A day of trudging through a hectic day deserves a night of good sleep, right? But what if you were woken up in the middle of your slumber by things you cannot really explain? Or maybe even a terrible dream?
These real-life experiences come freshly served from the people of the subreddit, AskReddit, as well as other folks we spoke to. And we’re sure that after reading these, you’ll want to sleep with the lights on.

Woke up to my dad covered in blood shaking me like a lunatic. Apparently, he had a dream that he was in an army and was killing people he woke up went to the bathroom saw he was covered in blood (from a nosebleed) and thought he sleepwalked murdered his family.

My little brother was hiding in my closet to scare me when I went to bed, he was in there for a while and fell asleep on some stuffed animals. He woke up in the middle of the night and just sorta fell out of the closet. I woke up to him just getting up and going to his room.

I woke up while I was dreaming that there was a demon sort of suspended right above me. It felt very off post waking up because I couldn’t go back to sleep after that. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched by someone or something.

I was living alone at the time in a little studio flat in the city centre. It was about 3 am and I was woken up by some crashing sounds in the hallway, and then somebody started kicking hard at my bedroom door. Fortunately, my door at the time was a pretty hefty fire door with a good strong lock, so I had enough time to call the police before he did any damage to it. I was living pretty close to the police station so they turned up fast, with dogs, and caught him still inside the building.
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Someone calling my name. I was 100% sure that I heard someone calling for me, in a casual manner, as if this person was asking me to pass the salt or something. I was alone in the house. It was certainly a dream but scared me anyway.

I woke up with a girl standing next to my bed, staring at me. At the same time, I hear horrifying screams, not from the girl but from somewhere far away. It took around 10 seconds for my scared & sleepy brain to realise my daughter (toddler) had woken up to look for me & so had my baby son in his room.


My wife, standing over me with a knife, whispering to herself that she needed to kill me. That was a rough year.
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When I was younger my mum was in the attic above my room and due to the weak flooring she fell through the ceiling and onto the end of my bed, somehow this didn’t disturb me. What made it terrifying was that when I woke up in the morning, there was a large hole in the ceiling above me and an old clown puppet staring down at me. It was horrible.


Every time I can’t make it home to my apartment I stay at my mum’s, my old bedroom is now the spare room so I sleep in there. Every time I sleep in that room I wake up at 3:33 am next to the bedroom door with my hand on the door handle half pulled down. I wake up as I’ve just witnessed something evil that has made me try to escape the room. It always ends the same way, I let go of the handle look around for a few seconds then fall back into bed.

I once woke up, and heard the most god awful throaty monster sound outside my bedroom door, and then thump, thump, thump. Somebody was slowly walking towards my bed. I freaked out and covered my eyes because I didn’t know what else to do and. Woke up again. That vivid nightmare that scarred me for life.
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I went to sleep that night but I couldn’t sleep well. My room had been incredibly silent. And suddenly – at around 4 I heard a loud THUD sound come from my storeroom. My guitar, which was on its stand, was lying at least a few inches away from it, face down on the floor. I don’t know how that happened.

I woke up to what I at first thought were a few notes of a music box I hallucinated while coming out of sleep. Then after a moment of silence, the music box for sure started playing again, all on its own. I shot up in bed and as soon as I turned on the light to look at it the music stopped. Then, no joke, I turned to put on my glasses and it started again. I launched myself out of my room as fast as I could.
What’s your experience of being woken up by things you cannot really explain?
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