Are Invisible in Light

Somewhere in between sound, dreamless sleep and being awake are dreams and hallucinations.

Episodically, I sort of wake and often see a miniature helicopter-like natural figure in movement—or perhaps it is more like an octopus swimming on my wall or ceiling. I have had every reason to believe that I am actually seeing these ‘things’ moving about, UNTIL I got the bright idea of having a flashlight at hand to see them better. But the light revealed there was nothing – only a bright white backdrop to my apparently active imagination!

These critters do not seem connected to any dreams that I can recall.

What are they?

Why are they?

A neurologist friend has told me these images are hallucinations and that they are quite common and essentially harmless –hence they have not been studied much and are a continuing curiosity.

Since my middle name is Curiosity, I wanted to know more.  I was able to find a fancy technical term for the phenomenon: hypnopompic hallucinations, defined as “visual or other sensory events that occur at the transition from sleep to wakefulness.” While they can be a symptom of narcolepsy, they are more often simply “bumps” in the smooth flow of a good night’s sleep. 

Still, I would like to know more.

Do any of you have these sorts of experiences?

What sort ‘things’ appear on your ’walls’?

What do you think prompts them to appear, they often appear first simply as black dirt on my hands that when rubbed off metamorphosize into the images that follow in my imagination?

Could there be another dimension in our world that we only see this way?

I promise NOT to reveal anything of a specific nature at all, but I hope to discover something about what other people may have experienced in similar ways or NOT?

There has never been anything threatening or even frightening.

But this leaves me very curious.