Weird thing happened after watching Emily Rose

[scoobysoo]

Wasn't sure whether to post this here or Body and Soul, so forgive me if I've made the wrong choice. I just wanted to run something past you good people. Last night I watched The Exorcism Of Emily Rose, which I enjoyed but found quite scary. Part of the story involves key characters waking up at 3am every morning...and I woke up at 3am this morning! Now, I'm not suggesting anything supernatural, but how can the mind make you wake up at a certain time? Has anyone had a similar experience?

[snook]

Well I've always used a simple method of waking up at a preordained time, and it works for me. It came about after reading Pat Reid's book, The Colditz Story, while I was still at school. Pat was in charges of escape attempts and he had to wake up at a set time during the night and get everybody else up (the ones involved in the escape attempt). He had to make the most of the times available, taking into account guards changing and moonrise and so on. Oh, and no alarm clocks around of course (too noisy anyway!).

He used to tap his head against the pillow three times, if he needed to get up at 3 a.m. Sounds too easy, I thought, so I tried it and it worked. The weird thing is how accurate it can be, I mean to the exact minute.

I've used it time and again, and found that just visualising getting up and seeing that time on the clock does the trick too. It seems the brain has an inbuilt clock (like a computer, I suppose) and is aware of the time, even when you're asleep.

I guess what you did was imagine getting up at three o'clock, like in the film, and that was enough to do the trick. Nothing supernatural about it, but still weird!

[Morrisonker]

If I have something I have to be up early for, at an unsual time like going on holiday I always wake up about 3 minutes before my alarm, and I mean always. Maybe it works in a similar way.