I have a serious hypnic jerk problem. A hypnic jerk is a sudden muscle twitch that occurs involuntarily while one drifts off to sleep and jerks one awake. Just like that falling sensation you have in a dream and you are woken up with a jerk. It is quite normal and quite a lot of people experience it. It is said that the muscles relax when falling asleep and the body sees changes in temperature and breathing. The brain misinterprets this as a sign of falling and thus the sudden jerk. In a way it is just another reflex to allow the body to function.
I started experiencing this almost every night and started to get frustrated because I would have to wait to fall asleep after a hypnic jerk. And as I was about to fall asleep again, I would experience another one. Eventually, I'd drift off to dreamland, but only after a series of twitches. There was nothing I could do about it. I consulted a doctor who told me that I had an unhealthy lifestyle and should give up drinking and smoking and start exercising. Now that was a difficult thing to do for someone in college.
One day, I was lying in bed, having trouble sleeping. That's when I got a weird idea. I decided to film myself falling asleep. I booted up my laptop and switched on the webcam and set it on a table in such a way that it would film me in the sleeping position from my left side. I also set up my handycam on a tripod, a few inches from my feet thus filming me in a vertical position. I chose 'night mode' and hit record on both and went to sleep. I was actually excited as I always wanted to see how it looked when I got these hypnic jerks. I was so excited that I didn't fall asleep till 4 a.m. My mind was racing and bursting with thoughts. I was also tired and wanted to badly fall asleep but couldn't. So I switched of both the cams and went back to bed. I was actually camera conscious and this was barring me from falling asleep. Once I turned them off, everything went back to normal. I barely got two hours of sleep before the alarm started ringing.
That day in college, I had football practice and our team went for drinks later in the evening. When I reached home at around 11 p.m., I was dead tired and wanted to hit bed badly. I gathered the strength to shower, felt sleepier and went straight to bed, not before turning on both my cams. This time I slept like a baby. I woke up at six again cursing the alarm, hitting the snooze button and buried myself under the blanket. Then I woke up jumping to see if the cams were still recording.
Yes! they had. I turned them off. I quickly browsed my laptop and found the video I was looking for. It was a large file and was 7 hours long. It took a while to load and I quickly skimmed the video to see if there was anything strange. But to my disappointment, there was nothing big. Most of the time, it was me lying stationary occasionally changing sleeping positions. The hypnic jerks did not occur nor had I felt anything the last night maybe because I was really tired and also because of the lack of sleep from the previous day. I did not bother looking at what the handycam had recorded from a different angle. I just took down the tripod and put my cam back into the kit and forgot about it.
A month had passed or so. My friend was leaving on a trip to Rome and he asked me if he could borrow my cam. I readily agreed and said I'd give it to him later that evening. So I was home later that day watching a movie on the internet when my friend arrived and was honking from his car. I looked out of the window and he shouted for me and asked for the cam. I shouted back, told him I'd bring it down and hurriedly went to find my camera. I found it and quickly checked if it had the batteries, charger etc. Then I remembered the footage I had recorded. Obviously I did not want anyone to see what I had filmed and was about to delete it. But something told me to take a quick look at the video. I played it on playback mode and watched myself sleeping on the small LCD. Fast forwarded it for a couple of minutes. My friend was honking madly. Then I saw movement. I rewinded to look closely and played again. What followed horrified me.
On the small screen, I could see it clearly. And what I had seen could not be unseen. I was lying there sleeping normally. Then I started to move, I woke up sitting on my bed. Eyes wide open. It was a cold stare looking straight into the camera, which meant I was now looking at myself on the cam looking back at me. I just sat there on the bed staring and then there was this creepy smile. My heart was pounding hard. I was smiling, tilting my head left and right staring straight into the cam. Then it went static. Nothing but static. I fast forwarded to find nothing. I rewinded to play the same thing again even though I was scared to death. Nothing. More static. I could not find what I had just watched. My friend was shouting my name from below. I ignored him and switched off my cam and switched it on. This time, I could not find the file. My whole head started to feel heavy and I was palpitating. I could not find that video file. The last file I had recorded was some birthday party. I checked and rechecked. I removed the battery, put it on and tried again. Nothing at all. That video I had recorded of me sleeping was gone.
I was standing in shock when my friend slapped me on my back and bought me to reality. He shouted asking me what was taking so long. I just handed him the cam saying nothing. He was in a hurry. He snatched it, called me a weirdo and left. I just stood there not knowing what to do. I opened my laptop and played the video that I had recorded. I played it for a while, then in fast motion. But it was normal. It had recorded everything till the last minute until the moment I woke up and stopped recording.
Till date, I have no idea what I saw. But when I think of that creepy face of mine smiling, it gives me the jitters. I would easily dismiss this as a hallucination. But I was not drunk, I was normal on that day and seriously, it scared the shit out of me. Everyday I go to bed dreading to fall asleep. And I never turn off the lights. Never.
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