What or who is a "Hypnogogial"?

It is nearly impossible to come up with a unique username (just mine, no one else's) that also fits me personally in some way that matters to me. After switching my blogger name around several times, I am going to stick with Hypnogogial because I am tired of trying to be clever and googling possibilities that invariably are taken by some other clever wit.

What I've chosen doesn’t quite make sense because it isn’t a real word. It is hypnogogia with an ‘l’ stuck on. Now you (might regrettably) ask, what is hypnogogia? Adjective: Of, relating to, or occurring in the state of intermediate consciousness preceding or coming out of sleep: hypnogogic hallucinations. (That definition is a bit of a lie, it is only preceding sleep but I use it for both, and it used to mean both.)


Yes, but WHAT is it? You go to sleep...you wake up, and see something in the room that shouldn’t be there. What a laugh-riot that is let me tell you. It took me decades to learn to stop immediately screaming. Now instead, I tell off whatever I see. (I will sometimes have long rants if I keep being awoken, because I am fed up and really really tired)

After about 20 seconds the spiders, the fuzzy balls of light, the hooded figures, the robot thingamajig, or rats running upside down along the rafters, (what ever craziness is confronting me) fades away, but that is long enough to completely freak out (thank you so VERY much adrenalin). Fortunately it doesn’t happen that often...anymore. It has given me an interesting outlook on what reality is though, and as an artist it has given me more than a few of my darker ideas.

Once again let me apologize to all those I have woken up in such a fashion. At least now my sister laughs about it, especially after the one night when I told her I was screaming because there was a pixie sitting on the foot of the bed.