I saw something that wasn't there

[Cainkane1]

I once saw a "ghost in the room next door to me. It was actually a Lon Chaney type werewolf looking thing. I wasn't on dope and I wasn't drinking. Some people have suggested that there was carbon monoxide present but I lived there and it never happened again. What could have caused me to see this?

[ksbluesfan]

It's hard to say without first hand experience. We don't know the exact conditions, your mental state, or other things that could help evaluate the situation. You might as well as who drank your coke.

[Minarvia]

Well, it could be pareidolia. You may have seen a shadow or a vague shape of something and for a moment it looked like Lon Chaney Jr. as a werewolf.
I used to see what looked like a woman in a red dress in my old apartment out of the corner of my eye, but it turned out to just be me seeing the drapes and window frame with my peripheral vision.
Does this sound similar to what you could have experienced?

[Solus]

Join the club, I sleep near a window and see stuff I can't identify all the time. The brain naturally wants make sense out what it doesn't understand so it takes it to be a werewolf, alien, or whatever else you can dream up.

[JoeTheJuggler]

Were you in bed? I'm not saying it wasn't one of the other explanations mentioned, or even simply a hallucination, but if you were in bed, the most likely explanation is that it was a dream and you weren't aware you'd been asleep.

[Reno]

If it wasn't there, you didn't see it.

[Lisa Simpson]

Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today
I wish that man would go away.

Hugh Means (1875 – 1965)

[Azrael 5]

Join the club, I sleep near a window and see stuff I can't identify all the time. The brain naturally wants make sense out what it doesn't understand so it takes it to be a werewolf, alien, or whatever else you can dream up.

Yep, always an alien never Evagiline Lily :D

[Cainkane1]

It's hard to say without first hand experience. We don't know the exact conditions, your mental state, or other things that could help evaluate the situation. You might as well as who drank your coke.
I was relaxed watching TV. My parents were off with friends. This happened 37 years ago and never happened again. I was 23 then.

[lister]

More details please. What exactly do you mean by "you saw it in the room next door"?
Another room in your house? A room in the house next door? How did you see it? Through a window? Through a door? Did you go and investigate?

My immediate thought was a TV show reflected off something like a glass cabinet door in your neighbour's house, but I'm not even sure if that is what you mean.

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

Were you in bed? I'm not saying it wasn't one of the other explanations mentioned, or even simply a hallucination, but if you were in bed, the most likely explanation is that it was a dream and you weren't aware you'd been asleep.

Took the words right out my mouth. I have dreams so real I would swear that they really happened to me. It sometimes takes until 1:00 in the afternoon the next day for me to realize that it was actually a dream.

[tkingdoll]

Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today
I wish that man would go away.

Hugh Means (1875 – 1965)

You reminded me of this:

Mrs Red
Went to bed
In the morning she was dead

Doctor came
Took her name
Told her not to die again

[darnell11]

I've seen things before, once saw an old woman walking down a hallway for about 3 minutes when I was a child (she was see-through). And many, many more things have happended to me that others would contribute to ghosts or spirits. It's really amazing what your mind can make you see. I don't know what causes things like this to happen, but they do happen on occasion. I just know better than to think I'm seeing ghosties.

Also, I sort of believed in ghosts as a child and I do not now; the "happenings" have pretty much ceased. Except at night if I wake up from a dream, I'd see things moving around in my room, which could just be my eyes and light, or me still dreaming. What I have learned is that when you believe, even just a little, you tend to see, or notice, things more and contribute supernatual origins to them, but when you don't believe at all, it just doesn't happen or if it does, you know it isn't supernatural and you realize what other things it could be. Unless, of course, you have a psychological illness that causes you to see/hear things.

[Speide Bahl]

I see things sometimes, but usually I just hear voices. They give me instructions...mostly to kill.

[Hokulele]

Question for neurologists, why do people often claim to see or hear things, but rarely to smell things that aren't there? I mean, you never hear of someone saying they were just sitting in their living room, and a mysterious waft of bacon brushed by them.

[Crazycowbob]

Well, it could be pareidolia. You may have seen a shadow or a vague shape of something and for a moment it looked like Lon Chaney Jr. as a werewolf.
I used to see what looked like a woman in a red dress in my old apartment out of the corner of my eye, but it turned out to just be me seeing the drapes and window frame with my peripheral vision.
Does this sound similar to what you could have experienced?

That happened to me the other morning, woke up, and swore there was someone in my bed, really freaked me the heck out, till finally my vison kind of cleared, and it was just my covers (the inside is a light color, the outside dark), they had been tussled to where they looked like a face from where I was laying. I had to mess them up some more to get it to stop freaking me out, was a pretty good face!

[latent aaaack]

Question for neurologists, why do people often claim to see or hear things, but rarely to smell things that aren't there? I mean, you never hear of someone saying they were just sitting in their living room, and a mysterious waft of bacon brushed by them.

These instances are less dramatic and less likely to be reported. However, in Ellicot City, MD (a town noted for hauntings) the court house is supposedly haunted by a chef and one common report is of an unexplained smell of toast. I learned this by happening to be in that town and heard anecdotal evidence from a freind who reported smelling it (a lawyer and her assistant).

edit: http://www.prairieghosts.com/cooking.html

[Modified]

Question for neurologists, why do people often claim to see or hear things, but rarely to smell things that aren't there? I mean, you never hear of someone saying they were just sitting in their living room, and a mysterious waft of bacon brushed by them.

I can't really imagine the smell of bacon or anything else very distinctly. There doesn't seem to be a "mind's nose" they way there is a mind's eye and ear.

[Professor Yaffle]

I smell things that apparently aren't there all the time. I know it is not that I just have a more sensitive sense of smell to other people, because when smells are really there, I have more trouble smelling them than other people.

I think we just don't notice smell hallucinations in the way we notice auditory or visual ones because we don't use our sense of smell in the same way, to gain detailed information in our environment. If people communicated with us by smell, or we discerned the shape of our environment by smell, then I think we would report a lot more smell hallucinations.

[skeptigirl]

I hope this isn't a JP1283 sock puppet.

[Speide Bahl]

My wife thinks she smells things. I tell her she's hallucinating...but she's not.

[chillzero]

Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today
I wish that man would go away.

Hugh Means (1875 – 1965)

:scared:

You and jmercer are just out to fill my nights with nightmares. :eek:

That poem has always creeped me out, and thanks to 'Sapphire and Steel' it really got entrenched in my imagination to scare the wits out of me.

:covereyes

[jmercer]

:scared:

You and jmercer are just out to fill my nights with nightmares. :eek:

That poem has always creeped me out, and thanks to 'Sapphire and Steel' it really got entrenched in my imagination to scare the wits out of me.

:covereyes

Here's looking at you, kid! ;)

(Ha! I've always wanted to use that line! Humphrey Bogart, 1899-1957)

[Azrael 5]

That happened to me the other morning, woke up, and swore there was someone in my bed, really freaked me the heck out, till finally my vison kind of cleared, and it was just my covers (the inside is a light color, the outside dark), they had been tussled to where they looked like a face from where I was laying. I had to mess them up some more to get it to stop freaking me out, was a pretty good face!

Reminds me of the letters page from Viz comic.
"I woke up with a start thinking there was a ghost in my room,Imagine my suprise when it turned out to be an escaped prisoner from the high security prison in the next town!" :D

[Soapy Sam]

My wife thinks she smells things. I tell her she's hallucinating...but she's not.

If only we had olfactory files, you could put some on your fascinating website.

[gfunkusarelius]

i go running around dawn and dusk a lot and it is amazing how many things i "see". most are based off of objects that just look different in the lighting, but others are just either a combination of some sort of persistence of vision with an existing object or a total fabrication (probably aided by jostling of my head when running, sweat in my eyes and oxygen fluctuation). anyway, the point is, i have had a few times where i can totally see how people would think they say bizarre things with their own eyes. it can be quite convincing. heck, i even "see" creepy people standing near the road when i wilk the dog at night (mailboxes that seem to be moving a bit as i walk down a hill, etc).
no explanation for your experience, but obviously it was some trick of your sight or you would have had to confront the wolf beast

[Reno]

I see things sometimes, but usually I just hear voices. They give me instructions...mostly to kill.

Anyone in particular?

[Kariboo]

....

[Kariboo]

Is this guy for real?

http://fixd.com/about-speide-bahl/

And from his website:
http://fixd.com/2007/05/03/when-is-keeping-children-in-cages-acceptable/

" This is a subject I’ve wanted to address for awhile now: Kids in cages. On the surface it may sound fairly barbaric, but I think after you read this you’ll agree that it doesn’t have to be.

Back when my girls were younger my wife had some problems getting them to comply with the laws I’d set forth in the articles of the Constitution of our home. At first she tried to simply send them to their rooms—or even lock them in the garage—much like Supernanny would likely recommend. As the girls got older they learned how to compromise the locks in their rooms and the garage. She then began using pad locks for a short time, but that just resulted in broken windows—I recently even found an incomplete tunnel that they must have begun digging from the back of our garage during one of their periods of incarceration.

Nothing she tried was working, eventually she came to me with the problem and I quickly solved it.

As I told her, there was no place in our home, or the trailer, that we could easily secure our daughters when they were acting up. I explained to her that another clever solution was needed. That clever solution? Cages.

Briefly I considered buying an off-the-shelf dog kennel, but they were prohibatively expensive and I wasn’t convinced that the plastic material most of them are made of would be suitable to keep them from escaping. I found that despite the fact that every parent faces these problems, no device existed that I would do what I needed. The solution was to fabricate my own cage.

My design was based on one that was used by the Vietcong during the Vietnam war to hold American servicemen. Instead of using bamboo, I used galvanized fence posts, I then wrapped it in chicken wire. It worked like a dream to hold the girls, even after repeated attempts to get out over several days, not once was the integrity of the cage compromised.

The cages I made were so successful that I built portable versions that I installed in the back of our van so that when my wife and I went out we didn’t need to worry about whether or not the girls were getting into mischief. For a short time I tried to start a business selling the cages, but was not able to find a distributor and eventually gave up to pursue other interests.

As you can see, I really had no realistic alternative other than to use cages to contain our unruly children. This is why stories like the one I linked above upset me so much. By immediately assuming that every parent who puts their child in a cage is a terrible person, we’re creating a society that refuses to look at the benefits of using one of the oldest disciplinary techniques known to man to control bad kids.

Also, if anyone is interested in purchasing a cage from me I have the original prototype models that I no longer need. I also have the materials and designs to make new ones, just contact me and let me know your needs. I can offer discounts for larger purchases like day care centers."


:jaw-dropp

[Kariboo]

OK I spoke too soon

I'm pretty sure Speide is not for real, you can't be that big an idiot and still breathe

He's not funny either, though

So that's 30 minutes of my life I won't get back

Ah well, you live and learn

[brodski]

:scared:

You and jmercer are just out to fill my nights with nightmares. :eek:

That poem has always creeped me out, and thanks to 'Sapphire and Steel' it really got entrenched in my imagination to scare the wits out of me.

:covereyes

Dont worry, All irregularities will be handled by the forces controlling each dimension.

[Stellafane]

I once heard something that wasn't there. Not only that, it saved my life!

When I was 17 I was involved in a car crash. I was sitting in the back seat of a speeding van when the driver hit a patch of sand in the road and lost control. As we were sliding around, someone shouted at me "Jump into the back!" So I did -- just as the van flipped onto its side, left the road, and slammed roof-first into a tree. The roof ended up pressed against the seat where I was sitting; it actually depressed it several inches. If I had stayed in my seat, I would quite literally have been squashed flat. (As it was, I got off relatively easily with just a concussion and a fractured shoulder blade.)

Now here's the odd thing: After the accident, I asked the other occupants who it was that told me to get into the back of the van. Funny thing was, none of them did -- they insisted no one had said a thing throughout the accident.

At this point, several possibilities present themselves. Maybe someone did tell me to get into the back, and in all the excitement the other occupants simply forgot it. (After all, the event was pretty traumatic all around.) Maybe "jump into the back" was the voice in my own head, amplified by the megadoses of adenaline coursing through my veins into an auditory hullucination. Or maybe (as my otherwise skeptical daughter suggests) it was the voice of an angel looking out for me. In any case, it was the best on-the-spot advice I ever received, because I wouldn't be here writing this without it.

I suppose some would see this as some sort of mystical experience, and my reluctance to accept it as such as pig-headed skepticism at its worse. I just interpret it as one of the odd things that can happen to an impaired, enhanced, or semi-sleeping mind -- like seeing ghosts in the room. Interesting, but not enough to completely change my philosophical views.

[skeptigirl]

I once heard something that wasn't there. Not only that, it saved my life!

When I was 17 I was involved in a car crash. I was sitting in the back seat of a speeding van when the driver hit a patch of sand in the road and lost control. As we were sliding around, someone shouted at me "Jump into the back!" So I did -- just as the van flipped onto its side, left the road, and slammed roof-first into a tree. The roof ended up pressed against the seat where I was sitting; it actually depressed it several inches. If I had stayed in my seat, I would quite literally have been squashed flat. (As it was, I got off relatively easily with just a concussion and a fractured shoulder blade.)

Now here's the odd thing: After the accident, I asked the other occupants who it was that told me to get into the back of the van. Funny thing was, none of them did -- they insisted no one had said a thing throughout the accident.

At this point, several possibilities present themselves. Maybe someone did tell me to get into the back, and in all the excitement the other occupants simply forgot it. (After all, the event was pretty traumatic all around.) Maybe "jump into the back" was the voice in my own head, amplified by the megadoses of adenaline coursing through my veins into an auditory hullucination. Or maybe (as my otherwise skeptical daughter suggests) it was the voice of an angel looking out for me. In any case, it was the best on-the-spot advice I ever received, because I wouldn't be here writing this without it.

I suppose some would see this as some sort of mystical experience, and my reluctance to accept it as such as pig-headed skepticism at its worse. I just interpret it as one of the odd things that can happen to an impaired, enhanced, or semi-sleeping mind -- like seeing ghosts in the room. Interesting, but not enough to completely change my philosophical views.

I might be inclined to think it was a false memory, myself.

[Fnord]

Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today
I wish that man would go away.

Hugh Means (1875 – 1965)


I saw no man upon the stair.
I looked again, he was not there.
He was not there again today.
I think he's from the C.I.A.

William "Bill" Maxwell Gaines (March 1, 1922 June 3, 1992)

[skullerello]

I actually have experienced olfactory hallucinations. Occasionally, I would smell Hong Kong. There are a lot of pleasing memories associated with Hong Kong, and the city does have a uniquely fragrant air.
We go camping every year, so the smell of wood fires make me feel a little "homesick".
I'm sorry, I seem to have gotten off-topic.
Hypnogogic hallucination? I'd **** myself if I ever thought I'd seen a werewolf.

[CLD]

Werewolf...hm....could it have been a vampire? :)

[Stellafane]

I might be inclined to think it was a false memory, myself.

Quite possible -- after all, getting in the back certainly worked out for me in the end, so maybe I just imagined after the fact that someone must have told me to do it. Indeed, for all I know I didn't actually jump in the back, maybe through sheer luck I got thrown there just before we hit the tree. Whatever the actual circumstances, I have a clear memory to this day of a voice shouting at me "Jump in the back!" just before doing so, then everything went black. Bear in mind, I'm not even remotely suggesting anying paranormal, just an example of what the mind can produce in extremis.

[Slimething]

...the court house is supposedly haunted by a chef and one common report is of an unexplained smell of toast. I learned this by happening to be in that town and heard anecdotal evidence from a freind who reported smelling it (a lawyer and her assistant).

The building where I work is supposed to be haunted. It's very old. I often smell toast, burned popcorn, and other culinary treats. In an altered state, I tracked them down to someone burnng toast, someone making popcorn and people's lunches.

Often, while lying in bed, I am visited by the olfactory manifestations of meals past. :o Such are my ghosts. At leat they warm me on chill in the chill (or should I say chili?).

It would be neat getting to know a ghost. I've always wanted a captive audience. The living are much too evasive.

[JoeTheJuggler]

It would be neat getting to know a ghost. I've always wanted a captive audience. The living are much too evasive.

I dunno--I guess one imaginary friend is as good as any other. I think "getting to know a ghost" is about the same as having a "personal relationship with Jesus".;)

[Cainkane1]

More details please. What exactly do you mean by "you saw it in the room next door"?
Another room in your house? A room in the house next door? How did you see it? Through a window? Through a door? Did you go and investigate?

My immediate thought was a TV show reflected off something like a glass cabinet door in your neighbour's house, but I'm not even sure if that is what you mean.
I was sitting on the floor next to the darkened living room. I saw movement and looked over and saw the "werewolf" walking a few inches above the living room floor. It "saw" me and it ducked behind a easy chair in the room. I did get up and investigate and look behind the chair. Nothing was there of course. It was realistic looking and it was actually walking a few inches above the floor. If I was into the paranormal instead of being an atheist skeptic I'd say ghost loud and clear. I don't believe in ghosts, the afterlife or god himself. What the **** happened? Why such a prolonged vision and why had it never happened before and why after 38 years has it never happened again? There must be a scientific reason.

[TX50]

I've seen and heard (more often heard) similarly bizarre things when I'm just
on the point of either falling asleep or waking up. Might you have been dozing
when you saw this werewolf-ghost?

[Crazycowbob]

I was sitting on the floor next to the darkened living room. I saw movement and looked over and saw the "werewolf" walking a few inches above the living room floor. It "saw" me and it ducked behind a easy chair in the room. I did get up and investigate and look behind the chair. Nothing was there of course. It was realistic looking and it was actually walking a few inches above the floor. If I was into the paranormal instead of being an atheist skeptic I'd say ghost loud and clear. I don't believe in ghosts, the afterlife or god himself. What the **** happened? Why such a prolonged vision and why had it never happened before and why after 38 years has it never happened again? There must be a scientific reason.

Have you ruled out the possiblity of a hallucination? The mind is a very complex peice of machinery, and can do some really wierd things for what seems like no reason at all. Had you been stressed out during that time period? Were there any medications that you were on? How tired were you? Also, keep in mind that, considering the length of time since the incident, you should also be skeptical of your memory. I can speak of this from experience, as I have found some of the things I thought I remembered clearly turned out to be completely different, one event was even the combination of two seperate events that I'd somehow cobbled together into one memory...

There are just so many possiblities, it's really hard to pinpoint what exactly happened. Best you can do is to look at the options and rank them from most likely to least likely, and go from there. It's quite possible that there is no way to tell what you saw, or what really happened. Unfortunately, those of a woo bend to them will probably take that as "you don't know for sure, so it must be ghosts!!!"

[Slimething]

My eyes are bad enough that I don't believe anything I see unless it stays where it is and doesn't disappear. I don't see UFOs or ghosts or anything like that but the whateveritis would have to pretty well bump into me or eat me before I would take it for real.

[Tamazon]

I have a story to tell. Only 'cause I'm at work and bored to pieces.

Late one night I suddenly sat up in bed and roused my husband who was asleep next to me. With eyes wide open, I pointed to the other side of the bedroom and said "Look, there's three people standing there." My husband tried to see what I saw but of course, saw nothing. I said "Can't you see them? They're right there" And I did see, plain as day, two men and one woman standing there, just looking at us solemnly. I even remember what they looked like the next morning.

After a few seconds, I simply said "never mind" and flopped back onto my pillow. My husband, on the other hand, had a hard time getting back to sleep.

Of course, I have no doubt that I was having a very vivid dream. But there are believers that have told me that they were undoubtedly ghosts or guardian angels that I could see because I was semi-conscious.

Hey, maybe I should ask Sylvia what their names are. Anyone have $700 I can borrow?

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

I once heard something that wasn't there. Not only that, it saved my life!

When I was 17 I was involved in a car crash. I was sitting in the back seat of a speeding van when the driver hit a patch of sand in the road and lost control. As we were sliding around, someone shouted at me "Jump into the back!" So I did -- just as the van flipped onto its side, left the road, and slammed roof-first into a tree. The roof ended up pressed against the seat where I was sitting; it actually depressed it several inches. If I had stayed in my seat, I would quite literally have been squashed flat. (As it was, I got off relatively easily with just a concussion and a fractured shoulder blade.)

Now here's the odd thing: After the accident, I asked the other occupants who it was that told me to get into the back of the van. Funny thing was, none of them did -- they insisted no one had said a thing throughout the accident.

At this point, several possibilities present themselves. Maybe someone did tell me to get into the back, and in all the excitement the other occupants simply forgot it. (After all, the event was pretty traumatic all around.) Maybe "jump into the back" was the voice in my own head, amplified by the megadoses of adenaline coursing through my veins into an auditory hullucination. Or maybe (as my otherwise skeptical daughter suggests) it was the voice of an angel looking out for me. In any case, it was the best on-the-spot advice I ever received, because I wouldn't be here writing this without it.

I suppose some would see this as some sort of mystical experience, and my reluctance to accept it as such as pig-headed skepticism at its worse. I just interpret it as one of the odd things that can happen to an impaired, enhanced, or semi-sleeping mind -- like seeing ghosts in the room. Interesting, but not enough to completely change my philosophical views.

Wow. I'm inclined to think it was an auditory hallucination. It was your own thoughts that you thought you heard.

I've had that, too, that in critical situations you hear your own thoughts as a voice.

[Explorer]

" Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish that man would go away"

William Mearns 1899

[Stellafane]

" Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish that man would go away"

William Mearns 1899

Once upon a long-gone year
I heard a voice that wasn't there.
I'm glad I listened to what it said,
For otherwise I'd be quite dead!

[Cuddles]

Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today
I wish that man would go away.

Hugh Means (1875 – 1965)

" Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish that man would go away"

William Mearns 1899

There seems to be an echo in here.

[Professor Yaffle]

There seems to be an echo in here.

But at least explorer got his name correct (William Hughes Mearns), so I'm going to have to blame Lisa Simpson....

[BPSCG]

Question for neurologists, why do people often claim to see or hear things, but rarely to smell things that aren't there? I mean, you never hear of someone saying they were just sitting in their living room, and a mysterious waft of bacon brushed by them.Mrs. BPSCG were doing some yard work yesterday and I got a sudden whiff of cowflop. I mentioned it to her; she thought I was crazy for a moment, but then she caught it, too, also just for a second or so. And that was it. No recurrence for either of us. There is almost certainly not a single live cow within a five-mile radius of our house, and none of our neighbors were doing yard work that we could tell, so it's unlikely we were smelling bagged manure from the local Home Depot.

I suppose this is where, if either of us were woo-ish, we would find some mysterious explanation for it. But we're not, and I attribute it to something that must have smelled similar to cowflop (we were cutting up a dead tree, so there was a lot of rotten wood involved; who knows what that could have ended up smelling like with the proper combination of rotted wood, insects, mold and the like?) and pretty much dismissed it, up to now. Got more important things to worry about.

[Explorer]

There seems to be an echo in here.

How did I miss Lisa's quote?

Must have been my brain's unwillingness to accept that someone else beat me to it!

Either that or I did really miss her post but her thoughts were subliminally transferred to me by telepathic waves?

[Hokulele]

Thanks to everyone who pointed out smelling things that weren't there. I hadn't come across any references, even anecdotally, and was curious. I have smelled things that seemed somewhat out of place before, but nothing I could not justify as being plausible. I wonder if people are more willing to dismiss unidentified smells as being interesting, but not threatening than sights or sounds?

[Soapy Sam]

You need multiple smellers. In the case of one person, the smell may be quite real, but arising in the person's mouth , gut or olfactory system- or it may be purely imaginary- arising in the brain.
If several folk smell it, a single external cause is implied.

Same for any hallucination I imagine, but we are less used to consciously paying attention to scent, so we may be easier to fool.

[strathmeyer]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucination#Visual_Hallucination_Subtypes