It happened to me once. I was falling asleep and suddenly I heard a huge explosion. I was certain that something like a lithium battery somewhere in the house just exploded. It was very loud.
But my wife was reading a book and heard absolutely nothing. Of course, I checked the house and nothing.
I heard about this syndrome after that and apparently it’s pretty common. Rare in a lifetime but happens to a lot a people at least once.
I've had something that seems to be the same a handful of times. Disconcerting.
Though I once had something like this while I was lying awake in the early hours of the morning, which was weird. It turned out that it was the Buncefield oil storage depot exploding about 40 miles away.
I think this article, and your comment have helped me understand something that happened to me a year ago.
Just as i was falling asleep i heard the loudest bang i've ever heard. And was sure someone just bombed the neighbor or someone else down the street. But after having stayed awake for an hour checking the news, and no police or fire department arriving. I went back to sleep.
In the morning i tried to talk about this with my family, but no one had any idea what i was talking about.
I had never heard of it but it also happened to me once but waking up.
I was dreaming when I heard an increasingly loud sound that culminated in me being awake all at once
Awww, I was looking forward to the replies from people who didn't read the fine article, and were deeply confused by comments like "I get this!" or "This happens to me every few months" or "God, It happens to me at least once or twice a month."
This happens to me fairly regularly. Best way to describe it is a mashup between those step-off-the-curb dreams in light sleep where you jolt awake and a gunshot being stuck in your head like a song.
I have quite vicious migraines, and have regular painless aura migraines that feels like I have a huge number of paparazzi behind me with random flashes, wonder if you're experiencing something similar?
This happens to me about once every few months. As the article states, just learning about it and feeling reassured that nothing is wrong turned the experience from terrifying to just slightly annoying.
In my case, getting my sleep apnea treated with a CPAP machine coincidentally greatly reduced the frequency of these episodes. Your mileage may vary.
It last happened about a week ago: I could swear I was woken up by a cluster of firework explosions going off in the distance, some 100m away. A sudden burst of sounds along with a lot of gentle but noticable shockwaves.
> In my case, getting my sleep apnea treated with a CPAP machine coincidentally greatly reduced the frequency of these episodes.
Orthogonal to the post here, but I just want to encourage anybody reading this who snores, or has a partner who says you snore or stop breathing occasionally, to go get a sleep study. I didn't have any of the hallmark symptoms, just descriptions from my wife, and my doctor seemed doubtful that I had sleep apnea based on my descriptions of my symptoms. But, he said, "I know better than to argue with your wife."
Turns out, I have severe obstructive sleep apnea (AHI >50), it's just that most of my apneas are what are known as hypopneas -- my blood oxygen drops, but I don't entirely stop breathing, I just have a partially obstructed airway. My sleep architecture is fine, which is probably why I never noticed extreme daytime sleepiness. But the dropping blood oxygen is still a serious health risk, and associated with a huge number of other conditions, from the obvious like heart conditions to the unexpected like fatty liver disease.
tl;dr, get a sleep study if you have any reason to think you have sleep apnea.
What a coincidence, I experienced this for the first time when falling asleep a week ago. It was clearly inside my head, so first I suspected it was somatic and was quite worried. Some quick googling and I found the hilariously named "exploding head syndrome".
Possibly related, I occasionally get "brain zaps", spontaneous sensations of an electric shock inside my head, also when on the verge of falling asleep. These are almost exclusively described as a symptom of SSRI withdrawal, but that is interestingly not the case for me.
This happened to me once as a kid right as I was falling asleep. It sounded like a car had just crashed into my bedroom. I spent the next half hour trying to figure out what had just happened.
It's only happened once or twice since then but was a lot less scary because I knew what EHS was by that point.
I know it can't be this but can't help wondering if it's the same problem digital audio systems have when you stopped playing something without returning the speakers to amplitude 0 :) The next time you play sth there's a loud bang because you return to 0 instantly :)
Or perhaps your brain listens and doesn't quite catch the header, so audio is played mid-stream and you get the digital noise playing like you're trying to listen to a tape loaded game.
When I was young, and experiencing the occasional ringing in the ears that's known as "transient ear noise" or "transient tinnitus" -- as far as I know, the causes are not well-understood. But, as a 7-year-old, or whatever age I was, I asked my parents why this was happening.
I vividly remember telling me that it might be exploding head syndrome, which would eventually cause my head to explode. Obviously, I was terrified. They quickly allayed my concerns, and it's never bothered me since (though, of course, I still get these transient episodes).
Anyway, I've always wondered: Did they actually know about exploding head syndrome, or did they just make it up? Obviously, the real thing doesn't cause your head to explode, but it would be a heck of a coincidence to just make up a real syndrome!
How apt. This happened a few months ago. I thought there was a lightning strike outside that woke me up, I remember a flash and a crack, and woke up. But there wasn't a storm. I checked radar, satellite, nothing. No strikes. Went back to sleep. At last, the mental thread has been closed. Thank you Hooke.
This is a good a place as any to ask about weird sensory experiences at night.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and while my eyes are open there is an instantaneous change in my vision equivalent to wearing coloured fillers or monochrome LED lighting. Usually red. No other symptoms. Transition was instant so that rules out retinal bleeding etc.
I asked my doctor about this, she didn't know either.
Moderately confident, but not 100% certain. I believe my dreams are normally longer than these experiences, and that my dreams have not involved my actual environment since I was in pre-school.
The only thing I have in terms of waking up in middle of the night is that I seem to see hexagon honeycomb patterns of RGB lights..... not kidding. They're like phasing in and out. Really makes me think of a visual screen, lol. If I push on my eyes they move.
I heard something a bit like that, once when I was 11, and I was waking up after being knocked out by a trampoline. Only time it happened though, and it was spinning triangles filling my vision.
Wow, I just had this for the first time yesterday morning. I woke up too early for some reason and heard a loud "screech" for a second or so just as I was falling asleep again.
I experienced this twice in my life but it was not an explosion type sound. Just a very loud sound with a sawtooth waveform, fast attack, ~1 second release.
Hmm, interesting. I've had the exact same sensation/"sound". Though not always that sound, I experience something like this moderately frequently when just about to fall asleep, so maybe it's likely that it would at least sometimes line up well with what others experience.
I've had the same sawtooth sound, in addition to a door slamming. It was while I was quitting caffeine, and made it difficult to sleep when I needed it most.
I occasionally hear a sound like a thin metallic tank rupturing due to air pressure, while trying to fall asleep. Not very loud, and I can kind of tell it's not real.
Now imagine not having the internet, and getting a few times a year. Everyone I spoke to thought I was insane (including doctors!), and I was beginning to think so myself. It tapered off and I hadn't had it for years when I accidentally read about it somewhere.
Until then it was on my ever growing list of "shit that only happens to me, apparently". Makes me wonder how many people got misdiagnosed with mental disorders, because the world was just smaller back then.
I just found out now that I get some of this. Occasionally I get a very bright flash as I’m driving off. As if an old camera flash has gone off in the room. No sounds, but the myclonic jerk and fright is there for sure.
Felt a bit giddy reading this annd recognising it! I also get a lot of headaches.
Even with the internet I was unable to explain to my GP back in 2006 what this was. All I could present was 'I dunno, maybe it's epilepsy, it's like an electrical zap sound deep in my head at times', I was told it was nonsense and sent away without any further knowledge.
Sometimes I wonder if it's remotely related to the other obscure 'unable to name until post-2010 internet knowledge' syndrome that I suffer - Alice in Wonderland syndrome. Although I do know that the cause for that was operations on/or my amblyopic strabismus 40+ years ago. Certainly it appeared first while I was convalescing.
edit: to add a little bit of clarification here, sometime around 2010 I learnt what they were both called due to one of those clickbaity buzzfeed-style '50 bizarre medical issues you won't believe' style pieces.
> 10% of people also experience visual disturbances like perceiving visual static, lightning, or flashes of light. Some people may also experience heat, strange feelings in their torso, or a feeling of electrical tinglings that ascends to the head before the auditory hallucinations occur
Such phenomena are well known amongst advanced yogis. Sleep scientists would do well to investigate there.
I've always been aware of many neurological curiosities, and I've never been able to determine whether most people truly don't have them or are simply not aware of them (or whether there's a difference, but my pet theory is that with appropriate training, others can become aware of, and experience them, because they're a result of us being analogue beings and not perfect computers).
I'm aware of the visual noise, and the multiple layers of auditory effects (from the mild tinnitus I have, to the sound of my blood pumping through my veins, and the "general brain noise" that leaks into my auditory processing).
I've found the auditory events when falling asleep somewhat disturbing, they often come after especially stressed days and are accompanied by a particular "feeling in my brain" which feels analogues to a mild muscle twitch. To me, it's not as much a boom as, the creaking sound like that made by an old-fashioned magnesium flashlight right after being fired.
Often I experience flashes of light on those same nights as the explosions, I think both are related to some kind of seizure-like event, but very mild. I don't have epilepsy.
I don’t have explosions, but in this pre-dream mind wandering, some events/phrases may become very loud. They don’t mean anything (unless you’re into deep meaning, then everything does), just parts of speech and sounds. It happens often, so I’m used to it. But a few times, especially when it only started, it amplified something you don’t want to hear… 8)
Also after waking up and trying to sleep more there is a periodic (but unpredictable) slap sound as if a thin wooden plank hit against a table. It only happens when I sleep more than needed. Something cares about my schedule I guess.
A therapist said it is a disorder, but not in the same class as schizo-… things, so relax.
- hearing a sudden banging sound like my head is hitting something
- feelign like I stopped breathing
In my case it seems obvious it is related to PTSD, developmental trauma - or simplified "stress".
Sometimes I wondered if there was actually a sound, because I have earplugs - but it's happened enough times that I can tell when it's "imaginary".
It's really simply, can we find someone who experiences these symptons that has NO developmental trauma, pretty good family and childhood, no PTSD, no shock trauma in adulthood ( car crashes, violence, and whatnot)?
Off-topic, but the title made me think of that scene from Cronenberg's Scanners [1], which has a pretty interesting backstory:
The head itself was made using a number of different materials. First, a plaster head was used, but it looked more like an exploding statue. Then, they tried making a head out of wax, but it wasn't pliable enough and did not provide the desired effect. Eventually, the team settled on an internal skull structure formed with plaster, with outside skin and facial features rendered using gelatin. From there, the team packed the skull with just about whatever they could find. They used wax and latex scraps, along with various stringy bits and anything they had lying around the studio that they thought would fly through the air a little better. They even used bits of leftover burgers from lunch that day.
From there, the plan was to blow the head up with explosives. The problem, the team found, was that any kind of explosive they used revealed sparks to the camera, which they didn't want. To portray a real sense of internal mental pressure resulting in the head exploding outward, they needed a different method. As the shoot wore on and nothing seemed to be working, special effects supervisor Gary Zeller told everyone to keep their cameras rolling, to get into their cars, and roll the windows up. He then lay down underneath the head with a shotgun, pointed it up beneath the back of it, and fired. The result is the exploding head scene in Scanners.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 171 ms ] threadBut my wife was reading a book and heard absolutely nothing. Of course, I checked the house and nothing.
I heard about this syndrome after that and apparently it’s pretty common. Rare in a lifetime but happens to a lot a people at least once.
A lithium battery exploded and I didn't wake. After my partner woke me, I found the kitchen in smoke and an exploded battery & charger.
Though I once had something like this while I was lying awake in the early hours of the morning, which was weird. It turned out that it was the Buncefield oil storage depot exploding about 40 miles away.
Just as i was falling asleep i heard the loudest bang i've ever heard. And was sure someone just bombed the neighbor or someone else down the street. But after having stayed awake for an hour checking the news, and no police or fire department arriving. I went back to sleep.
In the morning i tried to talk about this with my family, but no one had any idea what i was talking about.
Spoilsport :-)
I always wondered if you could damage your senses with an imaginary light / sound
In my case, getting my sleep apnea treated with a CPAP machine coincidentally greatly reduced the frequency of these episodes. Your mileage may vary.
It last happened about a week ago: I could swear I was woken up by a cluster of firework explosions going off in the distance, some 100m away. A sudden burst of sounds along with a lot of gentle but noticable shockwaves.
Orthogonal to the post here, but I just want to encourage anybody reading this who snores, or has a partner who says you snore or stop breathing occasionally, to go get a sleep study. I didn't have any of the hallmark symptoms, just descriptions from my wife, and my doctor seemed doubtful that I had sleep apnea based on my descriptions of my symptoms. But, he said, "I know better than to argue with your wife."
Turns out, I have severe obstructive sleep apnea (AHI >50), it's just that most of my apneas are what are known as hypopneas -- my blood oxygen drops, but I don't entirely stop breathing, I just have a partially obstructed airway. My sleep architecture is fine, which is probably why I never noticed extreme daytime sleepiness. But the dropping blood oxygen is still a serious health risk, and associated with a huge number of other conditions, from the obvious like heart conditions to the unexpected like fatty liver disease.
tl;dr, get a sleep study if you have any reason to think you have sleep apnea.
Then I suddenly rise up and wait a bit in order to calm down.
Possibly related, I occasionally get "brain zaps", spontaneous sensations of an electric shock inside my head, also when on the verge of falling asleep. These are almost exclusively described as a symptom of SSRI withdrawal, but that is interestingly not the case for me.
It's only happened once or twice since then but was a lot less scary because I knew what EHS was by that point.
I vividly remember telling me that it might be exploding head syndrome, which would eventually cause my head to explode. Obviously, I was terrified. They quickly allayed my concerns, and it's never bothered me since (though, of course, I still get these transient episodes).
Anyway, I've always wondered: Did they actually know about exploding head syndrome, or did they just make it up? Obviously, the real thing doesn't cause your head to explode, but it would be a heck of a coincidence to just make up a real syndrome!
No idea what's caused it at all - sounds like someone has suddenly opened a pressurised pipe near my head/ear.
Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, and while my eyes are open there is an instantaneous change in my vision equivalent to wearing coloured fillers or monochrome LED lighting. Usually red. No other symptoms. Transition was instant so that rules out retinal bleeding etc.
I asked my doctor about this, she didn't know either.
One trick a psychologist mentioned is having a notepad near the bed and writing in it when it happens.
Until then it was on my ever growing list of "shit that only happens to me, apparently". Makes me wonder how many people got misdiagnosed with mental disorders, because the world was just smaller back then.
Felt a bit giddy reading this annd recognising it! I also get a lot of headaches.
I silently assumed that this is true for everybody, I'm amazed to find out it's rare, at least in your experience !
Sometimes I wonder if it's remotely related to the other obscure 'unable to name until post-2010 internet knowledge' syndrome that I suffer - Alice in Wonderland syndrome. Although I do know that the cause for that was operations on/or my amblyopic strabismus 40+ years ago. Certainly it appeared first while I was convalescing.
edit: to add a little bit of clarification here, sometime around 2010 I learnt what they were both called due to one of those clickbaity buzzfeed-style '50 bizarre medical issues you won't believe' style pieces.
I had one episode once when very relaxed but awake, though.
Such phenomena are well known amongst advanced yogis. Sleep scientists would do well to investigate there.
I'm aware of the visual noise, and the multiple layers of auditory effects (from the mild tinnitus I have, to the sound of my blood pumping through my veins, and the "general brain noise" that leaks into my auditory processing).
I've found the auditory events when falling asleep somewhat disturbing, they often come after especially stressed days and are accompanied by a particular "feeling in my brain" which feels analogues to a mild muscle twitch. To me, it's not as much a boom as, the creaking sound like that made by an old-fashioned magnesium flashlight right after being fired.
Often I experience flashes of light on those same nights as the explosions, I think both are related to some kind of seizure-like event, but very mild. I don't have epilepsy.
Also after waking up and trying to sleep more there is a periodic (but unpredictable) slap sound as if a thin wooden plank hit against a table. It only happens when I sleep more than needed. Something cares about my schedule I guess.
A therapist said it is a disorder, but not in the same class as schizo-… things, so relax.
- hearing a sudden banging sound like my head is hitting something - feelign like I stopped breathing
In my case it seems obvious it is related to PTSD, developmental trauma - or simplified "stress".
Sometimes I wondered if there was actually a sound, because I have earplugs - but it's happened enough times that I can tell when it's "imaginary".
It's really simply, can we find someone who experiences these symptons that has NO developmental trauma, pretty good family and childhood, no PTSD, no shock trauma in adulthood ( car crashes, violence, and whatnot)?
I'm 99% sure it is due to the nervous system.
The head itself was made using a number of different materials. First, a plaster head was used, but it looked more like an exploding statue. Then, they tried making a head out of wax, but it wasn't pliable enough and did not provide the desired effect. Eventually, the team settled on an internal skull structure formed with plaster, with outside skin and facial features rendered using gelatin. From there, the team packed the skull with just about whatever they could find. They used wax and latex scraps, along with various stringy bits and anything they had lying around the studio that they thought would fly through the air a little better. They even used bits of leftover burgers from lunch that day.
From there, the plan was to blow the head up with explosives. The problem, the team found, was that any kind of explosive they used revealed sparks to the camera, which they didn't want. To portray a real sense of internal mental pressure resulting in the head exploding outward, they needed a different method. As the shoot wore on and nothing seemed to be working, special effects supervisor Gary Zeller told everyone to keep their cameras rolling, to get into their cars, and roll the windows up. He then lay down underneath the head with a shotgun, pointed it up beneath the back of it, and fired. The result is the exploding head scene in Scanners.
https://screenrant.com/david-cronenberg-scanners-movie-explo...
1. Probably don't watch this at work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YI3NoBeNwfk