My best hallucination yet! A Visit from the Phantom Foot Massager

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During lunchtime today, I went to my nap room at work, cuddled up into my lovely blanket from Ireland and quickly fell asleep. Next thing, I awoke to the most AMAZING foot massage!! Oh la la. My feet were sore from intense yoga classes over the weekend, so I really appreciated the free yummy foot massage from…. um…. my phantom foot massaging friend?

Foot-Massage

After a minute of enjoying the massage, I thought, “Well, that was nice, but I better get back to work now.”

I tried getting up, but I was stuck physically. My head tingled with confusion, I tried lifting my neck, but it weighed a trillion tons. I struggled, gave up, struggled, gave up… Time passed. At one point, I fell off the nap bench onto the itchy carpet.

My nap room at work

My nap room at work

Eventually, I woke up… for real this time… on the bench (never had fallen off). Flustered and disoriented, I folded my blanket into my nap-sack, straightened by hair and returned to “real life”.

What are hypnagogic hallucinations and sleep paralysis?

For me, a majority of my hypnagogic hallucinations are negative (burglars and attackers) or just annoying (like falling off the nap bench or hearing a neighbor play the guitar in the middle of the night). Once in a blue moon, the hallucination is pleasant – like flying, hearing the most beautiful orchestra music or today’s lovely foot massage.

These positive hallucinations are few and far between, but for tonight, I’m giggling and hoping my phantom foot massager returns again soon. Or better yet, I hope he is flying around like the tooth fairy, visiting others with narcolepsy while they nap around the world!

While my daytime sleepiness, hypnagogic hallucinations and sleep paralysis have all improved greatly with medications, I still take short naps daily as a KEY part of my treatment plan, and sometimes during these naps, I still experience HH and SP, like I did today. Please note that naps are not refreshing for all people with narcolepsy, but for some, they are a huge relief.

My entire nap today was only 19 minutes. This was very “busy” mentally, but it relieved the pressure on my skull and allowed me to go back to work feeling refreshed and functional – and my feet felt great!

More about my experience working with narcolepsy.

5 Comments

  1. dblu on April 5, 2016 at 7:37 pm

    Most of my hallucinations are nice. But the last one made me bail out of bed, destroyed the nightstand, and ended up sitting on the waste basket!
    After three times falling out of bed, my doctor prescribed Clonazepam. Great stuff. Almost the end of hallucinations and falling out of bed.

    But I miss my little friends that visited me every night [in hallucinations].

  2. Michael Hennessey on April 8, 2016 at 8:50 am

    Hi Julie,
    That is a nice HH.
    I find lately a 8 to 10 hour sleep I wake up for about 2 hours and then need to lay down for an hour to feel refreshed.
    My HH has mostly been bad also. I am a combat Viet Nam vet so you can imagine what mine focus around.
    I am also the primary caregiver for a wife with serious medical problems so a lot if the time am trying to wake up to help her but can’t and of course she is soundly sleeping.
    I enjoy following you. Keep the stories coming.

  3. Melissa on April 21, 2018 at 10:30 pm

    Too cute! I rather have “REAL” foot massages than hallucinating about them lol! Sheesh I LOVE massages! I enjoy giving my clients massages also! Best thing EVER! ❤

  4. Kay on March 22, 2021 at 8:22 pm

    Yes! The only pleasant one I’ve ever had was recent and felt like I was getting a foot massage, no panic or fear. Just a kind tenderness. ?

  5. Magnus on November 23, 2021 at 9:50 am

    I first experienced a phantom foot massage when I moved to a new house just after graduating high school. The very first night there on an air mattress (new bed hadn’t arrived yet) I had what I later learned is “sleep paralysis”. For a year or two I would get what felt like foot massages regularly when I started to wake up.

    Then one day the sensation moved upward (like I could feel this “presence” move upward) to my solar plexus area just above my stomach. It felt like someone was pressing on the area somehow, but it resulted in some kind of very pleasant sensation. I think my breathing was affected too, but it kept pressing in waves and each time it would press harder I would feel this incredibly pleasurable sensation in that solar plexus area (no not like sex, but almost as good in a way). I actually wondered if I had a ghost in the house, but I though foot massages? OK. But this was getting weirder.

    Now it would start at my feet momentarily and then quickly move upward to the solar plexus and eventually just start at the solar plexus and skip the feet area. This went on for over a year. I’d sometimes get this 4x a night. I was disturbed, but it felt good so again, I couldn’t get too upset. I did notice I couldn’t move at some point along the way (the paralysis part), but if I concentrated really hard I could slowly move my left hand and it felt like it was in slow motion and then would suddenly accelerate and BAM, I was out of this sleep paralysis mode (but I still didn’t know what it was at this stage).

    Then one night, it started at the solar plexus area, but then suddenly I felt that “weight” move upwards really quickly across my torso and into my head. I immediately heard this high-pitched voice audibly in my head or around me that reminded me of a leprechaun kind of voice from Darby-O-Gill or something. It said, “Heidi Heidi Ho! Heidi Heidi Ho!”. My Lhasa Apso I had since 3rd grade was named Heidi and we used to sometimes call her Heidi-Ho.

    OK, that FREAKED ME OUT! I was going to college in the 1990s and living in a shared house with my mother (me downstairs; her upstairs). I ran upstairs and woke her up and told her all about this stuff going on for years because that scared the heck out of me. I thought maybe something was trying to possess me or something. While talking, the downstairs TV suddenly turned itself on and started changing channels. This was before “smart” cable boxes and the TV and cable box were on different frequencies. I had the TV change channels before on its own a few times over the years, but I assumed it was some kind of RF leakage (even though the family room downstairs was 2/3 underground and my bedroom 4/5 underground just behind it with no windows).

    What could I do? Nothing. I tried sleeping in the guest bedroom upstairs for a few nights and it showed up there as well so I figured there was no point. I didn’t know if moving would help, but it wasn’t a very realistic option. I still hadn’t read about sleep paralysis. I had early Internet by 1996, but it didn’t occur to me to look this up until maybe 1998 or 1999.

    I got used to these occurrences. It would sometimes stay on the solar plexus and other times move to my head. I never heard a voice again in my head like that, but I did hear other things when it moved there like machine noises or banging sounds.

    Then one day I read about sleep paralysis on the Internet and thought, boy do I feel stupid. I stopped worrying much about it, but if it got too weird, I’d still try to move to wake up. Then one day in 2004 a few years after starting my first job, I was still living there (my mother eventually moved out when she got remarried and rented me the house until I decided whether I might buy it, but ended up getting transferred in late 2005 to another job location in another city 50 miles away and bought a house there instead), something EXTRA WEIRD happened.

    I woke up and found I could move, but the room felt weird like I was in sleep paralysis just the same. I heard a voice that sounded a bit like Charlton Heston for lack of a better comparison moving around the the foot of the bed in an arc shape that passed right through the wall from the laundry room and out the side wall but without changing in sound like the wall wasn’t there. I saw nothing. The voice said something about “The storms are coming” and started listing dates (which of course I can’t remember). I saw a map on a screen hanging in mid-air in the room in black & white (kind of like the screen in the video “Pressure” by Billy Joel from the 1980s on MTV) and I saw what looked like a map of Texas. A few weeks later on Christmas Eve it was snowing in Texas in that area (I think at the time it was the first time in like 18 years or some big number down by El Paso; it seems like since then they’ve gotten a lot of snow storms on and off) and so it kind of made news headlines. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world a Tsunami was hitting the Philippines (Christmas 2004). I really thought about that voice and wondered if that was one of them.

    Fast forward to Apri 28th, 2005. The voice returned. This time it said, “In 1686 days, prepare for the worst” and walked off again (that day on or about Dec 9th, 2009 came and went and nothing seemed to happen that day at all, but a couple of weeks later I got injured and it was bad, but the time is off so???) I never heard the voice again. I also have not been paralyzed when I get “sleep paralysis” anymore. It happens far more rarely than it used to, but when it does, I can move and IF I move, I snap out of it fast so if I want to observe, I have to lie still.

    Since then, I’ve heard far stranger things compared to just noises. I’ve heard music playing on a different floor of a house I was staying at clear as day as if the walls and floor weren’t there (and when I woke up, of course nothing was playing and it was the middle of the night). I heard a voice that sounded a bit like one of those talking “snake” voices on Harry Potter say “Thank you” 3x in my ear after I could “feel” it walking over through my bed as if the bed wasn’t there. It was talking to “someone” else just before that, but I couldn’t make it out (I used to hear voices when I woke up for years and years like that or when a noise maker device is playing, it sometimes sounds like that to me when I’m just relaxing, not even asleep.

    I’ve also seen “pixies” (for lack of a better description) made of red light fly through my bedroom when I lived in that house two nights in a row and never before or again afterward. That bedroom had no windows and I had a blue nightlight so I wouldn’t trip. These “pixies” were RED and I wasn’t asleep. I had just lied down and they flew into the room and one seemed to notice I was tracking it with my head turning. I can’t see without glasses very well and it looked like two red “orbs” glowing in the room flying along. The one that seemed to notice me, flew over right in front of my face (all of like 8 inches tall or so) where I could see it clearly. I stared in shock at it. It appeared to be made of red light, but had slight variances in the shade of red and had what looked like a body shape and a head, but I couldn’t make out features because it was all red light. It floated there for maybe 5 seconds total and I just stared dumbly at it. However, it seemed to cock its head slightly for a moment like it was puzzled at how I could see it or something (at least that’s what went through my head) then lost interest almost instantly and flew off through the other wall (where it left the room was the backyard about 4 feet underground). I believe the other one that was with it went straight through to that same point without stopping. No, I wasn’t drinking or using drugs. The next night, the same thing happened, except there was only one and it didn’t stop. I never saw one before or after again.

    By now, you might think I was starting to question whether this “sleep paralysis” is actually all just in my head/dreaming because some of these events didn’t involve sleep. Besides, more “proof” would come soon that I seem to be in touch with more than just dreams.

    My grandmother had an issue with her lungs in her 90s and they had her in the hospital sedated. My step dad had died a few months earlier and I had two strange dreams. In the one, my mother got a call from her brother on the den phone at her house that her mother had passed away. The next dream I saw my step dad standing in her kitchen (houses usually look weird in my dreams no accurate, but this looked completely accurate). He was young looking like he was in his 20s again and had a beard like he did back then. His mouth never moved, but I heard a “thought voice” in my head that said my grandmother’s soul had left her body already and her physical body would expire in a week’s time.

    I told my mother she better go visit that time that week. I thought, Ha! It can’t happen like that dream on the phone because she wasn’t at home. She visited at the hospital and all seemed well and the doctor told them they would wake my grandmother up in a day or two as they think whatever problem she was having was about over. My uncle and aunt had already had lunch and the rest of the family went out to lunch at a restaurant including my mother. She then got a cell phone call from her brother that her mother had passed away (exactly like the dream, but in a different location instead). If that was two coincident dreams, that’s one heck of a coincidence!

    Meanwhile, the sleep paralysis events had slowed way down after moving where it was only a dozen times a year or so instead of as often as 4 or 5 times a night previously (although sometimes weeks or months would go buy without an incident too). I hadn’t had an incident in over a year and then just briefly.

    Recently, however, the foot massage thing returned a few days ago, but it went on like all night long. Every time I was dreaming or even semi-conscience I noticed my feet being massaged. At one point, I could feel what felt like hands grasping my hands as well and starting to rub them. So strange. I’m not sure what to make of it.

    But I had a dream when I was around 4 years old that I was walking in what looked like a mall (maybe 8-12 years old or more, definitely not 4 years old) and I got into this machine. Tubes came down and attached to various parts of my chest and body. I saw view outside the machine and there stood my mother waiting and I came out as a baby and she was holding Johnson’s baby shampoo. I woke up. When I saw The Matrix in 1999, I almost freaked out at the scene with Neo waking up in the tub with the tubes attached. In my dream, the tubes were attached to my body, but it looked more like an MRI machine with a table that pulled you in, but it looked like a conveyor belt when I came out the other side as a baby. That has had me wondering for some time now if perhaps we’re not really in the “real world” but some simulation of one.

    I was driving home from work one night around in the fall/winter (forget which month, but maybe November or December) and there was a car riding my bumper behind me and all the sudden ahead I saw 4 deer crossing the freeway. I was doing maybe 70mph and I knew if I hit the brakes the guy behind me might just plow into me, but I had no choice. Even so, one of the deer stopped and looked right at me and there was no time to stop, just slow down a bit. I slammed on the brakes. Suddenly, my foot wasn’t on the brake, the car behind me was a 1/4 mile behind me and all the deer were already on other other side of the freeway (going the other direction). It was as if someone hit PAUSE, moved the deer and car and then hit unpause again. It was instantaneous. To this day, I can’t explain what happened there, but that didn’t feel like guardian angels. It felt like someone stopped time, moved them and resumed in an instant. I keep thinking the only reason I can figure someone would interfere is if in that moment that deer was going to kill me and whomever is in control of this world/reality/simulation, be it “God” or some controller dude in a Cryo Prison or education program or whatever this world is saw I was killed in the crash and they didn’t want me dying at that point in the simulation for whatever reason and changed what happened and figured I’d just sound crazy if I told others.

    You can decide (if you’re even real; I may be talking to the computer program itself). The Gnostic Christians believed we are in a false material universe and The Matrix was partly based on Gnosticism. Maybe such things are hints to tell us where we’re at because even in the Bible, it says and you will find (The Book of Thomas version says, “Seek until you find and when you find, you will become disturbed and rule over “the all”). It’s all very mysterious sounding, but then when you stop and look at some of the strange things that occur and sometimes how coincidences are too unbelievable or unlikely, it seems even stranger.

    There’s a video of a pub in London, England on YouTube. For this pub, there’s only one video of it ever filmed (at least last I checked). I was in England in May of 2016 and that was the ONLY time I’ve ever been there my entire life and I and the person with me are the only other people in this pub other than the bartender when this couple walks in filming. I found out two years later while looking up pub videos I was in this video, the only one of that pub ever filmed in all of history (well the Internet anyway). What are the odds out of around 8 BILLION people in this world that I would be in that pub on that day? The person who filmed it was with her husband and they were from one state away in Kentucky. They were not on our cruise ship we arrived on. The odds have to be higher than the Mega Millions lottery of this happening, perhaps in the 1 in a billion or more type category given the time factor). My dad told me at the time I should play the lottery because it was child’s play by comparison, but of course it doesn’t work that way. But it does make me wonder. I’ve had too many impossible odds type things happen in my life (usually negative, though or just weird) for me to believe in that level of coincidence. But if this really is a computer simulation, then it’s not a coincidence. It’s planned. Someone makes it happen. This whole Covid thing reminds me in some ways of hitting the natural disaster button on the old computer game Sim City. It interfered with plans I had to go back to England and more. A series of terrible events have occurred (not from the virus) since then in my family (lost my father; my mother had a stroke, my hard drive failed, my one large speaker failed, I pulled a muscle on my own birthday, several machines at worked suddenly broke and most of these events all occurred in a two week interval one after another after another. Disaster button indeed! That’s after over a year and half of this mental hell related to Covid. It’s too many coincidences. Someone’s pushing a button somewhere. God is a kid with a magnifying glass standing next to an ant hill and sadly we’re the ants!

    There’s way more, of course I left out as I could write a book at this point about the strange events that have happened in my life. I have a 139 IQ and two engineering degrees and a minor in English, lest you think I’m totally insane at this point.

    And it all started with a foot massage…. I take that back. I had one incident before that. I used to visit computer bulletin board services in the 1980s and 1990s before the Internet and there was a board called The Underground Kingdom of Shadows. It was professed to be a Wicca site. I was into D&D and mythology, etc. as a result and there was this article on there about how to have an out of body experience. It said you need to do these things it says right at that moment when you’re falling asleep or just waking up. Yeah, right, I thought. It suggested to imagine a string coming out of the top of your head and then plucking the string and you’ll FEEL it for real and follow that vibration right up the string and out of your body. You can then supposedly fly around, etc. and this string is really the “silver cord” that is myth to attach you to your body.

    Anyway, that very night I fell asleep on the couch lying on my side and I woke up and saw the VCR clock in the distance. I immediately thought of that article I had just read earlier that night and imagined a string, etc. Sure enough, I felt this vibration/sensation (that later felt similar to sleep paralysis in years to come) and suddenly I saw the VCR clock moving downward! That meant I (or some part of my consciousness) was moving upward in the air. I got near the ceiling and started to panic as this was too crazy and suddenly I shot back into my body (clock went up fast and I was lying awake on the couch). I’ve never had an “out of body” experience since that one even with all that sleep paralysis, but my goodness that was weird and probably 2-3 years before I moved to that house and had the incidences start, but it “felt” similar.

    If anyone is still reading, I hope you enjoyed these stories as it’s hard to tell them to people you know lest they think you’re insane or something, but they all happened exactly as I stated them (within my ability to remember them accurately).

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