I Was Asleep Last Night And Woke Up Because I

I was asleep last night and woke up because i felt what i thought was water coming from my ear but it was blood i havent used a qtip before bleeding started and ive had no injury to that eat so as im holding tissue to my ear my daughter looks at it and there are small clots of blood on tissue we cleaned it up and put cotton so i wouldnt get blood everywhere when i woke up i changed cotton and it had a good amount of blood now i was removing cotton and it came out with a bigger clot of blood on it maybe about the size of a pencile eraser what can cause this