Most of us at some point in our lives have experienced this type of hallucinations that are more common during childhood and adolescence, often these are confused or related to paranormal phenomena when in reality they are a simple type of hallucinations that happen when we sleep or wake up due to the changes in our brain in the transition from sleep to wakefulness or vice versa.
In the field of psychiatry and psychology these hallucinations are called hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations and are often very common and terrifying because through them our deepest fears can manifest.
In one of my previous post I explained in detail what the term hallucination refers to and all the confusions that revolve around it, to know what the term hallucination refers to, go to the following link: Hallucinations
Hypnagogic Hallucinations
Hypnagogic hallucinations are a set of visual, auditory and even gustatory or haptic perceptions (referring to touch) that people who suffer from it experience in the transition from waking state to dream, that is, when they begin to fall asleep .
When we are falling asleep many times we hear, see or feel the presence of someone strange, usually this is something that happens to most of us after watching a horror movie. Something that also happens to us is to listen to our relatives calling us, talking, commenting something etc. When we open our eyes during this transition, we can see for a few seconds the shadow or silhouette of someone, flashes of light among many other things.
Sleep Paralysis
When we dream, we enter a state known as ''hypnogogic'', transitional between wakefulness and sleep. At that moment, the body is paralyzed and only the muscles of the eyes, heart, brain and breathing work. In this state it is common to believe that you are awake, to such an extent that you are sure to have your eyes open and see and hear things around. The characteristic of this state is that the body can not move, it is immobilized. If the subject wants to move, he can not do it. There are even times when the person who is sleeping in that state wakes up, and the immobility remains. However, it reverts to normality in a matter of minutes, not requiring intervention or having greater pathological significance.
This is what we call the famous and terrifying Sleep Paralysis. Occurs in the transition from sleep to wakefulness in which we are in the hypnogogic state characterized by immobility that can be accompanied by tactile, auditory and visual hallucinations.
Sleep paralysis is often an exasperating experience and despite knowing that it is not a paranormal phenomenon the sensations that accompany it are so real that it is impossible to keep calm.
Hypnopompic Hallucinations
They are called hypnopompic hallucinations to those that occur in an intermediate state between sleep and wakefulness, these occur when we are waking up. They are perceptions that do not correspond to objective reality but are lived as such, the subject do not distinguish them from a normal experience lived completely awake. They are not pathological.
Some years ago I experienced my first hypnopompic hallucination and at first not knowing what it was, I worried a lot about my mental health, as many people in this world I am arachnophobic and at that time my house was full of spiders and that was keeping me in a state of alertness and fear. That night I awoke terrified when I saw lots of spiders walking the walls of my room, the worst part is that these hallucinations lasted an average of 20 seconds, lasted an average of 20 seconds, In the beginning these hallucinations are very real and clear and then they become blurred until they disappear completely.
Not all hallucinations are terrifying, some even become funny or impressive, one day I woke up and all the walls were covered with encrypted messages and strange neon figures, as if I was able to perceive another dimension or my third eye had been awakened.
On other occasion I saw a cat jumping on me, which is normal because I live with several cats, but that cat was not real and I almost broke my head jumping from the second floor of the bunk in which I sleep. My sister tends to make fun of me because of shows that I have done.
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