Maybe it's just the elves

July 31, 2013 8:45 PM

Several times a week, I'll see some movement out of the corner of my eye. Usually it seems like something smallish and gray is moving about there. I turn, thinking it's a cat or squirrel or some other small animal, and nothing's there. I'm wondering if I should be worried about it, or if this type of mild hallucination (?) is common.

I'm in my thirties, in good health as far as I know. I do wear glasses but am seeing these things outside of the range of the lens. It's always very indistinct--usually if I'm at home when this happens I assume it's one of the cats walking into the room and turn to look and...nothing. It doesn't bother me all that much, but at the same time it's kind of weird. It usually happens when I'm really tired, so I'm wondering if it's a hypnagogic-type thing--like maybe I'm going into a microsleep while sitting at the kitchen table or whatnot.

Googling hasn't seemed to yield much info, and I was just curious if this happens to other people a lot, or if it might be a sign of something I should be concerned about. I'm not sure when it started, but I've been pretty conscious of it for the last several months.

Thanks!

posted by whistle pig to Health & Fitness (30 answers total)

If you're in trouble, so am I. Happens to me all the time, except instead of cats and squirrels, I see phantom spiders scurrying off in my peripheral vision. Only happens when I'm wearing my reading glasses.
posted by HotToddy at 8:48 PM on July 31, 2013 [1 favorite]

Eye floaters? (I have a ton of them, and so they're usually in my main field of vision, but sometimes I notice them on the periphery like you describe.)
posted by scody at 8:49 PM on July 31, 2013 [11 favorites]

I've had this for as long as I can remember. I find it's pretty reliably correlated with sleep deprivation... the tireder I am, the bigger the animals. First bugs, then cats, then coyotes.
posted by town of cats at 8:51 PM on July 31, 2013 [3 favorites]

Totally sounds like eye floaters. The only advice I can give is to spend a lot of time in front of a microscope, they'll make whatever you're trying to do a pain in the ass, but you'll get to know them quite well. To deal with them just step back, focus on nothing in particular, and blink a bunch for about 10 seconds. They should go away or at least rearrange themselves into a less annoying pattern.
posted by Blasdelb at 8:56 PM on July 31, 2013

If this is happening indoors in your house then you might have a mouse friend? Although presumably your cats would have noticed it by now.
posted by elizardbits at 8:56 PM on July 31, 2013 [3 favorites]

This type of thing happens to me a lot when I've been particularly sleep deprived, though I'm not sure whether it's something hypnagogic or whether I'm just being scared awake by my own eyelids/eyelashes as I fall into a microsleep. It seems pretty normal and not really something to worry about, but if you're very concerned about this, ask your eye doctor about it.
posted by jdgreen at 9:00 PM on July 31, 2013

It happens to me regularly-ish (though I have cats, so I generally assume it's one of them), and I notice it increases a lot with increased caffeine consumption.
posted by jaguar at 9:01 PM on July 31, 2013 [1 favorite]

I get this too, and it isn't floaters (I see them too). I just assume I'm a bit sleep deprived or moody or something, and I've been seeing them since my teens, so presumably I'm not about to explode or anything.

But sometimes it *is* a mouse!
posted by Kaleidoscope at 9:59 PM on July 31, 2013 [3 favorites]

I realize you're not necessarily talking about seeing people so this isn't a direct answer, but I've been meaning to find a short story I read as a kid about someone who keeps seeing mysterious humanoid beings out of the corner of his eyes, and ultimately learns that they are earth's original inhabitants (or something like that?)

It turns out that is a pretty common trope in ghost and other fiction generally under the rubrik of Shadow People. "At first, they appear only out of the corner of your eye, furtively darting out of view when you turn to look straight at them, but are now gone. Did you really see them?"

And if you google "why do I keep seeing things in the corner of my eye" there's about 15 million hits and lots of related suggestions. Of course, there's no consensus on the explanation - ghosts seems to be most popular so that may be your answer. But in any case its clearly (?) a pretty common phenomenon.
posted by RandlePatrickMcMurphy at 10:17 PM on July 31, 2013 [1 favorite]

My experience is exactly the same as what town of cats wrote. It happens to me more with sleep deprivation.
posted by seasparrow at 11:21 PM on July 31, 2013

Along with Shadow People, I think the Doctor Who monsters The Silence are based on this phenomenon, too. Basically, The Silence are everywhere, and the second you don't see them, you forget you saw them or that they exist.

My friend call's them, "No See'ums!"

Come to think of it, he's an executive restaurant chef, so he focuses on plates and plating intently during service, and naturally, also fits the definition of sleep deprivation:))

Personally, because I once lived with an actual ghost for a while in the way back, even when I am sleep deprived and such, I do a mental exercise and "clear" my living space periodically.

Sure it's bullshit, but after having a ghost for a roommate, mentally locking down my space from unwanted whatevers seems to work. Certainly, this easy 5 second mental exercise makes me feel better.

I'm not advocating the paranormal, but I'm pretty sure The Silence exists, so eff them!
posted by jbenben at 11:25 PM on July 31, 2013 [1 favorite]

I think this is definitely related to sleep deprivation. One of the first things that happens to me if I miss a night of sleep is my perception of depth, speed, and movement starting to feel awry.
posted by threeants at 12:15 AM on August 1, 2013

Nthing that this is a common experience. I also think it's floaters and then when they appear in the corner of your eye, your brain kindly supplies you with more of a distinct sense of a "some THING running past" than when the bits simply float across the front of your visual field. Floaters do increase with age and it first began to happen to me in my 30s. The first times it happened I was a bit confused and mentioned it to a friend, who said, "Oh, you saw the Black Scottie Dog." The Black Scottie Dog now lives in the corners of my house with several of her shy Black Scottie puppies...
While I do think it's floaters in my case, it's worth noting that sometimes visual migraines also cause weird tricks of vision. You don't need to even have a headache.
posted by third rail at 12:19 AM on August 1, 2013 [3 favorites]

Sometimes I have that experience. Anti-depressants helped with that. BTW, a good quarter sized spider I thought I'd hallucinated, and therefore reported to my shrink a few years ago turned out to be real, so in an untired time, check things out.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 12:59 AM on August 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

This is extremely common if you're sleep deprived.
posted by empath at 2:13 AM on August 1, 2013

Response by poster: Tiredness+caffeine seems to bring it on, so I'm thinking it's just a function of that. (Though it could be floaters, mice, spiders or coyotes as well.)

I'm glad it's not just me.
posted by whistle pig at 4:20 AM on August 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

Reading this thread and sympathizing with this phenomenon has made me realize that I'm probably sleep deprived. And drinking too much caffeine.
posted by Kronur at 6:08 AM on August 1, 2013 [2 favorites]

I also get this frequently, from little bug sized fuzzies to what I thought were dogs or cats. Happens in the unfocused area behind a book when I'm reading, too. I drink a lot of coffee and am often tired.
posted by postcommunism at 6:23 AM on August 1, 2013

All the time. Definitely happens more with less sleep/more caffeine.
posted by dizziest at 7:23 AM on August 1, 2013

If this is happening indoors in your house then you might have a mouse friend?

In two different houses I have experienced this phenomenon. Both times I started seeing things darting away out of the corner of my eyes, and a few days later encountered the mice that were there all along.
posted by grog at 7:46 AM on August 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

This is one of my precursor signs for an incoming migraine headache (eta 4-6 hrs) and precedes other visual disturbances. If you don't suffer from migraines, it's more likely the caffeine/fatigue.
posted by bookdragoness at 8:21 AM on August 1, 2013

A not-uncommon experience, I think it's triggered other science-fiction than Doctor Who, hope somebody chimes in here with the name of that story about it which I can't quite recall.
posted by Rash at 8:34 AM on August 1, 2013

I asked my friend if he ever sees birds flying around inside his house, out of the corner of his eye. His response was "oh yeah, mind bats!"

Turns out he was just messin' with me, but "mind bats" stuck.

I haven't noticed any correlation with caffeine or tiredness. But I assume this phenomenon is normal.
posted by MonsieurBon at 9:59 AM on August 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

"Mind Bats," "the Black Scottie Dog," or "No See-Ums"--I just can't decide which is more delightful!
posted by HotToddy at 10:27 AM on August 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

If I take the time to track down the weird motion I glimpsed, it will sometimes be a reflection off something shiny, or I won't be able to figure it out. It seems to happen more as I get oooolllld. Maybe I should just name some Shadow People, and enjoy the company.
posted by theora55 at 11:09 AM on August 1, 2013

But you do 'see um' -- and actually, teeny insects called midges are known as "no-see-ums" (may be regional).
posted by Rash at 11:15 AM on August 1, 2013

Do you know at one point I was seeing these every evening in the sitting room. We have an old house, not very smart and at times we have had mice - but not this time. We had bare floorboards at the time and I swear I regularly saw drifts of things scuttling across the floor into the corners. Then I mentioned them to my husband and it turned out he was seeing them too! We called them the ghost mice.

Then we got a carpet and gradually the ghost mice dissipated.
posted by glasseyes at 1:57 PM on August 1, 2013

I see stuff like this every once in a while too.

Sometimes it's floaters. They get accelerated by head/eye turning but then they also have inertia and continue to move. So when you become aware of one that's already near the edge of your field of vision and you turn your head or your eyes in that direction the floaters start moving that way too on top of moving with your head/eyes. When your head/eyes stop the floaters don't and overshoot for a bit. So they exit your field of vision.

Sometimes it's migraine artifacts. I don't actually get migraine headaches but every once in a while I do experience the typical iridescent visual artifacts. Mostly they're fairly static, just morphing in place, but sometimes they come and go creating the illusion of peripheral movement.

Sometimes when I'm tired it feels like the error rate of my brain interpreting visual stimuli starts to go up and stuff happening in my peripheral vision becomes... erratic. Keep in mind that you don't see through your eyes in the same way that a sensor sees through a camera lens. There is lots of filtering and processing going on before the data even reaches your brain. Data from the periphery is generally mostly scanned for movement afaik. When you're tired and those bits don't work as well you'll get a lot of false positives.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 3:58 PM on August 1, 2013 [1 favorite]

But you do 'see um'

Not when you turn your head!
posted by HotToddy at 7:16 PM on August 1, 2013

I have this problem a lot when I'm driving home at night. I work swing and live in a rural area so I'm driving home at midnight and am ultra-afraid that I'm going to hit an animal. So any little movement or light spot in the shadows or plant material blowing around, I am convinced is some furry creature about to leap to it's death in front of me. It makes sense to me that tiredness/caffeine would make it worse.

I also get this at home - sometimes it has actually been a mouse so I'm always hyper-aware of potential movement. When we don't have a mouse problem, sometimes I think it must be some sort of reflection from the television on the window.

I'm always expecting movement in both situations, so I think my brain is just messing with me a bit.
posted by Beti at 3:35 PM on August 3, 2013