It’ll be awkward when they discover a new syndrome where your head explodes and the name’s already taken.
They could name it Kennedy syndrome or something like that.
Hello, fellow “no shooter” conspiracy theorist!
Good thing cranial rapid pressurization change syndrome is still available…
Rapid unplanned cranial disassembly
Not catchy enough! Though you can shorten it to “crap syndrome”.
Sometimes sound, sometimes an impact. Either way it’s pretty disruptive. I thought this was very common.
Yes, I get the sound version but it’s more likely for me to just be walking in a dream, fall flat on my face, and wake up. But it’s more jarring than it should be.
Apparently it’s more common in people with sleep paralysis, which I have.
The falling thing is a hypnic jerk. I get both too though the nose one tends to be rare and more often when I’m sick.
i just realized i have this. not sounds but “impacts”.
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Hmmm, never really thought about this, but I have this happen every now and then. From what I remember it sounds like a sudden snap or click, but I don’t have concrete memory of the sound. Also with a bright flash of light. Just a sudden sensory spike. I don’t have good memories of it, because it usually happens just when I really start falling asleep and at that point memory usually isn’t working well. It’s also often accompanied with my muscles suddenly activating, basically jolting me awake. Heart rate spikes as well, but I cannot really remember any instance where it was more than a small nuisance. I always assumed that it was just a bit of a race condition in the transition to the deeper sleep state
Maybe time to write an issue to the development team for the brain OS :p
Pull request closed: could not replicate
This has happened to me twice very recently and never had it before, scary stuff
Wow! Now I have a cool name to this phenomenon. Doesn’t happen every night and there are also times I can ignore it because it’s typically not scary, just disruptive. I also see the flashes of light and that can be scary sometimes. I’ll think somebody tried to come in while I’m sleeping or that a nuclear bomb just went off. Or that a cosmic ray hit my eyeball.
Now, is there a phenomenon about seeing random faces in my head while falling asleep as well?
I used to have all this as a chronic weed user, if you’re the same maybe try stopping and see if they go away. The only one I still have is the flashing lights, but it’s rarer.
Haha that’s what I couldn’t ever narrow down (I guess cause I don’t quit long enough usually)
Hypnagogic hallucinations
I’ve had this! Idk why they’d call it the exploding head syndrome, but it sounded like a door shutting really loudly
For me, it generally sounds like something crashing to the ground.
The couple of times I had it, it sounded like a car crash right outside my window.
Me too!!! It sucks especially because I live on a busy road :(
I hear door slams now and then too
Not for me, oh dear. It’s a legit BOOOOOM
Mine goes ShhhhshhiINNKK!!! Starts kind of static like and within the same second makes a sound like if you flicked a really thin glass really hard, but with a metallic finish. I also see a flash of purple/green/silver color on my eyelids when it happens.
Really difficult to describe.
I’ve had the door sound too a few times
When I was deployed in Afghanistan, everyone I knew had the same reoccurring dream- some other dream is happening, and then out of nowhere, you hear a gunshot/explosion, and wake in a cold sweat, absolutely certain that you just got shot or blown up. And the certainty persists for about five seconds after you wake, as you shakily pat yourself down for blood. Good times.
And the certainty persists for about five seconds after you wake, as you shakily pat yourself down for blood.
Unless you also happen to get sleep paralysis at the same time! Happened to a friend who fortunately was in a tent full of very understanding people when he woke us up screaming.
Fantastic combination
This made me double check, but it’s still just that I have loud children.
I don’t know if this qualifies, but I go on call for my job and get woken up sometimes. I use a really annoying alert tone to make sure I wake up. Unfortunately, some times when I’m not on call I hallucinate hearing that tone as I’m dozing off or in a dead sleep and it makes me shoot straight up in bed.
I used to have this during my school days lol
I have ADHD and am a night owl, so that kind of time management was always super stressful for me, to the point that I would set up a dozen or so alarms so I would wake up in the morning. After some time it was so ingrained that I sometimes heard the alarm sound randomly when sleeping, always causing me to be wide awake in the middle of the night with racing pulse.
I used to have that when I was a teenager. About one out every ten times I was falling asleep just at the moment I drifted off I’d feel this crazy big pop that went from deep behind my right eye to the top right part of my skull. Sometimes it was more like a noise, sometimes it was more like a physical impact, like somebody bounced a golf ball off of my skull. It was really annoying. It started to happen less and less as I got older though. It pretty much went away completely by the time I was in my late 20s.
Always felt like an increasing rush of wind to me. Like falling faster and faster.
I get that as well! When it’s not a horrifyingly loud boom, it’s like an increasingly loud wind sound. When I get that one, it’s accompanied by my body feeling like I’m in a wind vortex being whipped around every direction. Makes me scared to go back to sleep.
I get this from time to time when falling asleep. It’s really annoying when it happens. Like I’ll be dozing off and then there will be this loud-ass noise.
How would you describe the sound?
I’ve experienced this, or at least something that very closely fits its description, a couple times in the past, and it varies on a case-by-case basis. One time it was almost like the sound of glass breaking, I think one time might’ve been closer to a door slamming. Weird shit.
And, same deal as the other fella, hard to remember the specifics 'cause you’re sorta half-asleep when it happens.
For me it is a popping sound, a bit like the sound of popping your ears during an altitude change, but way, way louder. It would be impossible to mistake for a noise caused by something IRL, it sounds like that blood rushing into your ears sound for me.
I hear a loud bang as if from another room. Like a trash can falling over, or a someone dropping a bag with about 10lbs on a hardwood floor, or a pushing a wooden chair into a dining table too hard. It’s enough to think “what just fell?!”.
It does not sound like a door closing, or stomping, or something fragile moving or falling.
I startle awake, realize I’m the only one awake, and that there aren’t anymore sounds so it must have been my brain and I pass out fully.
It’s pretty strange and I think it’s funny how I never really thought about it until now.
Do you happen to live in an old haunted house?
Have you seen the housing market? Sometimes you have to deal with a roommates bad habits, even if he is a spirit.
At least he doesn’t leave dishes in the sink.
Yeah, is it like the Inception sound?
No, more like that one video with the Polish dudes lighting a trash can cannon in the street. At least for me.
Edit: Fucking thing also jolts me awake sometimes so it takes me a couple seconds to determine that no, in fact the building is not crumbling down.
Yeeeeep, looked that up and that scans for most of my exploding head episodes.
Like most people, it changes. For me it is like someone took the volume knob on the world and maxed it out for half a second. Just a blip of every sound in the room suddenly being set to 11. Sometimes it is like someone yelling in my ear, but just a grunt or a scream like they fell over.
I have this happen sometimes. Usually its loud but mundane stuff like doors closing, a familiar voice saying something vaugly important, something slamming or dropping. It can variy wildly but usually its the most boring crap.
Usually I go back to sleep with no issues but sometimes it startles you and gets the adrenaline going. I usually rule it out as half dreaming but sometimes you got to check to name sure no one broke in.
The absolute worse is the cat throwing up, I have to go check that one since sometimes its real.
Yes! Mine definitely preys on my anxiety of having someone break in when my husband is gone for an overnight shift. I have to check the doors and windows before I can get back to sleep.
I have checked the house a few times wearing noting but a pistol a few times because of it. I think it was really just nerves from moving in alone at that point.
I’ve definitely been there as well; it can get spooky. It’s funny you mention that, my first (and thankfully only) really bad experience with hallucinating during sleep paralysis happened the first time I moved into an apartment on my own. I had to run out of there and drive around to calm myself down at like 3 in the morning. Wishing you peaceful nights!
Mine sounds like a big commotion, like a bunch of metal sculptures falling off a table. Luckily it doesn’t happen often.
Me.
It’s an explosion in my head.
Like this : imagine a sound. For example, a cat meow. Meow meow. You doing that? Are you “hearing” that meow in your “mental sound space”?
Now imagine the sound is 500x louder. And it isn’t a meow, its an explosion.
It sounds like the blast of compressed air when you disconnect a compressor fitting.
That’s what it’s like.
It happens in half-sleep.
I’ve had big blasts that make me go “woah” a couple times a month since forever. I had a really big blast that made me go “holy shit!” just a couple days ago.
Wouldn’t you develop PTSD from this kind of thing
Apparently not
I heard something a few days ago that sounded 100% like someone crashing a car through my apartment. I jumped up and looked around, and nothing was happening. Sometimes it just sounds like a gunshot next to my ear, but usually it sounds like an industrial crash. Screeching metal exploding.
Wait, is this my “nightmare sound”? When I have nightmares (fairly rarely, but I’ve gone through times when they were more common) there’s a sound that goes with them, and builds in intensity as the fear comes to a crescendo. It’s like a high-pitched whine that starts as a hum (like tinnitus) and slowly grows to ear-splitting intensity, except it’s more like head-splitting because it feels like the origin is in the center of my head. And I say “feels” intentionally because it’s not just a sound, it feels like my consciousness is vibrating apart.
Often the actual content of my nightmares is mostly abstract (like worrying about why the room is dark, or feeling followed but not knowing by what) and the terror is completely disproportionate to the events, but directly proportional to the intensity of the sound.
Uh, for me it’s firmly inside the dream though, I wouldn’t classify it as a hallucination. When I was taking antidepressants I used to have hallucinations wake me up—like waking up because I heard my mom talking, when she was in a different state—but that felt different. That was like hearing someone in the room with you and having it pull you out of whatever dream you were having. The “nightmare sound” is inside the nightmare, it isn’t what wakes me up.
For me, it sounds exactly like a wooden screen door slamming shot.
The spring-loaded kind or someone/thing forcibly closing it?
Interesting Q lesbian_seagull. I never got the sense that anyone else was involved, but the sound is definitely slamming shut with a loud thwack. And I suppose the first couple times I thought it was real, but I don’t have screen doors.
Yes. Me too.
I would describe it as the sound of a big quick blast of compressed air. Like when you disconnect a compressor fitting.
Which is pretty similar.
Short loud white noise.
A flash of white light in sound form?
Whoa this is so interesting!
I’ve been having them on and off for as long as I can remember. I seem to notice I suffer them more often when sleep deprived and also when playing long hours of videogames (or both).
To me, it sounds like someone screaming into my ear.