You are not alone - it's called sleep paralysis.
It comes in varying degrees, most common is you feel someone kneeling on your chest you wake up, eyes open but are completely paralyzed & something is kneeling on your chest. Some people get it when falling asleep and some when waking up. Usually no more that 1 once a night but I once got up to 8 times in 1 night & the worlds leading expert in it said this was unheard of.
I will get it is I use some sort of benzo as a sleep aid - I used to do that to combat jet lag - if I take Valium or Xanax for 5 nights straight, the 6th night is literally a living nightmare.
One night, I woke up and I heard footsteps in my living room. I was paralyzed, I managed to get out of the paralysis by wiggling my fingers. I jumped out of bed to the bedroom door & put my hand on the handle. At that point I glanced back towards the bed and saw I was still in it. Immediately, the real me jumped out of bed, to the door as if it was a reflex and then into the living room where no-one was pacing about. That happened 8 times in 1 night & every time it was terrifying. To this day, I still can't figure out which of the 2 of me in that room were the physical one when I was looking at myself on the bed.
Now I'm used to it, I just go with it. When it happens, just remember it's just the sleep paralysis, relax, don't fight it. After a while you kind of float off - as if you are having an out of body experience. You can literally float around your house. It is most weird.
When you dream about running, there's a reason you don't scramble around the bed - it's because when you are asleep, the brain disconnects from the body in a sense. Voluntary movement isn't possible at that point (sleepwalkers are a different matter) which is why the voluntary movements don't translate from your dreams to your body. In sleep paralysis you wake up and your brain doesn't reconnect immediately. This is enough to confuse anyone which is my guess as to why you have the bizarre hallucinations.
Either that or it's a flashback to the days when LSD was $3 a tab and the cheapest form of entertainment around.
If you want, I can dig out the doctors name - she's pretty much the only expert on it & she likes to hear from sufferers.
