Scary experiences

[billydkid]

I'm not talking about normal kinds of scary experiences - like having a car accident or falling off a roof and such. I'm talking about the kind of scary experience you might have, say, when you were younger and stupider and inclined to believe in supernatural kind of things. I know, of course, that all of you have always been completely immune to that kind of thing. I wrote once about the experience of walking down a country road at night in the moonlight and seeing this strange dog in the road ahead of me that turned out to be a branch. Here are a couple more. Damn it, I just forgot one of them!

Well, here's the one I remember. I was living in a basement apartment with just a couple of windows at ground level. I was maybe 20 years old and subject to the insanity that typically comes with being that age - or maybe it's just me. Anyway, one night I was awakened by this god awful howling and screaming noise that one might hear at the gates of hell, just outside my window. I mean it was terrifying and my skin was crawling. I thought some creature from hell was at my window intent on eating my guts as I watched. I was more afraid than I had ever felt before in my life. Really, it was beyond discription. It went on for a couple of hours and the whole time I was literally sick with fear.

As it turned out, I finally discovered, there was a cat that lived on my street and this was not just any cat - it was a least thirty pounds, truly a monstrous, huge thing. The largest house cat I have ever seen in my life. Apparently the thing was in heat or it was a male and there was another cat in heat and it was just expressing its desire outside my window. You need to understand, this was no ordinary cat - it's voice was as deep as linx and it was the size of a very large one. As it happened it was also a remarkable friendly cat too. It did this a number of times - howling outside my window - during the time I lived there and even when I knew what it was it was terrifying.

[JoeEllison]

I'm not talking about normal kinds of scary experiences - like having a car accident or falling off a roof and such. I'm talking about the kind of scary experience you might have, say, when you were younger and stupider and inclined to believe in supernatural kind of things. I know, of course, that all of you have always been completely immune to that kind of thing.
Yes, well... there's always the possibility of having an intellectual immunity and still suffering the same sort of involuntary physiological reactions as anyone else. :cool:

[Showmeproof]

The only type of experiences I ever have is hearing someone call my name when no one is actually there. I figure there are three possibilities:

1) I am schizophrenic

2) It is a ghost

3) Due to some sort of normal physiological process in the brain/sensory systems.

I am more apt to believe its number 3 :)

[dahduh]

The only type of experiences I ever have is hearing someone call my name when no one is actually there. I figure there are three possibilities:

1) I am schizophrenic

2) It is a ghost

3) Due to some sort of normal physiological process in the brain/sensory systems.

I am more apt to believe its number 3 :)

A couple of years ago I suddenly and mysteriously started going deaf in one ear.

After a rather disturbing consultation with an audiologist ("Dunno"), I lay down to sleep. And there was someone muttering just on the other side of the wall. Which was impossible, since on the other side of the wall was a private garden. But I got out of bed, turned off the fan so I could hear better, and took a look. Nobody. So I turned the fan on and climbed back into bed. Again, mutter mutter mutter - I could hear it perfectly distinctly. So I go out of bed again, turned off the fan, and took another look. Nobody, and no sound - until I went back to bed, and the muttering returned.

I eventually figured out that the white noise from the fan was being somehow transmogrified by my duff ear into muttering voice sounds. If I turned the fan off, the muttering went away but was replaced after a while by an annoying tinnitus. According to the audiologist I was losing the low frequencies (which was rather unusual; usually it is the high freqencies that go first) - so my brain was filling in the lows with some interpolated noises.

Ever since then I have been deeply impressed at how good the brain is at just making stuff up.

Oh, and my hearing came back, thanks for asking.

[schlitt]

Oh, and my hearing came back, thanks for asking.

Out of interest, what was the cause of your hearing troubles? Someone i know seems to be suffering something similar.

[Gord_in_Toronto]

The only type of experiences I ever have is hearing someone call my name when no one is actually there. I figure there are three possibilities:

1) I am schizophrenic

2) It is a ghost

3) Due to some sort of normal physiological process in the brain/sensory systems.

I am more apt to believe its number 3 :)

Every now and again I hear my wife call my name when she says she has not and the circumstances or relative locations seem to say it's just me hearing her voice "in my head". This does not happen frequently enough to balance out the times she claims to have called me and I don't hear. :D

[Chimera]

Apparently the thing was in heat or it was a male and there was another cat in heat and it was just expressing its desire outside my window.

I am familiar with that "cat in heat" howl. It's disturbing even knowing what it is.

Speaking of animals, I used to notice that after a pet's death, I still thought I saw the pet disappearing behind a chair or flitting by a doorway. My mother saw it too and said the pet's spirit was still in the house. The more skeptical me now notices that I sometimes imagine seeing a current (live) pet when I really don't. I think we're just so used to seeing our animals around us that our brains automatically place them somewhere in our peripheral vision.

[Whack01]

Every now and again I hear my wife call my name when she says she has not and the circumstances or relative locations seem to say it's just me hearing her voice "in my head". This does not happen frequently enough to balance out the times she claims to have called me and I don't hear. :D

I really think that hearing things like your name called when its not is probably a manifestation of the same phenomenon that Michael Shermer demonstrates here * this link may be NSFW depending on how zealous your coworkers are* (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nypTBLLu18Q) we tend to try to recognize patterns in sound that aren't really there if we're expecting them.


*NSFW = not safe for work

[Showmeproof]

A couple of years ago I suddenly and mysteriously started going deaf in one ear.

After a rather disturbing consultation with an audiologist ("Dunno"), I lay down to sleep. And there was someone muttering just on the other side of the wall. Which was impossible, since on the other side of the wall was a private garden. But I got out of bed, turned off the fan so I could hear better, and took a look. Nobody. So I turned the fan on and climbed back into bed. Again, mutter mutter mutter - I could hear it perfectly distinctly. So I go out of bed again, turned off the fan, and took another look. Nobody, and no sound - until I went back to bed, and the muttering returned.

I eventually figured out that the white noise from the fan was being somehow transmogrified by my duff ear into muttering voice sounds. If I turned the fan off, the muttering went away but was replaced after a while by an annoying tinnitus. According to the audiologist I was losing the low frequencies (which was rather unusual; usually it is the high freqencies that go first) - so my brain was filling in the lows with some interpolated noises.

Ever since then I have been deeply impressed at how good the brain is at just making stuff up.

Oh, and my hearing came back, thanks for asking.

Interesting story. I have a dysfunctional eustachian tube and suffer from a constant ringing or humming in my ears. I guess the best way to describe the sound is the sound of the ocean in my ears. There is a chance of me going deaf in the future(very slim chance, thank god), but thats if i dont stay aware of the problem and keep it at bay.


And good your hearing came back!

[Gst]

I have a way too active imagination at night. There is ALWAYS someone right behind me. Or around the corner. Or behind the couch. I used to not be able to walk in the dark when I was a kid. Now it doesn't bother me a bit, but I still always see things in the dark. I used to hate stuffed animals, because they would always come alive at night. Mostly after I read a RL Stine Goosebumps book about a doll that comes to life.

...and MAN I hate that cat noise.

[Kaylee]

I eventually figured out that the white noise from the fan was being somehow transmogrified by my duff ear into muttering voice sounds. If I turned the fan off, the muttering went away but was replaced after a while by an annoying tinnitus.

<snip>

Ever since then I have been deeply impressed at how good the brain is at just making stuff up.

Oh, and my hearing came back, thanks for asking.

I really think that hearing things like your name called when its not is probably a manifestation of the same phenomenon that Michael Shermer demonstrates here * this link may be NSFW depending on how zealous your coworkers are* (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nypTBLLu18Q) we tend to try to recognize patterns in sound that aren't really there if we're expecting them.

I think you're both right.

I don't hear well and sometimes I come up with some pretty amazing things that I'm sure people said -- but they didn't. Its just convincing to me because my brain goes into overdrive trying to make sense of incomplete and distorted sounds.

I also have tinnitus, a common symptom of hearing loss. Mine is pretty run of the mill, mostly buzzes. However quit a few people will hear voices and also music.

Here's a good link: http://www.hearinglosshelp.com/articles/mes.htm

ETA: Glad you got your hearing back dahduh!

ETA2: Oh and to relate this to the OP -- when I was very young and didn't know what tinnitus was -- it was very scary until I found out. I would be more aware of it at night when it was quiet and I had less to distract me.

[AgeGap]

I really think that hearing things like your name called when its not is probably a manifestation of the same phenomenon that Michael Shermer demonstrates here * this link may be NSFW depending on how zealous your coworkers are* (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nypTBLLu18Q) we tend to try to recognize patterns in sound that aren't really there if we're expecting them.


*NSFW = not safe for work
I really think that playing Stairway to Heaven Backwards is the only way to make the lyrics make sense.:D
When I was in my teens I was in bed and saw somebody come into my room. It was dark and I could not make out, at first, who it was. I thought it was my sister, then I thought it was my mother, I was wrong on both counts. As my vision became accustomed to the low levels of light I realised I was looking at the face of my grandmother who had died some years previously. My heart began to pound, it felt like it would leap out of my chest, I felt paralysed with fear. As I stared at her face, unable to look away or close my eyes, once more the apparition changed, and the true nature of the ghost was revealed. It was just bunched up sheets. Tiredness in the dark messes up my view of the real world.

[ExMinister]

Once or twice I've heard a voice, usually just as I fall asleep, that sounds like it's right behind my ear saying my name. It's a very clear voice. I know several people who've experienced this. Usually it jolts me back fully awake, so I'm thinking there are different types of this, and this is more along the lines of a sleep onset hallucination (auditory) and different from the white noise type.

Scarier: I'll think I've woken up, gotten out of bed and tried to turn on a light (which doesn't work), then see someone enter the room (usually menacing - dark clothes, the whole works). Still convinced I'm wide awake, my heart starts to pound - and then usually I feel myself move backward through the air toward my sleeping body and wake up. It's a type of lucid dream but I can understand why people might be convinced they are seeing a spirit and "out of body," (as I did for a time). :o Or how about when you're drifting off to sleep and you suddenly realize someone has walked into the room, right up to the side of the bed, better yet, you feel them sit down... and no one is there. :eek: And then there's sleep paralysis... (Sheesh, I'm a walking example of sleep disorders)

Then again, these things are a lot less scary now that I know what they are. In fact, when they happen now, I can look at them with curiosity instead of terror.

[madurobob]

I wrote once about the experience of walking down a country road at night in the moonlight and seeing this strange dog in the road ahead of me that turned out to be a branch.
That triggered a similar memory for me.

As a child my family lived about a mile down a gravel road from an intersection where the country church and "community center" was. Once summer evening when I was about 12 after one of the regular barbecue suppers at the community center I started walking home just as the sun was setting. I heard a womans voice some distance away and looked in that direction - back towards the community center. Standing there, about 200 yards away, was a woman wearing a hooded cloak and carrying a baby. I yelled back. No response. She just stood there, motionless. I knew I must be imagining things so I stood there and watched for about five minutes and kept trying to see what it was that was causing what I was sure was an illusion. No matter how I stared and squinted it was clearly a woman carrying a baby. I walked another 20 yards and looked again - still the same thing.

I was a little freaked out, but walked on home. The next morning I walked back up to the same spot and saw a road sign in the place where the woman stood the night before. One of those yellow warning signs with a curved arrow on it warning of an upcoming bend in the road. I knew that was what created the illusion for me - that sign and the light and shadows from the setting sun. But, each night for the next week I walked there at sunset to try to replicate the illusion and it never looked even close to the same.

[Elvis666]

When I was about eight years old, I had a dream that I looked out the window of our bathroom and, sitting on the sill just on the other side of the flass, was a perfectly human looking. living bust. Just the head a shoulders of a normal looking adult male. It was about half size and did nothing scary but look at me.

In the dream, I was terrified. Somehow, I knew it was a alien and it was one of the pulp fiction kind, ready to eat my brains or something worse.

For years I was afraid to look out that window after dark. I was in college before I truly got over my fear of dark windows. Until my sister sold the house after the death of our father, I still thought of that dream everytime I visited that bathroom. The memory can still give me chills.

[billydkid]

I just remember the other experience. I was, again, in my 20's and had been out drinking and came home filled with that weird kind of delusional melancholy that comes from drinking and talking philosophy (in a really broad sense of the word) with your friends when you are in your 20's - what is the meaning of life? Does my life have any meaning? Does it matter if I ever actually get a real job? The universe is going to end in few billion years anyway, so what the hell - and so on.

I got home - I lived in the country with a large field and hill behind my house - and it was a very dark night. I went running out into the field and up the hill complaining loudly to the universe. Part way up the hill I stopped, being exhausted, and stood there. Then I heard movement behind me in the grass - rustling. There was obviously something there, something large moving around 20 feet or so away. A shiver of horror ran up my spine - was it a demon from hell tracking me down in the night? I couldn't see a thing. My terror turned into a kind of rage and I ran screaming in the direction of the thing I heard. Of course, it took off fleeing into the night and, of course, it was just a deer that had been sleeping in the grass and I'm sure I terrified it far beyond any fear I felt. but, for a few moments I was convince that the universe was enchanted and not in a good way.

[creativecritter41]

With three kids calling, "Mom" hundreds of times a day, I assumed it was only natural to hear it in my head while they are giving it a rest. Voices don't scare me, people do. :D:

[dahduh]

Out of interest, what was the cause of your hearing troubles? Someone i know seems to be suffering something similar.

Still a mystery; probably of a neurological nature. Unfortunately real doctors don't always have an answer and then they just say so.

[Autolite]

The only type of experiences I ever have is hearing someone call my name when no one is actually there.

Dimenhydrinate has been known to cause that. Had you taken some Gravol or something???

[EyeOn]

I am familiar with that "cat in heat" howl. It's disturbing even knowing what it is.

Speaking of animals, I used to notice that after a pet's death, I still thought I saw the pet disappearing behind a chair or flitting by a doorway. My mother saw it too and said the pet's spirit was still in the house. The more skeptical me now notices that I sometimes imagine seeing a current (live) pet when I really don't. I think we're just so used to seeing our animals around us that our brains automatically place them somewhere in our peripheral vision.

I find this interesting. Back when I was about 8 years old or so, I remember going to my cousins house with my mother a lot and everytime I went there the first thing I would do is look for her cat and we'd go upstairs to play. This one day my mom and I go over as usual and the same scenario plays out...I look for her cat and we go upstairs to play. The cat went back downstairs and I followed, but then couldn't find him anywhere. I asked my cousin which way he went, being she was right there when he came down, I thought she saw him. She replied he had been killed by a car a week before. This was devastating news, but it was also very perplexing. I just kept the whole ordeal to myself and let it be, but it had always nagged at me about what I saw and what I did with an animal that wasn't there anymore.

I've always had a liking for biology and the way life works and grew up around medical and emergency workers and it's something I've always taught myself by getting my own textbooks from used book stores and always had myself a mini zoo of exotic little critters...some not so little like fish, amphibians, reptiles, arachnids, insects, et. Finally, one day it dawned on me what happened and what I saw. It clearly defines what a ghost is and it was such a wild discovery for me to have finally figured out this perplexing moment in my life that have always seemed to defy what I learned, yet found it is very much a part of what I learned.

A ghost, in a more practical definition is an impression of what was once there. The ion particles that were shed from the cat was still present in the environment outling a trail of his actions. The actions that played out were also impressions of the actions of the cat that always played out everytime I was there.

My conclusion is ghosts are real, but merely reflections of what was once there...like how electrons move so fast the waves they leave behind make it appear as if the electron is in two places at once. It's just moving so fast you're seeing where it was and where it's at virtually at the same time. However, the actions of ghosts are completely benign and those note a marking of the subjects actions in that environment at the time the subject was there. Therefore, me playing with the ghost of my cousin's dead cat was mere coincedence to the trails left behind in his tracks...literally.

Why some see the actions of ghosts sometimes and not others is an enigma, but one I think there is plausible explanation for. It seems to depend on the individual who is sensing these particles...what's stored in the cortex as recallable memory and their sensory sensitivity at the time the ghosts are being sensed. For children, this is normal. For adults however, it may correlate to an x degree of physical loss...a way for the brain to compensate for a physical loss by gaining in mental capacity through sensory perception.

It's just a hypothesis, but I think it's tangible enough to be successfully tested scientifically.

Just to note...from how I define ghost, the subject could be inanimate, animate, alive or dead.

[TheAnachronism]

The scariest paranormal-seeming events that I can recall have both been connected to (as far as I can tell) night terrors. These don't seem to happen to me very often, thankfully, but when they do, they are really quite terrible.

The worst episode came two summers ago when I had a really irregular sleeping pattern due to being on vacation from school. After going to bed at about 2 am, I "woke up" only to have this horrible screeching in my ears -- think of tinnitus multiplied many times over. It was a deafening ringing sound. I was convinced there were "evil spirits" or something in my room tormenting me. Add this to the fact that I was completely paralyzed and was trying desperately to open my eyes, only to have the sensation that my eyelids were being pulled down. I could partially get them open, allowing me to see just dark swirling shapes and "static." This seems like it went on for an hour, although it must have been only about 5 minutes or less.

Anybody who hasn't experienced a night terror can't really comprehend just how scary they are. All logic and awareness just flies out the window, leaving you in a state of panic and confusion.

ETA: After reading the Wikipedia articles on both "night terror" and "sleep paralysis," I'm convinced that my experiences were probably the latter.

[skeptigirl]

Falling through the ice in a lake and having a snow bank shift while cross country skiing were the scariest things that ever happened to me (two different trips), and once I almost ran in front of a fast moving car but my boyfriend grabbed me, that was scary. Twice I was assaulted but got away, that was scary.

On the supernatural side, the events weren't scary. The radio came on when my boyfriend and I were in another room. There was nothing that could have made that happen. To this day I cannot explain it. It was an old portable, no remote control or anything like that.

My 2 brothers and I saw a UFO. It was a rocket type light that shot up in the sky with a trail of smoke. That would not be so unusual except I happened to mention it to my 5th grade teacher. And she happened to have had a friend who saw a weird craft that hovered overhead and eventually shot up in the air like a rocket and had a smoke trail. The teacher was intrigued enough by the two sightings that were on the same day at the same time miles apart (the friend was on Catalina Island and we were in Norwalk California) that she told the whole class about it.

Once I saw a dog run in front of my car and slammed on the brakes so hard I literally bent the brake pedal. But there was no dog and my boyfriend said he did not see any dog.

(Three different boyfriends, BTW.)

I tried for days to picture the arsonist who caused a warehouse fire in Seattle that killed 4 firefighters. I work with firefighters and I was particularly upset by the incident. One day I fell asleep on the couch and dreamed that a man, young, short dark hair, was the arsonist and he had watched the fire. There was no suggestion in the media any such details. Later, the son of the building owners was arrested and convicted of the crime. He matched my dream but I have to say the picture I had of the guy was not specific enough to say it was that guy. It did turn out, however, that the arsonist had flown in from California, started the fire and flown back all in a day. The news had started to write that the son was a suspect but the suspicion was he had hired someone. No one thought he had flown up here and back. That was part of how he had tried to hide his involvement. He had an alibi that he was in California when the fire was started. My dream that he had actually seen the fire was long before that fact was known as was my image of the guy before the son was mentioned in the news as a suspect.

None of these events has made me believe there was a woo explanation, but they remain woo experiences nonetheless.

I have awakened to what looked like a big spider on my pillow a couple of times that I think were just dreams occurring while waking. They were creepy events, can't really say I was scared.

[DmKrispin]

Well, having had cats for the last 17 years, I'm not troubled by those sneaky bump-in-the-night noises at all. That is not to say I haven't had a couple of very scary "supernatural" moments!

Many years ago, I was in my living room watching a movie on TV. It was the middle of the morning, but I had closed the blinds and curtains in order to see the TV better. The main source of light in the room was the open hallway door behind me. During the movie, I stood up to get something, and froze -- there, not more than two feet in front of me was an eye!! A yellow, winking DEMON EYE!! I didn't know wether to faint or pee my pants! As I, frozen in fear, stood there staring at it, I finally realized what it was. A medium-sized spider had dropped down on it's strand and was hanging in mid-air. The light from the hallway had caught it's smooth belly and been reflected a little bit.

One dark and stormy night (yes, really), I was alone in the house watching The Haunting, that wonderful old movie based on the Shirley Jackson book, The Haunting of Hill House. My mom had taped it (VHS) and sent it to me. It was the first time I'd ever seen it, and I was really enjoying how creepy it was. As far as I can tell, they only use one special effect (and it's pretty late) in the movie, so your brain gets a real work-out! Anyway, there I was, eating my popcorn in a darkened, empty house, watching this wonderfully creepy movie. During the greenhouse/sunroom scene -- the one with the big weird statues that you just know are gonna do something -- the freakin' tape does a quick flash of loud white noise and blue screen!! I just about jumped outta my skin! In the few seconds it took for my heart to start beating again, I realized what had happened, but I was still a little creeped out for weeks after that. Man, I gotta stop watchin' movies in the dark!

To end on a more mundane note, I once had a large, thick glass candle plate break for no apparent reason. It was on the table, about 5 feet behind me. No candle was on it or had been on it for days. The cats were draped over various other pieces of furniture, exhausted from a hard day of napping and eating. I'm sitting there, minding my own business ... well, I was online, so I was probably minding someone else's business. Anyway, I suddenly hear a chunky "pop" behind me. I swivel around to see that my candle plate was now in into three large pieces. The only explanation I can think of is that maybe cold air from the vent in the ceiling blew on it and caused a temperature change that the thick glass couldn't quite handle. It's either that or the demon ghost that is messing up my VHS tapes.

[sinclairmcevoy]

When I was 9 or 10, I read a book called It's Alive. Remember that? It was about a demon baby or something like that. After it was born and escaped, and killed a few victims, it was heard howling in a tunnel underground. It was 2 in the morning and I put the book down, scared witless. Then I heard this wailing, howling sound outside. It was a cat of course, but never having heard it before, I had to assume it was the baby from the book. I laid in bed terrified for the rest of the night, certain that I would be the next victim. Stupid book.

[Third Eye Open]

I used to get that 'voice in your ear' thing all the time, usually my name or some seemingly random sentence fragment. Even when I was young though, I was never scared by it.

One irrational thing that did scare me though, (speaking of cats) was a dream I had when I was 5 or 6. I had a really vivid dream that I had turned into a cat after trying to pet one. For several days afterward I was afraid to touch the family cat.

One time I sneaked into this abandoned house that Ted Bundy's supposedly had lived in. I remember being disappointed that I was not creeped out at all. It was just an old house.

[Carnivore]

I too get the auditory hallucinations, either someone saying my name sharply, (usually one of my parents), or random conversation between two different voices. It's definately a sleep onset thing with me, I get it a couple of times a week when I'm overtired and starting to drift off without realizing it. It's never worried me, and seems to be fairly common.

A "supernatural" scary experience occured when I was eleven. My parents and I were staying over the summer as caretakers in an old mansion that had been converted into a childrens home. When I tell people that, it sounds like the set up of "The Shining", but the place is totally non creepy and I had a fantastic holiday there. (Cholmondely Children's Home in Governors Bay, New Zealand if you care).

One night I woke up in my room. There was a long wooden corridor directly outside my door, and I could hear a noise coming from the corridor. I got up and went out to investigate. There was a light on in the corridor and I could see down the length of it to where it turned a corner at the middle of the house. I could hear a noise that sounded exactly like the noise of a skateboard's wheels rolling down the corridor towards me. The hairs on my neck stood up, and I got an icy shock of adrenaline.

I could see the empty corridor in front of me, but could hear someone apparently skating down it towards me - the effect was totally convincing. The sound stopped abruptly some distance before it reached me and I just stood there terrified, wondering what could possibly be happening. A few minutes later the sound came again - it started towards the end of the corridor and came towards me. Again, I was sure it was a skateboard. I couldnt think of anything that would make sense of what I was experiencing. Again, the sound stopped some way down the corridor. This time I ran to my parents' room and told my Dad what had happened. He came back to the corridor with me and we waited and listened.

Sure enough, the sound came again. My Dad checked the boy's dorm bathroom to see if the plumbing was causing the sound, paced the corridor to try to locate the source and then had me roll my skateboard down the corridor to compare the sound. It was very different, and much louder than the sound we had heard.

My Dad started going through the whole building trying to identify the source of the noise, and eventually tracked it upstairs. Looking out a top floor window over section of the roof, he could see a dozen or so possums walking across it from where some tree branches overhung the roof. After a while, he took me up and told me to watch a steep sloped section of roof where it met a flatter section. After a few minutes a possum came over the top of the roof and slid down it to the flatter section, then walked on to the tree. It's claws on the roof were making the sound that I had heard downstairs.

Probably the possums used the roof as a shortcut every night, and I just hadnt woken up to hear them before. If I hadnt had a sceptical and methodical father I might have concluded I had had a genuine paranormal experience with a phantom skateboarder. I always think of this incident when people say things like "there was no possible rational explanation". Just because I couldnt imagine one didnt mean it wasnt there. :)

[Showmeproof]

Dimenhydrinate has been known to cause that. Had you taken some Gravol or something???

Nope, do not take any sort of drugs (prescribed or OTC). I mentioned earlier that I have a dysfunctional eustachian tube and get ringing/humming in my ears a lot. Maybe this has something to do with it :::shrugs:::

[Olowkow]

I too get the auditory hallucinations, either someone saying my name sharply, (usually one of my parents), or random conversation between two different voices. It's definately a sleep onset thing with me,


I had this happen once when I was in college. I had pulled an all nighter studying in the dorm, and I laid down just to rest for a few minutes. Suddenly I heard my name come over the PA system. "Olowkow (not my name:)), please report to the office." It was about 4 am. Well I got up, went down to the office, no one was there of course. Very real experience, so it made me feel for those who hear voices all the time.

Scariest experience was in a car backing down a snow covered steep road with no guard rails in the mountains.

[Miss Whiplash]

This happened as an adult and initially scared the hell out of me.

/cue spooky music/

Night of the Haunted TV

I was staying with my parents at the time and sleeping in my old room. In the room I had an old (cira 1980) Panasonic 13 inch color TV. The TV woke me up in the dead of night with an errie glowing blob in the center of the screen. The blob would get larger, then contract. All in all, it looked like some ghostly eye manifesting in the TV. I got up, turned on the light and unplugged the set. The blob remained for about two full minutes afterward and then slowly faded away.

As this happened at 4 AM, I was completely unnerved by the antics. I took the TV out of the room and eventually went back to sleep. The sight of the unplugged TV on the kitchen table was the subject of a few jokes the next morning and a running joke about my TV being haunted.

My spooked TV behaved as it should for a couple of more weeks, then did a repeat performance early one evening when I walked into my dark bedroom. It gave me a start, but as I was directly in font of the the screen this time, I could see that the roiling blob glowing in the middle was part of a TV transmission. After pushing the on/off switch several times, the blob faded and the set's picture expanded as it should.

To exorcise my TV's demon, I took the set to a local electronics repairman. After several rituals and $75, he found the TV's voltage regulator was on the fritz. Evidently static electricity was collecting. When the charge built enough, it would cause the electron guns to fire. Of course the charge would not be enough to power the whole CRT, so just the center of the screen would glow and remain until the static charge was drained.

[Olowkow]

This happened as an adult and initially scared the hell out of me.

/cue spooky music/
After several rituals and $75, he found the TV's voltage regulator was on the fritz. Evidently static electricity was collecting.

$75.00 for a TV repair!!! Those were the days! :D

Not static electricity...but.. the CRT phosphors could glow for a while if the HV went beserkly high, and the whole picture would shrink.

Interesting, my take would have been immediately to assume that the high voltage was out of regulation, even knowing it could not be a horizontal or vertical drive problem. It would not be scary at all to me. But, that's because I am familiar with the workings of CRT's.

If it were a phenomenon that I knew nothing about, I might be freaked out as well though. Kind of hard to think of one, but just think what it must be like to observe an eclipse and believe it is god getting mad. Or hearing a mysterious noise and right away believing it is a ghost...

[Miss Whiplash]

$75.00 for a TV repair!!! Those were the days! :D

Not static electricity...but.. the CRT phosphors could glow for a while if the HV went beserkly high, and the whole picture would shrink.

Interesting, my take would have been immediately to assume that the high voltage was out of regulation, even knowing it could not be a horizontal or vertical drive problem. It would not be scary at all to me. But, that's because I am familiar with the workings of CRT's.

If it were a phenomenon that I knew nothing about, I might be freaked out as well though. Kind of hard to think of one, but just think what it must be like to observe an eclipse and believe it is god getting mad. Or hearing a mysterious noise and right away believing it is a ghost...

I honestly didn't think the set was haunted. Still, a ghostly glowing blob coming from the set at 4 AM waking me out of a sound sleep was unsettling. I did recall some old tales repeated by my mother about color sets (from the 1960s) catching fire or exploding. In any event, evicting the TV from my bedroom felt like the thing to do at the time.

This might tell you more of what happened to the TV and its HV regulator - the afternoon preceding the event, a transformer two houses away exploded and we had a 3 hour blackout. There was no surge protector on the set, as surge protectors were not that common at that time. It was found later the ground was off the receptacle where the TV was plugged in.

[Hydrogen Cyanide]

With three kids calling, "Mom" hundreds of times a day, I assumed it was only natural to hear it in my head while they are giving it a rest. Voices don't scare me, people do. :D:

But at least you know where they are!

Some of the my more recent scary experiences involve not knowing where a child is... one happened this evening! The most extreme was when I went to pick up a child from chess club, only to find he was not there. Rushed home to find he was not there either! Rushed back to school... to find that child realized he was supposed to be at chess club when he was on bus, the bus driver waited while he tried to get someone to answer home door... then bus driver drove him back to school, where I found him!

By the way, I now like kids having cell phones. I just wish daughter had not lost hers!

My other scary moments:

1) Age 8: I had a very bad flu that year. I went to bed one night, I vividly remember being awakened by some invisible hand grabbing my face and telling me to get up! I swear I felt a hand on my face, but there was no one in the room. The only hint I had that this was not a normal night of sleep was the fact my hair was a terrible mess, and had to be cut off. I was apparently in bed for two weeks, and according to my brother my parents were very worried.

2) In my mid-20s: I had been reading the Dragonriders of Pern books. While my hubby was in the basement working on a D&D campaign, I was in bed sleeping. I had a very vivid dream where thread was reaching down to the ceiling to burn me. I screamed... in real life. My hubby ran up to our room with a baseball bat thinking I was being attacked by a real person!

3) Just last year: I was driving on a basic divided roadway that turned into a freeway. I had an anxiety attack. I am afraid of driving on freeways for real. I avoid them like the plague. It is for people like me that Mapquest has the "avoid highway" option.

[Travis]

When I was a kid, around 7-8 years old I had an encounter that still puzzles me. It was the first night of the town carnival, called the Tuolumne Lumber Jubilee, and I was getting ready to go down and ride the rides. I ran out on to the back patio where our laundry room is and stopped dead in my tracks. There standing before me was someone in a black robe with a hood holding a scythe with black gloves. It was essentially, visually, the Grim Reaper only I didn't know it because this was the first time I had ever seen it. Needless to say I turned right around and ran screaming back into the house. As my parents then tried to comfort me I described, as best I could, what I had seen. My older brother was overhearing this and got out an encyclopedia and pointed to the Grim Reaper picture and asked if that was like what I saw. I then told them it was exactly what I saw and asked them who, or what, it is. After they explained what it was I was obviously disconcerted.

I now know there is no such being which does raise the question of what it was I did see. The only explanation I can come to is that one of my brother's friends (he hung out with some strange characters) had donned the costume, for whatever reason, and then, when he saw my reaction, fled.


Another story:

Just a couple of years ago I was driving home from the store at night and took a back road called Wards Ferry Road. On this road, in the middle of nowhere, is an old church, called Morgans Chapel, and a very old, very creepy cemetery. On a whim I decided to pull my car up in front of this cemetery and kill the engine and lights and just see how spooky the place was at night all by my lonesome. I did this, sat there for a minute, decided that it was kinda scary and went to turn the car back on and......nothing. I turned the keys again but again the engine didn't even try to start. Now I very quickly sank into a panicked state as I imagined the cops finding my car the next day with me nowhere to be found. In this moment of irrational terror it dawned on me that this was remarkably like the stories people told about being abducted by aliens. Not being in a rational state of mind this suddenly seemed possible and it exacerbated my panic while at the same time angering me that those UFO nuts I had denounced as loons might be right!

Then, suddenly I looked down and realized I had the car still in "drive." I hurriedly shifted it to "park" and turned the key and the engine started and I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief. Then I started cursing myself for getting so worked up over nothing.

[AliasN]

I've got a "scary" story, but it's much too long to rewrite here. I wrote it up (http://aliasn.blogspot.com/2004_04_25_archive.html#108316437607768990) on my blog years ago if anyone is interested. Warning: the "f-bomb" is dropped a bit in it, just in case that bothers you.

Even though I made light of it in my blog, it was really creepy and totally real feeling. It took me a couple days to get over the creepiness factor.

[Dr Adequate]

The only type of experiences I ever have is hearing someone call my name when no one is actually there. I figure there are three possibilities:

1) I am schizophrenic

2) It is a ghost

3) Due to some sort of normal physiological process in the brain/sensory systems.

I am more apt to believe its number 3 :) You don't mention whether this happens only when you're very sleepy.

Such hypnagogic auditory hallucinations are common, as you can see from this thread, usually someone saying your name and often a parent. With me it's always my mother saying my name. At the time, it doesn't seem frightening.

My one hypnopompic hallucination, on the other hand, was absolutely terrifying.

[tripi]

Does accidentally seeing your grandma naked count, or is that for another thread?