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I'm trying to find information about the phenomenon: on the last second of the sleep a person experiences false awakening so when a person awake he accepts that false awakening as reality and it creates false memory. Does it have specific name?

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What has this got to do with scepticism? – david4dev Feb 26 '11 at 8:07
@david4dev Probably not direct link to scepticism, but I heard it in the sceptic program about UFO abductions. – Egle Feb 26 '11 at 9:34
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@david4dev What is skepticism defined as for the purposes of this site? Where I can read this definition? – Billare Mar 16 '11 at 3:01
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Not sure about the false memory part, but my mother tells of a morning where she woke up and started about her daily routine. On seeing fish swimming in the walls she awoke again, thinking "wow, that was a cool dream!", wrote it down and again went about her day. Something else weird occurred, bringing understanding that she was still dreaming. This repeated 7 times before she woke "for real". For some time she frequently wondered if she was really awake. She was bemused by it all, but it could easily freak someone out, especially if the nature of the dreams were nightmarish and recall hazy. – matt wilkie Mar 27 '11 at 7:41
-1 not really a skeptical question. – matt_black Nov 23 '11 at 23:34

closed as off topic by Sklivvz♦ Apr 9 '12 at 10:56

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2 Answers

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You are probably referring to a sleep disorder called sleep paralysis. SP is a disorder that is associated with vivid dream-like states, panic and hallucinations and is commonly thought to be able to explain some UFO abduction cases.

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I think that is exactly that. Thank you :) My partner experienced that (kind of ghost attack). He is sceptic, so it had kind of 2 layers of fear - attack itself and freaking out that he is going mad. Happened just once 7 years ago, so all good :) But he remembers it as scariest thing ever happened to him. – Egle Feb 26 '11 at 11:02
@Egle, it's quite a common disorder, actually. :-/ – Sklivvz♦ Feb 26 '11 at 11:09
The first thing I thought of when I read the question was this. Not a disorder, just something annoying that happens to me all the time. – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Mar 25 '11 at 20:43
up vote 5 down vote

You can also research for the terms:

  • hypnogogic state

  • hypnopompic state

  • Night terrors

  • Sleep Paralysis

These are some complex, yet common and well-understood neurological phenomena related to the sleep cycle. What you describe seems to most resemble hypnogia, which has been implicated in an understanding of alien abduction syndromes, old hag syndromes, and all manner of other strange occurrences which seem to only happen to people in the middle of the night.

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