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Woken up by a ghost

Quinn

Breathtakingly blasphemous.
Quinn
Joined
Jan 6, 2002
Messages
2,310
I was rudely awakened early this morning by being poked in the ribs -- two hard jabs in quick succession. I rolled over and looked up to see why my girlfriend was waking me up in such a hostile manner.

She wasn't there. Neither was anyone else.

My first thought was that she had poked me and then quickly left the room for some reason. But it would have had to be really quick. Though I had been fully asleep, I was startled by the poking, and I spun around fast to see what was going on. Plus the bedroom door was closed. She would have had to close it while quickly running out of the room, which meant I would have heard it close, which I hadn't.

Just to make sure, I opened the door and looked in the living room. She was napping on the couch, under a blanket, with her dog sleeping next to her.

My next thought was that something had fallen on me. But it would have had to be something fairly substantial to land on me with that much force, and therefore would have been easy to find (and there would have been two of whatever it was). There was nothing to find, either in the bed or on the floor nearby. Plus, there's nowhere something could have fallen from except the ceiling (there are no shelves or anything nearby). There hadn't been anything hanging from there, and the ceiling itself was intact.

I was rapidly running out of possible causes, and the ones that remained were getting more and more unlikely. Nonetheless, did I check under the bed and in the closet to see if there was anyone hiding there? You bet I did. (There wasn't.)

At that point it was basically down to mind tricks or ghosts. So I chalked it up to an unusual but certainly not inconceivable misfire of some part of my brain, and laid down to go back to sleep.

And as much of a skeptic as I am, and for as long as I've been one, and for all the ways I understand and appreciate (and even utilize) the ways our minds can make us perceive things that never happened… I was too freaked out to go back to sleep, because dammit, I felt something poke me! I know what I felt! There's no way it could have been all in my head!

So today, as I sit here groggy and sleep-deprived, I feel just the tiniest bit more empathy than usual for people who believe in paranormal things because of inexplicable personal experiences. If I could be that freaked out, with the collection of information in my head, it's not at all difficult to understand how someone with less information could interpret such an experience as irrefutable proof of ghosts (or whatever entity they chalk it up to). It really did feel like something I couldn't possibly have imagined. And for someone who isn't familiar with the degree to which it's possible to imagine things that don't seem like you could possibly have imagined them, it would be easy to dismiss that option as ridiculous -- possibly even more ridiculous than ghosts.
 
Last edited:
Professor Yaffle said:
It was just the monster under your bed.
Click to expand...
I advise counting the remaining ribs. The monster might not have just poked, but taken as a trial run.


Bit more seriously: As my (mostly adult) children can attest, I am a firm non-believer in this stuff, but I can still get spooked. I was having the discussion last night with one of my boys about what can creep me out, including the sort of experience related in the OP.
 
Quinn said:
I was rudely awakened early this morning by being poked in the ribs -- two hard jabs in quick succession. I rolled over and looked up to see why my girlfriend was waking me up in such a hostile manner.

She wasn't there. Neither was anyone else.

My first thought was that she had poked me and then quickly left the room for some reason. But it would have had to be really quick. Though I had been fully asleep, I was startled by the poking, and I spun around fast to see what was going on. Plus the bedroom door was closed. She would have had to close it while quickly running out of the room, which meant I would have heard it close, which I hadn't.

Just to make sure, I opened the door and looked in the living room. She was napping on the couch, under a blanket, with her dog sleeping next to her.

My next thought was that something had fallen on me. But it would have had to be something fairly substantial to land on me with that much force, and therefore would have been easy to find (and there would have been two of whatever it was). There was nothing to find, either in the bed or on the floor nearby. Plus, there's nowhere something could have fallen from except the ceiling (there are no shelves or anything nearby). There hadn't been anything hanging from there, and the ceiling itself was intact.

I was rapidly running out of possible causes, and the ones that remained were getting more and more unlikely. Nonetheless, did I check under the bed and in the closet to see if there was anyone hiding there? You bet I did. (There wasn't.)

At that point it was basically down to mind tricks or ghosts. So I chalked it up to an unusual but certainly not inconceivable misfire of some part of my brain, and laid down to go back to sleep.

And as much of a skeptic as I am, and for as long as I've been one, and for all the ways I understand and appreciate (and even utilize) the ways our minds can make us perceive things that never happened… I was too freaked out to go back to sleep, because dammit, I felt something poke me! I know what I felt! There's no way it could have been all in my head!

So today, as I sit here groggy and sleep-deprived, I feel just the tiniest bit more empathy than usual for people who believe in paranormal things because of inexplicable personal experiences. If I could be that freaked out, with the collection of information in my head, it's not at all difficult to understand how someone with less information could interpret such an experience as irrefutable proof of ghosts (or whatever entity they chalk it up to). It really did feel like something I couldn't possibly have imagined. And for someone who isn't familiar with the degree to which it's possible to imagine things that don't seem like you could possibly have imagined them, it would be easy to dismiss that option as ridiculous -- possibly even more ridiculous than ghosts.
Click to expand...
Maybe this?

http://sleepdisorders.about.com/od/glossary/g/Hypnagogic_Jerk.htm
 
Garrette said:
I advise counting the remaining ribs. The monster might not have just poked, but taken as a trial run.


Bit more seriously: As my (mostly adult) children can attest, I am a firm non-believer in this stuff, but I can still get spooked. I was having the discussion last night with one of my boys about what can creep me out, including the sort of experience related in the OP.
Click to expand...


Who was it that said, "I may not believe in ghosts, but that doesn't mean I'm not afraid of them?"

The brain can send all kinds of signals, particularly when you are asleep. As a kid, I distinctly remember feeling my cat jump on my bed and walk around my legs. The problem was that he had died a few days earlier. As I was drifting off to sleep, my brain fired some remembered response that I interpreted as a cat walking on my bed. ...either that or I was touched by a ghost cat. Yikes!
 
Regardless of the information we all understand about things the brain can trick us into remembering, let's say that it actually was a ghost and that people actually do interact with ghosts quite often. Can someone explain to me the fear part? I don't understand why ghosts are supposed to be scary. I can understand annoying, like getting poked in the ribs when you need a good night's sleep, but what's actually scary about ghosts?
 
The Shrike said:
Regardless of the information we all understand about things the brain can trick us into remembering, let's say that it actually was a ghost and that people actually do interact with ghosts quite often. Can someone explain to me the fear part? I don't understand why ghosts are supposed to be scary. I can understand annoying, like getting poked in the ribs when you need a good night's sleep, but what's actually scary about ghosts?
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I don't really know. Perhaps it is that we are trained to fear them as we grow up and hear scary stories, or perhaps it is the Uncanny Valley.
 
The Shrike said:
...let's say that it actually was a ghost and that people actually do interact with ghosts quite often. Can someone explain to me the fear part?
Click to expand...


If people did interact with ghosts quite often, then they probably wouldn't be scary (except maybe the first time you met one, or unless they did specifically scary things to you). They might startle us from time to time, but ghosts would be mundane, and we would probably have a field of science devoted to studying them.

But in our current world, where we don't interact with ghosts, if you see one then it is something new, unknown, and potentially dangerous. Fear is good - it prepares you for your fight-or-flight response.
 
^Yeah, I get that but I was more going for the angle of "what harm has a ghost ever done to someone?" Like if there's some evil spirit creepily telling you to "Geeeeeet oooouuuuuttt" and you say "No, I'm staying" what happens next?
 
I once dreamt that I was lying on my back, unable to move, as a small vivid green snake slithered towards me very quickly. It leapt at me and sunk its fangs into my right thigh and I could feel the poison pumping in, followed by my entire leg fizzing. The shock woke me up, and I could still feel my leg fizzing.

I assume that I'd got pins and needles in my leg while asleep and the snake thing was my brain dealing with the outside information and incorporating it into my dream, but it was still a strange sensation as it seemed like what had happened to me in my dream had come out into reality, like Freddy Kreuger's hat.
 
There is an easy way to decide if you've been woken up by a ghost or not:

1: If you think you've been woken up by a ghost.
2: You haven't.

:D
 
I've woken up to the sound of myself making a loud grunt a few times; the weird thing is that it's loud and odd enough that I've tried to do another one, but find I can't make a sound remotely like it. I think I really did make a noise, because the room reverberation sounds right, but I don't know whether my waking brain has distorted the perception or whether I can make sounds in my sleep that I can't make awake...

I've had the odd sleep-poke and shoulder-shake too; I half wake, wondering why I'm being disturbed, then realize there's no-one there, so go back to sleep.

The worst one was as a teenager, sleeping with the side of the bed against the wall; I dreamt I was kicking a soccer ball (a shot or a penalty, I don't recall exactly) and kicked the wall really hard. That woke me up. Fortunately, I didn't break any toes.
 
Quinn said:
I was rudely awakened early this morning by being poked in the ribs -- two hard jabs in quick succession. I rolled over and looked up to see why my girlfriend was waking me up in such a hostile manner.

She wasn't there. Neither was anyone else.

My first thought was that she had poked me and then quickly left the room for some reason. But it would have had to be really quick. Though I had been fully asleep, I was startled by the poking, and I spun around fast to see what was going on. Plus the bedroom door was closed. She would have had to close it while quickly running out of the room, which meant I would have heard it close, which I hadn't.

Just to make sure, I opened the door and looked in the living room. She was napping on the couch, under a blanket, with her dog sleeping next to her.

My next thought was that something had fallen on me. But it would have had to be something fairly substantial to land on me with that much force, and therefore would have been easy to find (and there would have been two of whatever it was). There was nothing to find, either in the bed or on the floor nearby. Plus, there's nowhere something could have fallen from except the ceiling (there are no shelves or anything nearby). There hadn't been anything hanging from there, and the ceiling itself was intact.

I was rapidly running out of possible causes, and the ones that remained were getting more and more unlikely. Nonetheless, did I check under the bed and in the closet to see if there was anyone hiding there? You bet I did. (There wasn't.)

At that point it was basically down to mind tricks or ghosts. So I chalked it up to an unusual but certainly not inconceivable misfire of some part of my brain, and laid down to go back to sleep.

And as much of a skeptic as I am, and for as long as I've been one, and for all the ways I understand and appreciate (and even utilize) the ways our minds can make us perceive things that never happened… I was too freaked out to go back to sleep, because dammit, I felt something poke me! I know what I felt! There's no way it could have been all in my head!

So today, as I sit here groggy and sleep-deprived, I feel just the tiniest bit more empathy than usual for people who believe in paranormal things because of inexplicable personal experiences. If I could be that freaked out, with the collection of information in my head, it's not at all difficult to understand how someone with less information could interpret such an experience as irrefutable proof of ghosts (or whatever entity they chalk it up to). It really did feel like something I couldn't possibly have imagined. And for someone who isn't familiar with the degree to which it's possible to imagine things that don't seem like you could possibly have imagined them, it would be easy to dismiss that option as ridiculous -- possibly even more ridiculous than ghosts.
Click to expand...
A little joke from your girlfriend, maybe? (link). As I read you, I have an impression that you are a fairly serious and reliable person.
 
Ghosts have a very strange sense of humour. They poke and run.
Let's find a ghost that sits on the end of the bed, discusses the afterlife, who's there, what it's like and how they came to be between two worlds. And maybe even do it in public and broad daylight.
Then I might believe.
 
Monza said:
Who was it that said, "I may not believe in ghosts, but that doesn't mean I'm not afraid of them?"

The brain can send all kinds of signals, particularly when you are asleep. As a kid, I distinctly remember feeling my cat jump on my bed and walk around my legs. The problem was that he had died a few days earlier. As I was drifting off to sleep, my brain fired some remembered response that I interpreted as a cat walking on my bed. ...either that or I was touched by a ghost cat. Yikes!
Click to expand...

This exat thing has happened to me more than once, and on the edge of sleep it fools me for a second, that my cat is really there.
 
I once had a sensation, fairly recently in my life...last year sometime. It felt like someone was trying to pull me toward the foot end of the bed by my ankles.
I suddenly awoke presuming i`d be face to face with a bogeyman...more likely a killer...that somehow quietly got in my house.
I figured it was some weird combination of sleeping, dreaming, and ready to wake up, that somehow triggered this.
But ghosts? No. Even as a kid i never really was afraid a ghost would come and get me in the night, whether it be in my bedroom or outside in the dark.
But i DID have a habit of looking under my bed and in my closet before going to bed. Bogeyman. Lol.
Watching Chucky say to the unbelieving boy`s mom, when she looked under the couch?...``Hi, i`m Chucky. Do you wanna playyyy?`` (as she now knows her son was telling the truth and lets out a big scream). Lol. Love that movie. Nightmares for kids. Kids looking under their bed and in their closets before bed, i bet, if they`ve seen that movie.
 
Shortly after I left for college, I was asleep in my dorm and I felt my cat jump onto my bed, walk up my side, and curl up on the pillow next to my head where she often slept. After a moment I realized my cat was 500 miles away, and WTF was curled up next to my head?!? I bolted up in bed, and nothing was there.
 
catsmate1 said:
That happens to me at least a couple of times a month, especially if I'm dreaming about stairs.
Click to expand...
It happens to me too..... and the stairs I see in my dream are usually bottomless, descending into a huge valley.....
 
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