Things That Go Bump in the Night
 

Last night I was woken from a sound sleep at 3:10 am by the sounds of screeching tires followed by the unmistakable crunch of metal on metal. It was a loud noise and it the noise carried on for longer than seemed right.

It was a very big car accident.

I live on the 14th floor and given the heat, always sleep with my windows wide open. The sound was unbelievably loud. The second bang came a moment later as, apparently, another car slammed into the first accident.

From my window, I couldn't see the point of impact but I could see the cars backing up and going in the other direction.

I was tempted to go down and look at the carnage but felt it was too voyeuristic. Then I lay down and tried to sleep again. It took a while but I finally managed to get back to sleep.


What things have woken you up in the middle of the night?

I'm one of those sound sleepers. I wont even know that there was a massive thunder-storm last night, people can turn on all the lights in the room and I'll stay asleep.

Heck the only thing that wakes me up is the sound of my alarm clock, I never hear my gf's alarm clock or even notice her getting out of bed.

I suppose its a good thing, but could be bad as well.

A new stray cat showed up at 3 this morning. Its a male of course and although my female cats are fixed he doesnt seem to know the diffference. He cries outside while my cats hiss from the window inside, the females are not impressed and want nothing to do with him. This upsets my dogs so they start barking, oh what fun. I throw on a robe, run the cat off, but he's back in an hour. I just put the coffee on at 5, I feel a nap coming on today.

In October, I awoke numerous times to the house shaking from earthquakes. The first time was startled, but thought to myself "nah, it's not my time," and let the planet rock me back to sleep.

Nowadays I think I just sleep through them. There's no saving me when the big one hits.

I'm a pretty light sleeper so I wake up fairly easily. I run a fan at night to drown out background noises that would normally wake me up.

One of the stranger things that have woke me up wasn't noise, but lights. I woke one night to the reflection of police lights flashing in my window. I thought it was odd because the street I live on is small and isn't a place police catch speeders. I found out the next day that an attempted kidnapping had happened in the alleyway behind my apartment and the police were looking for the suspect.

Me? Wake in the middle of the night? Un-possible! :)

The cat chasing a fake mouse around the laminate flooring.
The air conditioner or de-humidifier clicking on.
My boyfriend's cell vibrating.
His violent rolling-over as well.
Any kind of light.

I hate being a light sleeper. There isn't anything I've ever found to help me stay asleep.

About a month ago I awoke to the sound of a pack of coyotes yelping loudly in the back yard killing a deer or something I guess. After checking my pets to see that they were OK I made a cup of coffee and stood out on the back deck listening to them (too dark to see anything).

When they were done yelping and growling after about 15 minutes all was silent except for a single long howl. This was answered by two other howls from different locations far in the distance. I wondered if the coyotes were bragging to other packs about their kill.

we have coyotes than run in the back field huntin' for vermin.

my dogs have no mercy on who or what ventures close to our fence so........i hear them often but........i can tell the "crazy batshit bark" (like someone is comin' to the door) and the "get the hell outta my yard bark" from each other so.........

getting used to this farm life..........

I'm on call 24/7, an no one seems to barricade themselves in their homes or take a hostage in the middle of the day, so my answer would be: the phone. Damn that phone.

It seems kinda' ridiculous, but a few weeks ago, I was awoken by the sound of one of my post-it notes unsticking itself from the wall and falling between my desk and wardrobe. I know, not something that should make a whole lot of noise, right? But I guess my hearing was extra sharp that night, because it woke me up in an instant. Scared the hell out of me, too.

Sometimes the cats deciding to clean themselves right next to my head wakes me up.

Another time an earthquake woke me.

Usually Cleo barking wakes me instantly. She's a very good guard dog and I know what her different barks mean. Her pissed off one freaks me out in the middle of the night. Last time that happened at 2 or so in the morning it was followed by something screaming. I flew out of bed and alpha phi was still awake and he went running outside. A raccoon decided that Cleo's kennel was a nice place to stay. Cleo we think grabbed it and shook it. When alpha went out there it was hiding behind the house trying to hide and limping around snarling. Took awhile for all the neighborhood dogs to calm down. Cleo was unscathed thankfully.

ive slept through tornados and hurricanes before....i sleep through all.

I used to sleep soundly. Until I had children. Now I wake up for anything and everything. No funny stories to share though, sorry.

The radioactive monkey that I keep in my closet because it escaped from a top-secret military installation for reasons of horrid experimentation conducted by the nation's foremost politicians that are secretly evil scientists hell-bent on unleashing a legion of genetically-enhanced super-soldiers that are in reality gorillas capable of mass destruction on a scale the world cannot even begin to comprehend.

Only I... alone... can comprehend... the HORROR... the HORROR of it all... because of this monkey in my closet... that keeps me up at night. :uhh:

the loudest:

some guy shouting 'I'll never be taken alive', followed by some gunfire. it was a few blocks away from me but very loud.

I spoke too soon, I woke up this morning to another earthquake. This one was over 6.0 at the epicenter, but just a 2 or so here :surprised:

I've slept through every hurricane that's come through here.

As it is, I have to set an alarm in ten minute increments for an hour to make sure I get up, because I sleep through the first one or two, and will continue to sleep if they don't keep going off, annoying me. :)

I was awoken this morning, before my alarm, but the loud crash of lightening. Scared the shit out of me.

I am a pretty heavy sleeper. Very little wakes me up, but once I'm up, it's very rarely I can go back to sleep.

sorry about your sheet's dude.

Really crazy-ass loud and powerful thunderstorms sometimes wake me up. Living in the mid-west, we get a lot of those :P

I was awoken last night by the phone ringing at 1am. Apparently someone in Toronto was trying to reach us. It was noon in Toronto.

When I went to answer the phone, the connection was lost.

Just as I was drifting off, the same number called my wife's phone.

Doesn't anyone know how to send an email anymore?

Everything. :grumpy:

My own snoring (yes, sleep apnea), other people's snoring, cats in heat, hurricanes, kids blasting gangsta rap in their cars, incorrectly set cell phone alarms. :yawn:

My wife shaking me violently and asking "Did you hear that?!?!"

Oh, and our (now passed) cat using my face for traction. Didja know that cats can fly? And while I DID have something to do with the cat flying, I did NOT have anything to do with it's passing.

Some asshole picking up his friend from my neighbor's house. The lazy fuck couldn't be bothered to get out of his car and ring the doorbell; he just lays on the horn.

The faint tickle of a spider crawling across my face. The resulting shot of adrenaline and the "get it off me!" flailing that ensues guarantees that I won't ge getting back to sleep.

Post traumatic stress disorder. :D

I once woke up to my girlfriend turning around and Karate chopping me in the neck on accident.

I was so upset for about 10 seconds and then cracked up so hard that I woke her up. That'll teach her!

Back in the days when I regularly snoozed while Red was driving I fell asleep sometime after midnight on a trip home from B'ham. To be awakened by the sound of screeching brakes and then to realize that I was in the car that had slammed on the brakes is a moment in time that I will never forget or fully recover from. A deer with large antlers was standing in the middle of the road. Only after Red had braked and we had come to a stop did the deer calmly walk away. No snoozing in the car for me now. We drove back the next day to see if we could find the black marks in the road. We were less than 5 miles from home at the time.

The dog jumping on my nuts, because my dog randomly moves around the bed at night.
Also, this really huge freak of a bug once, which made noise not unlike that of a helicopter. I actually had to act asleep, with the lights out, for it to come out...did that routine twice, finally got it. The thrill of the hunt kept me up for another hour or so.

I lived in the attic of my parents old home on and off. As a teenager I had 2 occassions where insistant dreams full of alarms and flashing lights woke me up. Once I went walk-about and found my baby brother had a pillow that had fallen against a space heater and was beginning to smoulder. The other time it was a new sister-in-law who hung a towel in front of a seldom-used electric wall heater with a built in fan that she had accidently turned on. That too was beginning to smoulder. In each instance I soaked the offending object and left it in a pool of water in the bathtub, and went back to bed.
As a young adult I woke to a humming noise that rapidly came closer, very quickly and very loudly, and the sound exploded directly overhead knocking me out of my bed and onto the floor. I have absolutely no idea what the hell that was.
There are some memorable awakenings involving my Lady, and TLC, but I tuck those happy memories in my reverie place and smile quietly to myself :)

Once, right after out son was born, I was just drifting off to sleep when I felt something crawling across my right ear. I sat up, batted wildly at my head and flung what turned out to be a giant cockroach against the opposite wall, screaming the entire time. Xeph woke up to me screaming "KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT!!!" It was the biggest cockroach I've ever seen.

Somehow the baby slept through it all.

Another time we were taking an afternoon family nap when we woke to the sound of helicopters hovering directly above our apartment complex. Turns out one of our neighbors across the parking lot had shot and killed an intruder in a home invasion. Three other guys were on the run, hence the helicopters.

the dog barking at shadows.
other than that, i'm a fairly sound sleeper.

Nothing for me recently, but tonight I responded to a car being driven into someone's house. Those people were quite awake when we got there. lol The house won, though, because they hit the very corner, and it was a cinder block home... so a small chunk was missing, but the car didn't penetrate the walls.

I woke up once.
It won't happen again.

"My mother woke me up once, Johnny... once!"

I once woke up after a car accident happened outside my dorm, and then heard gun shots. I was dazed since I was having a dream before that and went back to sleep. The paper in my floormate's room told me I was wrong about it being a dream, luckily not dead wrong.

I was woken up by something large sliding and collapsing in my closet..it was my snowboard and it sounded alot like that of a body slumping to the floor. A huge racket. Otherwise Im usually woken up with a full-on view of the cat's sphincter smiling at me. Not nice.

Coyotes are the first interesting thing that came to mind....

-Will

That's usually my mother calling from Seattle, 8 hours behind us... she works the graveyard shift and gets all out of whack on the time difference. My reactions have taught her to be very careful to check the time before she calls now, though. :)

Recently, our friend from Belgium missed his flight to Iceland at 7:30am and decided to call us in his panic. Which shouldn't matter, except that the sun doesn't rise until 11:30am now, it was a pitch-black Saturday morning (after being out until 4am the night before), and he called my cell, ktspktsp's cell, and then our land line before one of us finally cogitated what was going on and answered. Jesus!

And lastly, 3 windstorms of up to 90 mph (40 meters/second) woke me up at 2am, 3 nights last week... with the sound of our windows being raped and pounded by the wind. I battened down the hatches to stop the crying sound (coming from the wind finding every single crack to scream through), but could not go back to sleep for a couple of hours. :grumpy:

my daughter has night terrors and wakes me up frequently during the night, ear piercing screams that have you pinned to the ceiling is not a nice way to wake u p lol

My cat. Every morning at 530 playing with the Christmas tree... or playing with plastic bags... or snuggling up next to me and accidently scratching me in the most random places.... the list goes on.

surprise buttseckz will wake anyone up. Not that i'd know 1sthand or anything

I'm a pretty deep sleeper, so it takes quite a bit to wake me up. But let me tell you, a cat clawing the hell out of your toes (which were sticking out of the blanket) will wake ANYONE up.

Also, the wife has her own special ways of waking me up.

I've had a few instances where I'm awakened by someone calling my name softly.
When I check, no one's around.

It's pretty creepy sometimes.

I tend to sleep better when James is next to me. Although I don't think he sees it that way. I'm home for the break between semesters at school and one thing I recall is my cat shifting around at night and me kicking her which lands her claws into my leg which wakes me up pretty fast.

Another thing is light. I have to be in complete darkness usually to go to sleep for the night. I just can't stand there being much more glow than from the clock.

I'm with you on the stray cats too. Several times our cats have flung themselves at the windows and set off the Brinks alarm. I don't know if you folks have heard a Brinks alarm...but the alarm is upstairs where I sleep. My parents who sleep downstairs sleep through it all the time. I tend to get up and grab the knife and baseball bat and wait till they wake up to make sure someone hasn't been murdered. Those are always fun times.

One time the Roomba went off at night and gave me a heart attack when it entered my room without invitation.:eek:

Between 2 and 4 AM: That all-to-familiar tapping on my ass that us women fall victim to while sleeping with our backs to our SO......