The similarities among stories of hauntings and alien abductions tells me there's a part of the human brain that creates these "stories" and sensations, but why?
If you don't know the scientific explanation for what you are seeing and feeling, haunting and alien abduction are fairly convincing.
When I was a kid I had the hypnopompic kind all the time, especially if I woke up needing to pee. This meant that late night trudges to the bathroom required wading through shark infested waters or darting past skeleton arms that reached out from the walls.
Wow, I'm not going to complain about the cat waking me up 15 minutes before the alarm any more. I normally get very good sleep--once I actually go to bed. Hubby was always jealous of the way I can drop off. Those hallucinations would drive you away from sleep.
And then there's Mike Birbiglia, who ran out of a hotel room window. [link]
I've only had the hallucination thing once that I remember, but it was fucking terrifying, especially since it repeated. I would wake up a little, be convinced that someone was moving in the room nearby, fall back asleep, wake up, see the person again, and I couldn't move.
Wow, although I suffered form terrible insomnia most of my life I never had any of those types of hallucinations. Just no sleep. Not anymore though. I drop off in no time and all and enter dreamy dream land.
I vote no.
Not dreams--hallucination. If you see a man in your room is he in 20/40 like your unassisted vision or is he properly in focus?
One of my great-uncles supposedly grabbed his wife and jumped out a window with her while dreaming about a fire.
I used to sleepwalk as a kid, but thankfully no broken glass or ER visits resulted.
Matt, Hubby tried the same thing in the early days of our marriage, but I woke him up before he got me to the window. He often dreamed of fire in the early years.
I don't recall any dreams where I perceived myself to be wearing glasses.
Now that you mention it, neither do I. And yet I wore glasses from age five, got contacts when I was 14, and wear glasses more often than contacts now. Somehow glasses are not part of my internal perception of what I look like.
If you don't know the scientific explanation for what you are seeing and feeling, haunting and alien abduction are fairly convincing.
I meant, why does the brain do that?
Alien abduction stories are remarkably similar to faery/otherworld abduction stories from times past.
edited for psellign
I loves me some Mike Birbiglia. He has one of my favorite comic bits ever: [link]
