💫Visual & Auditory Hallucinations 💫

Yes I do, The most annoying one is hearing a knock at the door when I am just dozing off. I can't sleep then.
And in the evenings I often think I see things, like a person sat on the sofa, or something running across the floor. When I look properly there's nothing there. The most peculiar one never happens any more. I used to see people as if at the other end of a telescope. Tiny little people in the distance, and yet they were actually right there in front of me. This happened a lot when I was young and into middle age, but hardly ever these days.

In this digital age, I often think I hear a WhatsApp message coming in.

Rarely, I hear a buzz of conversation around me as I'm dropping off.
I don't mind it as I know I can make it stop if I want.

I am sometimes awoken by the doorbell pinging, except it hasn’t.

Yes, a lot, door bell ringing, my partner calling me, or speaking to me, loudly enough to be real life, usually just waking from sleep. I`m not as stressed as I was, and they seem to be diminishing

Had to google this and there is a name for them. I've had them
my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/23234-hypnagogic-hallucinations#:~:text=Hypnagogic%20Hallucinations,patterns%2C%20shapes%20or%20flashing%20lights.
I love the word hypnagogic!

I had one of these recently; it involved my husband and a duster. The shock woke me up.

Rather more seriously - in fact a lot more seriously - is something called Charles Bonnet Syndrome which is what I think my sister in Canada suffers from
She has had some truly terrifying hallucinations and thought she was going mad.
Whether or not it was a precursor to her present Alzheimers I shall never know, but waking up to see her bedroom shrouded in thick cobwebs, or metal ball bearings appearing to cascade down the side of her freezer must have been horrendous.
If you have never heard of it, this is what I found when I Googled
What causes Charles Bonnet syndrome?
We don't know exactly what causes Charles Bonnet syndrome but it's more likely with
severe sight loss or blindness especially in both eyes in older people
when people are socially isolated
after vision gets worse suddenly
Although eyes are the sensors that respond to light, it's the brain that does the seeing. The brain receives information from the eyes and decodes it into the picture we see.
If the brain stops receiving information, it can fill in the gaps with its own images. So it's possible that Charles Bonnet syndrome is similar to the feeling of having a 'phantom limb' that can be experienced by people who lose an arm or a leg.
If you have Charles Bonnet syndrome it does not mean that you have dementia or a serious mental illness

Maw that sounds absolutely terrifying, your poor sister

Glorianny I mentioned that in my opening post, as well as hypnopompic hallucinations

She has now lost the sight of one eye but prior to that went through a period of only seeing the printed word or writing upside down,
I can hardly imagine how awful it was and actually still is.

I don't get them now but when I was suffering from very severe depression and anxiety, I used to have hallucinations. Very frightening. I remember walking down the road with a friend and pointed to a man walking towards us who had a sort of halo of bright blue hair. I said to my friend 'Oo bright blue hair'. She said 'Where?'. When I looked again the man had neat, short, brown hair.

Is this the same thing as hearing a doorbell or phone ringing just as you’re dropping off or waking up? I’ve had that occasionally. I also get sleep paralysis, which can be frightening.

I recently read about Charles Bonnet, Maw. It sounds horrific, your poor sister. Do they know why she’s losing her sight?

I didn’t know until recently that people who have been sighted but lose it often forget what things look like eg what an elephant is like. I had assumed that once you had that image in your brain, it stayed there forever but seemingly that’s not so.

henetha
I used to see people as if at the other end of a telescope. Tiny little people in the distance, and yet they were actually right there in front of me. This happened a lot when I was young and into middle age, but hardly ever these days.
One of my sons used to experience this. The first time it happened it was when he had just recovered from flu and got quite frightened- he said "everything's getting small". It happened again a few times but he seemed to grow out of it.

There was a feature mentioning it in New Scientist some years ago but no-one knew why it happens, and mostly only in young people.

Thank you for that , Farmor15. I've never heard of anyone else having this. It's puzzled me for years. It's almost comforting to know someone else has experienced it too, but I'm glad your son has grown out of it, just like I eventually did.
I would welcome any information about it. It quite frightened me when I was young and can remember banging my head deliberately to try and bring people back to bring life size again.

Being life size.

An interesting thread, Fanny. It reminds me of an article I saved years ago (Telegraph, 14 May 2007, Doctor's Diary, James le Fanu) It might interest fellow sufferers.
Those intense and dreadful feelings of nostalgia, bereavement and sadness while dropping off to sleep, as experienced by Mrs BE and several of her Cambrian friends, are widely reported by others. They represent a form of hypnogogic hallucination caused by changes in brain activity before sleep takes over.
These sensations may include the feeling of the "presence" of some ghostly being, auditory hallucinations such as hearing footsteps or vivid visual images of friends, relatives or bizarre and frightening creatures. They tend to be repetitive and episodic, occurring several times in a week, followed by months without them.
There would seem to be several variations, with one woman reporting something "more like terror honing in from a long distance". Alternatively, they may occur on waking, accompanied by a profound sense of gloomy pessimism about life in general. This can last for several hours and can be prevented, a reader reports, with a small dose of the anti-depressant Dothiepin.*

* please note this article is 15 years old and GPs may no longer recommend this particular medication

I have the knocking on door thing and often at the most anti social hours. I have a ring type doorbell and two other CCTV cameras pointing in that direction such that its impossible to approach my front door without being on one of the cameras. Yet there never is anyone. Most be the invisible man.

I have the ringing doorbell one. Also something/things scuttling across the floor or my bed if I’m sitting up in it reading. Don’t like that one!