Thread: Strange events during the process of going to sleep.

hi! what you've described sounds like an accidental WILD complete with hypnagogic imagery/hallucinations. Look it up in the tutorials section to find out more.

Originally Posted by life705

The first, which is most common, happens about 5 minutes after getting into bed, before i'm actually close to reaching sleep, and consists of a massive buzzing sound shooting past my head, followed by chills up my body, a fast heartbeat (probably from the sudden scare) and a short headache.

Except for the headache, these sounds like typical 'tactile' or 'somatosensory' and auditory hypnagogic hallucinations and nothing at all to be worried about. The headache is one I've never heard of except for a brief period where I tried binaural beats, but it doesn't sound like this is what you mean. Do you feel disoriented when these things are going on? Is it the kind of headache one gets from disorientation?

Originally Posted by life705

The second (which happened about a minute or 2 following) was one that i hadn't had before. It was as though I had suddenly been dropped into a dream although i was still awake. Basically, I was overcome by uncontrollable vivid flashing images of for some reason, a football video game that i was playing several days ago along with some sound to go with it as well. Of course, being shook up by this one, I opened my eyes almost immediately after it began.

This sounds more like the most common form of hypnagogic hallucinations, the visual and auditory 'dreamlets' that one gets as they are falling asleep. Some people use these hallucinations to enter a dream, by focusing on them and causing the images to form a dream around them. Sounds like you either got the hallucinations, or began the WILD process.

Originally Posted by life705

After these events last night, I had some very vivid and full dreams, and was actually questioning myself as to whether i was dreaming or not at one point, although i came to the conclusion that i wasn't. I've read about lucid dreaming and everything that goes with it in the past but i'm not so experienced or knowledgeable on the subject, so maybe someone else on here has had similar experiences or knows what these were?

Darn, almost lucid It's unfortunately very easy to talk 'reason' (or, when you don't know a lot about lucid dreaming, what seems like reason ) to yourself and conclude that you aren't dreaming when you really are! Regardless of the type of lucid dream (DILD or WILD), learning to Reality Check will help you really find out if the strangeness around you is a dream or not so that next time this happens you come to the true conclusions

Originally Posted by Shift

Darn, almost lucid It's unfortunately very easy to talk 'reason' (or, when you don't know a lot about lucid dreaming, what seems like reason ) to yourself and conclude that you aren't dreaming when you really are! Regardless of the type of lucid dream (DILD or WILD), learning to Reality Check will help you really find out if the strangeness around you is a dream or not so that next time this happens you come to the true conclusions

Yeahh, one reason that i believed it to be a dream was because it was one of my recurring ones (one of which consists of me being back in the military). When i used to read about lucid dreaming i believe i remember that noticing recurring dreams is one tactic of becoming lucid. Had i remembered the reality checks, i may very well have succeeded.