Happens around falling asleep or waking up.
Showing 6 oddities.
This tag marks entries that happen around falling asleep or waking up, a transition where the brain runs unusual states for a few minutes. Hypnic jerks, sleep paralysis, and hypnagogic hallucinations are all concentrated in this narrow window.
The tag exists because this transition produces a disproportionate share of the strangest entries in the whole catalogue. A reader here has often just experienced one of these and wants to know if it is normal.
This list will tell you what part of the sleep transition produces each effect, and how common it is. It will not diagnose a sleep disorder. If an event tagged sleep happens often enough to disrupt your rest, that is worth raising with a doctor, separately from reading here.
Results narrow the list below as you type.
Close your eyes and you do not see nothing. You see speckle, drifting colour, and, as you fall asleep, moving patterns and even scenes. Almost everyone sees the speckle, and many people see more. Almost nobody talks about them.
A loud bang, crash, or explosion heard inside the head while falling asleep or waking up. Nothing actually happens, there is no pain, and it is harmless.
A kind of dream, often during fever in childhood, filled with huge or tiny shapes, infinite space, crushing pressure, and dread. The name comes from an online forum, not a medical text, but each piece of it is well known to neuroscience.
Vivid images, sounds, or touches that appear while you are falling asleep or waking up. A face, a voice saying your name, a hand on your shoulder. They may be dream fragments arriving early or late, and they are usually normal.
A sudden jolt of the arms, legs, or whole body just as you fall asleep, sometimes with a feeling of falling. Most people get them, and they are harmless.
You wake up, or start to fall asleep, and cannot move or speak for a few seconds to minutes. Sometimes a threatening presence seems to be in the room. It is the normal paralysis of dreaming sleep running a little late.