jeffma (02/04/83)
One peculiar thing that you'll notice about a lot of spook
stories is the predominance of the "I woke up in the night
to find. . ." or "I was lying in bed when. . ." syndrome.
Although it is obviously impossible to prove whether or not
these people where actually being visited by Casper the
Ghost or flying saucers, one established glitch in human
perception does exist: the susceptibility to superfluous
perceptual experiences is unusually high when one is either
falling off to sleep or just waking up. A good book on this
subject is "The Psychology of Anomalous Experience" by a guy
named Thomas Reed (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974).
Two types of "anomalous experience" found among normal peo-
ple are "hynagogic" and "hypnopompic" imagery (the former
refers to imagery immediately prior to full sleep; the
latter, which is less common, corresponds to experiences
during the process of waking). People wake to see some-
thing, such as a psychedelic pattern on the ceiling or even
human figures, and after a brief moment the image fades
away. Sounds and even smells can also occur (strange, faint
strains of music, or the sound of one's name being called).
Usually the experience causes the person to become more
alert, at which time they realize the "unreal" character of
the occurrence. Reed provides a good set of definitions for
"illusions", "imagery", and "hallucinations":
a. Illusion involves the misinterpretation of input in
terms of its synthesis with stored material (this does
not include "illusions" caused by mechanical effects in
the eye, such as after-images).
b. Imagery involves the perceptual reconstruction of
stored material.
c. Hallucination involves the perceptual reconstruc-
tion of stored material and its misinterpretation in
terms of input.
Thus, an occurrence of imagery becomes a hallucination when
the subject fails to distinguish it from an external
stimulus.
Again, let me emphasize that the existence of these
phenomena does not prove or disprove the "genuineness" of
peoples' "paranormal experiences" (whatever that means: usu-
ally it refers to the rather cryptic observation that there
really is "SOMETHING out there"...), but the rational
observer should reflect on the shortcomings of his or her
sensory equipment. To make judgements--and especially to
change one's fundamental outlook on how the world works--on
the basis of isolated experiences without any appreciation
of these perceptual "bugs" is surely a mistake (at least if
you're trying to be rational). Before shifting your
personal philosophies because you saw something you don't
understand, first become aware of those built-in "gremlins"
which can, and often do, make a big difference between what
you see and what's actually there (or not there). After all,
what could be more reasonable than to acquire a set of tools
to help you evaluate your weird adventures? Would you
throw your complete trust behind strange data from a com-
puter program which is known to produce spurious data occa-
sionally, or would you prefer to find out more about those
known glitches first?
It's a virtual certainty that at least some bizarre stories
of ghostly visitations or just plain strange stuff are in
fact the direct result of hallucinations ("fairy music",
faces in the night, floating lights), and the human brain
tends to spew out things it's picked up in conversations,
books, and TV ("near-death experiences" tend to fall into a
cookie-cutter pattern which has been cast into most peoples'
minds practically since birth--and what better time to start
hallucinating than when you're near death?). This makes the
regularity of ghost stories and the like no more convincing.
It does make them better slumber-party stories, though,
because people subsequently share common perceptions on what
constitutes "scary stuff", and they LIKE it. Your very own
brain is the most authoritative expert on what scares
you...and I, for one, can hardly blame it for occasionally
giving in to the temptation to interfere with the perception
and interpretation of external reality (does that dark hall-
way really LOOK any different after seeing a scary movie on
TV??).
If you don't believe that "anomalous experience" is the root
of many mystic practices and beliefs, just look at the mul-
titude of ways in which different groups around the world
try their damndest to starve, sweat, drug, or otherwise com-
pel themselves into a psychedelic stupor which for them has
religious or mystical significance. Now, I know there are
people who would (perhaps even seriously) contend that what
you see after swallowing some funny mushrooms is real in
some "higher sense", but I happen to be an adherent of
Occam's Razor, and therefore, based on the available evi-
dence, am inclined to dismiss this as intellectual masturba-
tion.
This is not to say that people should reject out-of-hand
anything they see because it doesn't "fit in"; they can,
however, acquaint themselves with the types of conditions
under which these perceptual quirks occur, and their proper-
ties. These perceptual anomalies DO exist, and you can't
afford to be ignorant of them.
And don't feed me any of this patronizing "until you experi-
ence it yourself, you just can't understand how convincing
it is" stuff. People who are immutably convinced of
anything probably hold that attitude because of a) other
personal convictions, or b) a lack of appreciation for the
tricks their minds can play on them. I'm not that sure of
anything, and am especially cautious of becoming a "true
believer" simply because I saw something I didn't understand
(which of course I have done).
A final note on this stuff: stories from one's deep past
are comfortably inaccessible to testing. Not only do people
see things differently as children (again because they don't
understand a variety of phenomena--and the memories that the
adult recalls have not been "updated" to reflect the matura-
tion process), but memories also tend to "warp out" in
creative ways. In their attempts to fit into an interpreta-
tional framework (be it a "normal" world or one inhabited by
stereotypical goblins and heebee-geebees), memories receive
a certain amount of subtle editing. This also falls into
the classification of a perceptual anomaly, and has been
studied (see chapter 4 of Reed's book, for example). One
neat trick your memory can play on you is to take things out
of the "remembered dreams" box and place them in the "remem-
bered reality" box, which can obviously open up all sorts of
possibilities. More confusion: have you ever awakened, only
to realize afterward that you were still asleep (i.e. were
dreaming about waking up)?
When it comes right down to it, though, the vast majority of
people will go right on believing the stuff they WANT to
believe in. It's a rare individual who can recognize the
difference.
Jeff Mayhew
Tektronix