Waking to the Sound of a Loud Boom

This is not a regularly scheduled entry, but it is something I wanted to get out and onto the blog today.

I was violently awakened in the middle of the night by the sound of what sure seemed like a shotgun blast in my front yard. I glanced at the clock: not long past two. It was so "real" that I even heard the echo of the report rippling outward from my location to the far edges of the valley.

I got up and spent about ten minutes peeking out the bedroom window and going room to room, attempting to ascertain whether there really had been some form of explosion or firearm discharge in my immediate area. All that existed was a dead, silent calm. No neighbors' lights on, nothing out of the ordinary. Nor did I notice any patrol activity afterward.

The rest of the household had slept through it, which I began to process as odd, since the sound had literally made me jump up in bed. I am leaning toward an explanation that has to do with me being violently and suddenly snapped back from the astral into my physical body.

Perhaps there was something in my dream state that connected to the boom. Maybe the abrupt exit from the dream gave my mind the impression that a boom had occurred in physical reality?

This has happened before, but never has it been so loud and so seemingly "real." I have since learned that there is a name for this (an exploding head sensation, of all things) and that it is not uncommon. Naming it does not explain it. But it is one more piece of evidence that the boundary between sleep and waking is far less solid than we are told.

I would be curious to hear if anyone else has experienced such occurrences, and what theories they might have.

Part of V. Contact and Beyond