Thread: hallucinations upon waking up

Glad I'm not the only one with this problem. It isn't when I'm waking up in the morning, though. I think it's during those brief awakenings in the middle of the night.

About once a week, I wake up and think I see a huge spider in my bedsheets. I feel intense fear, and run out of my room. Last night, I woke up screaming and running into the bathroom because I saw giant spiders about 1 foot in diameter. A few weeks ago, the same thing happened. I wasn't fully awake and didn't fully realize what was happening or where I was until I entered the washroom.

The only problem for me is that it's a bit embarrassing when my family starts knocking on my door and asking why I'm screaming.

Why are spider hallucinations so common here? I've had them too.

I'm really glad this old thread was dug up, because I never knew that my little problem was so comon until now.

I've had the exact same issues with these hallucinations that I get about an hour or so after falling asleep. I usually find myself awake with eyes open, and something horrifying is making me scream, jump out of bed, try to alert my partner, etc. Like the other posters, I've had the instances where it seemed the window was the only way out, and my poor partner has had to try to stop me from jumping to my death. Once I pulled (from the bottom edge up) a very heavy lead backed full length mirror onto myself because it was the only exit of some horrible scenario. I'm lucky it didn't break when it fell on me. But that was more of a sleep walking experience I think. The worst ones are when all of my environment is affected, as in, I see my walls falling in on my baby son that is just down the hall, for example. I leap out of bed and go running like a mad woman to rescue him, and then it fades away as I get to the hall.

What I find interesting is that I too have visions of these horrible massive spider like creatures, crawling along the wall. I will scream and point to them, utterly terrified (I am extremely scared of spiders), and then they just fade slowly and I am left looking like a mental case, trying to explain what happened to my partner. He just shakes his head usually... guess he's used to it by now.
I have to echo the previous posters... WHY are all of us seeing these spider like creatures? I don't think that's coinsidence.

The only thing I have found to help the situation is to move. I know it sounds funny, and I'm not saying that houses I've lived in are haunted or anything, or that I've moved for this reason. I just know from moving many times over many years that I have this problem much worse in some places, usually ones that I can feel a lot of negative energy in.
It's not fool proof though - moving. I always have these hallucinations, it's just that in some places they are more intense/negative/convincing.

Anyway, it's somewhat comforting to know I don't suffer this alone.

(Nightmare): Old Best Friends & A Dark Cloud: What I saw was a circular swirling flat dark cloud/mist. This could be described as roughly spider shaped on account of the "swirling edges." My experience is closest to post #51:

...I see a small spider like/energy ball that is spinning exactly on whatever I am looking at when I open my eyes. I just stare at it and close my eyes again and after about 10 seconds it fades away.

Additional focus on details could help understand these events better:

1. Sleep Paralysis or No?
2. Dream or Nightmare lead in?
3. Lighting conditions?
4. Witnesses?
5. Related or incidental events? -Did anything else weird happen?
6. Supplements, drugs, special foods, herbs or spices?
   

Another time when I was 4 or so I woke up in the middle of the night and was seeing lizards and roaches that would crawl out of the patterns on the bed and disappear, it just kept constantly happening and it was freaking me out and I woke up my mother who got annoyed and finally after what seemed like hours of this going on she made me go sleep on the couch. When I went out of the bedroom to go to the couch I noticed the sun was coming up. While laying on the couch I was still seeing lizards and they looked even more real despite it being brighter from the sun. The lizards moved very realistically, they would run coming from seemingly nowhere and stop and do that thing where they bob their head and sometimes that red thing would come out beneath their neck. Eventually I calmed down and fell asleep.

Highly doubt this could be a Waking Hallucination. Maybe another kind of hallucination?

The last time i had one of this was pretty scary. i woke up in the middle of the night and saw a huge , rotting head with pieces of hair floating towards me with its jaws wide open.

Have my doubts about this one too.

I have been having these hypnopompic hallucinations for years also. Most times I dont even remember what Im dreaming about and I wake up screaming, scared, or very panicked and confused. Just a week ago I was sleeping and my wife walked by our bedroom and she said I suddently woke up screaming and pointing at her and screaming to her asking her who she was and to go away now. She said My eyes were open fully and i was pointing at her, but I cant remember anything, and then after like 10 seconds I actually woke up not remembering anything. Then on another ocasion when I was sleeping my wife walked in the room and I awoke partially and when I saw her I was scared to death. it felt like i was in danger and that it wasnt really her and i thought it was someone pretending to be her to harm me and I immediately backed away from her and picked up my pillow and was away to hit her with it lol. Then on another occasion as I was waking I saw a spiderweb and a transparent looking spider coming down on my bed to me and I immediately did a front roll on my bed and asked my wife where did the spider go cuz i was looking for it on the bed. when i was in the army years ago the same thing happened in our barracks, my friends told me that i suddently started screaming "grenade take cover!" and i woke up everyone in my barracks but i couldnt remember what i was dreaming. They said i dropped my flashlight and thats when i reacted.

I don't think this one could be blamed on anything supernatural. Sounds like a variation of sleepwalking.

One night it happened several times in a row. A girl kept trying to cut me open at the sturnum with a shard of glass. It took me five times to lay down to go to sleep before she wasn't there anymore. Seen a man at the foot of my bed in a rocking chair. I was able to ask him " are ready to do this" not sure what that meant. He just nodded before he and his chair vanished. I've learned over the years, if you have time and can muster it talk to it.

This one is terrifying... I wish we had more details about the sleep/room conditions and transition from dreaming to waking up.

I've read about Waking Hallucination's before. But, there are a lot experienced dreamers on Dream Views. Waking Hallucination's seem to be a rare exception not a rule. I've recorded hundreds of dreams, including vivid severe nightmares, but until I found this thread I was unaware of anyone who actually had one.

Hoping experienced dreamers will post more.

About once a week, I wake up and think I see a huge spider in my bedsheets. I feel intense fear, and run out of my room. Last night, I woke up screaming and running into the bathroom because I saw giant spiders about 1 foot in diameter. A few weeks ago, the same thing happened. I wasn't fully awake and didn't fully realize what was happening or where I was until I entered the washroom.

Then on another occasion as I was waking I saw a spiderweb and a transparent looking spider coming down on my bed to me and I immediately did a front roll on my bed and asked my wife where did the spider go cuz i was looking for it on the bed.

It's good to hear it's natural. I've experience it also but I always seem to take it to the next level like scream for help or run the hell out of my bed. I once had a spider right in front of my face and that scared the shit out of me. Another time I was convinced there were people on the roof haha I'm just special.

just after waking up i have experienced hallucinations, a few times. once i saw a large black dog standing by my chest of drawers, a few feet away,then it vanished after a few seconds. also i have seen a large spider running along the bedroom wall then vanish. if ever i see a person like this it would scare the hell out of me. i was not under the influence of drink or drugs btw.

This happened to me last night. I woke up and there was a giant spider slowly moving through the air. I now know what they are so they don't freak me out as much as they used to, but they are still scary at times especially when they are in the form of people.

I woke up and then saw a weird giant spider running along the floor and going behind my chest of draws. It was tall, but not very wide, with its legs going down rather out outwards. It freaked me out so much, I ran out the door faster than I've ever ran in my life.

My wife has called me into the room and asked me if I could see the thing crawling on the wall. She pointed at it and described it to me but there was nothing there. This started a couple of months ago and she has seen this object six or seven times now. Always right after waking up. It doesn't look like a spider or any normal object. It is black and looks like a group of squiggly lines bunched up together. The last time she saw the object it was bigger than all the other times she saw it.

About once a week, I wake up and think I see a huge spider in my bedsheets. I feel intense fear, and run out of my room. Last night, I woke up screaming and running into the bathroom because I saw giant spiders about 1 foot in diameter. A few weeks ago, the same thing happened. I wasn't fully awake and didn't fully realize what was happening or where I was until I entered the washroom.

I forgot to add; I also see spiders all the time. Once it was even a crab.

Spiders it would seem are the most common waking hallucination.

That's fascinating, because I've had a number of vivid dreams about giant spiders that startled me awake, but not as of yet hallucinated one after waking. One time, I woke up because I felt a spider crawling on me. I freaked out, slapped myself all over. Lo and behold, there was a large dead black spider laying next to me.

Maybe spider hallucinations are induced by the presence of real spiders in bed with us? Ones that slipped away before we could actually see them. Effectively our subconscious warning: Beware! After all, some spiders can deliver extremely dangerous bites (horrible picture link).

One of the few waking hallucinations I've had was a few weeks ago. Another spider! On the ceiling directly above my head. I was definitely awake when it happened, because I went straight from looking at it to jumping out of bed and running for the light switch. It was still there before I hit the lights, and gone after. These hallucinations could be the effect of the brain still dreaming when we wake up. Think about it this way. Normally, we dream, and the body is paralysed to prevent us physically acting out our dreams (REM atonia). People can have sleep paralysis episodes upon waking wherein their mind has woken up, but their body is still switched off, and their brain is still half-dreaming (hence hallucinations).

The way I see it, three things happen when we wake up normally. The mind becomes conscious, paralysis is lifted, and the brain stops creating images to occupy itself (dreaming). Occasionally these things happen out of synch. In the case of the standard SP episode, the mind becomes conscious- but the body is still paralysed, and the brain may continue making imagery. I suspect waking hallucinations are caused by the mind waking up, paralysis being lifted, but the brain continuing to create images for a few seconds. So, we have two of the three parts of waking up happening as they should, but the third lagging behind by a few seconds. Because we are receiving input from both our senses and the dreaming brain, whatever we "see" can be integrated into the environment around us- be it a spider crawling across the bedroom floor, or a dude sitting on a chair at our desk (I've had this one too).

Another example could be sleepwalking. There, we have the body waking up, maybe the dreaming brain, but not the mind. Those are just my thoughts anyway.

I've had one spider hallucination while TRYING to get to sleep. >.<
But in the past I used to wake in the middle of the night and hallucinate that patterns on my bedsheets were little bugs, and they'd move about and I'd just watch them in amazement, just dazzled but not entirely afraid...

The fact that J.D. has had only one waking hallucination is interesting. He's a LD pro and basically a master of sleep paralysis.

I think there's several similar phenomena difficult to distinguish. In most of these examples, no mention of the dream/nightmare leading to the hallucination is provided and or recalled. Few detailed descriptions of lighting either. And, fear is the most common factor for the spider hallucinations, but I experienced no fear whatsoever. On that contrary, I was happy to be free from a nightmare.

I hope going forward people will take special note of the details surrounding these experiences. The questions I posted in post #55 are a decent starting point.

This has been happening to me a lot lately. Yesterday I woke up to a big waffle floating above my bed.

Do you like waffles in the morning? Do you recall the dreams you've been having before? What is the lighting like in your room? Does it remain after you look away?

I have had spider hallucinations upon waking for a few years now but I decided to google "hallucinations when waking up" and found this site. I think its very strange that the spider is so common. For me it is usually a few spiders crawling on the walls or one spider coming down from the ceiling. I never remember any dream when these hallucinations happen. I feel so much better knowing that I am not the only one.

I had another one a few days ago. These weird things seem to happen more when I'm sleep deprived, or hung over. -Or both as I was that morning. Went to bed feeling rough... after watching the exorcist for the first time. I only really slept in the late morning when exhaustion overcame fear. Anyway, I half woke up into sleep paralysis. I had left a small lamp on on the other side of the room so visibility was pretty good. My wardrobe was open and a jacket was hanging out of it. As I watched, it morphed into a dude with dreadlocks and a trenchcoat. He stood at the bottom of my bed and began talking about a type of person who wears body armour. It made very little sense. I knew it wasn't real, and understood that he was made of my jacket but it was still a bit scary. Especially because I couldn't move. I tried not to let him become threatening, so I "hmm"-ed along encouragingly to what he was saying whilst trying to break the paralysis.

Then I could move. I never took my eyes off the spot where he was standing, but before I knew it, the man himself was gone and just the jacket remained. Except the arms of the jacket were still moving in the same way as the man's arms were gesticulating. I stared at it intently. My mind and vision were fuzzy, but after a few seconds of blinking, everything was back to normal. Very strange experience. The boundary between sleep and awake is very easily blurred!

I always had dreams of like 1000000 spiders running across my body and once there was even a dead body next to me in my bed... I was too scared to move, then i reached my hand over and there was nothing there

I've had these all my life unfortunately... I think my dreaming/awake switch has always had problems. When i was a kid i had sleepwalking issues but have mostly grown out of it. I've had sleep paralysis many, many times - about 6 years ago i was searching for info on why it was happening and found this place. I started trying to lucid dream and had some success - but haven't worked on it in years.

I experience these hallucinations when awakened suddenly from a deep sleep. They last approx 7-10 seconds before fading away. Most common is seeing weird symbols or words on the alarm clock instead of the time - i have to just stare at it until the numbers fade in. Many many times I've seen the bugs crawling on the wall or something floating inches from my face - that's a nice scare but usually not too bad. And once I swear heard someone walking on the roof - to this day i'm not sure if it was real or not lol.

The worst of the worst for me is the aliens lol! I wake up and see a typical small grey alien standing in the room staring at me. they fade out after a while or if you turn on the lights. I've even thrown my pillow at it and it passes right through lol. My theory is that I saw something scary on tv when younger that caused this to manifest the first time - and it was absolutely terrifying as a kid. So i kind of have a small fear of it in the back of my mind that causes it to show up again once in a while. I'm on here because it happened again last night - woke up abruptly from dogs barking outside - jumped up and shut the window - turned around and there's a friendly alien vision lol. I know its all in my head i'm not someone that thinks there's aliens visiting me lol. When it happens I just talk aloud to myself and try to wake up the rest of the brain and they fade away. But it still scares the crap out of me!

I've always assumed it's just from waking up too abruptly. I've had the asleep/awake switch problems before all my life (sleepwalking, paralysis). And maybe I have some kind of apnea that wakes me up all the time idk? 90% of the time its silly and makes me laugh - but sometimes creeps me out lol

I was about to start a thread on this then found this one. This happens to me often, about once every two nights, that I have memory of. I only started having them a year or 2 ago. I don't think I had even one in my life before that.

Usually, I hallucinate huge spiders. The hallucinations last for a few seconds and then disappear. They seem to be getting worse recently, more frequent. A couple times, I've woken up screaming and running out of my room, sure that I saw a huge spider on my bed. Other times, I don't scream, but I run out of my bed, to the other side of the room. I calm down, and even though the spider looked as real as it would in real life, I've learned that I tend to hallucinate them, so I recognize that it was likely a hallucination (especially if the spider was unrealistically big). I'll check my covers, then go back to sleep.

It used to be only spiders, but lately other things have manifested, and I'm afraid that it will continue to get worse.

2 or 3 weeks ago, I hallucinated a big green spider-grasshopper thing. What gets me every time is how real the hallucinations appear.

While I stayed at my boyfriend's house (who lives far away) last week, in a room by myself, I experienced 2 hallucinations. In one, my boyfriend was beside me on the bed, breathing heavily, maybe sobbing. This was odd because it was auditory, while in the past they had only been visual. In the other, I saw his face, looking at me, really clearly.

A couple nights ago, I hallucinated the feeling of ants crawling on me. It seems any of the senses can be involved in these 'hallucinations'.

The most recent one was last night. I woke up in the middle of the night, looked at the ceiling, and in the corner of my room I saw the stem of a plant, the branch of some plant with tiny leaves all over it. It looked so real, I thought it must be coming from my window. But I realized it couldn't be, since my window was too far away. Then I looked away, looked back and it was gone.

I wonder why spiders are so common... Dietz59, that's a great account, thanks for sharing it! These sorts of hallucinations along with sleep paralysis are part of the reason why I no longer take alien abduction stories seriously. The classic "unable to move, in bed, aliens levitating you into their spaceship etc". Not that I ever really believed those stories anyway now I just know what causes them.

Oh my god, I thought I was the only one who saw spiders!

Last night I woke up, and saw the biggest spider! I screamed, and attacked it with my pillow. But then it wasn't there.. My dad gave me something to kill spiders with. But, off course I didn't used it. Because I knew it was waaaaay too big to be real.

Spiders.... Why not a butterfly, ah?!?!

My mind has conjured all sorts of crazy spider-creatures, and there's something really terrifying about them. I don't see them after I wake up, but usually it wakes me - in fact it seems to be a sort of meme my mind uses to force me awake by creating an escalating nightmare scenario that's too scary to sleep through. Usually I'll start by seeing a small one, or maybe some other kind of insect, in my room or house or yard. Then another and another, and soon either I'm seeing hordes of them or they're getting bigger and bigger. And they reach ridiculous size and bizarre configurations - I remember seeing something once sitting in my doorway that was sort of a spider but bright green and somehow it was about 4 feet tall!! Seeing these big ones fills me with a deep dread that usually wakes me in a panic. I wonder if that's what happens when people wake and see them... it's the tail end of such an escalating nightmare?

In related news, there was a series of snake dreams in my childhood that followed the same pattern. First I'd see just one in the yard, then several, then I'd realize they were all around me, and start seeing bigger and bigger ones. I just realized, I had one like this not long ago actually. The worst one though got to the point of every square inch of my yard writhing with weird mutated snakes of every description - every color and pattern, weird non-snakelike shapes... and finally I ran across the street and started to climb over the guardrail to go down into the woods and below me I saw a wide spillway with the most monstrous snake of all laying in it... stretching from horizon to horizon. So these dreams also follow the pattern of escalating danger and panic.

In some cases I think these kinds of panic dreams are a way the body wakes you up if something's wrong... like you're sleeping in a position that's cutting off circulation or something.

I just realized I replied to this thread in January too. I guess I had forgotten.

It just happened... a huge black spider. I saw it, so clearly, even as I was getting out of bed. I screamed and ran to the washroom and didn't even think it was a hallucination. My screaming woke my mom and she knows I've hallucinated spiders before and suggested it. I still didn't think so because it was so real, until I checked my covers and couldn't find it. But now I'm worried it just went somewhere else. I hate this.

Sometimes when I wake up early in the morning and go to take a shower, I often see little people running around the bathroom.
Also, odd figures are made out of different objects everywhere which actually exist for a few seconds.
Your body has not fully left its REM stage at this point.

Spiders are possibly the greatest danger we face while sleeping. I'm thankful I've never been bitten by one to my knowledge, but I know at least one person who was bitten by a spider...

She was helping a friend move and was moving boxes in her basement. A spider bit her that was from outside of California: she had an allergic reaction. She became paralyzed from the waist down for months. She was hobbling around when she told me what happened a year later.

If spiders can inflict that level of harm silently in our sleep: it stands to reason that we maintain a special guard against them. I had a vague spider waking hallucination two days ago:

My long pillow had fallen, one end to the floor. I woke up, picked it up, shook it out, and put it on the covers near me. As soon as it touched down, I saw several long (about 6" long) spider legs flop out of the end. As if a huge spider was stuck to the bottom of my pillow facing me. The visuals looked a little fuzzy, and vanished when I focused my attention.

I've suffered from sleep paralysis about 2 years now.. I've hallucinated some pretty weird stuff and I'm kinda used too it by now.. All these hallucinations disappear instantly when I come out of the paralysis BUT NOW it looks like I hallucinate when I awake without even having a paralysis attack.. LOL
I've seen the spider about 3 times in a week so I decided to look it up ! The first time I saw it crawling on the wall towards me very fast, I thought it was real so I jumped the hell out of the bed when it suddently faded away.. I was all like WTF WAS THAT ?! Then the other night I saw it right above my head in the ceiling, this time was bigger and didnt move.. BUT TONIGHT WAS SPECIAL.. I had several nightmares and woke up several times then I had another one and I woke up abruptly.. I was watching looking at the wall but there was this ball of swirling black strings again, this time I didnt freak out.. and I decided to not move and just stare at it.. turns out I could morph that ball of strings into whatever shape I wanted.. I turned into a little black running horse (just the shape) and it was animated.. then I tried other things but it went back to the ball and then faded.. I watched that little horse for like a minute or 2..
So my guess is that we all hallucinate with that little ball of strings and then our brain (being awake) doesnt believe its a flying ball of string so it turns it into what it most looks like.. the spider ! (little or big, black, and with a lot of legs (the strings)) thats my guess to why almost everyone sees a spider.. next time dont run, just lay still and watch it.. it'll last longer than if you run or jump out of the bed. try to morph it and tell me if you could and what shape did you get it to go !!