Hynagogic Hallucinations or Seeing Ghosts in the room

My wife has had some very odd sleep habits. Every few days when she falls asleep she wakes up abruptly, usually sitting up, and looks across the room. She sometimes will shout "there it is" or "look" and sometimes will even point. She used to scare the crap out of me, but now it just disrupts the night.

What she has told me is that she usually sees a figure, a woman, at the foot of the bed or in the entrance of the room. She said she has been seeing her since she was little and thinks that maybe it is her dead great grandmother that died when she was a baby. She recently went to a psychic who said this woman's name is Mary (which happens to be her great grandmother's name) and that she is looking over her to keep the other spirits away because my wife has a gift that allows her to see them.

My wife also said that at first it was scary but now she isn't scared, she is more startled and just wants to have a good nights sleep. It also seems to be induced by stress. She went to a sleep center and unfortunately it didn't happen the night she was there... go figure.

Any ideas?

Hypnagogic Hallucination is paired with sleep paralysis. If she is able to move while having these hallucinations, then it's most likely not HH. That's not the say the psychic is correct, either, but it's worthy of more serious examination.

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Originally Posted by Omnis Dei

Hypnagogic Hallucination is paired with sleep paralysis. If she is able to move while having these hallucinations, then it's most likely not HH.

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Actually, I disagree with this. Hypnopompic imagery can actually stick with you, for quite a few seconds after the rest of your body has awoken. I've had quite a few experiences with this. Your body does not have to be in SP for you to experience hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucinations.

Not to say that she shouldn't consult a doctor - just in case - but there is little reason to be alarmed, right off the bat, because this kind of thing happening is not unusual at all.

Interesting, the most post-paralysis hallucination I've ever gotten is static or swirlies, never full fledged figures.

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Originally Posted by Omnis Dei

Interesting, the most post-paralysis hallucination I've ever gotten is static or swirlies, never full fledged figures.

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Oh yeah. Believe me. They can be much more potent than that. I've had both residual imagery and auditory hallucinations, even moments after I've actually woken up and had been sitting up in bed. I've written about a couple of them, here at DV. They can be pretty damn scary.

Well she has seen a sleep doctor and her regular one and everything is fine with her, as far as they know.

It has been happening to her since she was 8 or 9, so there is nothing new going on. She has also seen these same people over and over and it occurs even when she is not at home.

Does she see them only after sleeping? Or can she see them other times as well?

Has she tried making contact with this Mary directly?

She could very well be having something of a mild bout with "night terrors" (Link). They are much less common in adults, but they are an extreme case of what I was talking about (as far as the experience). It works the same way, in that people who have night terrors can still be technically 'awake', but still seeing nightmarish images from their dream, even though their eyes are wide open.

Ask her how intense these experiences were, when she was younger. I wouldn't say I had them intensely enough to be called 'night terrors', when I was younger, but I've had similar experiences. Odds are that it's nothing too uncommon (and I would be surprised if a sleep clinic didn't suggest the same thing), but maybe getting into lucid dreaming might offer her a way to start becoming more familiar with the dream state. I wouldn't say that it would help her to stop having the experiences, with any certainty, but I tend to find that the less startled you are by having nightmares and the like, the less power they have over you. And at the very least, it helps to be able to cope with them, even when they don't completely go away.

Is the purpose of this thread to just share some weird experiences, or are you looking for ideas to somehow help your wife?
If you would like to help or change the situation, then the next question would be, in what way. For example, if one believes what the psychic said, would your wife want to just have the grandmother cross over, or would she also want to investigate more about being able to "see things"?

If your wife has so far only seen always the same person standing at the bed, it appears not like other possible "ghosts" are trying to do something. As I doubt that one ghost could keep away all the others just like that. Ghosts can be attracted, when one is able to perceive them, but it does not seem the case here.

Thanks for all in insight so far. Kilpikonna you are right in what I am looking for. I am interested to know what others have experienced but ultimately I am looking for a reason this is happening or a way to stop it. I am not even sure I believe in ghosts, but this is all starting to have a creepy vibe to it.

I am not sure she would consider them night terrors. She said she isn't afraid. If anything it scares me more because she will abruptly sit up and point across the room asking if I can see them. She is clearly half-asleep because if I say, 'there's nothing there, go back to bed' she lays down and is out in 2 seconds.

She has also been prone to sleep walk and go into the other rooms, turn on a light, talk and then turn it off and go back to bed.

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Originally Posted by jcwilde1

If anything it scares me more because she will abruptly sit up and point across the room asking if I can see them. She is clearly half-asleep because if I say, 'there's nothing there, go back to bed' she lays down and is out in 2 seconds.

She has also been prone to sleep walk and go into the other rooms, turn on a light, talk and then turn it off and go back to bed.

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Yeah. Definitely sounds like a classic case of dream imagery (as opposed to anything supernatural), though I'm no somnologist. Doesn't seem like something so uncommon as to call it 'paranormal'. I would think her dreams are just bleeding over. If she sleepwalks, it's a tell-tale sign that her body has trouble 'turning off the dreams', before becoming mobile, so it only makes sense that she would sit up in bed and still be dreaming.

I agree with O on this one, especially if it doesn't happen when she's wide awake.

Most Sensitives don't actually see anything, they just feel presence and receive messages. If she were a sensitive, it doesn't make sense that the only time she'd see this is during an interrupted sleep cycle. She should at least be able to feel their presence while awake.

Recently someone told me experiences she had when she was young shortly after her uncle died. At first, on her shelf she saw a skull with a sword entering from the top with a snake wrapped around the sword. When she looked outside she would see her uncle sitting on a swing in her backyard. She was quite frightened by all of this. She would see her uncle often and it bothered her and her family. They resolved it by asking him to go away. Not sure if they contacted the invisible man or "prayed" but after they asked it never happened again.

I'm not sure about the dream bleeding over.. I'm not an expert, I haven't witnessed a lot of things but i've had times where i'd be half awake/asleep in the morning. And with my eyes open i had dream imagery of a guy sitting in lotus position right beside me. Which doesn't make sense because i wasn't looking in that direction. This was most certainly a case of the dream bleeding over.

Another time i woke up and a transparant ghostlike figure without a defined face floated trough the door passing my bed, completely ignoring me and floated right out the building. It was far different from any HH i've ever experiences. I didn't believe in ghosts, but after this experience i'm inclined to reevaluate my preset beliefs on what ghosts are.

So, definetly not unusual experiences. I hope you find a way to resolve the issues they cause, besides asking the spirits i woulden't know where to begin.

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Originally Posted by Dthoughts

Another time i woke up and a transparant ghostlike figure without a defined face floated trough the door passing my bed, completely ignoring me and floated right out the building. It was far different from any HH i've ever experiences. I didn't believe in ghosts, but after this experience i'm inclined to reevaluate my preset beliefs on what ghosts are.

So, definetly not unusual experiences. I hope you find a way to resolve the issues they cause, besides asking the spirits i woulden't know where to begin.

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This is interesting; my friend told me the same thing happened to her last summer! So it was 2016, in Croatia.. At first I was shocked to hear that, but skeptical.. She told me she woke up in the middle of the night to go to bathroom. Her small room was completely dark but suddenly even darker woman figure appeared floating above her bed making a circle thru her room. She was in a state of shock and couldn't scream or say anything, but she had to go so she pulled herself out of bed to go to the toilet. When she came back, her cat standed at the door of her room and hissed to this black ghostloke figure. Then my friend went to bed, closed her eyes and took a deep breath to go to sleep.
So firstly I was a bit skeptical about it, (because I was afraid of such thing) but now when I read your comment too, I think I'm starting to consider there are such things, making me less scared. I mean, we still don't know everything but it's important not to be afraid of such thing. Also, to have an open mind and respect this strange beautiful world we live in.
I don't know if I myself will see similar creature, nor why do they circle around our rooms, is it coincidental or not.. But after her story, I often look at walls of my room when going to bed. Hehe.

WHen did this 'ghost' tell her, her name is Mary? is it something she heard when she was a kid, maybe its something she made up to cope with the situation and then it stuck?

Maybe relevant, maybe not: I think that most 'ghosts' are real in some sense, but are not spirits of dead people. Maybe they're other people's unfulfilled thoughts or something. Some portion of those would belong to dead people. Some people are a lot more sensitive to these things than others, but a large number of people have these kinds of experiences at least a few times in life. There isn't a clean line separating what's real from delusion though, the vision is usually a mental projection of something sensed, and it can be misinterpreted. In that sense it is a hallucination, but something partially real is stimulating the hallucination.

The reason I don't think most of the ghosts are spirits of dead people, is there seem to be too many of them. Almost all old houses seem to have something like this associated with the house, and the spirit often doesn't seem to fit the history of the house very well, unless it is an emotional fragment of a person who lived there or visited, but not of a person who died.