There was that knocking

Last night’s dreams were fragmented and (at this point in time, several hours after waking) are mostly unremembered. However, one remains very clearly in mind. Actually, I’m not 100% convinced it was a dream.

Lucid dreams can often be categorized as hallucinations, and hallucinations can take many forms.

Last night at 03:00 hours (I’d just drifted off to sleep approximately half an hour earlier, at 02:30) I woke to the sound of five sharp knocks on my front door. My eyes popped wide open, but I lay still, waiting to hear what might come next. If someone really wanted to wake me, they’d knock again, and maybe announce their presence, or call out to me. But I heard nothing more.

For those who don’t know, I live in a residential hotel with a “secured” front door. No one can get in this locked building unless he’s “keyed in” a security number at the front door or has been “buzzed in” by a resident inside.

When I hear an unexpected knock in the middle of the night I’m much more likely to reach for a gun than answer the door. We do live in the real world, ya’ know.

So I waited after those five sharp knocks at 03:00, but heard nothing more. There were no more knocks on my door, no knocks on any other doors in my hallway. No one “tried” my front door knob. There was no sound of voices out in the hallway, and no sound of footsteps or movement of any kind.

Was there someone out in the hallway knocking at my door? Honestly, I don’t know. At this point in time, I’m tending to think that the five sharp knocks were something like an auditory hallucination, or an extremely realistic sound-enabled, semi-lucid dream.