This was a poll taken on the Everybody Votes Channel for the Wii.



My prediction was wrong. I honestly didn't think that many people believed in ghosts.

My prediction was wrong. I honestly didn't think that many people believed in ghosts.

actually i thought you're prediction would be right, even though i do believe in them myself. My whole family does, and it probably has something to do with how i was raised?

Yah, thats "sleep paralysis, Its more frequent than most people think, it happens once to about 1 out of 4 people, usually in their teenage years, but for some very unlucky people, it happens once, and then happens again and again. Some people see a pale face right in front of them, like a skull or something like that, others see large spiders dangling in front of their face. I read somewhere that this might be part of what caused myths about vampires and the like (a huge collection of different things created these myths, apparently). I read on a website dedicated to night terrors and sleep paralysis many horror stories, like a woman that dreamed the ceiling was coming down to crush her, suddenly snapped out of sleep paralysis and almost jumped out a window.

But yeah basically, you start dreaming seamlessly with being awake and you hallucinate "over" what you already see, hear and even smell around you. Happened to me when I was 14 or so, it really shocked me back then. I saw one of the most common ones, a huge white face right in front of mine with large bug eyes. The most common one though is the "old hag": it usually starts with a feeling of pressure on the sleeper's stomach. It makes him panic, and then he tries to move, but realizes he cant (because of sleep paralysis).

Lots of stories of alien abductions stories come from that, and lots of other things in popular culture. Like these weird ghosts you see in harry potter that steals souls, and one of the creatures in the Supernatural TV series was inspired off the "old hag", and theres also a few movies, like that one with like, the tooth fairy or something that kills anyone who enters darkness? Kidnaps children at night? Cant remember the name of that movie. I think it came out around 2000.

This happened to me a few times in my early teens. I would wake up (or THOUGHT I woke up) and see strange visions in my room. The visions would be incredibly similar to my previous dreams so I passed it off as my imagination. I believe its perfectly feasible that someone could see things like this while wide awake. I hate how some people don't even question it, they just automatically think GHOST. The human mind can be very convincing, as dreams have shown us.

Look, it's a ghost. (Click to reveal)

This is actually Aerogel, a special low-density material.

This is way, way cooler than any ghost (hint:  useful)

yeah i am looking at that.  i want to build my house out of aerogel.

Has anyone else here mentioned or heard of infrasound?

Yes

Although I hadn't heard about the pipe organ thing before, that's interesting

Also Psychoskull did your dreams look like this


I think I remember having dreams where I was waking up in the morning but I couldn't move - and I remember having all sorts of false awakenings, can't remember if some monster popped out to let me know I was still asleep though. I think I might've had a dream where the walls were closing in though

Either way I had some WEIRD dreams growing up, some of them were scary but others were kind of grim and bizarre without being nightmares per se - I consider it a nightmare when you're scared during the dream or something loud happens and you wake up scared shitless

But yeah there's lots of weird shit, like fairies/pixies/changelings might be based on this http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/magazine/08sociability-t.html

Go to page 2, it has an example of how someone with the condition would speak which is kind of interesting

Oh there's this too - http://migraine.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/lifting-lights-and-little-people/

I figured most of our mythological stuff was a bunch of weirdos on mushrooms making it up but it's interesting to read about this sort of stuff


Edit: I used the word INTERESTING way too much in this post

Edit: NYTimes.com might not let you see the article, I think you get like 5 or 10 freebies before it tells you to pay them money though (the bastages)

Nah, it was more like a large monochromic white visage that appeared over everything, and moved along with my head. Not smoky or hazy, something very clear. It was there for just a moment and disappeared. Pretty freaky.

I don't know if "false awakenings" are the same thing though. But I wouldn't know, my own episode happened right before I slept, not when I woke up.
But from the stories I read, those that happen after waking up often let you get up and walk around along with the dream. Like there was a story of a woman who woke up to see large cockroaches everywhere around her. She got up screaming, and they were still all there. She gets out of the bed and runs to the bathroom to get water on her face, trying not to touch any of the creepy things, and when shes back from the bathroom they're gone.
A false awakening sounds more like a tricky nightmare that starts in your bed, in which you just assume you're not sleeping anymore. Like, in the nightmare, you get up, walk around, be scared, but when you wake up you're back in your bed. So at least thats some sort of reality check or something. Like, you know that none of it happened.

I think I found a website about these things, but i'm not sure I like the site, it looks creepy, the terms they use are a little... "out theeere"
http://www.trionica.com/

Also apparently I made a mistake in my early post: sleep paralysis in itself is quite frequent, but sleep paralysis with visual hallucinations is pretty rare.

I know none of these things "disprove" ghosts at all (Its not like the non-existence of anything can be proved anyway), but at the very least it shows you don't need to have schizophrenia for your mind to have a pretty strong hold on what you experience.

Yah, thats "sleep paralysis, Its more frequent than most people think, it happens once to about 1 out of 4 people, usually in their teenage years, but for some very unlucky people, it happens once, and then happens again and again. Some people see a pale face right in front of them, like a skull or something like that, others see large spiders dangling in front of their face. I read somewhere that this might be part of what caused myths about vampires and the like (a huge collection of different things created these myths, apparently). I read on a website dedicated to night terrors and sleep paralysis many horror stories, like a woman that dreamed the ceiling was coming down to crush her, suddenly snapped out of sleep paralysis and almost jumped out a window.

But yeah basically, you start dreaming seamlessly with being awake and you hallucinate "over" what you already see, hear and even smell around you. Happened to me when I was 14 or so, it really shocked me back then. I saw one of the most common ones, a huge white face right in front of mine with large bug eyes. The most common one though is the "old hag": it usually starts with a feeling of pressure on the sleeper's stomach. It makes him panic, and then he tries to move, but realizes he cant (because of sleep paralysis).

Lots of stories of alien abductions stories come from that, and lots of other things in popular culture. Like these weird ghosts you see in harry potter that steals souls, and one of the creatures in the Supernatural TV series was inspired off the "old hag", and theres also a few movies, like that one with like, the tooth fairy or something that kills anyone who enters darkness? Kidnaps children at night? Cant remember the name of that movie. I think it came out around 2000.

Man, I can go into sleep paralysis almost anytime i want now. At first it happened to me a few times when I was a youngin', the first I remember when I was about 5ish or something. I was laying in bed and the feeling slowly crept in on me somehow. I was so fucking terrified of the feeling of not being able to move at all, and a creepy mummy-looking guy was floating right above me with his arms stretched out slowly falling down on me. At the time of course I thought it was a ghost and didn't realize what it was until about 13 when I finally seen this shit on tv.


The other memory I have was when I was 8 and visited my Aunt in Toronto. I was sleeping in my little cousin's room, and I was having trouble sleeping. Then the feeling kicked in again, this time I heard creepy as fuck music playing in my head and I looked at the side of my bed and seen a fucking dummy with an evil grin walking around. It suddenly stopped and didn't know what the fuck just happened. By then I was able to think rationally, and I knew it was my imagination. Then later in the night I was facing my cousin's bed, and the feeling came in fast. I was just staring at her bed, and it suddenly lifted itself up on an angle and went from being straight up, then back to the floor. I slept with my mom for the rest of the vacation.

But nowadays, ever since about 14 it seems like this happens to me a whole lot. No more visual hallucinations but often sound hallucinations. And when it happens I'm not scared anymore even though fear seems to arise from it anyways, so I try to prolong the experience to try and induce hallucinations and a lucid dream. When I keep it up for a while it seems like my heart rate goes up rapidly and my chest starts to hurt like it's about to explode, kinda like a bad weed high, so I stop. Then there's that stage where it seems like it keeps coming up whether I like it or not, so I lay on my back and try to lucid dream (which I seem to be naturally good at, but almost every time my excitement ruins the experience..)

Pretty much all it seems like for it to happen is try be trying to fall asleep, be in that tired stage, but being semi-conscious the whole time. Some trippy shit happens.

-edit-

Just read on the site; "Some ASP experiencers fear they are suffocating, or maybe dying, due to the pressure of a crushing weight on them, usually in the chest region."

That sure as hell what happens to me a lot.