Which is scarier! Seeing or hearing?

[CactiComplex]

Hearing, definitely. Any hallucinations I've had in the past have been visual rather and auditory, and they scared me less and less every time. It was unnerving, sure, but not scary. Hearing, however, well... as many other posters have said, your imagination will quite happily lead you down a far more terrifying path if you can only hear these things.

 

[Kruptos]

I'd say hearing. When you see the problem, your mind understands what it is. It becomes less frightening. When you hear it, you don't know if there's a problem at all. Or how large it is. And most importantly, how to deal with it.

You see an ugly monster coming towards you, you know the problem. You know how you would deal with it. However you can't because you can't move. So the fear is simple and straightforward. Also you might dismiss the information you see with the fact that ugly monsters don't exist.

You hear unnerving sounds from the kitchen? You don't know what it is. It might be your pet. You get paranoid. You hear that something is possibly coming to you? You get terrified. And you have no idea if this is real or not since it's not impossible to actually have something movin in the kitchen.

Also i too get sleep paralysis from time to time. Always so funny to wake up to realise you'r still dreaming.

 

[sky14kemea]

Well it depends...hearing would be worse unless you didnt see it fully, like just something out of the corner of your eye, that would be worse than hearing something weird.

I've had things in the corner of my eyes sometimes. I agree those are kinda worse than seeing the full picture >_> 'cause you're thinking "Is it friendly or not? What the heck is it?!?".

 

[sky14kemea]

Sleep paralysis is identical, if not the same, to night terrors, right?

I had one once after I had previously gone 2 nights without sleep. It was easily the scariest experience of my life.

I woke up in the middle of my sleep cycle and I remember being really scared about something and tried to yell out for help but I could do anything. I had no control over my body except for breathing. When I finally got control back I rolled over and saw a guy sitting on the end of my bed holding a knife up in the air. Naturally I freaked out because it seemed so real. I jumped out of bed and booked it towards my door - which was closed. After the shock of running into my door I snapped out of it and slept with the light on.

Yeah they do sound like twins. :0 I have a friend on twitter who gets those as well when he hasn't had much sleep in a long time.

 

[Addicted2]

id say hearing things is scarier, the imagination can make up a lot more from noise then what i can see, this is probably linked to the dark being scary, which hinders sight, and the fact my eyes are not the best as it is.

and i have a question if you dont mind me asking, but does this sleep paralysis affect you every night?

Yeh, I'll go with hearing. If you keep hearing things you'll probably always be tense and emotionaly stressed.

 

[cptawesome]

Hearing scary things would most certainly be more terrifying.

I have this happen from time to time as well, and I get the hallucinations. However, I'm usually aware when it happens so I tend to take over my dreams and conquer the scary things. However, if i couldn't see what I was against...I dont know how I'd beat it.

this ties into games as well. Things like Dead Space don't really frighten me, especially not the gore. However, Limbo scareS the shit out of me. Just hearing the spider come after the little boy made me scream "HOP FASTER YOU LITTLE BASTARD! YOU CAN DO IT! RUN!!!!" I can't play that game for extended periods of time at all.

 

[Blitzwarp]

Hearing things, definitely, because I have an over-active imagination that can take any sound in the night and run with it. D:

 

[Iskra25]

Hearing things is definitely more terrifying.

I actually had this happen to me once. I woke up in the middle of the night, feeling tense. I felt helpless because I could not move anything. And then I heard all these weird noises- but there was nothing there- just a hallucination. Naturally I wanted to scream but I couldn't. I freaked out- jerked myself out of bed. Brrrrr

 

[King of Wei]

I'd say hearing is scarier. With sight, you can see what is there and can at least attempt to analyze what you're seeing. But with hearing, you have no freakin idea what it is that's making any given noise, then if you're like me, your imagination goes wild with "worst case scenario" possibilities and just makes the whole situation much, much worse.

On a side note, experience sleep paralysis on a regular basis and never had any type of hallucination. If I start getting them now I'm gonna be a little pissed off.

 

[joe90]

Hearing is probably worse IMO...
harder to judge distance, and your imagination can create a worst case scenario that scares you the most

 

[AwesomeExpress]

I'd say.. it's scarier to hear it, cause then your imagination takes over, whereas if you see it.. it'd depend on what it was for it to be scarier or not..