i had a similar instance. when i was younger ~10 i remember waking up scared by a nightmare around midnight. i decided i’d go to my sisters room because she was likely still up and i didn’t want to wake my parents.
her room was on the second floor so i had to quietly run in the dark and up the stairs as to not disturb my parents.
when i got to the steps i began hearing a crowd of people and with each step up the stairs it got louder and louder. i recall it being one of the loudest things i’ve ever heard. at the landing of the stairs it was so loud i collapsed onto the door handle and swing it open. then just like that the noise stopped and it was silent.
my sister was up watching a movie and looked over curious to why i made such a dramatic entrance. i don’t recall ever saying anything i just curled up on her floor watching a movie until i fell asleep.
i’m in my 30s and i still think about that event at least once a year and it still gets my heart pumping! thankfully it has never happened since.
Perhaps it was a hypnopompic hallucination? I ask because I have many experiences waking up from nightmares and hearing bizarre sounds or seeing bizarre things. Like ice cream truck sounds outside at 3am. Or seeing the face of an “alien” standing next to my bed.
Hopefully your experience was just a trick of the mind!
certainly sounds like a fair explanation! don’t you just love how our brain works?
Yes! This stuff certainly raises a ton of questions. I know some, maybe all, of it is probably random “noise” but I’ve always wondered if peripheral states of consciousness let us perceive things that are "real’ (somewhere out there). That’s the great mystery I want to see unraveled in my lifetime.
