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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.' "
For several weeks after a beloved cat of mine died, I swear I saw him out of the corner of my eye a few times! Most of the "hallucinations" were brief glimpses, but one I particularly remember I turned a corner and swear I saw him sitting there. I even said involuntarily "Hi, Prince..." then realized after a few seconds that nothing was there. Pretty creepy, huh? After about a month or so I stopped "seeing" him around. So long, my friend.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
One thing that the death of someone I loved has proved to me is that there are no ghosts, and certainly no afterlife.
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?
That in 80% of cases some remnant, some energy of that person was left behind? Just because it happens frequently doesn't mean it is *not* supernatural in nature.
Do they have MRIs of people while they are experiencing a hallucination like this? Something to show the brain is dreaming, and not simply observing?
By the same token, I suppose we can't really prove that there is an observation going on. I've had family members relate to me that they remember a sequence of events, in a very specific way. I remember the same events differently. Either we are people from different dimensions who have slipped between worlds to share this one, or we have altered our own memories to suit what we would have liked to happen. One of these is more consistent with current science. It doesn't guarantee that the other option won't be found to be possible at some point.
I remember when I was a kid, I shared a bedroom with my older brother.
I would hear him whispering in his sleep, it would go on for hours.
Then he went away on a school trip and I could still hear the whispering.
A lot of early morning hallucinations probably also come when a person is still asleep, but doesn't realize it. I saw a documentary on sleep research not long ago where they showed that during certain phases of a sleep cycle, a person could actually be asleep and still think they're awake. People in these phases would often interpret lingering sleep paralysis as some weight on their chest, not realizing it was just the remnants of them dreaming.
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They've barely been investigated because one of the best avenues for investigating them, hallucinogenic drugs, has been actively suppressed. Take the tryptamines for example. Here we have a class of chemicals that are, for the most part, physically harmless, that can be administered in a controlled setting and are all but guaranteed to produce hallucinations. Hell one of them, dimethyltryptamine (DMT), is even produced naturally in the human brain. This is the most powerful hallucinogen known to exist, yet we know almost nothing about it or what it's doing there, because (ironically) it's a Schedule I drug. Technically, we're all guilty of possession of a controlled substance.
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.
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I observed this phenomenon with grief over a girlfriend. We broke up after four years together. Afterward, I kept seeing her out of the corner of my eye, and my heart would skip a beat. It was always someone else, though.
Another unusual visual phenomenon: when the grief was particularly overwhelming, I started seeing in black-and-white, or at least with muted perception of color.
Since then I have avoided this problem by always breaking up with a girl as soon as things start getting serious. Hey, it works.
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My father was in the hospital when my grandmother (his mother) came by to see how he was recovering. Pretty well, he said. They talked of this and that and finally my father had to mention that though he was pleased that Grandma had stopped by he was puzzled because she'd died the month before.
A couple of years later, after Dad died, he came by to see me and would have said something except that his mouth had been sewn shut.
The mind is a wierd thing to live in. I've "seen a ghost" twice in my life. Both were wierd. Neither was explicable.
The first time my oldest was an infant and my youngest wasn't born. We lived in a funny shaped house by a railroad track (we were dirt poor). The (now ex) wife and I had just gone to bed, and both of us saw a thin, very pale woman with long black hair and wearing what looked like a "dressing gown"' from ages past walking past the bedroom door! We thought there was an intruder. We both jumped up, I looking for the intruder and she checking to make sure the baby was alright.
It was extremely strange that we would both have the same hallucination at the same time. We finally decided that we'd seen the ghost of a woman who'd been struck by a train.
The second time I saw a ghost I came to the conclusion that seeing ghosts isn't a hallucination or sight of a disembodied spirit but a wrinkle in the spacetime continuum. The girls were visiting the wife's family in Missouri and I had the house to myself. 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, -- and then she vanished.
There is a lot about the physical world that we not only have never investigated, but never expected or suspected.
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Who is to say that living on in your memories is not a form of ghostliness? Its an unorthodox view, but I believe this is what the summary is getting at.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
AFAIK so far there's no scientific theory to explain "self awareness"/"consciousness", and I suspect it's the very first observation all scientists make - observation of self. Why should there be such a phenomenon in the first place?
:) ) observe? Is it because we're all somehow "cheating" and peeking into the actual future very slightly?
One of my current theories of consciousness is it's the result of the mind recursively simulating/predicting itself as part of simulating/predicting the universe, and peeking into the future of what it is going to think next. It's very useful for a creature to predict the world around it, including other creatures, and it often has to predict itself.
But even if that is the case why should it cause the phenomemon we (I presume it's "we" and not just me
The fallacy comes in when people start touting said non-existence as a proven fact when it's only based on our current understanding of science. Like this article itself - dismissing it all as hallucinations. Current science can't explain it, so it must be a hallucination.
But what if it's not?
Seriously, this statement:
'We often fall back on the cultural catch all of the "ghost" while the reality is, in many ways, more profound.' "
What could be more profound than the spirit of the deceased lingering?
My Paternal grandfather had died, and my grandmother was still kicking around 5 or 6 years later. I was dreaming one night that I was hanging out in the woods behind their house, when my grandfather came walking out of the woods and said to me, "It's time to call your grandmother."
Normal dream fare, but for some reason it woke me up and I stored that I should call her. So, the next day, I woke up, went about my day, and called my grandmother and had a nice conversattion with her, which was fortunate because she died that night.
I still have that walking stick in my office.
Being certain that such things are impossible is just as stupid as believing in them, imho. We are just a bunch of monkeys. There's far stuff more going on that we don't understand than there is stuff we've scratched the surface of.
You can smile and nod at me and think I'm a looney toon for thinking that the deceased may linger. I would be just as much in the right to smile and nod at you for thinking otherwise.
Neither of us knows.
I've had one hallucination, without any grief or drugs. I think stress is enough.
I was kayaking nears rocks, surfing very high waves, lost my kayak, and spent 15 minutes in the surf, hitting rocks multiple times. I got out, retrieved my kayak, launched, and paddled to a place where I could relax... then I had a pretty long and elaborate hallucination.
It involved three-four deities (Tangra, Athena, Poseidon and the Lady) and the appropriate sacrifices I should perform for my pretty damn miraculous survival. I'm an atheist, and I cannot help but think that this is how religions get started.
No good deed goes unpunished...
One possibility is that, shortly before the alarm goes off, the clock emits a subtley different sound (I had an old analog alarm that would do exactly this - a sort of pre-alarm echo) just barely audible. You've slept to the point of being woken by the alarm often enough that you sub-conscious recognizes the sound, and jerks you awake to avoid the annoyance of the alarm proper.
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