me. It always felt incredibly real, very lucid. I would think "this again?" and run, but I knew I wasnt in any real danger, aside from the crippling fear.

Now I get them much more intensely. Demons sitting on my chest, dark figures entering my room, old friends appearing next to me, shadow figures in my bed, and more. I'm very interested in talking to others that experience these type of things, so my email is below-

I appreciate many of the comments, I have been studying narcolepsy lately once I found out it was often accompanied with hypnagogia, I do not have narcolepsy, but I have had sleep paralysis/hypnagogia etc for most my life. Last night when I awoke (or 'felt' entirely conscious) it felt like someone turned the static on a radio up, there was a pause and a breath, and a voice said "...don't fuck with me" the voice was very clear and intense. I have no idea what it related too.
I try to take histamines to sleep since I've heard they delay the REM onset (from occurring too quickly), I also heard this results in overall poorer sleep, but it is worth it if I can wake up without voices talking to me.
This is very difficult for me to deal with. I really wish I could talk to someone about it, but every time I try to bring it up to people close to me, I know they don't understand the depth of the pain it can cause. It is very hard to be optimistic when I hear voices angry and screaming at me every so often, and God knows what the hell it is.
I know many of you see this as positive but this is horrific to me. I have heard hundreds of voices and all of them felt bad intentioned, terrifying, and evil. I don't know what to do anymore. I just feel really alone.

Wow! I've experienced hypnagogia since I was a teen and at the age of 42 am just realizing it for the first time ever after reading these posts. I was never really able to figure out what was going on with me and just came to term it as some kind of "pre-cognitive ability".

When it first happened, I found myself in the middle of the night digging thru newspapers my dad had saved about an Apollo rocket that'd blown up. Challenger exploded the next day. I never even knew he had the clippings stuffed away in a filing cabinet. It was like I was just drawn to them.

I have awakened in the middle of the night at the exact same time (or right before) people have been in harm's way or died. I'll have very specific dreams about friends (and more recently people I barely know) in distress (people I haven't talked to in months or years or never spoken with). I will contact them them by phone or in person and blow them away because they've told no one about what I just dreamed about (things like them being pregnant, medical diagnosis, having marital or financial problems, etc.)

I have always strongly shied away from considering it as a psychic ability, preferring to privately think of it as more a "gifting" in the prophetic realm - so I can pray with them and guide them along biblical perspectives. Just wondering if anyone is aware of any resources about this from a Christian perspective?

This is all very fascinating but using primates to investigate this thing is absolutely repellent. The pursuit of knowledge at any cost makes the human race poorer not richer.

You have no idea how happy I am to hear that I'm not crazy! I mean I feel for all of you because I know how scary it is. But now after researching this I look at it as more of a gift. I knew it had something to do with my psychic abilities but I have no control over it. Just like I have no control over the nights when hypnagogia happens. But maybe now I can learn it and be able to harness it. I don't know..use it better. I'm gonna pay attention to the days my psychic abilities are really dead on to the nights I have the episodes. I willing to bet that my days are of more of a heighten awareness.
Peace to you
DG

So over the last few months I have been going through this pattern when falling asleep. Somtimes when I am exhausted somtimes not. I will lay down and slowly fall asleep but I don't feel asleep per say. My mind is alert, and I think I am still awake. I can see my intire room exactly as it is. However I then start to panic as I try to move I realise I'm being held down, when i look at my arms there are 'shadow' streaks across my arms (as i sleep on my stomach)I can't move, then I figure I'm asleep but can't force myself to wake up it goes on for what feels like hours. Its very terrifying.

I'm female and my hypnagogic experience started at age 34 lasting to present (age 51).

I got a book one day on how to become psychic - it said to 'open to it'. I didn't know what that meant so I made a goal to 'put my focus inward 24/7'. My thinking was, "When a person gets messages, they appear in the thought stream, so if I'm focusing inward all the time I can't miss them should they occur".

Unfortunately within a few months I got 'messages'. I say "unfortunately' because after I got really good at keeping my focus inward all day long, I got what looked like psychosis. I had this continually for nearly 2 years and then incorrectly concluded I had 'sleep deprivation symptoms'. What I didn't realize was that to get psychosis from sleep deprivation it doesn't take 9 whole years to build up a sleep debt!

To make a long story short, I finally realized my goal to 'focus inward' made me accidentally start seeing my what I imagined show up in my hypnagogia. In other words, I became an 'accidental hypnagogist'. For anyone whose never heard of this, 'hypnagogist' or 'someone who induces hypnagogic content', here's a link out of many out there which explains what it is and how to do it :

There are other pages that talk about how to induce this on the internet besides the one I just gave.

Unfortunately I became very very good at getting self-induced hypnagogic content. Imagine what that did to someone who didn't mean to do it, didn't know that's what it was, especially when the content became spooky and violent in topic. DON'T ASK. Seriously. I was in and out of E.R.'s trying to find out what went wrong with me.

Years later, in late 2009 (it started in 1990, btw), I finally figured out what it was and now I'm stuck having to undo and very nasty habit I accidentally started in 1990, which is hypnagogia I don't even want nor am interested in. This is why I first came to this site - to try to figure out the best way to rid this awful thing I gave myself.

That's my experience.

hi everyone. i have experienced hypnagogia for all my life. i have never found it to be scary or anything (although i have almost had a few OBEs which are scary for me) if i am really sleepy i will sometimes put on some ambient music and concentrate on that and i do begin to see hypnagogic visions and hear voices, sounds and sometimes even music. i see random people usually anime style but not any that exist so far as i know (i am into anime lol) i will also see some facinating landscapes and feel interesting concepts. yeah you can actually FEEL concepts. i also see swirling colors (this is what i see first) and then flashing lights. i saw a space ship traveling at light speed once, also i have seen the ocean from above clouds and i think i had wings or there was a winged person nearby. i dont see any of those geometric shapes that others say they see (i wish i could) but if i am lucky enough to get into a deep hypnagogic state, wow, now it can be very facinating. i usually take midday naps in order to not fall completely asleep. although lucid dreaming in my opinion more fun this is also fascinating.

Hi all

These are most of my experiences that I remember:

Every night just before I fall asleep I hear loud noises like cupboard doors slamming in the kitchen, crockery, pots and pans crashing to the floor, guns being fired, people talking in the next room, my name being called from afar.

Then I feel a force pulling me down through my bed, everything turns black and I am falling fast and while I am falling I feel lots of human arms/hands pulling me down into the darkness. This is very frightening and really scares me and I have to force myself back to reality (although I sometimes feel these experiences are quite real as I am not dreaming yet). I guess this is what is called the RABBIT HOLE experience.

At times I wake up choking and have to force air into my lungs. It believe it feels like drowning or being born. Believe me, this one is the most terrifying of them all because I always think I am dying when it happens.

One time I also saw the black figure in my room before falling asleep. I was totally awake then. It happened a few minutes after I turned off the light. I was also paralized, could not move, speak or breathe til it left the same way it entered my room... via the door. It was not walking it was floating very slowly.... it held an old fashioned candle holder with an almost burntout non lit white candle. It just stood there nexto my bed. I said the Lord's prayer and it left. I was able to move when it left. I slept with the light turned on the next week.

((You know when you are tired your eyelids feel heavy, you close it but you are still awake (or at least you believe you are because you can still open them at any time and see everything in your room)? Now this is then when it happens to me. When I force myself back from this noisy and falling experience all I have to do is force my eyelids open, then I will see my room again. I just think by myself: "open your eyes" and it works)).

At times after I closed my eyes I feel something small jumping onto my bed. I then open my eyes and my 2 little dogs are fast asleep, they fall asleep before me. Anyway, my poodle died a couple of years back in her cradle right next to my bed. That night I was sitting up with her for the whole night while balling my eyes out. I knew it was time because she was terminally ill and very old and she made me FEEL that it was her time. I made her a promise that she wont go alone that I will be holding and comforting her til she had gone. I did as I promised. Since then I always talk to her when I miss her too much. Twice I was lying in bed after closing my eyes with my arm hanging down the side and I feel her licking my hand like she used to. I open my eyes and the other two are still fast asleep like they were before I retired for bed.

I CAME TO MY OWN CONCLUSION THAT WHEN WE ENTER THESE "STATES" WE ACTUALLY ENTER THE PLANES OF "THE OTHER SIDE".

MAYBE THAT IS WHY SOME PEOPLE SEE AND HEAR ENTITIES COMMUNICATING WITH THEM.

MAYBE THE DEAD ARE PLAYING TRICKS ON US AND THINK THEY ARE MUCH TOO FUNNY.... LIKE THE ONE PERSON MENTIONED ABOVE ABOUT THE ENTITY ON HER BED SAYING "I GOT YOU!" BEFORE DISAPPEARING. SEEMS LIKE THEY LIKE TO PLAY HIDE AND SEEK WITH US.

MAYBE WHEN WE ARE IN THIS ALTER STATE THEY ARE ABLE TO COMMUNICATE WITH US THEN. BECAUSE WHEN WE ARE TOTALLY NOT SLEEPING, WE ARE TOO BUSY DOING THIS OR THAT OR TOO BUSY THINKING, ETC, TOO BUSY TO HEAR THEM OR EVEN SEE THEM. SO, I CAME TO THE BELIEVE THAT "THAT" TIME IS NOT OUR TIME BUT THEIR TIME!!!!

I AM ALSO GOING TO TRY NOT TO BE AFRAID FROM NOW ON AS I THINK WHEN WE GET SCARED WHILE HAVING OUR EXPERIENCES, WE ARE VUNERABLE TO THE "BAD ONES" WHOM WILL TAKE ADVANTAGE OF US.

SO TONIGHT........ I WILL JUST GO WITH THE FLOW!!!!! see what lies beyond!

Have a gr8 day you all.

This site and the posts are truly amazing. I can't imagine experiencing the unwelcome terrors that some people have written about here. However, I have read a few books on out-of-body traveling by individuals claiming to be able to control this experience and turn it into something positive. (?)

For myself I experienced seeing phantom spiders for a while when I was in my pre-teen years. I'm now 61. I finally got up the courage to quickly put my finger out to touch a spider on the mattress and realized, with relief, that it was more like something between dreaming and waking up and not real at all. The experience faded after that.

About seven years ago I was waking up in the morning on a Saturday when I heard a man's calm voice say in my ear, "439." Because I'd never heard voices before (or after), I thought it was significant. After consideration, I decided that such numbers might have to do with a website I had wherein I used a Banner Agent that would pay me for *hits* or whenever somebody visited. At the time I was obsessed with checking the numbers every day numerous times to see how many *hits* there were. A slow but steady increase occurred, never more than 20-30 in a day. Well, the hits on that Friday had been something like 300 and because the weekend visits always went down, I guessed that the 439 number might apply to Monday. I wrote down 439 and waited for Monday and checked stats all day. It was a very big reach to go to 439 and all day long on Monday it definitely didn't look possible. But there at the very end when I checked the very last count, it was 439! What a blast! Probably sounds stupid to other people because they didn't experience it. But for me it was my very own personal ESP experience that nobody can tell me didn't happen. :-)

I've had a couple other premonitions in my life: (1) One that may have saved my life (a body/sensory warning that called me to do an action I would never have otherwise taken that was within a WINDOW of 30 seconds); and (2) a dream foretelling facts to happen 2 days later although of complete silliness with no serious effect at all. If you want details, continue reading.

(1) I was a front seat passenger in a car accident wherein my seat broke away from the floor. The seat belt was secured to the floor and if I had not undone my seat belt within the previous 30 seconds I would have likely been squished. However, on an absolutely cold, rainy day I had grown boiling hot within a matter of seconds and even told myself that "somebody" wanted me to take off my coat. Although the car was stopped on a busy freeway for a jack-knifed truck it went against reason not to have the protection of my seat belt. However, I made a decision that "somebody" knew more than I did and therefore braced my legs and quickly undid the seat belt to take off my coat. Within 2 seconds we were hit from behind by a student driving on bald tires that couldn't stop in the rain. The impact was hard enough to throw the back end of the car high into the air causing my seat to break loose from the floor.

(2) I had a silly dream one night that James Garner the actor had decided to change his last name to "August" as in James August. In the next 2 days I happened to watch a program about one of the Caesar's who built a coliseum and because on its opening night in the month of *August* a comet flew overhead he was so self-impressed that he decided to change his name to Caesar Augustus. Well, I already said it was silly -- but the fact that I had previously dreamed about James Garner changing his name to James August did make it relevant for me.

I just heard the word Hypnagogic for the first time yesterday and have been reading on the internet all morning. Okay, well, reading all your posts makes me happy I am not alone/crazy etc, but OMG some of you have such frightening experiences !! Mine are never scary, just annoying as Iam tired everyday from being constantly wakened. I have them every nite. Voices I hear as clear as day, objects floating and just in my room. The weirdest thing is that (and it doesnt matter where I am... staying at a friends house, motel, even on a cruise ship last month, and of course in my bedroom in the various homes I have had) for some reason most all the activity is in the RIGHT CORNER of the room. When it's happening I have a very clear realization that there is a portal or some kind of opening in the right hand corner where these "people" (not really appearing in human form but I cant describe it) can enter into my room. They are not scary or doing me harm, they just come into my room each nite and it's always just random stuff that happens. It never even makes sense so it's hard to even describe. I am kinda excited now that I know what it's called and I can learn more. One thing that does work when I do it is right before I fall asleep, I say to God or "my spirits", or whatever you want to call them, "I do not want to have any episodes tonite. I want a full restful nights sleep please. Thank you" and believe it or not it works most of the time.

I really thought I was alone, I’ve been having a strange experiences, and thought that I was truly a freak.
Before I fall asleep, I would see things, people I don’t know, and things that had nothing to do with me.
I hear a loud buzzing, and my name being called.
Sometime it was like something jumped on my bed, and nothing did.
I can close my eyes, and see a room come in to focus.
There would be people there and I would talk to them.
I’m still the wake, I’m aware of what I’m doing.
We would have conversations, and they would ask me to look for things.
I’ve had the same thing happen several times, I would go back to the same room.
I think it’s really strange, that you can be still awake and have these things happen.
I wonder why I see these things. These people?