So a while back, the smoke alarm in the kid’s room directly below mine started going off for no apparent reason at 3 AM. Got up, went downstairs to silence it, checked everything in the house, smelled for smoke, looked at all the outlets, etc. Dug through drawers to find a new 9V battery and figured it was either a battery issue or a literal bug set it off. Never really got back to restful sleep after that, and the next day I kept worrying I had missed something and a shorted wire was quietly smoldering away in the wall somewhere.
Next night, around the same time, I was again jolted out of sleep by a loud beep, but by the time I had gotten downstairs, there was no alarm going off, just my ears ringing. Asked everyone else if they heard an alarm, they said no. I must’ve hallucinated it, but I was also experiencing the most intense tinitus I have ever had. I don’t usually get tinitus at all, but my ears were ringing so loudly I couldn’t get back to sleep for a half hour afterwards.
I believe I had a major psychosomatic event, which manifested tinitus. It’s either that or the timing of the random tinitus that woke me up was a bizarre coincidence.
Exploding head syndrome only a beep? Brains do weird shit.
Our fire alarm is very loud I can still hear it for hours after it stops going off if it’s quiet now and went off for long enough. The first time may have been real.
Do you have a window open somewhere? Or have a bathroom fan on?
Sometimes the negative pressure at my house on a windy day when the window in my room is open can cause the bedroom door to close so fast it practically slams.
Whatever you do, DO NOT buy one of those bedside sleep sound recorders. There’s just too much iffy shit you hear on those, if you listen closely and you hear stuff you can’t ever forget. I tried it once. The one I had would skip to the places where there was noise.
I heard my snore stop suddenly, like my breath stopped or a hand over my mouth silenced me, and then I hear a clear whisper “Don’t wake up!”
I don’t know if it was me talking or what, but I’d rather not know the noises in my room at night! Never again for me.
Uh oh, r/writingprompts is leaking! (Is what I’m telling myself)
This seems like it could be turned into a r/nosleep story
I feel like either this can’t be real or you embellished how sure you are of what you heard. If this really happened, the only reasonable response would be to put a knife under your pillow, install a night-vision security camera, and then spend the next few nights pretending to sleep because there’s no way you’re getting any real sleep. You’d also involve other people if you knew anyone.
Burying your head in the sand and waiting for the guy living in your attic to kill you is definitely a BS response to what you described.
Creepy story! Do you still have the recording?!
It might seem stupid but I didn’t want any connection to it. I actually ended up burning it
Luckily you didn’t wake up, that could’ve been very bad.
I need you to wake up now.
I could never use one of those unless it also had a camera with it. If shadowmen are going to mess with me in my sleep, they’ll have to live with having their images captured on camera.
Yes. Or maybe you dreamt it and were a bit confused on waking up. Perfectly normal and nothing to worry about.
Maybe relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis
This happens to me almost every night. Usually while coming out of sleep, but sometimes while I’m still trying to fall asleep. It used to only happen when I was stressed about work, but once I had a kid it became very frequent.
I hear/see the door open, hear my son’s door open, see giant spiders on the wall, hear someone rummaging through the fridge, hear my son screaming, etc. If I get up to check it’s always nothing.
Do you have cat or a dog? My cat is able to open/close doors, so likely your pet has done it for you.
Possible, but also: ghosts?
Let’s not be too quick to rule out good old-fashioned demons.
Yes
Did you lose a tooth recently?
Turns out we’ve been getting invisible IOUs for centuries, and she’s finally turning a profit. OP got the first visit
