Ever woken to eerie sounds in the night, or a feeling of your skin being touched when you’re sleeping alone, or been scared out of your wits when you’ve opened your eyes to see ghosts or strange things going on in your bedroom? As utterly convincing and frightening as these sensations are, it’s important to take a deep breath and know that what you are hearing, feeling, and seeing is not real. Neither are you going insane. What you are doing is dreaming while partly awake, so that both your dreaming and waking worlds overlap. You could say you are experiencing the Twilight Zone, not a scary spirit world but a brain zone where the night of dreams mixes with the light of day in a hazy, confused half light. This is how it happens.
You will be utterly convinced that a tiger is under your bed.
When you wake up to visions in your bedroom, you are experiencing a phenomenon known as hypnopompic hallucination. When you open your eyes while you are dreaming, your eyes transmit a picture of your bedroom to your brain, and this is then superimposed onto your dream images. Because your eyes are open, your brain decides the mix of images is a real event situated in the bedroom. So you see the ghost, or dream scene, in your room.
The same applies to other sensations, such as sound and touch. If you start to wake up while you are still dreaming of a wolf howling, or a tiger nuzzling your skin, your brain will superimpose the fading howls or the warmth of the tiger’s breathy lick onto your bedroom scene. You will be absolutely convinced that a wolf is outside your door, or that a tiger is under your bed, as your ears will still be ringing, and your skin still tingling. The sensations feel real, but they are dream sensations, dissolving away as your brain becomes fully awake. The memories of those sensations may haunt you, but they were dreams.
Have you ever got into bed and then felt the covers lift as if an invisible stranger or spirit has just climbed in with you? The explanation for this sensation is the same, except that your dreaming mind has switched on while you are still half awake. This common experience usually happens when you’re not expressing your whole self, holding back too much of the real you, the true enormity of your power. Your dream is about to introduce your ‘lost spirit’ and you perceive this lost, detached, abandoned shadow as a separate being as your brain begins to switch into dreaming mode.
So when these kinds of spooky events happen to you, relax in the safety of this knowledge, and be amazed at the power of the mind to believe what it sees and feels.
Then simply record your awesome Twilight Zone experience, and interpret it as the dream it really is.
[Extract from 101 Dream Interpretation Tips, Jane Teresa Anderson]
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