August 1, 2009
Dear Clusterflock: Have you ever hallucinated?
I had a bout of hallucinations about 10 years ago. I was suffering quite badly with depression and had been on anti-depressants for years. Then came along Prozac®. The doc thought they would be good so off I went!
The three stages of my hallucinations always happened at night and in bed. I had always been asleep for a while and was awakened by the goings on. They happened in quite quick succession, perhaps over the space of two weeks, then stopped.
1. I woke violently as a tiger jumped from sitting above the bedroom door, onto my pillow and then jumped up onto a shelf (which didn’t exist in reality) above the bed. I woke my wife, quite calmly pointed out said tiger, but was told to return to sleep as there wasn’t one. He only appeared once.
2. I woke to see a man standing in the doorway of the bedroom — that would have been about 4 feet from me. He didn’t scare me. I came around slowly to see him standing there. I don’t remember colour — I do remember him being an Abe Lincoln type – stovepipe hat, and a beard. He wasn’t moving. I woke my wife and asked her quite calmly if she could see the man stood in the corner – she could not. I lay there for a while looking at him, closing my eyes and opening them. He stayed for a while and then left.
He returned for quite a few nights. He was always in the same place, always in monochrome and he never spoke. Unfortunately, I never spoke to him.
3. I woke one night. I was lying on my back, and as I looked up at the ceiling it was alive with a sea of frogs – all moving as one. I again woke my wife – just for the reality check. They stayed until I closed my eyes, say 20 minutes, then disappeared.
What have you seen?
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What with having been a (literally) myopic and imaginative only child and having done some adventuring in entheogenic (as well as hypnagogic) realms, I’ve seen a thing or two. I’ll try to select some of my favorites and tell y’all.
When I was young, 12 or 13, our doctor had given us a few samples of some cough/cold medicine to help treat a cold I’d come down with. I took a dose of cold medicine, before bed and went down to the basement to grab something from the laundry room.
On the way back up the stairs heard a voice (at the time I thought it was Lucifer himself) and I did what was natural; I ran. My mom’s 19th century (sorry Cindy)™ Victorian has hardwood floors and at the time she had a little throw rug spanning the doorway between the kitchen and living room. On many previous occasions that little rug had been the banana peel to my sprint through the house. As I hurdled the rug I had the sensation of being held in place, feet off the ground, hovering in the doorway, as the voice spoke to me, a low, loud calling of my name. The spell was released I made it successfully to my bed and fell asleep under the influence of the night time cold medicine.
Later that same night I awoke to the same voice. My room was drenched in an evil red light. Frightened, I pulled the comforter over my head and curled into a ball (because we all know down is the ultimate protection against evil…and cold).
That was the last time I ever took medicine for a cold (with the exception of Advil or Tylenol). I’m still frightened of hallucinating and have never been tempted to put myself in that state intentionally.
Michael Smith, that is an amazing tale.
when I was three or four, a fisher price jumbo jet flew through my bedroom window, the pilot and copilot waved, the plane flew across my room in a lazy swoop and finally out my door never to be seen again.
Michael, that is one mother of a tale!
Deron, that may of course be real – such things happen to toddlers. The adults never believe them.
I think it was about 1963 when we had a very hot summer in the UK. I can remember having to go home and lay in the dark as I was feeling sick. I recall vividly the laying in a darkened room and the whole room spinning, bright colours in my dark head. It was like being on a roller coaster of light – the room zooming and my body spinning. It passed after an hour or so.
The odd thing is, I relive that feeling on a regular basis, about every 12-18 months I get exactly the same feelings, visions, thoughts. I feel like my head is going to explode. Where ever I am I have to stop until it passes.
It happens completely at random and lasts about 30-45 minutes and then disappears. It has happened pretty much every year. I have always assumed, well since I was an adult, that it was sun stroke of some kind. I have no idea why I relive this on such a regular basis.
I don’t “hallucinate” as much as I carry my dreams into wakefulness. I’m asleep and dreaming, but my body isn’t fully disconnected from my brain. Many times I’ll wake my wife up over something I see in my dreams.
Once, monkeys were climbing on our ceiling.
Another time, the ceiling was falling in, and I got her out of bed so she didn’t get hurt. I thought I was being helpful, but she didn’t appreciate it.
Another time, she was not entirely thrilled to wake up with me hovering over her, trying to pick off invisible insects. That was the only time she got angry at me over my dreams.
One night, aliens attacked through our ceiling. I pulled her out of bed, and all the way downstairs (we had a loft bedroom). At the foot of the stairs, I fully awoke and realized what I’d done. Apparently, she slept through it, and had no memory of it the next morning.
When we were staying in a hotel room once, I woke her up because a big black dog was walking through the room.
Generally speaking, she’s been a pretty good sport about that sort of thing.
K
Now this is a topic I want to read. I just bought a book about this, “The Spiritual Anatomy of Emotion” by Michael A. Jawer with Marc Micozzi, MD, PhD. They say the energy of feelings plays an integral role in immunity, stress reactions, and conditions like “migraine headache, synesthesia (overlapping senses), chronic fatigue, phantom pain, and post-traumatic stress disorder.”
They also say apparitions, telepathy, poltergeist disturbances, and ‘out of body’ experience also arise from distortions in the way individuals process feeling. “Although they have long resisted explanation, each of these phenomena involves a discernable pattern and is amenable to scientific inquiry,” Jawer says.
They say these experiences are not unusual or crackpot. In fact, the University of Chicago’s prestigious National Opinion Research documents that “these happenings are practically the norm.” Surveys since 1972 have found that two-thirds of us have experienced some sort of extrasensory perception, nearly half “describe contact with the dead.” About 30 percent have had visions, two-thirds deja vu. These people, the research finds, are for the most part ordinary Americans “somewhat above the norm in education and intelligence and somewhat less than average in religious involvement.”
Kevin, your response gives me much relief. I talk in my sleep, which has been a constant source of amusement and frustration to my bed mates. I woke up my college girlfriend the first night she stayed over, and politely reintroduced myself: “Hi, my name is Mike. I play the piano.” The speaking is a relatively frequent occurrence; I once woke up screaming in terror. Anyway, no images, or none that I remember.
It was only once I’d begun to live with real cats that I discovered the phenomenon of ‘false cats’ — those cats who dart swiftly just at the edge of your peripheral vision.
Mike,
According to my wife, talking in my sleep is such a constant occurrence that it’s hardly worth mentioning. Apparently, I only tend to sleepwalk when I’m particularly stressed.
This runs in my family. My father once gave my mother a black eye when he went up for a rebound playing basketball in a dream, and on another occasion she awoke to find my father feeling around on the floor next to the bed. “I’m looking for my axe,” he said, when questioned. (Still happily married; why do you ask?)
My brother and sister are also apparently active in their sleep, and one night my cousin awoke to find her six year old daughter sitting on the kitchen counter holding a chef’s knife. They started locking her door after that.
K
It’s a delight to read all of these tales of voices and Abe Lincolns and shadow cats and pilots waving from little jets circling the room. My first hallucination came when I was about three and awoke to see my sister–two years older–standing beside my bed. I asked her what she was doing and reached to touch her. When my hand went through her image I leaped all the way from my bed to the doorway, screaming. I had learned that jumping from the bed trick after seeing the movie The Blob; the dark floor of a child’s room is surely always covered by such creatures. Then in my teens I discovered LSD. I don’t know if that counts here, where it seems tales of other causes prevail–but let’s just say that shit really sets the bar when it comes to hallucinations (although peyote buttons are are not far behind). I’m talking people melting or turning into various animals right in front of you, and so on. Then there was the odd stint of chemo-therapy-induced hallucinations that were sort of like waking fever dreams: I kept seeing exploded drawings of machines, each part performing some intricate activity, with associated sounds all distinct but occurring simultaneously. Also, at other times, I saw long strips of fleshy material that looked like human gums, with parrot beaks and chunks of fresh pineapple protruding from both sides. I think I have had all of the hallucinating I want.
And then there are the auditory hallucinations. Those have been and remain a regular feature of my experience.
And you’re right, Daryl. The acid visions set some kind of standard, you bet.
The afternoon of sex with someone who turned into a skeleton draped in flowery garlands was memorable. It was okay, though. I thought I’d entered an Alphonse Mucha poster.
We are sleepwalkers, too, at least one per generation. My son shot out of his room in the middle of the night a few months ago. I recognized what was happening instantly, even though I was half asleep, and ran down the stairs after him. He ran through the living room to the kitchen, unlocked the deadbolt, ran into the back yard and out the back gate. I ran outside yelling his name. He is very fast. He stopped finally and I led him back in. Deadbolt keys are hidden away at night now.
Growth spurts, times of high stress trigger the wild times. I also tried to get “out” during my sleep when I was growing up. Now, I wake up at windows, pushing aside curtains and blinds, looking for something.
[...] Mike Dresser: I woke up my college girlfriend the first night she stayed over, and politely reintroduced myself: “Hi, my name is Mike. I play the piano.” [...]
Hallucinations, it seems, are anomalies, at least for most of us. And so they are memorable.
It is in what I have come to call the ‘hypnagogic states’, episodes such as Cece just recounted, that interesting things can happen, things that can — perhaps — spill over into the lives we lead in the broad light of day.
I once heard someone say my name when I was trying to nap.
At the moment I’m on Citalopram. It doesn’t take away the depression but it doesn’t make me impotent which seems to be important at the moment. Anyway it can make you hallucinate, but for me it has created a ‘suggestability’. If something looks like something, my mind tells me it is and I will turn to look. Instantly I know its happening and look away but it will happen again and again. i get quite a kick out of it and luckily no-one has noticed yet.
I experience hypnagogia a lot and wonder if anyone else experiences the “armies of phantom cats” and “man with a gun” episodes? I have different experiences a lot but these ones keep coming back and have heard of narcoleptics who have the same visions. Just wondered.
I do often catch glimpses of what I call ‘false cats’.
Ah. I see I’m repeating myself.
When I was 3 until about 5 or 6 I would hallucinate every night. Huge rectangular light purple blobs would “come through my window” and float above me. I would take my hand and slice the object through the middle. Every time I did this, it would split in half, stop floating, and fall to the floor. I absolutely loved this and treated it as a game.
Once I saw a bunch of pink jewelry sitting at the end of my bed… another time, I saw a tiny Little Red Riding Hood plastic doll with a picnic basket in her hand. I “chopped” the basket in half with my hand, and apples and bananas started pouring out of it.
Every night, my floor looked like mud that was slightly moving… I always felt like all of this was wonderful and perfectly normal at the time.
I miss those nights!
Teresa, I saw similar wonders at an early age, and then they went away.
Even before I reached the close of your comment, I thought, “Damn. I miss those visions.”
Hi all,
I work for a TV company that makes films/shows for the BBC and US networks.
I’m researching information about hallucinations that have been caused by medication.
I’m really keen to speak to individuals who have experienced something like this or know someone who has. Or anyone with information on this subject matter would be quite helpful.
I’m currently at the research stage of this project so your help and insight would be greatly appreciated!
Many thanks,
Sara
researchfirecrackerfilms@hotmail.com