Waking Hallucination

I woke up this morning. Well. I wasn't awake. But on my bed were a swarm of spiders. Individually they were red, green & yellow. But unlike any spiders Ive ever seen. Just my impression of them was. They are spiders.
I was upright in my bed and felt alert to danger.
The first thing i saw was a group of these spiders at the corner of my quilt which was scrunched up as id arose from my bed.
As i inspected. Checking if there were anymore. I noticed them coming up from under my covers also.
They were coming up past my thigh as i was sat up.
At this moment i panicked and leapt out of my bed. I don't mean, Got out of my bed enthusiastically and stood up.
I mean i 'Sprung'.
So. Mid springing. Pre hitting the floor with my knees still bent. I fully woke up.
Hitting the floor already knowing it wasn't real.
Knelt on the floor for a few moments. laughing at myself. Before climbing back into bed.
As i did, I noticed my body was clammy and where id lay was damp with sweat.
I Thought for a moment longer. Then fell straight back to sleep.


Now what the hell was that? Never have i experienced this in my whole life up until now. I'm 29.
The waking hallucination was so vividly real it actually made me jump out of my bed.
I say hallucination because, This wasn't a dream.
It was my room. My covers. Me looking out of my head. Seeing everything in my room.
When i jumped out of bed, I was already upright. Doing all the actions i was doing in the hallucination.
This wasn't a dream. I became reality aware mid hallucination.
I became aware the threat wasn't real just as i left the bed (with a leap).
I landed on the floor. Laughing to myself. Like what a tit. But it was so real

Can anyone relate to this or am i a freekin loon?

Im just describing how i saw it. Which is quite hard. As you might imagine

I should probably add. Im not a druggy. Im on no drug whatsoever. I drink a little but not overly to much and im not overly stressed. The night before it happened i did have a little trouble sleeping. Which i do sometimes. But have never had this experience before

[edit on 10/15/2009 by Matt.Trakker]

[edit on 10/15/2009 by Matt.Trakker]

Could be a night terror. Did you get them when you were younger?
Since you hadn't felt the sweat until you jumped out of bed I'd say you weren't fully conscious when the spiders were on your bed, so it was your dream state seeping into your waking life.

reply to post by Matt.Trakker


Have You ever dreamed an old Hag was sitting on Your chest,squeezing the breath out of You?

Did you take any medication that contains Diphenhydramine??

In reply to them all. No.
I added to my post I'm not on drugs. Medicinal or otherwise.

I have actually done a little research on this today as i was understandably a little shook Once i awoke a little later on. The whole experience was still fresh in my mind.

Ive read up on succubus/incubus. Wasn't that.

What Ive seen was instances of Hypnagogic hallucinations & Narcolepsy

Im not convinced. I just wanted the ATS view

Edit : Oh to add. Whilst i was looking. I noticed an alarming amount of people that had exactly the same thing as me. Eg Seeing spiders

[edit on 10/15/2009 by Matt.Trakker]

reply to post by Matt.Trakker


Gas Leak?

a waking dream that continues imagery into reality.

had this a few times, but not with spiders!!!

eww spiders!!!

Originally posted by Polynomial C
Did you take any medication that contains Diphenhydramine??

..one of the side effects of Diphenhydramine is Hallucination of spiders...

What im hoping for really from this is not really an explanation. Although that would be nice. I understand its probably not going to be forthcoming. Id just like to hear other peoples experiences really. So i don't feel mental

I don't take Diphenhydramine. I don't Even know what it is.
Although i have thoughts about the possibilitys of these drugs entering the water supply through peoples urine. I wondered about all this #

Im open to all these scenarios. I just wanna get your thoughts.

[edit on 10/15/2009 by Matt.Trakker]

I have this happen, usually with one spider mind you when I wake up suddenly from sleeping and my mind hasn't flushed out the dream juice yet.

The coolest example is from a dream where I was in a totally different setting and had opened my eyes awake and everything morphed from the dream to the view of reality within a few seconds, it just looked really cool because of how vivid it was. The dream was like a mask that just changed it's face to reality when I woke up.

As for spiders, I have had them usually dangling in front of me, sometimes they look like twisted balls of thread with legs or an actual large creepy spider.

I think that is just an interpretation from the dream juice leaking between my ears upon waking. It's rare and always clears up within a few seconds of being awake.

reply to post by Matt.Trakker


Well..i do sometimes wake up and see hallucination of spiders.. but that happens because i have sleep disorders and i am very afraid of spiders.. the explanation i got from experts was that when you have an episode night terror (or similar disorders) images of your most primal fears ( or things you think too much during the day..aliens?) occupied large part of your thoughts, and that triggers the hallucinations..

[edit on 15-10-2009 by Polynomial C]

Aliens? no. I was actually quite concerned that day about a new house i was in the process of viewing the next day. It had kept me awake. Im kept awake by really quite trivial day to day things

Doesn't happen to me in the morning but sometimes more often waking in the middle of the night (half awake half asleep). I get a bunch of those hallucinations, once every couple months.

Definitely a hypnagogic hallucination. I had one when I was about three years old. Got up out of bed to go to the bathroom one night, and standing there in the bathroom was the wicked witch straight out of The Wizard of Oz.

They do tend to be more common in kids, but not unheard of in adults.

I have had that happen before, although mine involved nothing so scary. I believe the more common phrase for it is "waking dream".

If I recall correctly, what happens is sometimes when you wake up, the part of your brain that is dreaming does not switch fast enough so you wake up and are still dreaming for a second or two.

Anyway, when it happened to me last I was about 14 and we had just moved into a knew house. I woke up in the middle of the night and there sitting on m bed ( Or so I thought) was my dad. He was sitting there watching me sleep with a smile on his face.... but this was unexpected and out of instinct I rubbed my eyes only to find he was no longer there....I asked him the next morning to see if he had been watching me or if it was just a dream and it was just a dream.

It looked so real though. I can't help but wonder if something like this offers us a little window into the world of schizophrenia.... seeing things that are not there when we are awake and what not....

Originally posted by Nventual
Could be a night terror. Did you get them when you were younger?
Since you hadn't felt the sweat until you jumped out of bed I'd say you weren't fully conscious when the spiders were on your bed, so it was your dream state seeping into your waking life.

I agree, this sounds like a night terror to me.

I used to get a TON of them when I was a kid. I would actually fold clothes in my sleep and I was mentally conscious the whole time. I would communicate with my Mother who would "help" me through them. I told her I needed to fold clothes through bouts of tears, and she would take her clothes from the closet, mess them up and let me fold them.

I would also "hallucinate" that I had very big red lips. Lips that were two feet across and one foot high. Or that I was in a circus tent with kangaroos. I even had dreams about giant toothpicks and long, red beds that never ended. All while feeling VERY conscious and communicating with my Mother, but I couldn't leave the "dream".

Now I find I get a bit of sleep paralysis a couple times a year...but no more night terrors.

I've had a waking dream before. The image was so real as it slowly faded, if it had been the image of a deceased person, I would swear I was seeing a ghost!
Hallucinations on waking are quite common.
And this spider hallucination, I'm sorry but insect hallucinations are not unknown. It happened with one of my sheltered housing tenants and she was so distressed, we had to get her family in. It was also a sign that she had a particular illness.
I would suggest, if you get more events like this, get checked out by a doctor (just in case) and don't just assume it has some supernatural explanation.


[edit on 16-10-2009 by unicorn1]

I experience this quite often but with big centi/millipedes and big bugs. It's just a bad dream with a moving after image. I tried counting the seconds of the after image before it disappears and it was around 10 to 15 seconds. I only attempted the count once since most of the time I was panicking while awake.

Nothing to get worried about.

My explanation for it is that, we have a good and deep sleep but it got screwed up towards the end so it still remains in our eyes. Much like how you look at a light bulb, then look at something else and the after image of the bulb is still there minus the the movement and detail of the bug.