Waking up, seeing things

This happens quite often to me, but I don't think it has anything to do with dreaming or lucid dreaming.
When I wake up and first open my eyes, I sometimes see things..shapes, objects, the shape of large person or something scary...and it's just my furniture!
It's my bookshelf with a lamp on top that suddenly looks like a hooded, cloaked giant person figure like the killer in I Know What You Did Last Summer. I can see where his face goes, but then it's just my scarf hanging over the edge of the bookshelf.
It's scary, but only lasts a moment until I'm fully awake and I can see clearly.
Sometimes I wake up, but before my eyes open, I feel that pang of fear that if I open my eyes I'm going to see this hulking figure again, even though I know it's really just my bookshelf.
Does this happen to anyone else?

YES! When I was younger it happened a lot, I'd suddenly wake from a dream and elements would float round my room then dissapear, I guess that was just the transition from dreaming to waking. But yes what you describe does happen to me, it's strange because even though I know I'm awake and I'm just imagining it, I still stare at the pile of clothes on my floor and think they're a wolf, sometimes I have to turn the light on to make what I'm imagining turn back into furniture! One dream I had earlier this year was about these vampires that were on a mission to catch this evil vampire, anyway long dream short they caught him and he got hung, i then proceeded to wake up and he was in my eyeline hanging from the ceiling, i was like "what the"... then I focused a bit more and realised it was my bookshelves XD It seems ridiculous that I could have mistaken them for a dead vampire. ANYWAY I know exactly what you mean!


Love your Avatar btw! :D

It's called matrixing. Your brain creates images by combining unfamiliar or objects that are hard to see into a more recognizable illusion. This happened to me a lot when I was younger. It still happens to me now, but not as much.

haha thanks!