Ok, so I have this friend who believes in ghosts

[moe darklight]

Ok, so I have this friend who believes in ghosts. I, on the other hand, neither believe nor disbelieve in ghosts or spirits; all I said was that there has not yet been any scientific evidence proving their existence, so I'm neutral.

So he says that (I think he said back in the 70's) there was a famous case of this woman who was repeatedly raped by spirits, and that it was investigated and even filmed and no one could come up with an explanation of what was happening on the tapes.

I haven't heard of this case, but he says it's well known... anyone know what case he was talking about and if there is any truth in this? ...

I usually find that the best "evidence" for paranormal activity comes from either people who are visibly insane, naive and credulous, or are making money out of convincing others of the existence of ghosts.

 

[ptabor]

he's referring to a movie entitled "The Entity".

I don't know the factual basis behind the movie. At the climax they end up freezing the entity in liquid nitrogen - so I think it's probably just as made up as the Amityville story.

 

[moe darklight]

he's referring to a movie entitled "The Entity".

I don't know the factual basis behind the movie. At the climax they end up freezing the entity in liquid nitrogen - so I think it's probably just as made up as the Amityville story.

O god, not another one of the those "based on a true story" ghost movies.

Now on to my next question: why are people so gullible?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Someone here once posted a link to the actual story that was used as the springboard for "The Entity". It was very long and I only read about half of it, but it seemed to be a case of two journalists trying to put the most plausible spin possible on the reports of a woman who was either borderline mentally ill, or , perhaps, pathologically attention seeking. None of the "evidence" they had was incontrovertable or any more plausible than what you see on the ghosthunter show.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Zooby already knows this story, but I know for a fact that there are real events that people preceive as ghostly encounters. My wife and I experienced what many people would call a haunting, and it was absolutely real. Among other things, we each experienced a physical force acting on the bed; in my case, like someone sitting on the edge of the bed between my feet.

I can't prove what I say, nor do I have any idea what it was, but it was real. Neither of us had or have experienced anything like it, before or since.

 

[moe darklight]

Zooby already knows this story, but I know for a fact that there are real events that people preceive as ghostly encounters. My wife and I experienced what many people would call a haunting, and it was absolutely real. Among other things, we each experienced a physical force acting on the bed; in my case, like someone sitting on the edge of the bed between my feet.

I can't prove what I say, nor do I have any idea what it was, but it was real. Neither of us had or have experienced anything like it, before or since.

I hear stories like that a lot, and from people who would have no reason to lie. I tend to think that, when something is unexplainable, it simply hasn't been explained: not "supernatural". An ipod would have been the spookiest, most unexplainable freaking thing to Isaac Newton, probably enough to make him go nuts about the musical spirits possessing this tiny box.

I do find shared "perceptual distortions" fascinating though. The best example I can think of is that on certain hallucinogens, two or more people can share hallucinations or thought patterns (without verbal communication, of course ).
This doesn't necessarily mean that they are having a "psychic" or "spiritual" experience; it may simply be that there is some line of communication or information transmission that we haven't yet discovered. Who knows. But I can't help but be a little skeptic when people start talking about electromagnetic ghost-meters or dead girls who say their name is "Annie... Ann... Alicia.. it's some sort of name that start with an A!" spoooky those TV shows crack me up... I like how they always have the green night cam effect going, as if ghosts have some sort of preference over infrared light.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I do find shared "perceptual distortions" fascinating though.

We had separate experiences with the "bed sitting". But there was an intense odor like flowers that we would both notice at times; that would suddenly fill the room for a minute or two, and then go just as quickly [in a closed system]. This was also quite a mystery.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I do find shared "perceptual distortions" fascinating though. The best example I can think of is that on certain hallucinogens, two or more people can share hallucinations or thought patterns (without verbal communication, of course ).

I have heard of these experiences and they seem to be related to a particular hallucinogen. Can't remember if it's mushrooms or mescaline. Regardless, there seem to be a lot of anecdotal indications that, under the right circumstances one mind can somehow impinge what it is experiencing onto another mind.

This has been identified in non-drug related circumstances in instances of shared mental illness between family members known as folie a deux. If an influential member of a family suffers hallucinations, say a parent, they can influence other family members to have the same hallucinations, particularly children. I think something like this was happening in the family that was the basis for "The Entity", and probably also the family that became so well known in "The Amityville Horror."

Personally, I prefer to keep my hallucinations to myself.

 

[zoobyshoe]

We had separate experiences with the "bed sitting". But there was an intense odor like flowers that we would both notice at times; that would suddenly fill the room for a minute or two, and then go just as quickly [in a closed system]. This was also quite a mystery.

I'm certain something way out of the ordinary was going on here, but it's impossible to say specifically what it was. Not that you're doing this here, but I think it's important not to assume it was a "ghost": the disembodied spirit of a dead person. It might well be something just as remarkable, who knows, but the explanation of "ghost" is simply the current cultural catch-all for this kind of thing and shouldn't be settled on because it's at hand and convenient.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I'm certain something way out of the ordinary was going on here, but it's impossible to say specifically what it was. Not that you're doing this here, but I think it's important not to assume it was a "ghost": the disembodied spirit of a dead person. It might well be something just as remarkable, who knows, but the explanation of "ghost" is simply the current cultural catch-all for this kind of thing and shouldn't be settled on because it's at hand and convenient.

I agree completely. We heard no voice from the beyond, nor did we see a disembodied spirit... I was even willing to consider that we experienced some kind of seismic related, EM induced hallucination [being that we lived above a fault].

In the end I have as much certainty that these events were real as I have that I'm sitting here now, but I have no idea what the source of this experience might have been. It certainly fits the bill as a haunting, but I really have no idea what that means.

It did have a permanent impact on my life. Never again could a listen to such a story told by an apparently sincere and respectable person or persons, and completely dismiss it.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I have heard of these experiences and they seem to be related to a particular hallucinogen. Can't remember if it's mushrooms or mescaline. Regardless, there seem to be a lot of anecdotal indications that, under the right circumstances one mind can somehow impinge what it is experiencing onto another mind.

This has been identified in non-drug related circumstances in instances of shared mental illness between family members known as folie a deux. If an influential member of a family suffers hallucinations, say a parent, they can influence other family members to have the same hallucinations, particularly children. I think something like this was happening in the family that was the basis for "The Entity", and probably also the family that became so well known in "The Amityville Horror."

Personally, I prefer to keep my hallucinations to myself.

I can say with absolute certainty that these situations don't apply to our case - the key point being that Tsu had an experience similar to mine, but without knowing about mine. IIRC, hers happened about a month after my "bed sitting", and both in situations when we were alone.

After her bed experience we first experienced the smell. We would both notice it at the same time as it was rather intense - pleasant, but strong. This happened about a dozen times or more; maybe as many as twenty times over a period of about eighteen months or so. And of course I spent a good amount of time trying to identify a source for the odor, or at least thinking about, but I could never think of a plausible explanation. I imagined that a neighbor below might be running an apartment based flower business, but once the smell was in our apartment, without opening the windows there was no way for the odor to escape! That was the really perplexing part of it. And sometimes we would notice it early in the evening in the kitchen or livingroom, and sometimes at 2AM in the bedroom. If you could smell it in the livingroom, you couldn't smell it in the bedroom... so none of this made any sense at all.

When I heard about Persinger's work and connected the dots to earth-lights and seismic activity, it did make me wonder if this could have been some false perception related to seismic related phenomena. But this would only make sense to me in regards to the smell. I see no logical connection between that and the bed episodes due to the nature of the events. Of course, there really is no direct connection between the bed episodes and the smell. That was a subjective call on our part which shows clear bias at that point. We couldn't help but think that one might be related to the other due to the stories of common hauntings.

The bed thing only happened once to each of us.

 

[Evo]

I have to back Ivan up here. I myself have had an unexplainable encounter. Middle of the day, taking my daughter's laundry into her bedroom.

I also had 2 years of unexplained phenomena in my house while my youngest daughter was between 12 and 14 years old. It got so bad that my older daughter was so frightened that she decided to go live with her father and when she came to my house, she would stand on the front porch to talk to me, she was too afraid to come back into the house.

Everything stopped abruptly a few years ago and has been normal ever since.

We had all been experiencing these weird things for awhile before we ever dared to share it with each other, so there were no "suggestions" being given.

 

[moe darklight]

you guys are scaring me now! I'm sleeping with the lights on tonight!

Other than the experience I mentioned before (which, due to the circumstances, even though hallucinogens were involved, could not have been a case of folie a deux), I've only had two "weird' experiences of the sort. But, while they are interesting, I still file it under "unexplained" and not under "paranormal."

Maybe I'm a die-hard skeptic— so much so that I don't even trust my own senses. But senses are easily fooled and influenced (as the McGurk effect thread has shown us)... or, who knows, maybe it isn't just a hallucination after all, maybe it is something that is actually happening. That still doesn't mean that, whatever it is, it's a ghost or something magical, it could just be a natural phenomenon we haven't yet explained.
Maybe our brain just doesn't know how to process the event, and creates these ideas of ghosts or spirits.

And if (and this is a big if) ghosts or spirits or whatever do exist, then I'm sure a scientific explanation lies therein as well: nothing that exists in nature can defy the laws of nature.

I think that the sad part is that the image or reputation of those doing real, scientific, objective research on such unexplained phenomena, is marred by all these quacks with spirit crystals and ghost-meters. Because I do think that these experiences are fascinating, but it's really hard to find credible research/books/documentaries on it.

 

[Evo]

are[/I] easily fooled and influenced (as the McGurk effect thread has shown us)... or, who knows, maybe it isn't just a hallucination after all, maybe it is something that is actually happening. That still doesn't mean that, whatever it is, it's a ghost or something magical, it could just be a natural phenomenon we haven't yet explained.

I honestly don't know what we experienced. I'm sure that an explanation will someday be found. We don't live too far from high power electrical lines. Looking into similar phenomena, I've found similar reports from people that lived close to such lines. I live very cloae to the electric plant and there is a huge group of towers near me and the lines going out of it are near me.

 

[zoobyshoe]

General remark about dismissing the explanation of hallucination based on the quality of the experience:


I know a 19 year old girl here who is the daughter of a tweaker and who was, in fact, born while her mother was on methamphetamines. She, herself, started doing all varieties of drugs at a young age: pot, ecstasy, L.S.D., mushrooms, speed, coke, you name it.

Now, out of nowhere, she occasionally enters into what might be called "phantom side-branches of reality". She experiences very realistic, full blown, multisensory hallucinations whose content is completely plausible, albeit usually extreme. Example:

She told me she was once sitting in a bathroom stall in a public building and had propped her purse against the door pillar in front of her. She heard someone else come into the restroom, and stop in front of her stall. Then she saw a girls hand reach in under the door and grab her purse.

Quickly, she pulled her jeans up, burst out of the stall, and caught the thief, another teenage girl, by the hair and proceeded to batter her with her fist till she dropped the purse.

A split second later the whole scenario vanished and she was back sitting in the stall staring down at her purse on the floor in front of her where she'd originally put it. There was no one else in the bathroom.

The whole theft and beating never took place.

My conclusion about this, and many similar stories I've heard from other sources, is that, after certain kinds of prior "alterations" the brain can later spontaneously create full blown, completely realistic seeming scenarios, that, during the experience, are indistinguishable from normal reality. Hallucinations don't necessarily give themselves away, as people suppose they do. The girl who told me this story didn't consider this experience to be in the same class as all the drug induced hallucinations she knew she'd had, and also felt she could rule that out since she wasn't on drugs at the time.

So, my point is that hallucination can't be ruled out in any case based on the reporters assessment that the experience didn't have the quality of an hallucination. A guy I know who saw a giant white rabbit sitting in a vacant lot after four days of sleep deprivation told me he could see every detail of it with complete clarity down to individual strands of fur. The ONLY thing that tipped him off to it being an hallucination was its impossible size. Had he hallucinated a normal sized rabbit he would never have known or suspected it was an hallucination. Its sensory quality passed every test of reality as far as he was concerned.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I can say with absolute certainty that these situations don't apply to our case - the key point being that Tsu had an experience similar to mine, but without knowing about mine. IIRC, hers happened about a month after my "bed sitting", and both in situations when we were alone.

After her bed experience we first experienced the smell. We would both notice it at the same time as it was rather intense - pleasant, but strong. This happened about a dozen times or more; maybe as many as twenty times over a period of about eighteen months or so. And of course I spent a good amount of time trying to identify a source for the odor, or at least thinking about, but I could never think of a plausible explanation. I imagined that a neighbor below might be running an apartment based flower business, but once the smell was in our apartment, without opening the windows there was no way for the odor to escape! That was the really perplexing part of it. And sometimes we would notice it early in the evening in the kitchen or livingroom, and sometimes at 2AM in the bedroom. If you could smell it in the livingroom, you couldn't smell it in the bedroom... so none of this made any sense at all.

When I heard about Persinger's work and connected the dots to earth-lights and seismic activity, it did make me wonder if this could have been some false perception related to seismic related phenomena. But this would only make sense to me in regards to the smell. I see no logical connection between that and the bed episodes due to the nature of the events. Of course, there really is no direct connection between the bed episodes and the smell. That was a subjective call on our part which shows clear bias at that point. We couldn't help but think that one might be related to the other due to the stories of common hauntings.

The bed thing only happened once to each of us.

The smells don't perplex me so much since most perfumes are very powerful and linger on things for a long time. I was haunted for several months by the smell of perfume in my truck now and then when I got into it, here at the zoobie brush shelter. I quickly located the source of the smell as one of my hands and this was always after I'd grabbed the steering when to help me adjust my sitting position. Someone seemed to be applying perfume to my steering wheel now and then. The only point of that seemed to be its function as a prank, or possibly it was the action of a crazy person obeying command voices, who knows. Regardless, it was disconcerting.

After several months, though, I happened to adjust my glasses right after leaving the building and before getting into my truck, and I smelled the perfume. Thinking where I might have touched something perfumed I bent down and sniffed the doorknob, the last thing I'd touched. Sure enough, it reeked of perfume.

The whole time I'd actually been picking it up from the doorknob where it had been left by one of the female tenants (some kind of strongly scented hand lotion, I guess), and not the steering wheel at all. I had never happened to smell it on my hand before getting into my truck, though, and was erroneously ascribing the source to the steering wheel.

Although you looked for the source and couldn't find it, I still wouldn't rule out normal everyday perfume picked up by one or both of you from somewhere else in the building and carried into the apartment.

The bed sitting strikes me as very different. In the past you described the sensation as that of a 50 lb cat having jumped up in the bed and lied down leaving a visible depression in the bedclothes.

 

[zoobyshoe]

We had all been experiencing these weird things for awhile before we ever dared to share it with each other, so there were no "suggestions" being given.

Suggestions can be non-verbal, and in fact, non-verbal ones are better than verbal.

Here's an example: two people are in a room talking. Apparently just fidgeting or playing around, one of them roles up a magazine and puts a rubber band around it, then sets it down.

A month later the second person enters a different room in a different house and notices a magazine rolled up with a rubber band around it. Instantly, an image of the first person, the one who previously rolled up a magazine while they were conversing, enters their head, and they start recalling things about that conversation.

Or: you're talking to someone and suddenly you feel irritated and unhappy even though they haven't said anything upsetting. Examining the feeling, you realize that they have just leaned back against the wall and put the heel of one foot against the toe of the other just the way your evil Cousin Kevin used to do, and it's the triggered memory of him that is upsetting you.

Anything anyone associates with something else can function as a suggestion: sounds, placement of objects, smells, sensations on the skin, color of nail polish, the quality of lighting in a room, anything.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

you guys are scaring me now! I'm sleeping with the lights on tonight!

Other than the experience I mentioned before (which, due to the circumstances, even though hallucinogens were involved, could not have been a case of folie a deux), I've only had two "weird' experiences of the sort. But, while they are interesting, I still file it under "unexplained" and not under "paranormal."

Maybe I'm a die-hard skeptic— so much so that I don't even trust my own senses. But senses are easily fooled and influenced (as the McGurk effect thread has shown us)... or, who knows, maybe it isn't just a hallucination after all, maybe it is something that is actually happening. That still doesn't mean that, whatever it is, it's a ghost or something magical, it could just be a natural phenomenon we haven't yet explained.
Maybe our brain just doesn't know how to process the event, and creates these ideas of ghosts or spirits.

And if (and this is a big if) ghosts or spirits or whatever do exist, then I'm sure a scientific explanation lies therein as well: nothing that exists in nature can defy the laws of nature.

I think that the sad part is that the image or reputation of those doing real, scientific, objective research on such unexplained phenomena, is marred by all these quacks with spirit crystals and ghost-meters. Because I do think that these experiences are fascinating, but it's really hard to find credible research/books/documentaries on it.

Any rare, unpredicatable, and transient event is difficult to study. The problem is that unless it can be reproduced in the lab, there is really no way to verify any data that might be collected. I remember a team from UCLA that allegedly got a good video of toys moving around an empty room, in an allegedly haunted house. I saw the video and it showed what they said, but rather than being interpreted as evidences of "ghosts", it was interpreted as evidence that the team was not credible. I don't know how one can avoid this problem.

Another part of the problem is the stigma and defintions attached to events like these. I find both sides of the debate on claimed phenomena like ghosts and UFOs frustrating because both side blindly accept common labels that may not apply.

 

[Evo]

Suggestions can be non-verbal, and in fact, non-verbal ones are better than verbal.

Here's an example: two people are in a room talking. Apparently just fidgeting or playing around, one of them roles up a magazine and puts a rubber band around it, then sets it down.

A month later the second person enters a different room in a different house and notices a magazine rolled up with a rubber band around it. Instantly, an image of the first person, the one who previously rolled up a magazine while they were conversing, enters their head, and they start recalling things about that conversation.

Or: you're talking to someone and suddenly you feel irritated and unhappy even though they haven't said anything upsetting. Examining the feeling, you realize that they have just leaned back against the wall and put the heel of one foot against the toe of the other just the way your evil Cousin Kevin used to do, and it's the triggered memory of him that is upsetting you.

Anything anyone associates with something else can function as a suggestion: sounds, placement of objects, smells, sensations on the skin, color of nail polish, the quality of lighting in a room, anything.

How about two people are in a room (me and the child of Evo) and suddenly a sleeping cat let's out a startled cry, you look to see the cat that was asleep on the bed hurtling sideways through the air and crashing into a box fan several feet away (cat still sideways). Don't forget, a sleeping cat is curled up and that's how it slammed into the fan. This is in the room were a suitcase moved several feet across carpeting to block a door and a number of other bizarre occurances.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

The smells don't perplex me so much since most perfumes are very powerful and linger on things for a long time.

The real mystery was not the source as I could imagine that I was simply unable to find it. The real mystery was how it could go from zero, to intense, and back to zero, in minutes, in a closed system. That is what made it a real mystery for me.

 

[zoobyshoe]

How about two people are in a room (me and the child of Evo) and suddenly a sleeping cat let's out a startled cry, you look to see the cat that was asleep on the bed hurtling sideways through the air and crashing into a box fan several feet away (cat still sideways). Don't forget, a sleeping cat is curled up and that's how it slammed into the fan. This is in the room were a suitcase moved several feet across carpeting to block a door and a number of other bizarre occurances.

Well, I can invent a plausible scenario for you:

You and child of Evo are at a restaurant. A guy at the next table says "There'll be hell to pay when the sh*t hits the fan!" But because his dentures are loose, or because of some strange acoustics there, it sounds to you both like he said "when the cat hits the fan." The image of a cat hitting a fan is planted in both your minds without you paying too much attention.

Then, on the day in quetion, the recollection of that phrase is triggered when one of you suddenly notices that you have both cat and fan right there in front of you. The other sees where the first is looking and the same association is made: recollection of the same overheard phrase.

Then, because you're both affected by powerlines or whatever, you both slide into the same sudden hallucination of the cat hitting the fan.

 

[moe darklight]

General remark about dismissing the explanation of hallucination based on the quality of the experience:I know a 19 year old girl here who is the daughter of a tweaker and who was, in fact, born while her mother was on methamphetamines. She, herself, started doing all varieties of drugs at a young age: pot, ecstasy, L.S.D., mushrooms, speed, coke, you name it.

[...]

Well, there is a difference between someone who is having a psychotic episode (brought on by the drug abuse of her mother while she was pregnant and her own, and by lack of sleep) and someone who's not.

Habitual use of drugs like cocaine, heroine, E, speed, and meth, can often cause delusions and even full blown psychotic episodes.

But, despite their name, Hallucinogens like LSD* and Mushrooms—unless we're talking about a high dose, which most users don't go anywhere near—rarely actually cause hallucinations! ... and for a vivid hallucination, we'd be talking about either an extremely high dosage, or someone who has a pre-existing mental condition and has an episode while on the drugs.
Even at dosages high enough to hallucinate, the person is well aware that what they are seeing is not real (unlike with other, dissociative, drugs, where people are not only not aware that it's not real, but might even lose complete control and do things without being aware that they are doing them... the potential for danger is obvious).
What hallucinogens can cause though, is something similar to PTSD. This happens rarely, and is usually brought on by "bad trips" (the 'bad' in 'bad trip' is an understatement: a bad trip on a high dose is something I would not wish on my worst enemy). It's not unlike shell-shock, where some people could be left unstable from such a terrible experience.

So, unless I was having a psychotic episode (which I guess I can't completely rule out, since I wouldn't be the one best qualified to judge my own sanity were I insane ... but assuming I'm sane enough to judge my own sanity, I'd say I'm not insane), I'd say these things really happened, and they're pretty weird... though they're not nearly as interesting as Evo's and Ivan's stories, I must admit.

* EDIT: oops, this is not entirely true: I remember reading somewhere about cases of psychotic episodes brought on by extreme use of LSD. Still, it's not as common as with other drugs (especially since you won't find many people using LSD regularly or at high doses).*

I saw the video and it showed what they said, but rather than being interpreted as evidences of "ghosts", it was interpreted as evidence that the team was not credible.
[...]
Another part of the problem is the stigma and defintions attached to events like these. I find both sides of the debate on claimed phenomena like ghosts and UFOs frustrating because both side blindly accept common labels that may not apply.

yep. It's frustrating, and I can see why someone might refrain from starting research in these areas for fear of ruining their own reputation. And even if it does turn out that there's not big mystery, and that all of these events are after all imagined, it would still be fascinating to understand how this happens to sane, rational people; why is this such a common human experience?

How about two people are in a room (me and the child of Evo) and suddenly a sleeping cat let's out a startled cry, you look to see the cat that was asleep on the bed hurtling sideways through the air and crashing into a box fan several feet away (cat still sideways). This is in the room were a suitcase moved several feet across carpeting to block a door and a number of other bizarre occurances.

wow! sounds like cat of Evo might be in need of some therapy! — I really do find it hard to dismiss these stories, since so often they come from sane people who would have no reason to make them up.

 

[Evo]

Well, I can invent a plausible scenario for you:

You and child of Evo are at a restaurant. A guy at the next table says "There'll be hell to pay when the sh*t hits the fan!" But because his dentures are loose, or because of some strange acoustics there, it sounds to you both like he said "when the cat hits the fan." The image of a cat hitting a fan is planted in both your minds without you paying too much attention.

Then, on the day in quetion, the recollection of that phrase is triggered when one of you suddenly notices that you have both cat and fan right there in front of you. The other sees where the first is looking and the same association is made: recollection of the same overheard phrase.

Then, because you're both affected by powerlines or whatever, you both slide into the same sudden hallucination of the cat hitting the fan.

That's it!

 

[zoobyshoe]

The real mystery was not the source as I could imagine that I was simply unable to find it. The real mystery was how it could go from zero, to intense, and back to zero, in minutes, in a closed system. That is what made it a real mystery for me.

All I can think of is those woman's magazines with the perfume samples. Once you close the flap the smell goes away fairly quickly. It's possible that in looking around for the source you covered it up.

A few years back I was occasionally haunted by the strong smell of urine. A powerful bad smell is a not uncommon simple partial seizure, but that would be outside the kind I normally had. Regardless, I determined it was some kind of hallucination when I realized that it followed me where ever I went, and asked a couple different people to sniff in my vicinity to see if they smelled anything. They all said, yes, they could smell the cigarette smoke on my clothes, but nothing else. This strongly indicated the smell of urine was an olfactory hallucination.

If this were still happening that's a test you could do: go elsewhere to see if you still smelled it, and if you could, get someone else to smell your clothes.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Well, there is a difference between someone who is having a psychotic episode (brought on by the drug abuse of her mother while she was pregnant and her own, and by lack of sleep) and someone who's not. Habitual use of drugs like cocaine, heroine, E, speed, and meth, can often cause delusions and even full blown psychotic episodes.
But, despite their name, Hallucinogens like LSD and Mushrooms—unless we're talking about a high dose, which most users don't go anywhere near—rarely actually cause hallucinations! ... and for a vivid hallucination, we'd be talking about either an extremely high dosage, or someone who has a pre-existing mental condition and has an episode while on the drugs.
Even at dosages high enough to hallucinate, the person is well aware that what they are seeing is not real (unlike with other, dissociative, drugs, where people are not only not aware that it's not real, but might even lose complete control and do things without being aware that they are doing them... the potential for danger is obvious).
What hallucinogens can cause though, is something similar to PTSD. This happens rarely, and is usually brought on by "bad trips" (the 'bad' in 'bad trip' is an understatement: a bad trip on a high dose is something I would not wish on my worst enemy). It's not unlike shell-shock, where some people could be left unstable from such a terrible experience.

So, unless I was having a psychotic episode (which I guess I can't completely rule out, since I wouldn't be the one best qualified to judge my own sanity were I insane ... but assuming I'm sane enough to judge my own sanity, I'd say I'm not insane), I'd say these things really happened, and they're pretty weird... though they're not nearly as interesting as Evo's and Ivan's stories, I must admit.

No, you have missed my whole point: a person does NOT alway know when they are hallucinating. The statement "I know I wasn't hallucinating," should carry no weight because, as with the girl in the bathroom, the quality of spontaneous post-drug hallucinations can be extremely vivid, and involve ordinary elements that don't call attention to themselves as unreal.

A "psychotic episode" generally refers to a somewhat more extended incident than the fairly brief thing she reported, but it wouldn't be technically inaccurate to say she, or anyone having a spontaneous hallucination like this, was psychotic.

 

[moe darklight]

No, you have missed my whole point: a person does NOT alway know when they are hallucinating. The statement "I know I wasn't hallucinating," should carry no weight because, as with the girl in the bathroom, the quality of spontaneous post-drug hallucinations can be extremely vivid, and involve ordinary elements that don't call attention to themselves as unreal.

A "psychotic episode" generally refers to a somewhat more extended incident than the fairly brief thing she reported, but it wouldn't be technically inaccurate to say she, or anyone having a spontaneous hallucination like this, was psychotic.

As you said, that incident, even if it does involve imagining something quite ordinary, is a psychotic episode— I hope we can agree this doesn't happen to a person who is stable.— I have a friend who went crazy from drug abuse, and her episodes don't involve anything extraordinary either. We found her one day outside at 2 in the morning, yelling at kids who weren't there. She was just convinced there were kids playing outside making noise... there is nothing weird about kids playing outside making noise as night per se— it's the fact that there were no kids: that's where the sanity/insanity question comes into play.

My point was that such episodes (of vivid hallucinations) are not at all common with drugs like mushrooms, and especially not after the person has sobered up. This girl you are talking about, she used many drugs that are known to cause these symptoms.

So imagining something so vividly, considering I've never even tried those types of drugs, would not be likely (unless I already had some pre-existing mental illness), neither would the fact that there were other people there who also remember the event... unless I'm so delusional that I hallucinate having conversations with these people where they tell me they remember the event !

 

[zoobyshoe]

As you said, that incident, even if it does involve imagining something quite ordinary, is a psychotic episode— I hope we can agree this doesn't happen to a person who is stable.— I have a friend who went crazy from drug abuse, and her episodes don't involve anything extraordinary either. We found her one day outside at 2 in the morning, yelling at kids who weren't there. She was just convinced there were kids playing outside making noise... there is nothing weird about kids playing outside making noise as night per se— it's the fact that there were no kids: that's where the sanity/insanity question comes into play.

The notion of a "stable" person is more a description of how they react to stress or unusual things than it is a measure of their proness to hallucinate. I know of a pharmacist who hears disembodied voices talking about him on a daily basis. He thinks they're real, and has tried to tape record them. He daily dispenses drugs that he knows are for people who hear voices but he doesn't see himself as having their problem: his voices are real. His employers and co-workers don't know about the voices. The only person he's told about them is one of his daughters, who told me about him. He's both delusional and hallucinates, but he goes to work regularly everyday unmedicated and properly fills prescriptions. Is he stable? I'd have to say he is to put up with the hallucinations and still function in his job.

My point was that such episodes (of vivid hallucinations) are not at all common with drugs like mushrooms, and especially not after the person has sobered up. This girl you are talking about, she used many drugs that are known to cause these symptoms.

Well, this contradicts what other people who've done mushrooms have told me. Most report some very entertaining hallucinations. As for mushroom flashbacks, it's very hard to say since most people who've done them have also tried LSD, which is famous for causing flashbacks.

So imagining something so vividly, considering I've never even tried those types of drugs, would not be likely (unless I already had some pre-existing mental illness), neither would the fact that there were other people there who also remember the event... unless I'm so delusional that I hallucinate having conversations with these people where they tell me they remember the event !

There is an important difference between delusion and hallucination. Delusions are false beliefs, i.e. that there is a far reaching conspiracy against you headed by the ghost of J.Edgar Hoover, or that you have magic powers to make other people do your will. That sort of thing. Hallucinations are sensory illusions: false sensory experiences triggered erroneously from within the brain.

Every one is different and responds differently to hallucinogens. Dosage certainly makes a difference, yes. But we don't have to assume a predisposition to mental illness when someone is more affected than someone else, just a greater sensitivity.

In any event, we can't conclude that your experiences are more likely to be "real" based on the fact you haven't taken the right drugs. The above mentioned pharmacists has no history of drug use. And, if your experiences were proven somehow to be hallucinations it doesn't mean you'd automatically be diagnosed psychotic or mentally ill. Those labels are only applies when someone becomes dysfunctional. I don't think anyone gets through life without an hallucination or two. Some have a lot more than that and still are able to function.

 

[Kurdt]

I don't know if you guys have heard of the research going on into temporal lobe epilepsy. It might be a good explanation for all these ghostly or religious experiences.

Anyhow, the jist of it is that people with temporal lobe epilepsy reported very strong religious experiences or ghost experiences after seizures. Some research into what was going on through some brains scans showed that the temporal lobes were being stimulated in strange ways when they were having seizures. This stimulation caused them to feel like there was a presence there which the imagination attributes to a ghostly encounter or a religious experience. They have reproduced the effects in people without epilepsy by stimulating the temporal lobes with EM fields and people report feeling like they are not alone and there is a presence with them. The stimulation can also induce particular sensations such as those of smells or tastes.

To me that would be a more logical explanation for all those experiences since the modern home is bathed in EM smog. Suppose it just takes the right combination in the right place in a room and it could affect the brain in ways we still don't fully understand.

 

[Evo]

I don't know if you guys have heard of the research going on into temporal lobe epilepsy. It might be a good explanation for all these ghostly or religious experiences.

Anyhow, the jist of it is that people with temporal lobe epilepsy reported very strong religious experiences or ghost experiences after seizures. Some research into what was going on through some brains scans showed that the temporal lobes were being stimulated in strange ways when they were having seizures. This stimulation caused them to feel like there was a presence there which the imagination attributes to a ghostly encounter or a religious experience. They have reproduced the effects in people without epilepsy by stimulating the temporal lobes with EM fields and people report feeling like they are not alone and there is a presence with them. The stimulation can also induce particular sensations such as those of smells or tastes.

To me that would be a more logical explanation for all those experiences since the modern home is bathed in EM smog. Suppose it just takes the right combination in the right place in a room and it could affect the brain in ways we still don't fully understand.

Like a sleeping cat knocking a fan to the floor and two people witnessing it? I had to walk over and pick the fan up, it was running at the time.

I'm not ruling out that the cat had some kind of seizure that propelled it sideways off the bed, I've just never heard of such a thing, but then, it's an easier explanation to swallow. I'm just really interested in what actually happened.

Until something unexplainable happens to you it's easy to blow it off. I don't believe in an afterlife, I'm not religious, I don't believe in ghosts, but things have happened that I can't explain. That's it, I haven't found explanations yet and I'd like some answers.

Talking to my youngest daughter about those two years, she said she was very angry and unhappy. Can human brainwaves affect those around them? Could the fact that we were related and emotionally close to her have made it easy for us to pick up her emotions? Could the high power lines contribute to that?

Was the cat capable of mind control and we were all it's hapless victims?

 

[moe darklight]

The notion of a "stable" person is more a description of how they react to stress or unusual things th[...]

You raise good points, and I agree with most of what you say.

Of course being mentally ill doesn't necessarily make the person dysfunctional. The fact that society has created a certain image of what mental illness is, is a different topic. Still, someone who experiences vivid hallucinations (provided these are not caused by stress, or lack of sleep, or a seizure or anything like that) has a mental illness. I never said this made them unstable, but it's still not "normal."

The visuals on mushrooms, for the average dose (1-3 grams), are usually things like walls breathing, trails left after movement, people's skin looking like it's made out of plastic or made out of layers, things looking like they have faces, voices sounding higher or lower in pitch... I would call them distortions rather than hallucinations (nothing is created that wasn't there before; they just distort and move).— For vivid hallucinations on mushrooms, you would have to take a rather high dose: 4-10 g's; most people won't go that high. But that's beside the point, my point is that the hallucinations don't persist once the drug wore off.

If these people were having vivid hallucinations on an average dose of mushrooms: A) these were very potent mushrooms, or B) they were laced with LSD (the two drugs mixed together have an effect much more potent than either alone).

I think you misunderstood my what I meant: my point was not that, since I've never done any of the drugs that can cause such episodes, I'm not hallucinating; my point was that, if I am hallucinating, it's not likely to be caused by the few and far in between occasions in which I've done mushrooms. So the fact that I was on them during one of these weird events is irrelevant in regards to the other events.

You are right that certain types of hallucinations are normal: Maybe you think you hear the voice of someone you live with calling you. Or you think you see something out of the corner of your eye. Or your dog keeps telling you kill Edward Norton because he's the son of the devil and about to stop the second coming of christ. This is all normal.— but full-blown, vivid hallucinations are not.

The event that involved the mushrooms was, in fact a visual hallucination (I've mentioned it before), and does not involve ghosts or spirits: both me and my friends saw ourselves on a roller-coaster— then we imagined that everyone else was speaking with bubbles of sound coming out of their mouth— but that's not what's interesting here— What I find interesting about it, is that two people would "share a trip:" what would cause two people to, out of all the millions of things that could pop into their minds, imagine themselves in the exact same situation, without verbal communication? ... that's what I find interesting.

On the other incident (and this one does not involve drugs), I was at my house, going up the stairs, when I hear my friend go "ah!" (my friend was actually there, in case you're wondering )— I turned around and, for a split second, I could swear I saw the image of a little boy, standing by him, holding his hand: it was literally a split of a second, and out of the corner of my eye.

When I asked him why he squealed, he said he just felt something weird on his left arm. We were both pretty freaked out, because, though he hadn't actually seen anything, he just felt "weird." ... I doubt there was an actual boy there ... what I find fascinating, again, is that we would both have that reaction. What causes shared experiences like these? How does this information travel between the two people? I don't know and I'm curious.

To me this is more a question of human perception and communication. A questions about the way our minds build a representation of the world around us, how they represent things they can't understand, and also possibly a question of information transfer and communication.

 

[Kurdt]

Not that particular experience of course. I was thinking more in line with the experiences of Ivan and those where there is more of a presence being felt in a particular place. I just thought I'd throw that in there anyway as its quite interesting and might offer an explanation for some experiences if not all. If my memory serves me correct a lot of the research was being done by Ramachandran of the University of California. I was going to post the link a while back in youtube classics to a documentary with Ramachandran in about this but since its main focus was on religious experience I thought it might just be against forum guidelines.

I apologise anyway I should have been more specific. I certainly didn't mean to offend anyone.

 

[Evo]

Not that particular experience of course. I was thinking more in line with the experiences of Ivan and those where there is more of a presence being felt in a particular place. I just thought I'd throw that in there anyway as its quite interesting and might offer an explanation for some experiences if not all. If my memory serves me correct a lot of the research was being done by Ramachandran of the University of California. I was going to post the link a while back in youtube classics to a documentary with Ramachandran in about this but since its main focus was on religious experience I thought it might just be against forum guidelines.

I apologise anyway I should have been more specific. I certainly didn't mean to offend anyone.

No offense taken (and it does sound rather nutty) I have posted a link to the PBS broadcast by Ramachandran on that very subject. Let me find it.

edit: Here it is, do a "find" on Ramachandran and it will take you to where his part starts.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2812mind.html

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Not that particular experience of course. I was thinking more in line with the experiences of Ivan and those where there is more of a presence being felt in a particular place. I just thought I'd throw that in there anyway as its quite interesting and might offer an explanation for some experiences if not all. If my memory serves me correct a lot of the research was being done by Ramachandran of the University of California. I was going to post the link a while back in youtube classics to a documentary with Ramachandran in about this but since its main focus was on religious experience I thought it might just be against forum guidelines.

I apologise anyway I should have been more specific. I certainly didn't mean to offend anyone.

I agree that this might and probably does explain some experiences, however in our case, nearly identical and otherwise unique experiences by two different people, at the same location, on two separate occasions in which a distinct [Newtonian] force was felt, hardly seems indicative of epilepsy.

 

[Kurdt]

I'd agree with that, but I wasn't suggesting anyone has epilepsy. Like I stated the same effects have been induced experimentally in people without epilepsy by using magnetic fields on the temporal lobes. The effects were never to the extent of those having seizures but enough to be able to feel a presence and induce smells and tastes.

 

[zoobyshoe]

You raise good points, and I agree with most of what you say.

Of course being mentally ill doesn't necessarily make the person dysfunctional. The fact that society has created a certain image of what mental illness is, is a different topic. Still, someone who experiences vivid hallucinations (provided these are not caused by stress, or lack of sleep, or a seizure or anything like that) has a mental illness. I never said this made them unstable, but it's still not "normal."

The visuals on mushrooms, for the average dose (1-3 grams), are usually things like walls breathing, trails left after movement, people's skin looking like it's made out of plastic or made out of layers, things looking like they have faces, voices sounding higher or lower in pitch... I would call them distortions rather than hallucinations (nothing is created that wasn't there before; they just distort and move).— For vivid hallucinations on mushrooms, you would have to take a rather high dose: 4-10 g's; most people won't go that high. But that's beside the point, my point is that the hallucinations don't persist once the drug wore off.

If these people were having vivid hallucinations on an average dose of mushrooms: A) these were very potent mushrooms, or B) they were laced with LSD (the two drugs mixed together have an effect much more potent than either alone).

I think you misunderstood my what I meant: my point was not that, since I've never done any of the drugs that can cause such episodes, I'm not hallucinating; my point was that, if I am hallucinating, it's not likely to be caused by the few and far in between occasions in which I've done mushrooms. So the fact that I was on them during one of these weird events is irrelevant in regards to the other events.

You are right that certain types of hallucinations are normal: Maybe you think you hear the voice of someone you live with calling you. Or you think you see something out of the corner of your eye. Or your dog keeps telling you kill Edward Norton because he's the son of the devil and about to stop the second coming of christ. This is all normal.— but full-blown, vivid hallucinations are not.

The event that involved the mushrooms was, in fact a visual hallucination (I've mentioned it before), and does not involve ghosts or spirits: both me and my friends saw ourselves on a roller-coaster— then we imagined that everyone else was speaking with bubbles of sound coming out of their mouth— but that's not what's interesting here— What I find interesting about it, is that two people would "share a trip:" what would cause two people to, out of all the millions of things that could pop into their minds, imagine themselves in the exact same situation, without verbal communication? ... that's what I find interesting.

On the other incident (and this one does not involve drugs), I was at my house, going up the stairs, when I hear my friend go "ah!" (my friend was actually there, in case you're wondering )— I turned around and, for a split second, I could swear I saw the image of a little boy, standing by him, holding his hand: it was literally a split of a second, and out of the corner of my eye.

When I asked him why he squealed, he said he just felt something weird on his left arm. We were both pretty freaked out, because, though he hadn't actually seen anything, he just felt "weird." ... I doubt there was an actual boy there ... what I find fascinating, again, is that we would both have that reaction. What causes shared experiences like these? How does this information travel between the two people? I don't know and I'm curious.

To me this is more a question of human perception and communication. A questions about the way our minds build a representation of the world around us, how they represent things they can't understand, and also possibly a question of information transfer and communication.

Yes, I am also very curious as to how the information would be transferred in the case of shared hallucination.

I don't think any hallucinations are "normal", or I'm misunderstanding what you mean by that word. When I say that no one probably gets through life without an hallucination or two I say it in the same way I'd say no one gets through life without a health problem or two. I mean: even the healthiest person catches a cold at least once in their life.

I think I need to repeat that, according to the stories I've heard and read, the post-drug use, spontaneous, hallucinations people have are NOT the same quality as the ones they have while actually on the drugs. The prior drug use, though, and not some predisposition to mental illness, is what primes them for these later spontaneous experiences of much more literal, realistic, hard to identify hallucinations. The fact they don't have the recognizable quality of previous drug induced hallucinations doesn't make them any more real, any less an hallucination; just a better rendered one. The portraits I draw today are much more realistic than the ones I did at age 10, but they're still just drawings, and not real people.