What counts as an area-of-effect experience?

I’d separate what was experienced from what it might mean. The report includes a sound, a strong sense of motion, changing figures, and a shift between being awake and asleep. “Area of effect” could mean a perceived influence extending across a space, but this account sounds more like a sequence unfolding in someone’s perception. The label is not very precise on its own.

If someone is trying to make sense of an episode, noting when it began, how awake they felt, how long it seemed to last, and what interrupted it gives more to work with than picking an explanation immediately.

Sleep timing seems worth noting here. Vivid imagery and sounds can happen around the transition into sleep, and a person may feel partly awake while experiencing them. That doesn’t prove this was a sleep-related event, but it’s a useful possibility to keep alongside other interpretations.

The heat, late physical work, nervousness, and unusual hunger are also context, not proof of a cause. A simple log of sleep, stress, surroundings, and any repeated episodes could show whether there’s a pattern.

For me, the most interesting part of the description is that each figure seemed to replace the last, with a brief greeting at each transition. Some people might use “area of effect” for a perceived presence or influence that seems to involve more than one person or a wider place. Others may use it differently, so I wouldn’t treat the term as a settled category.

It’s fine to describe the experience in vivid terms without deciding whether the figures were external, dream imagery, or something else. The interruption by the alarm is a clear detail; the meaning of the experience is less certain.