Thread: Sudden sound..

This question has been on me mind for quite a while nows..

You see.. sometimes when I daydream or just waiting to fall asleep I hear this
sudden sound which is as strong and sudden as a gunshot and if I recall right
got a sound of a really fast air current.

Anyways, when I hear it I usually get me heart pumping really fast and I snap from my daze..

It doesn't happen that often.. but it happens.

Anyone knows what this sound might be, or maybe from what it's generated??
Aww, and did this happen to anyone else or am I loosing it? :?

I might get a high pitch ringing in my ears but I think thats normal. I don't think what you are describing is anything I know of. Sorry.

Originally Posted by Hanuka

This question has been on me mind for quite a while nows..

You see.. sometimes when I daydream or just waiting to fall asleep I hear this
sudden sound which is as strong and sudden as a gunshot and if I recall right
got a sound of a really fast air current.

Anyways, when I hear it I usually get me heart pumping really fast and I snap from my daze..

It doesn't happen that often.. but it happens.

Anyone know's what this sound might be, or maybe from what it's generated??
Aww, and did this happen to anyone else or am I loosing it? :?

Er....you're probably loosing [sic] it Hanuka

I get exactly the same thing sometimes. Just when I'm almost 100% dreaming. A sudden jerk or kick sometimes too.

Suppose the two are related? Yet one is sensory, the other is motor. But in both cases as sleep comes on the greater part of your brain is supposed to have no access to them.

?

A sudden jerk or kick is normal in stage N1 sleep. The sound Hanuka describes could be imaginary and most likely related to the "drowsy sleep" (Stage N1) as it's called.

Yeah I often get sudden jerks when I'm trying to sleep!

The best thing to do is to kick them out of bed and send them home

From what I learned in psychology once upon a time is that those jerks are natural reactions of your body to your dream. For example when you see a ball or something coming at you, you flintch to dodge it. But the reason your body moves still is because when you start going into REM sleep (rapid eye movement), your body takes on a paralysed persona, as in your body just becomes paralysed.

Now when I was a child I had the ability to wake myself from my nightmares, however I used to wake up in a paralysed state. I could only, very slowly move myself. It took me a while to sit up against the wall at the top of my bed, couple that with trying to identify your surroundings when you conscious brain isn't working proporly, well I was probably better off asleep; I couldn't even scream for my father.

To top that off I've even been awake and in a dream at the same time with the two images overlapping. 1. I could see my bedroom window, and the green curtains at the time, and 2. in the other I could see myself moving through a maze where I was being chased. Kind of strange huh?

Oh, in another of these 'wake yourself up' moments. I saw a black figure stood next to my television, about 5ft tall. He was cloaked and hooded. I fully regained consciousness and he vanished. But that is not the first time I have seen him; he has been in many dreams out of place and I've seen him in reality before as well. Kind of ironic that I see the same figure and none any different. Years and years and years later I saw a spiritualist, so to speak just in general and appranentely my spirit guide is exatly that what I saw. I didn't even say what I'd seen as a child. Pretty wierd.

Originally Posted by 425 Chaotic Requisition

From what I learned in psychology once upon a time is that those jerks are natural reactions of your body to your dream. For example when you see a ball or something coming at you, you flintch to dodge it. But the reason your body moves still is because when you start going into REM sleep (rapid eye movement), your body takes on a paralysed persona, as in your body just becomes paralysed.

Now when I was a child I had the ability to wake myself from my nightmares, however I used to wake up in a paralysed state. I could only, very slowly move myself. It took me a while to sit up against the wall at the top of my bed, couple that with trying to identify your surroundings when you conscious brain isn't working proporly, well I was probably better off asleep; I couldn't even scream for my father.

To top that off I've even been awake and in a dream at the same time with the two images overlapping. 1. I could see my bedroom window, and the green curtains at the time, and 2. in the other I could see myself moving through a maze where I was being chased. Kind of strange huh?

Oh, in another of these 'wake yourself up' moments. I saw a black figure stood next to my television, about 5ft tall. He was cloaked and hooded. I fully regained consciousness and he vanished. But that is not the first time I have seen him; he has been in many dreams out of place and I've seen him in reality before as well. Kind of ironic that I see the same figure and none any different. Years and years and years later I saw a spiritualist, so to speak just in general and appranentely my spirit guide is exatly that what I saw. I didn't even say what I'd seen as a child. Pretty wierd.

Don't worry Svwillmer it's only Death come to check you are still breathing

Originally Posted by 425 Chaotic Requisition

From what I learned in psychology once upon a time is that those jerks are natural reactions of your body to your dream. For example when you see a ball or something coming at you, you flintch to dodge it. But the reason your body moves still is because when you start going into REM sleep (rapid eye movement), your body takes on a paralysed persona, as in your body just becomes paralysed.

Now when I was a child I had the ability to wake myself from my nightmares, however I used to wake up in a paralysed state. I could only, very slowly move myself. It took me a while to sit up against the wall at the top of my bed, couple that with trying to identify your surroundings when you conscious brain isn't working proporly, well I was probably better off asleep; I couldn't even scream for my father.

To top that off I've even been awake and in a dream at the same time with the two images overlapping. 1. I could see my bedroom window, and the green curtains at the time, and 2. in the other I could see myself moving through a maze where I was being chased. Kind of strange huh?

Oh, in another of these 'wake yourself up' moments. I saw a black figure stood next to my television, about 5ft tall. He was cloaked and hooded. I fully regained consciousness and he vanished. But that is not the first time I have seen him; he has been in many dreams out of place and I've seen him in reality before as well. Kind of ironic that I see the same figure and none any different. Years and years and years later I saw a spiritualist, so to speak just in general and appranentely my spirit guide is exatly that what I saw. I didn't even say what I'd seen as a child. Pretty wierd.

heh, well the last part I dun really know how to approach so I'll leave it unsaid,
although I do belive that that you saw something, weird things do happen ^^

As for all the above:
I wasn't actually reffering to these sudden jerks and kicks that everyone seem to have(including me).

But to an actual sound as described in my 1st post.

And it doesn't always happen to me when I'm about to go to sleep, it also
happens when I'm half concious infront of me computer or when I'm just resting meself.

And if I'm not wrong it's always the same-ish sound: a sort of a combination of
an air explosion and fast air current, that lasts less that half a sec and as loud as a gunshot...

..'preps it's my guardian devil telling me to snap out of it and go back to kill n00bz? :?

p.s. when I look at something and sink into smi-sleep state(usually happens at
school or when waiting for something or someone) I can look at a random location
and it reflects to a dreamy scenario. Maybe that's what yah were reffering by
two images overlapping..

Hanuka, the sound I imagine exactly matches your description. Faster than a door slam, and it's got a rush to it, not a crack.

@Obviously. Thanks for useful input, but mine anyway does not seem related to dream hallucination. This occurs before my thoughts take on much reality of their own, and anyway I know what I'm semi-dreaming about when the "sound" surprises me. It seems to come out of nowhere, just like the motor thing.

Originally Posted by Pong

Hanuka, the sound I imagine exactly matches your description. Faster than a door slam, and it's got a rush to it, not a crack.

@Obviously. Thanks for useful input, but mine anyway does not seem related to dream hallucination. This occurs before my thoughts take on much reality of their own, and anyway I know what I'm semi-dreaming about when the "sound" surprises me. It seems to come out of nowhere, just like the motor thing.

Hmm. I think I've experienced something similar in respects to waking up when almost falling asleep. I would still say the sound is imaginary though.

My experience stems from almost falling asleep in class on rare occasions with my hand supporting my head. I wake up to avoid losing balance and crashing my head on the desk. Perhaps the sound is generated/imagined by the brain to quickly wake you up before falling completely asleep? A kind of wakeup call telling you not to fall asleep, something will happen.

For now it would be nothing but wild speculation though. :P

Originally Posted by Obviously

Originally Posted by Pong

Hanuka, the sound I imagine exactly matches your description. Faster than a door slam, and it's got a rush to it, not a crack.

@Obviously. Thanks for useful input, but mine anyway does not seem related to dream hallucination. This occurs before my thoughts take on much reality of their own, and anyway I know what I'm semi-dreaming about when the "sound" surprises me. It seems to come out of nowhere, just like the motor thing.

Hmm. I think I've experienced something similar in respects to waking up when almost falling asleep. I would still say the sound is imaginary though.

My experience stems from almost falling asleep in class on rare occasions with my hand supporting my head. I wake up to avoid losing balance and crashing my head on the desk. Perhaps the sound is generated/imagined by the brain to quickly wake you up before falling completely asleep? A kind of wakeup call telling you not to fall asleep, something will happen.

For now it would be nothing but wild speculation though. :P

Yeah, who knows, maybe it is an adaptation from when we were still tree climbers and had to sleep in the trees for protection.

Chaotic the majority of psychology is theory and speculation.
Us humans need to explain things, so we find explanations that fit other theories and speculations based on the small knowledge we think we have the most evidence of.

Our knowledge is built on this framework of theories where large portions of it could very easily collapse if one part of the puzzle proved to be false.

This is a fact in science and in philosophy, and nowhere more so than in psychology, the study of which is still in its infancy.

So all the psychological explanations are theories as are the suggestions above and below.



As a kid i used to regularly wake up crying when as i was falling asleep i had the experience of sensing a a dark presence standing behind a rushing wall. It was very much like standing on a platform and a rush of a fast train going through a station in front of you, but behind this I used to sense a dark male figure standing very quietly and calmly. The figure was so calm and the feeling & shock it gave me was so frightening that I felt that this figure was malevolent. It got to a point where I dreaded even to go to sleep in case it happened.

When I got older and began to read Jung and about animus and psychology & Occult books about the importance of facing your demons and fears etc. So i thought ok, next time it happens I won't panic and wake up in a sweat, i will go with it and see what happens. This time instead of panicking as soon as it happened i tried to remain calm and try to project loving feelings towards it and amazingly instead of sensing malevolence from this presence behind the wall i sensed a very strong feeling of benevolence.

After that I began to notice certain little things changing in my life for the better and feeling more calm at peace & confidence inside.

The point to this story is that this experience taught me what I would now consider to be one of the most fundamental things essential to leading a fulfilled human life.

It was my projected fear that caused my experience to feel malevolent, and this malevolence that my fear produced ironically fed the fear creating more of a sense of malevolence and so on in a vicious loop which increased gradually in intensity, until I became terrified to even go to sleep.

By deciding to take control and consciously influence the experience I was able to turn it around and get a decidedly different and beneficial effect from it.

We give so much importance to wakefulness and see our sleep as the body recuperating, but i think that is a mistake. I think sleep and the dreams and experiences that has to offer has just as much important lessons to teach us as being awake.

In fact I would even say that being awake we are more likely to learn less because our conscious mind takes over with all it's blind spots, biases, speculations, theories, prejudices and fears and weaknesses etc which taint our experiences, the mind psychologists would call ego.

But when we are asleep this mind also goes to sleep and so sleep affords the opportunity to give the other portion of mind, which is obviously there or we wouldn't dream, which the psychologists might call the subconscious, the chance to take control. Which is perhaps why we have experiences that feel a shock and scary because they feel like they are beyond our 'normal' control.

Sleep and it's experiences give us the opportunity to learn about this other part to ourselves, that psychologists find difficult to uncover because in our normal waking state it lies buried behind the scenes.

I think next time you have an experience whilst getting to sleep you should try hard to remain calm not wake up and see what happens.

Originally Posted by Obviously

Hmm. I think I've experienced something similar in respects to waking up when almost falling asleep. I would still say the sound is imaginary though.

My experience stems from almost falling asleep in class on rare occasions with my hand supporting my head. I wake up to avoid losing balance and crashing my head on the desk. Perhaps the sound is generated/imagined by the brain to quickly wake you up before falling completely asleep? A kind of wakeup call telling you not to fall asleep, something will happen.

For now it would be nothing but wild speculation though. :P

Yes it's imaginary, a boom in the head like a sudden sound. Baffling because it pops out of the blue without any connection to what I'm thinking/dreaming about. And Absum, it's no message from the psyche - no emotional resonance there or any symbolic meaning... it's just a sudden blam that makes one remark, "Whoa! That was weird."

I'm thinking it might be failure in whatever isolates a sleeping brain, like a ratchet slipping. It's purely auditory though, so I dunno.

Wake-up call sounds good. Yet when I've tried to stay awake, the "call" that yanks me up is voiceless.

Yeah I get em too, In different stages, I can be slightly asleep, and then bang your awake. Funniest thing to happen to me, Is infront of a group of friends, I dozed off slightly, then awoke by kicking my leg up on the table and smashing some glasses, was so funny.

The ones I'm having at the moment, are when I am still fully concious but only just drifting away, and I see something coming toward me, and I get a shock from that.

As I've said before, its your brain falling asleep, it starts to enter REM. The next tim you have a lie in bed on Sunday, try and get yourself to have to do something in the morning, at say 8 o clock and set the alarm, your body if bothered about the task will keep waking itself up. You'll notice that you'll keep having dreams, if only short. Its the same when you go to bed proporly, if you start dreaming before your body is paralysed, your conscious side of your brain will react to the images that the sub-concsious is creating:

http://www.unclesirbobby.org.uk/dreamessayparalysed.php

This may be similar, but I'm no expert.

I experience the same thing, only very occasionally, but it is in the middle of the night after i have been sleeping for several hours, it is a sensation of being ripped from sleep accompanied by what can only be described as a loud whip-crack.

The only way i can describe feeling is a sense of rapid motion whilst waking, the first time i experienced it i felt as thought id been pulled from my bed at high speed and through a pane of glass.

can find no real explanation, but it really is a horrible experience.

Hi Divvi,

As I explained in a previous post, these experiences of awareness between the state of full consciousness and sleep are called hypnogogic. That whip-crack sound is likely how your unconscious mind interpret the sort of arousal (rapid arousal) you were experiencing at the time. In this state between sleep and full arousal, thoughts become deeds; i.e,. what you heard was a concurrent manifestation of what you may have been thinking about your experience of being aroused so quickly to wakefulness.

Just a note, subconscious, in my opinion, is not a state, condition, or aspect of the mind but rather an influence upon the mind and awareness. Unconscious, from what I've learned about the dreaming brain, is indeed a condition and state of awareness, which the brain creates, that is distinct from the conscious condition of brain function. I hope this helps.

Originally Posted by DrmDoc

In this state between sleep and full arousal, thoughts become deeds

Beautifully put.

...

I still don't understand why just sometimes the waking hits like a burst balloon. It's like there were two strong forces balanced in opposition, and one snapped.

I still think it might come from when we still used to sleep in trees. That falling feeling, you know? Maybe a sudden jerk of adrenaline to hasten your reactions so you can stop yourself faster?

Yeah if you slip then sudden waking is critical. So perhaps we exercise this capacity like yawning exercises lung capacity?


BTW we still can sleep in trees without accident. One drapes the arms and legs down, so their weight prevents the torso from rolling off a limb. If one did begin to roll I'm sure the hugging reflex would kick in. I've slept and even dreamed in trees this way a few times. Lazy summer afternoons.

Originally Posted by Kalster

I still think it might come from when we still used to sleep in trees. That falling feeling, you know? Maybe a sudden jerk of adrenaline to hasten your reactions so you can stop yourself faster?

Although a plausible explanation, our rapid arousal from the early stages of sleep is likely a holdover from the earliest evolution of sleep when ancestrals animal needed to arouse quickly from a state of rest to satisfy an immediate survival need that probably involved feeding. Between feeding cycles, early animals entered a state of rest that decreased their metabolism until sources of sustanence were restored. When their sources of sustanence became available, these animals could arouse quickly to feed. This early stage of sleep (non-REM) evolved in our animal ancestors before they developed dreaming brains, which the evidence appears to suggests is before our more immediate ancestors learned to sleep in trees.