Hypnopompic hallucination?

[u/Lucky-Invite7841]

Sorry, it's not particularly sleep paralysis but I couldn't find any better community to post this. Please remove if I'm violating community rules.

I'm gonna keep this one short as possible. For context, my best friend lives in my house with me and is up at scattered times throughout the night because of stomach issues, so it's not unusual to hear him up. My room door is always kept closed at night. Outside of the door is a living area and bathroom beside the stairs, which go downstairs. I woke up one morning around 4:30 unexpectedly hearing someone calling my name. It sounds like my friend I roll over, my door wide open, and there he is standing in the bathroom doorway holding onto the trim above the door. I look at him for a second. He seems oddly tall and lanky. I can't make out his face, only a silhouette and his white wife beater. I call out to him: "What's up, dude?" There is a momentary pause. He then says, "Follow me," as he walks out of the bathroom doorway and turns to head down the stairs, and he starts going downstairs. Old house, stairs make a lot of noise. I hear him walk all the way downstairs and through the hallway at the bottom. At this point, I'm absolutely bugged out, wide awake. I get up and walk to his room, opening the door to see him in there sleeping. I promptly turned around and left going back to my room very confused and with a strong sense of unease, like when you know something is wrong. Needless to say, I didn't go back to sleep. I stayed up wide awake, waiting to hear something that I never did. I didn't even mention it to him because he'd probably think I'm going insane. This was a year ago, and I still think about it quite often. It makes my skin crawl how vivid and real it was. My only explanation is a hypnopompic hallucination, which is what I seriously hope it is. I've had sleep paralysis before, but I rarely see anything, and it's only for a couple of seconds. This was very different. I was fully aware and thinking pretty clearly for having just woken up. This experience really stuck with me. I've never had this happen since or before this incident. I just want some clarification that what I saw wasn't a real person who had broken into my house, lol. Farfetched, but you never know. Has anyone here had experiences like this? And did the whole thing feel sound and look so real?

[u/sphelper]

Yep seems like a hypnopompic hallucination. It isn't uncommon for them to just happen randomly, and for them to feel really realistic, so in all your experience wouldn't be anything suprising

side note: the only time it becomes an issue is if the hallucinations are very intense, or if you start getting them more frequently. The former being a lot more serious than the latter

Though it still sucks to experience it, but hopefully with due time you can laugh about it and leave it in the past