Although highly characterized as hearing voices and seeing shadows, there are several types of hallucinations. Keep in mind that the
examples on this page are just the common examples, in theory, anyone can hallucinate practically anything.
These include hearing things that aren't there. These are like voices (the common stereotype is that voices are inside your head, but
really, auditory hallucination voices would be heard outside your head). Voices can be positive but are commonly negative, they can
be mumbling/whispers/indistinct conversations or laughter as well. They can be someone known to the person or not. There is also
hearing hums and rhythmic sounds and random noises, like an alarm or notification or cat meowing.
These include seeing things that aren't there. Nearly all visual hallucinations can be classified into distortions of size, shape, and/or
colour. The popular stereotype for this one is shadow people and monsters, but you can also see weird shapes and colours in your
vision. Visual snow syndrome is a constant visual hallucination of a static overlay over your vision. Sometimes people see things like
bugs or random objects; personally, I've seen walls and ceilings move before.
These include feeling things that aren't there. Common ones are bugs crawling on one's skin, or hands touching you that aren't there.
Sometimes, there are feelings of organs shifting or something turning around in their stomach or skull, or feeling something inside
your body trying to get out of it.
These include smelling things that aren't there. It's not impossible for this to be a pleasant smell like flowers or perfume or freshly
baked sweets, but they're very commonly unpleasant and weird, like garbage, smoke, burning rubber, rotting food, burnt toast,
chemicals, a metallic odor, or a moldy or stale smell. Sometimes people can't identify the smell. Sometimes the smells linger, or they
go in and out.
These include tasting things that aren't actually there, commonly rot or poison or a strong metallic taste. Another example is a
strong sweet taste like molten sugar. Sometimes they're described in terms of taste (bitter, sour, sweet, disgusting) but can be
more specific like chloroform, charcoal, tobacco, rusty iron, blood, sperm, bile, garlic, grilled, peanuts, oysters, or mussels.
These include feeling your body or the room moving when it isn't. People with Parkinson's have reported feeling sensations like flying
or floating. They can also include feeling the room move when it isn't, or out of body sensations. One that I experience is that the
world moves around like an elevator or treadmill. They can also include imagined sensations, like a feeling of bliss. These
hallucinations can be called tactile hallucinations as well most of the time.
*I'm not sure on the name because they're never referred to as synonyms directly, but from what I've seen they refer to the same kinds of hallucinatinons.
These include feeling that someone is in the room with you, is nearby, or is standing behind you.
These are hallucinations which occur when you're waking up (hypnapompic) or falling asleep (hypnagogic.) They're considered normal
and aren't a cause for concern, but may be more common in people with certain sleep disorders (for hypnapompic hallucinations.)
Hypnagogic hallucinations are mainly visual, but you could hallucinate anything in theory.
Illusions are like a "lesser" form of hallucination. Whereas hallucinations involve perceiving something that's not there, illusions are
misperceiving something that is there. For example, it's common for humans to see faces where there are none due to pattern-
seeking. Illusions may also be things mistaking running water for a voice, and there are also various bodily illusions like feeling like
you are lacking an arm or that you are not in control of your body.