I saw a Stick Man in my room

[Schtickman]

I woke up around 2 am recently, and 'saw' the weirdest thing.

It was a stickman (like what you see on public toilets) 'running' through my bedroom. 'He' had no features as his face was a big black circle, but the vibe I got from him was that he saw me seeing him and had a very jolly, jovial and 'oops, ya caught me! What am I like?' kind of expression/energy. He found it all very funny.

It lasted about 2 seconds and afterwards, I lay there very bemused. I assumed it was some kind of dreamlike state, an overlap from being asleep and a sign of over exhaustion. However, when I googled it, lots of other people have had the same experience!

In fact, the general consensus was that these stick men were always 'on the go/innttansit somewhere', and they always reacted strangely when they realised they had been seen. The other interesting thing is that they often have a very jolly and jovial demeanor, just like my guy did.

I'm not coming at this from too much of a woo perspective, as I do think it was slee0 related. However, I do think it's a bit nuts to have seen this and then find out other people did too!

Did any of you ever see the Stickman?????

I love that the stickman was jovial and mildly embarrassed at being seen. I definitely think it was a sleep/waking phenomenon, but it's nice to know that your mind conjures up benign entities.

The loveliest hypnogogic experience I had was the day after my beloved dog Daisy died. I was in bed, and I heard her coming up the stairs, she pushed the door open with her nose, I could hear her claws clicking as she walked over to the bed, and a definite movement as she jumped on the bed and settled down.

I lay there in the dark enjoying her presence for a while before turning on the light and of course, she wasn't there, the bedroom door was closed and there was no evidence of anyone or anything in the house other than me.

There's a fair amount of anecdotal "evidence" for stickmen out there - as ever, it's hard to separate the genuine from the woo, but some interesting reading nonetheless;

https://www.reddit.com/r/Paranormal/comments/btnb6j/has_anyone_seen_a_black_stickman/

That's a really common image used to signpost emergency exit routes. Urban dwellers will see these several times per day at work or during their commute. It's therefore not surprising that the image has made it into lots of people's dreams.

My dad had parkinsons. The drugs made him hallucinate. He used to see a huge wolf lying across the door to the en suite bathroom.He would shut his eyes tight and say loudly" you are not real". When he opened his eyes it had gone. A native American chief used to appear sometimes too. Full headdress and weapons.

I watched this the day after it happened and got a bit of a squeaky bum.

That sounds unnerving but your dad seemed to have handled it well.

I always hear the doorbell too in a half asleep/awake state! Occasionally followed by my name.

I often hear the doorbell ring and get up to answer it, even get so far as opening the door. I'd shit myself if there was ever anyone there.
Also, I hear the children call for me and go out onto the landing. The children are 29, 23 and 22, they're not calling for their Mummy in the night.

@BlancheSaysYes That's beautiful ❤

Funnily enough I woke up the other night due to what I thought was a noise, but there was nothing as far as I can tell - I didn't realise that's a thing.

I haven't had one for a while, but i used to get what I thought of as waking dreams. I'd "wake up" but I'd be somewhere completely random like by a pool in a jungle or outside a dark Gothic castle or, most unnervingly, in the furniture department of John Lewis at opening time. There'd be some random bloke next to me (DH!) and, because I sleep naked, my clothes would be "missing". It was really terrifying as I lay there trying to work out how I got there and how to escape. Eventually, I'd properly come to and realise it was just a dream.

It has made me very sceptical of people who have definitely definitely woken up to find a phantom in their room. If I didn't have hard proof that what I'd experienced was a dream (having never had to escape, naked from John Lewis) I would be left thinking what I "saw" was real.

A friend and I saw a Slenderman in our teens. We were sharing a slightly creepy youth hostel room; it appeared at the window, tapping. After a rather tense exchange of "Can you hear that?" "Tapping? Yes. What can you see?" "Someone in a top hat," we both legged it out of bed and camped on the floor of the dorm room below us.

I had quite a few psychotic episodes aged about 18-20. Nothing too horrific, but weird and worrying. I didn't find out until much later that it's actually quite common in young women - we go through further hormonal changes and, what with the neural pruning also happening then, our minds misfire now and again.

Now I'm old, utterly cynical and fatigued, I have no 'supernatural' experiences but I do hallucinate when I'm tired. It's all mundane stuff so far, and I've got into the habit of fact-checking myself before deciding whether I really can hear music/talking, smell roast beef or see something dashing across the corner of a room 😂

No explanation for the Slenderman, though, other than a very small episode of teenage mass hysteria!

When I was very young child (at most 4 years old) I saw a picture in a children’s book come to life on the page. I understand of course this must have been an hallucination, but it looked entirely real at the time. The picture was of little animals in a train station running around, climbing onto the train etc and all of a sudden they were all moving. I told people that this had happened, and I wasn’t ridiculed or anything, but it was never taken very seriously. A picture has only ever done this again once - I was an adult in an art gallery and a painting of a woman smiled at me. I guess I’m a coward, but I was so sure that people would say this was psychosis that I never told anyone. I have not had any other hallucinations like this - although when I was a girl I did sometimes hear members of my family calling my name (when they weren’t really there.)

I’ve had/have all sorts of hallucinations/sleep paralysis stuff. But yes have had the stickman op talks of and it stayed with me for years. It happened when I was a child and I’ve never been able to shake the memory. It was like a shadow moving across a light patch on my wall. It slid rather than walked. It held the shape exactly as in your picture. It frightened the shit out of me.

I often think 🤔 I hear someone coming up the stairs. I wake DH up and have sometimes got him to go and check but he has never found anyone. It's horrible because I know I can hear someone. I just lie there terrified.

Me too, but it's DP saying the nickname that only he uses for me. Never when he's in the house and almost always when I'm on late shifts.

one early morning (5-6am) last week I was in the middle of a very involved dream, focused around a job I used to do and I suddenly heard ‘mum’ from my youngest daughter loudly enough to wake me up. It was slightly quizzical in tone mum? But definitely was not part of the dream. She wasn’t there, still fast asleep in her room across a large landing. Very odd.

@Schtickman yours sounds terrifying

I've had the mum thing and the knocking on the door waking me up, it's much better than the sleep paralysis though. That really used to freak me out

I used to get the knocking on a door at 3am ..it was always bloody 3 am..scared the life out of me.

Gah! Yes I've had similar with creepy monsters on the ceiling, staring down at me. I've always been trying to scream but the paralysis prevents it. Luckily it happens quite infrequently and only since I had children!

Yes I think I've had the mum thing too but only a couple of times. I think having kids completely screwed my sleep generally though. Any long high pitch noise snaps me awake in case it's crying. Cats yowling outside, whining distant car, DH whistling nostril, MY OWN whistling nostril.

I don't have proper nightmares anymore though, haven't had one for 6 years or so since dc1 was born.

Had you been drinking/ did you eat a lot of sugar?

I’m just speaking anecdotally and have no medical knowledge but I used to get sleep paralysis at uni and I always just thought it was me until my nanstarted getting it a lot later in her life and when she was quite poorly with liver issues. I think hers was caused by sugar as she was never a drinker.

As an adult I still get it sometimes so I’m convinced for me at least it where I go to sleep after drinking a really sugary alcohol, I got it the other night after a WKD or just having way too much sugar x

Foxes screaming at the dead of night, it’s like a woman being murdered. Wakes me up and takes a second or so to realise what it is.

I hope things get better for you @OldTinHat 💐

My DD8 tells me that she sees shadow animations on her wall as she's going off to sleep. There can be people, horses or other animals and they act out a story. She says she's not bothered by them 🫥 but does still like to have someone with her to fall asleep.

I suppose it must be a trick of her brain but I can't explain it any more than that.

I have hallucinated spiders before when I was totally awake during the day, but I was when I was 9 months pregnant at the time so...🤷‍♀️