I used to love these threads on reddit. I’ll go first.
This one is kinda mundane and is most likely a hypnogogic/pompic hallucination but it used to happen A LOT when I was younger and I kinda realised earlier that it’s been a long time since I last noticed it.
So from about the onset of puberty till my early mid twenties, at least a few times a month I’d be falling asleep, drifting in and out of sleep, or even woken up by- my bed shaking.
Usually it was a steady-ish rumble, almost like being on a train, but like 1/10 times I’d wake up to my bed rocking like someone was shaking it.
It scared me a few times when it was particularly violent, but as I freeze up when scared I’d just be lying there terrified, wondering why the fuck this was happening and hoping the bed didn’t start squeaking. Usually when this shaking happened though it was just a thing I noticed, filed away as a curiosity, and tried to go back to sleep.
This happened in probably every place I lived (which was a lot of places as I was moving like 2 or 3 times a year most years from about 11 till 16, then less so as I got older) and mostly around the south east of England. And I very rarely lived on a main road with heavy vehicles on it or by railways either, so it wasn’t environmental. We do get the occasional very minor earthquake here every ten years or so, and it’s a similar feeling!
So I don’t generally believe in the supernatural stuff, but I’ve had a few experiences I can’t explain that still freak me out a bit.
I used to live in a 3 bedroom apartment with a rotation of 2-3 other roommates that worked out being about 7 different people that lived there during the 2 years I lived at the place. Every single one, including myself, had a nightmare experience that only happened while living there.
The nightmare wouldn’t seem different from an average dream. Then you’d notice a presence like someone who wasn’t supposed to be there. Eventually the discomfort of this presence would become overbearing and wake you up. Which is when you’d realize you were in sleep paralysis and hear a woman screaming loudly in your room.
Eventually you’d shake off the paralysis and have to decompress from whatever the hell occurred. But man was it strange that it happened to all 7 roommates the exact same way and was isolated to that random apartment.
Bonus experience - At that same place I once woke up to my computer turning on by itself. The monitor lit up my small room and when I woke up to see what was going on it looked like my room was filled with smoke. There was no smell of smoke, but in my sleepy haze I didn’t care as I thought it was a possible fire. So I carefully touched the door handle to make sure it wasn’t going to burn me. It was fine, I opened the door and it was dark and normal for the middle of the night. I turned back to my room and watched the smoke somewhat slowly disappear. I have no explanation for what I saw that night and have never had a similar experience since then.
Did you talk about it? I could imagine the subconscious mind takes some inspiration from stories it has heard recently… I knownmine does
When a new roommate came into the fold we didn’t want to freak them out so we didn’t give them any heads up about it. Because, who knows, maybe it wouldn’t be a problem for them 🤷♂️
But instead it happened to each of us randomly over the years
This is going to sound like a joke, or that im making fun. Its not, i promise you. Ive just read of a lot of accounts having similar dreams followed by sleep paralysis. Anyways, did the presence have a hat on?
I don’t recall, but my wife (who was at the time my gf) said she remembered the girl having like a floppy sun hat 😬
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_person#The_"Hat_Man"
Its just so strange that so many people have seen this shadow being, that it has a name and tons of articles about it. IDK if its the same you experienced but there are a lot of others who saw the Hat Man.
Oooh fuck that nightmare shit sounds spooky, maybe it was some kind of subsonic vibration you all were picking up on, like old pipes or tube tunnels under the building or something. Didn’t mythbusters or brainiac or something have an episode on that, I can’t remember if they were all having the same hallucinations?
I was just about to share a similar-ish but funny and not paranormal story, till I realised it was one of those ‘funny stories’ that are only funny to the person telling them and everybody else just looks at you weird and quietly says things like “oh my god” and “I’m so sorry”. Lmao. Proud of myself for catching that.
Yeah I have no clue what could have caused the shared sleep paralysis demon there. Oddly enough I moved back to the same apartment complex, but a different building about 500nfeet away from the original one and never had any weird experiences