Department of Neurology, Neuro-Muscular Center

[UglyNRude]

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More studies about ghosts being created in your mind. Sixty to 70% of these tales can be classified into these four types of hallucinations.

Further, sleep-related hallucinations increased from 17.0% to 36.6% in about 40 years. Our criteria will be useful to classify hallucinations experienced by normal people and to elucidate the mechanisms of these kinds of hallucinations experienced in neurodegenerative or psychological disorders.

Be it illusions, delusions or hallucinations at least people are looking in the right place.
Article

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When investigating paranormal don't rely on assumptions, base your decisions on evidence.

[CMF]

What about multiple wittnesses to things like objects moving?

[1TxLady]

I absolutely believe that people imagine or hallucinate things that are not there. I absolutely believe that some people experience things that others cannot.

I am as yet not convinced though that all hypnogogic or sleep paralysis incidents are created by the body. They may be, but I'm not convinced it is 100%.

The study indicates attributing 60-70% of the 183 cases to explainable causes such as sleep paralysis or other hallucinatory states. That leaves 30 - 40% to be determined or attributed to "unknown but probable cause" and then discarded in the name of science.

[D B Sweeney]

IMO multiple witnesses can be mistaken when witnessing something they collectively deem to be supernatural. We're all fooled collectively by the likes of Penn & Teller or
David Blaine. The only difference is that we KNOW we're not actually seeing the supernatural (and suspend disbelief) when we see professional magicians, illusionists and mentalists.
I've seen the very excellent Derren Brown perform live a number of times (using my own eyes) and have seen him perform table levitations, spirit cabinets, mind reading and mind boggling visual illusions that have
fooled thousands of witnesses in a fully lit theatre. My point being that it's relatively easy to fool one or fool many and that the mind itself has been shown to be fallible in the way receives and interprets data.
As a sceptic I'm in agreement with 1TxLady in that there must be some cases that fall outside the norm but it's a tiny percentage but an important tiny percentage that science has yet to answer.

DB

[scarygirl67]

I also recommend reading a very good book I discovered this week called Remembering and Forgetting: Inquiries into the Nature of Memory by Edmund Bolles. In this book, he asserts that memory is a "creative, constructive process". In other words, a lot of what is remembered can be created in the mind.

It's been proven that people see things differently. One challenge that defense attorneys and prosecutors have when gathering witnesses is getting everyone's story to collaborate. Three different people can see the same thing and yet remember it differently. (another reason why crime investigators want to get statements as quickly as possible). This is another reason that paranormal investigators should document everything about a personal experience had on a case rather than relying on their own memory or the memories of others present.

I've still got a lot to learn about this, and I of course don't think it explains everything..but I no longer put trust in my own memory as a reliable source of information, that's for sure! =)

[Haunted Lady]

I'd like to know about instances where there are witnesses, sometimes several. What are the brain effects there? Can we write it off to mass hallucination and several people hallucinating the same thing at the same time? That makes sense.

What about when a ghost communicates? When a person gets enough information from the subject of their hallucination to go to the geneological department at the library and pull death records from 30 or 40 years ago or longer from people they haven't met or lived before their birth should they have a neurological workup? I mean certainly they must have something biologically or physiolgically wrong with them to be able to pull verifiable facts from thin air.

Or, would these folks be the 30ish percent that the study doesn't apply to? Where are the studies that suggest paranormal experiences are real? Why is no one focusing on the smaller percentage and trying to gather statistics for the group of people that don't fall into the category where it can be explained? How can you just drop 30 percent of the population off a cliff and say that they don't matter?

Oh, I am sorry...I forgot. That 30 percent must be nutty. Yeah, that evens things out.

[scarygirl67]

Backing it up with real information is one thing, and when you are able to do that, it does give validation to that memory. However, in my case...there were aspects of my experience that I was so sure I remembered correctly and I have now found out facts that tell me different things.

What I found out a couple of weeks ago gave me another example of my mind creating a memory. The name of the 'ghost' I saw as a child had a very unusual name. I was convinced I had not made this name up, and I was also convinced I had never heard that name ANYWHERE before.

I was wrong. In talking to an old friend on facebook, I saw that name again. It's the name of a childhood friend's older sister. A girl that had been very kind to me when I was a child and someone I had not thought about in years.

Does this mean that girl did not exist other than in my head? I'm not sure. That's just it...I'm not sure anymore. What I do know now is there are things about the memory of her that I created, and I need to be honest enough with myself to admit that.

I do not believe for one minute that it answers every question about the paranormal or spirit communication. I don't think it explains every case, because we know there are instances that don't fit into any box whatsoever. I just want to learn more about how to separate what can be explained from what cannot.

[snapdragon928]

Hypnogocic hallucinations account for my name being called by a million different voices, including mine and my husbands when he was fast asleep. And the one time he said I yelled his name and I was fast asleep. Or the hallucinations brought on by lack of sleep. sleep disorders account for a good number of hallucination, I am sure.
I don't know how to explain the "ghost" dog that everyone in the family saw. at various times in the house I grew up on though. So I guess there is some unknown still to me.

[scarygirl67]

Exactly, snapdragon...there is still unknown. I've been having more conversations with both my parents (now that I am thankfully reunited with my dad) to get their take on some of the things that happened in my former house. Not everything was created in my mind, that's for sure..because there are things that they confirmed for me that did happen. An incident on the stairs where I was pushed that my mother witnessed...the old "objects disappearing"..a shadow my mother saw as well as a few incidents of her hair being pulled...among some others. When I look at it in black and white on a page, I see some strange instances that may well have natural explanations. And yet...I still wonder because I don't know for certain.

What interests me about the brain itself creating paranormal is just how complex an organ the brain is...and how little we understand about it, even with today's knowledge. You can't even really say it's like a computer because it doesn't store information as is. Studies have been done to show that people can create memories or be influenced into remembering things differently than they actually happened. Nine eyewitnesses can see the exact same event and remember it differently, especially after some time passes. Computers simply relay information as it is given, no matter how much time passes.

I think to understand more about the paranormal, the brain is the key...maybe it does create most paranormal or maybe it is something that is undiscovered that gives some people an ability to see and feel things that others don't. Either way it goes..it is research that is well worth looking into.