Same here. I also recall them when I had fevers in my childhood.

I attribute them to the fact that, while trying to sleep with a fever, my eyes are half-open, and any sharp object becomes a visible geometric shape that my brain attempts to comprehend but almost fails to. I still experience them in adulthood. I’ve never had sleep paralysis, but whenever I think of people who have it, I imagine it feels as debilitating as these half-sleep experiences where you’re unable to move while your brain processes distressing memories.

“Geometric Nightmares” is not a scientific name. It is simply the name given to this phenomenon in forums [1][2] where people discuss and share their experiences.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Dreams/comments/7ofu86/x/

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/geometricnightmares/

Last time I stopped smoking cannabis I got these for a couple days. They are intense. The most recent was kind of like taking a slow rollercoaster ride through three black hole sized perfect spheres orbiting nothing. Another one was less geometric but was basically me getting sucked into a black hole. Both had this almost lucid dreaming feel where my entire sense of self became condensed into a single point... but I was still there, aware of what was happening... it was incredibly memorable.

Interesting. I recently discovered that my sister and I have identical geometric nightmares, down to every detail, while everyone else I mention this to thinks it's insane. I wonder whether there's a genetic aspect?

I had a recurring abstract nightmare as a small kid (don't think it was related to fever but I guess those were pretty common) which was basically about a line, gradually becoming messier and messier until it was all just a big jumble. I could never explain it to anyone else, but it terrified me for a time.

I also had something like this. Again as a kid, with fever. Very unsettling. But I don't remember having it as an adult. Strange.

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I think I just learned that I have this! I usually sneeze when walking out of the house into the morning sun. And regardless of what makes me sneeze, it's rarely just one or two at a time.

I have this as well, and all my kids seem to as well.

Never knew that it was part of fighter pilot screening, that is interesting.

Do you like to eat? Or do it out of a sense of duty?

I get the doorbell too, super weird.

Headcanon: Cortisol spike right before you wake up. Brain goes, "something must have alarmed me", and cooks up phenomena: loud noise, feeling of falling/tripping, etc.

Funny, that happened to me just this morning, I awoke from some kind of alarm signal, very close by. But I could not find any possible source for it, so I am sure it was part of a dream. In fact I forgot about it until now.

About the second thing, I have felt something similar. Especially the part about it originating around the collar bone and neck. It's probably something like a nerve misfiring. I sometimes think it's weird that the body doesn't misbehave more often than it does, it's an enormously complex system after all.

I get the someone pounding on the door at night thing, wakes me out of a heavy sleep. Never anyone actually knocking.

Most of them are pretty good. He just has to hunt down the bad ones and fix them.

Generating those has been its own little project inside the project. Many iterations to go.

I can do each ear independently.

I knew those as otoliths, and the vertigo they cause is so intense and annoying I never forgot the name: benign paroxysmal positional vertigo

Fortunately, the Epley maneuver is very effective, if done correctly. Unfortunately, if done incorrectly it can worsen the symptoms. It's all about identifying in which semicircular canal are the otoliths before moving them.

If I understand correctly this is the same as BPPV which is on there :)

Ah great! I'll put it on my list to read up on. Thanks

I would get that as well - I ended up at the urgent care a few times just because it was so painful and unsettling.

It was never diagnosed but I'm pretty sure it was costochondritis - something in my sternum area was inflamed and would give off this awful shooting chest pain.

I thought this was universal. It's pretty easy to trigger for me, even quite abstract geometric shapes that look a bit like something falling from a height can trigger it.

Lovely! I mean odd… I will look into it, thanks!

Could it be that both noise _and_ flash are in your head, and like me you have Exploding Head Syndrome? https://vester.si/bodily-oddities/oddities/exploding-head-sy...

>if I’m about to fall asleep and I happen to hear a loud noise nearby,

https://vester.si/bodily-oddities/oddities/hypnagogic-halluc...

>I also see a flash of light with my closed eyelids.

You might want to talk to a optician about that. It can be a sign of issues with your retina.

I see flashes in a dark room when I wake up, because I have PVDs (posterior vitreous detachment) in both eyes.

Edit: I just re-read your post. If they both happen together, I think it is something different.

Weird. A spike in blood pressure maybe? Can you do reproduce it consistently on purpose with an alarm or by holding something as you fall asleep that will make a loud noise when it falls?

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I was prescribed Xanax for a bit and it gave me the absolute worst sleep paralysis imaginable, with nested false awakenings.

Why do you miss it? It is usually described as being terrifying.

BTW sleep paralysis is likely the cause of many 'alien abduction' reports: wake up, can't move, presence in the room, sexual element (e.g. probing!).

Sleep paralysis is when you're having an intervention in the monitoring realm but your matrix being becomes aware while so. Sources can't agree if it's done on purpose or just the analgesic dosage that was too short. Next time you have one pay attention to hear if there's sound of steps as if moving away from where you are.

I've never seen someone miss sleep paralysis before. I get it, but the hallucinations that people describe never happen to me. I just become aware that I'm about to wake up, but I can't yet control my body or even breathing. I always know not to panic, yet I always panic and try desperately to start moving. I can always see the room, but it's a dream version because my eyes aren't really open and it looks different once I'm truly awake.

I don't have much sleep weirdness, but when I'm about to fall asleep, I frequently imagine 3D object spinning and rapidly changing size. Kinda like the 3D TempleOS sprites [1], but 5x faster and increasing/decreasing size at the same rate.

1. https://youtu.be/LtlyeDAJR7A?t=451

I've experienced it once or twice, and mine was the classic "can't move, malevolent presence just barely in the corner of your vision". Once, I think I was actually still half-asleep-ish, and trying to yell and my wife woke me up.

Definitely not pleasant, even when I'm rationally aware of what's going on.

Please point out the claudeisms, I want to clear them all.

V1 looked like complete Opus slop, but since I make many little sites all the time I can get it to undo a lot of them, one at a time. I just explicitly tell it the aesthetic to avoid per-element (like the famous left border), and eventually it looks okish.

Edit: Ah and for text, Standard Technical English is a good instruction to give it, but I also told it to be dry and technical, and no embelish or do storytelling. And some manual editing out of cringe stuff still after that.

People downvote me when I say we're back in the "Geocities era" / "indie web" of the 90's and 00's, but LLMs have enabled us to build cool side projects to completion and give them love.

This is 100% a good thing.

I love this website. It's fantastic. I don't care if it's AI. The world is better for it existing.

Ooh! I also have this (but didn't know the name)!

For me, I'm pretty sure it's related to having just awful seasonal allergies as a child - I'd quite often get stuffed up and have an unfortunate amount of pressure in my sinuses and ears. So then I'd pinch my nose and try to adjust it, eventually realizing I didn't need to pinch my nose.

My friend who does free diving would kill to be able to do it! She can't learn it.

You're right, I moved it

To either my credit or against it, wikipedia provides a lot of the raw data. However that makes you feel.

I've been making this list for years as markdown files with a few sentences and links to wikipedia (or xkcd for his visual field comic), but the site is indeed made with the help of AI.

I know someone who can literally vibrate their eyes sideways. It is very odd to see. You can see his eyes rapidly moving left/right but only a centimeter or less.

Don't know if this has a name.

In this case, I'd prefer Wikipedia links that have sources. To be honest, this is also what students do when they can't cite WP directly, they cite or follow the sources.

I experienced mild brain freeze as a child but it went away in adolescence. It doesn't seem pleasant so I don't envy those of you who get intense versions of it.

So it seems, it just happens to include everyone I've ever talked to about it

I'm surprised it's so few! I'm in the 60-70% here -- I've never gotten it (despite many deliberate efforts), but I've never known anyone else who seems to be immune.

I have to be so careful eating cold things, it's like freeze++, brain glaciation.

I agree, the images will need iteration.

Ooh this is the closest description I've heard to one odd thing I had which was a satisfying feeling associated with two specific thicknesses (one around the thickness of a school copy book, the other around the thickness of a school maths book). At some points it could be activated by thinking about the thickness but long gone now.

Also had 3 more complex emotions/feelings/states that were a blend of certain particular things, not always that connected. For example one was mostly a combination of memories of my grandad's past (he died before I was born), and the Ratchet and Clank level "Metropolis". Similarly, the actual feeling of these is now gone. Anyone else have something similar?

The closest I've heard to that was Brian Eno in his film talking about something similar he seemed to have growing up with the colour purple.

I started off having an nsfw tag, but it wasn't too populated, and decided for now to not include it. Might revisit.

I remember choosing to not buy NVIDIA stock because Ethereum moved to proof of stake. Oops.

But just think of how many many things you could have bought with the same knowledge which would have been mediocre or failed entirely.

Not that I know of. But some people so far visiting the site have voted that they do no get hiccups, which is very odd.

It's there! :)

If you're going to mock me by repeating my own words on a different HN thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49665394), at least make it make sense because this is not analogous other than the Claude-esque design (which to be fair could be better). There is human intentionality in terms of how the information is presented (e.g. using Astro.js) and wit and it is not verbose or the output of just telling Claude to output as much detail as possible, and per the comments from the author, fixing any Claudisms instead of embracing them.

Or maybe you could start focusing on the content instead of how it's made.