Halucinating

[ghall]

When I'm not getting very much sleep, I often see cats or some other small animal run in front of me out of the corner of my eye, and I turn to look and there is no sign of an animal of any kind. And today a really weird thing happened, I saw a photo of a person, and I could have sworn the person turned his head to look at me, and then I blinked and the picture was back to normal.

What kind of things have you all halucinated(it can be from lack of sleep, drug use, etc.)?

Also, for you super smart people out there, what causes a halucination? I'm just curious.

 

[TimJim]

Once when i was really sick, I was half awake watching tv on my bed, then i halucinated me watching myself watch tv. so the 1st person view was looking at me. it was wicked weird.

 

[ErikCLDR]

I hallucinated a lot when I had food poisoning and essentially didn't eat or drink for 4 days.

 

[iToaster]

Once at night, I was at my relatives house, and I heard someone talking to me, but I was alone in the basement... and I couldn't understand them

 

[xUKHCx]

After getting sun stroke a good number of years ago at a music festival I was lying down on the ground outside my tent and I saw a huge burning plane coming straight towards the campsite. After about 4 seconds of being terrified i realised it was the setting sun.

Also slightly different but when I sleep walk I am often looking for my dog or cat claiming someone has taken them away.

 

[Big-TDI-Guy]

This is actually Mac related:

After a very long stressful week between work and home, I hadn't slept for over almost 96 hours straight.

When I finally crashed out, something really loud happened outside about 4 hours after I fell asleep (broke me from my sleep).

Upon awakening, I saw a purple jellyfish floating above my iMac, just chillin there. While I had half a mind to know for a fact it wasn't actually there, it didn't change the fact that I was seeing it plain as day. After a long while, realizing that it was not a threat to me, and that whatever made the noise outside had gone away, I decided that I should get back to sleep.

Now I make sure I sleep it it's been over 48 hours, one way or another.

 

[Leareth]

Sure -

I see things all the time when I get the aura stage of my migraines.

I once took ergotamine for them and after the toilet started talking to me asking me " why would I throw up on it? it thought I was its friend" I swore I would avoid taking ergotamine if I could avoid it.

I have had a few good visions from oxycodon and morphine. Usually floating away from myself and then looking at me laying there.

 

[Telp]

When I'm not getting very much sleep, I often see cats or some other small animal run in front of me out of the corner of my eye, and I turn to look and there is no sign of an animal of any kind. And today a really weird thing happened, I saw a photo of a person, and I could have sworn the person turned his head to look at me, and then I blinked and the picture was back to normal.

What kind of things have you all halucinated(it can be from lack of sleep, drug use, etc.)?

Also, for you super smart people out there, what causes a halucination? I'm just curious.

I wouldnt say ive ever hallucinated, but anyone i tell would say i have. Ive seen several spirits in my house, and have been hearing them for years. Maybe yours are paranormal too.

 

[mcarnes]

Oh man, my gerbil has said the weirdest **** to me. I could go on and on.

 

[MrSmith]

I wouldnt say ive ever hallucinated, but anyone i tell would say i have. Ive seen several spirits in my house, and have been hearing them for years.

Need help?

 

[0098386]

I'd probably faint if I hallucinated, I mean I get scared if my mind isn't working exactly right. Which is why I don't drink or anything.

Anyroad! I've never hallucinated. But I've had times where I thought things that I've dreamt were real years later. I've been dead certain on these events too

 

[iMacZealot]

I usually get a really bad fever in the winter (not every winter, but most), and I hallucinate to insanity when I get it. The last time I had it, I imagined that I was in a Lifetime movie with the local anchorwoman on TV.

And everytime, everytime, I start to fall asleep, my thoughts stop making sense, and sometimes I'll stop myself and say that what I'm saying to myself doesn't make any sense, but I just start to fall asleep.


I really need to get some sleep. I've had an average of 3-4 hours everynight for the last two weeks. I tried going to sleep right now (at 8:00 pm) and then waking up at 4 or 5 to do my homework, but I know I'd just sleep straight through, so I'm here on MR procrastinating...

 

[Big-TDI-Guy]

Well, apart from drugs, electro-shock therapy, mental disorders and sleep deprivation, another surefire way to hallucinate is to kick up a good fever. None of that lightweight 101 degree business, crank that thermostat up to 103-104.

Had that happen once when I was a wee man, and that time it scared the poop outta me. Which is why I probably didn't freak out when a Jellyfish was using my iMac.

Also explains my low IQ, single status and habitual usage of the internet.

 

[RugoseCone]

I once saw a herd of Zebras run across the highway while driving from Chicago to Minnesota in the middle of the night. Most of my experience with hallucination has been whilst driving when tired in the wee hours.

 

[Prelude2Tragedy]

Not quite a hallucination, but one night i woke up out of sleep and felt like someone was laying on me pushing my face into the pillow. I tried to move but i couldn't and then tried to yell stop and get off but couldn't speak. I was really freaked out and next day asked my friend who is a pharmacist and he explained it was sleep paralysis, where your mind wakes up but your body is still in the state that keeps you still while dreaming.

 

[shecky]

Not quite a hallucination, but one night i woke up out of sleep and felt like someone was laying on me pushing my face into the pillow. I tried to move but i couldn't and then tried to yell stop and get off but couldn't speak. I was really freaked out and next day asked my friend who is a pharmacist and he explained it was sleep paralysis, where your mind wakes up but your body is still in the state that keeps you still while dreaming.

i actually get that exact same thing not infrequently. its quite disturbing. i had no idea until now it was an actual, ya know, "thing" with a term and everything.

 

[benlee]

This is a cool thread.

I have, on occasion, seen black flashes out of the corner of my eye, looks like something small is running past.

Also, this isn't quite hallucinating, but I set my alarm for way earlier than I need to get up so I hit snooze a lot. And the first couple times I look at the phone to hit snooze, I swear the lettering is in a different language. Two times I actually thought my phone somehow got the language changed to Spanish.

Also, this is just weird and not really hallucinating either, but Sometimes, randomly during the day I will get a memory of a dream setting of dreams that I had years ago but I remember them clearly. Really weird feeling.

 

[wonga1127]

I got a really bad fever once and I was in my basement alone staring at the ceiling. It felt like there were a million needles pushing at me on all sides, and whenever I moved, I would break through the mesh/grid they formed. I was floating in white space and masses of black sound were at either side of my vision. They would connect with a thin piece of black and the tone would rise as the black would move from left to right and right to left...as far as I remember. The needles I specifically remember, but the black stuff with the sound is as far as I can explain it. My mind chases it ceaselessly, it's been on the tip of my memory ever since it happened. My description of it in no way expresses the actual hallucination.

I actually love hallucinating. I think hallucinations are the doorway to the inner workings of the brain, to our subconscious, but more effective than dreaming.

I'm weird.

 

[nightdweller25]

The hallucination that left the absolute biggest impression on me was one time, I was watching Shawn of the Dead with a few friends late at night with all the lights turned down and saw my black tile floor form into a huge tile wave that swallowed me whole and shot me into space, leading into a black hole that shot me towards Earth at a million miles an hour, going through the sky, and eventually through my roof and landing me back on my couch. The best thing was that it felt 100% real and vivid. True story, but I'm not going to say what I did that night

 

[Xfujinon]

When I had food poisoning, while I was laying on the floor of the bathroom looking up at the ceiling, I felt like the lightbulb in the ceiling was zooming toward me at crazy speeds and would come down and burn me. I would swat at it and thrash my head around to avoid it. I imagined the heat of the bulb on my cheeks when I would look away.

Occasionally, I will get motion flashes (look like dark swirls or smudges) that fly through my field of vision too. They appear to have depth and substance, like other objects in my field of view, but they sometimes appear to move in and out of nearby objects and distort my sense of perspective.

One time (admittedly, when I was on drugs...), I felt like my hair was moving on its own, so I had to keep smoothing it down or I assumed it would begin working its way into the walls and blinds behind me on its own. Creepy sensation, but not really a hallucination.

Your brain does lots of magical crap behind the scenes, so to speak. The way I look at it, everything you can see, touch, hear, etc. is really just a composite hallucination based on sensory inputs being unscrambled by the brain, and because of the complexity of the process all kinds of things are possible.

If you begin hearing voices, and they tell you to harm yourself or others, do not sit idly and wonder about it, or brush it off as funny. Get help immediately, they often preclude more serious psychopathology. Thankfully, available treatments are excellent when followed.

 

[Iscariot]

Medically speaking you can't really say what "causes" a hallucination, since hallucinations can occur in any sensory modality. Your perception is based on information from at least nine different senses, all of which can be altered in a plethora of ways. A hallucination is a perception without genuine stimulus, and can be "caused" by anything from a chemical imbalance to an infection, disease or injury, and can even be induced by suggestion and self-hypnosis, psychological trauma, etc. making for purely psychological hallucinations.

A hallucination is when your senses are "tricked" into perceiving something that isn't there.

Anyways! My hallucinations.

1. As a long-term sufferer of sleeping disorders, I frequently experience sleep-deprivation induced hallucinations. I see spiders/insects on the periphery of my vision.

2. Once when I had food poisoning I hallucinated that I was in the future, and as such all electronic devices were sentient and could communicate with me. I talked to the clock for a good period of time. About relationships, no less. I don't actually remember this, but have been told I did it.

3. Once when suffering from sleep deprivation I started to think that the design on the back of my shirt was slowly crawling up. I then came up with the absurd(ly awesome) idea that shirts are actually symbiotic organisms, and that we provide them with transportation in exchange for the chemicals they released into our skin that would reduce feelings of shame and loneliness. I wasn't tired enough to believe the idea really, but I talked about it extensively in a "what if, man!" way.

4. Once when extremely sick I had this hallucination/vivid dream about a God-like being causing the apocalypse. Everyone was trying to escape, piling into trucks and vehicles and driving or running away from "God", in the hopes that there would be a safe zone somewhere. In the end, reality fragmented and shattered, like a mirror. To this day it still disturbs me a little bit because it felt so real. This happened about five years ago, and I actually think it's pretty cool. Goes to demonstrate the mind's power over the body.

5. Another time when extremely sick as a child I hallucinated a white hand breaking through the wall and coming for me (note: it came in from the intersection of the wall and ceiling*). I mostly surpressed it, but afterwards I became convinced I had witnessed something paranormal, that at some point I had actually seen a ghost hand coming for me.

*In some of H.P. Lovecraft's work, demons would enter our dimension through angles, like the intersection of wall and ceiling

 

[iMacZealot]

I love my fevers...the hallucinations are what get me through it, even though one made me think I was dying, so I stared in the mirror naked and screaming for the better part of ten minutes.

 

[Prof.]

I see dead people. Seriously, no joke, I do see dead people.

Just the other day I saw a black, shadowy figure run up the stairs to my second floor; I was the only one home.

I also see small figures like cats and dogs run across the floor, even though we don't have any pets.

There is a slight chance that I am a medium.

 

[todd2000]

I'd probably faint if I hallucinated, I mean I get scared if my mind isn't working exactly right. Which is why I don't drink or anything.

Anyroad! I've never hallucinated. But I've had times where I thought things that I've dreamt were real years later. I've been dead certain on these events too

On a somewhat related note, I've had dreams that I was on vacation before, that seemed soooo real, that when I woke up I was pissed that they were just dreams.

None of that lightweight 101 degree business, crank that thermostat up to 103-104.

Had that happen once when I was a wee man, and that time it scared the poop outta me. Which is why I probably didn't freak out when a Jellyfish was using my iMac.

Also explains my low IQ, single status and habitual usage of the internet.

ROTFLMAO!!

 

[ghall]

Not quite a hallucination, but one night i woke up out of sleep and felt like someone was laying on me pushing my face into the pillow. I tried to move but i couldn't and then tried to yell stop and get off but couldn't speak. I was really freaked out and next day asked my friend who is a pharmacist and he explained it was sleep paralysis, where your mind wakes up but your body is still in the state that keeps you still while dreaming.

I had something similar happen to me. There was some creepy looking person standing over me and laughing. I snapped out of it, and my heart felt like it was going to jump out of my chest.