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Visual Hallucinations Are a Normal Grief Reaction
Hugh Pickens writes "Vaughn Bell has written an interesting essay at Scientific American about grief hallucinations. This phenomenon is a normal reaction to bereavement that is rarely discussed, although researchers now know that hallucinations are more likely during times of stress. Mourning seems to be a time when hallucinations are particularly common, to the point where feeling the presence of the deceased is the norm rather than the exception. A study by Agneta Grimby at the University of Goteborg found that over 80 percent of elderly people experience hallucinations associated with their dead partner one month after bereavement, as if their perception had yet to catch up with the knowledge of their beloved's passing. It's not unusual for people who have lost a partner to clearly see or hear the person about the house, and sometimes even converse with them at length. 'Despite the fact that hallucinations are one of the most common reactions to loss, they have barely been investigated and we know little more about them. Like sorrow itself, we seem a little uncomfortable with it, unwilling to broach the subject,' writes Bell. 'We often fall back on the cultural catch all of the "ghost" while the reality is, in many ways, more profound.' "
..they are actually not hallucinating? (I, for one, welcome our dead, elderly, overlords)
Mourning seems to be a time when hallucinations are particularly common
Yes, this is very common, and is usually attributed to the caffeine withdrawal symptoms prior to morning coffee.
Better known as 318230.
That's quite clearly just a simple glitch in the Matrix.
But that's because the only time I ever lost a friend (you expect to lose grandparents) all the young folk she knew went and dropped acid. It's what she would have wanted...
You're all wrong.
i can haz 10 livs?
Just because it happens frequently doesn't mean it is *not* supernatural in nature.
That's why I pray every day to our great Flying Spaghetti Monster so I can see his terrific, supernatural tentacles grabbing down everything where others just see "gravity".
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
It ties the whole room together!
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Of course I'm dead due to misfiring brain cells.
No no, you're pining for the fjords.
Dug 'em up, they were still in there.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
Bad point. There may well be less things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of. Especially if you consider for instance pre-election rethoric as dreams.
Dude it's called the Bible. And if isn't in there you shouldn't even be thinking about it, sinner.
I have been told "You don't exist, go away!". Perhaps that was no error message.
it takes time for a soul passed to the other side to adjust to higher frequency and eventually become unperceptible for us.
Read radical news here
Absolutely. Why, in 46% of documented cases, energy inductance drain has been detected in the vicinity of dead bodies, decaying exponentially with time and oscillating about a void karma mean. And in 67.2% of such cases, inductance eddies were suggested by gathered data as having occurred before the obituarial event. Couple this evidence with well known ESP studies and psionic-harmonics studies, and the case for ghosts, and particularly poltergeists becomes more than compelling, it's practically irrefutable.
You can link these findings with the proven influence of Saturn, on general supernatural phenomena, especially those involving the recently deceased. True, r is only 0.13 in the case of 80% energy remnants(measured on a Kasparov scale), but the results ARE statistically significant.
Or has been found already, and is just being ignored my small minded skeptics. The truth is out there. Keep the faith!
May the Maths Be with you!
How exactly did someone's death prove there is no afterlife? I can understand not believing in an afterlife, but how did someone you love's dying prove it?/
He postulated his epistemology a priori then pronounced it a posteriori posthumously.
Probably.
I'm a satanic clam.
Time and space is an illusion
Lunchtime doubly so
Free Martian Whores!
Seems like a very subjective opinion, and no "proof" as such.
Subjectivism, on my Slashdot? It's more likely than you think.
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
Besides, the researchers may well find themselves on the other end of that hallucination.
I totally hate when the people I'm studying start hallucinating me.
Ah, but in politics, as well as governance, there's but a fine line between "Vision" and hallucination, which which we tend to comprehend mainly in retrospect...
Mourning seems to be a time when hallucinations are particularly common, to the point where feeling the presence of the deceased is the norm rather than the exception.
Dammit.
Next thing you know those awful secularists will be claiming that anecdotal stories of "I saw Jesus three days after He died" represent something fundamentally normal about the human experience.
Those damn secularists might suggest that such anecdotes may say more about the grief and mourning of people for a really nice peaceful human guy, than about the magic powers of the dead really really nice peaceful human guy. It's a good thing that no one ever made claims that differed from the early Christian church that ended up dominating the orthodoxy.
And don't even get me started about Elvis. I saw the King with my own eyes the week after he faked his own death, I tell you what.
I was sitting on the toilet, and since I was alone I didn't bother shutting the bathroom door.
I looked up just as a woman wearing contemporary-looking clothing walked up to the door, startled out of her wits as if she'd seen a ghost, as was I
So, in other words, it scared the shit out of you...
One thing that my death has proved to me is that certainly there is afterlife.
"Whether these things should be legalized is another topic, but at least make it easier for researchers to do legitimate science with them. Just tell me where to sign up."
And you wonder why they don't make it easier for researchers to do 'legitimate' science? (Ignoring the MASSIVE disparity between what different people consider legitimate altogether)
Since then I have avoided this problem by always breaking up with a girl as soon as things start getting serious. Hey, it works.
I do that too, but change "girl" with "computer" and "serious" with "slow and obsolete or broken".
They have medications for that.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
The human brain seems to be very good at making shortcuts to speed up processing.
So when I'm around my wife, my human brain assumes that the person I see is my wife (shoot, it even assumes the warmth next to me in bed is my wife, and that the person I'm talking to is my wife), and interprets it that way for me.
If your brain was REALLY good at making shortcuts, it'd skip all that and use the only shortcut a married man needs: "Yes dear" ;-)
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And that is why all the women call you Lord Ender, right?
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It involved three-four deities (Tangra, Athena, Poseidon and the Lady) and the appropriate sacrifices I should perform for my pretty damn miraculous survival.
Ok, don't leave us hanging. What were the sacrifices, and did you perform them?