Twilight Shadows (North) Paranormal

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream.

 

I am currently reading a book called Paranormality by Professor Richard Wiseman which I am finding to be an incredibly interesting read.

 

I wanted to highlight the chapter which explains about our sleep patterns. 

 

For centuries, people have experienced ghost sightings when dropping off to sleep or in the act of waking up.  After reading this chapter, I feel Professor Richard Wiseman has explained very clearly how a malfunction in our sleep pattern can cause the sleeping person to feel the sensation that they have just experienced a paranormal incident.

 

In it, he explains how researchers have now identified five distinct stages of sleep.  Soon after nodding off you drift into the creatively labelled ‘stage 1’.  Here your brain is still very active and producing high frequency brain waves known as ‘Alpha’ waves’.  During this stage people frequently experience two types of hallucinations known as hypnagogic imagery (which occur when people are drifting into sleep) and hypnopompic imagery (which occur when they are waking up).  Either type can result in a wide range of visual phenomena, including random speckles, bright lines, geometric patterns and mysterious animal and human forms.  These images are often accompanied by strange sounds such as loud crashes, footsteps, faint whispers and snatches of speech.  Interestingly, these are exactly the type of experiences that have been mistaken for the presence of a ghost for hundreds of years. 

 

Having survived the potential terrors associated with ‘Stage 1’ you drift into ‘Stage 2’.  Again, your brain is far from calm, often producing brief burst of activity known as ‘spindles’.  ‘Stage 2’ lasts for about 20 minutes and can result in the occasional mumble and even full on sleep-talking.  Slowly you drift further down into (you guessed it) ‘Stage 3’.  Now your brain and body are starting to become properly relaxed and after another 20 minutes or so you finally enter the deepest stage of sleep . . . In ‘Stage 4’, your brain activity is at a minimum, resulting in very slow moving ‘Delta’ waves.  If you are going to engage in a spot of bedwetting or sleep-walking, this is the moment. 

 

After around 30 minutes or so in ‘Stage 4’ something very strange happens.  Your brain moves rapidly back through the first three stages and then enters a mysterious state.  It exhibits the same high levels of activity originally displayed during ‘Stage 1’, but your heart races, your breathing becomes shallow and you produce the REMs that so fascinated Aserinsky all those years ago.  Now you are dreaming.  Everyone experiences the REM stage about 5 times each night, with each of the periods lasting an average of twenty minutes.  Although some people think that they don’t dream, if they are woken up directly after exhibiting REMs, more often than not, they will report a dream, it is not that some individuals don’t dream, but rather that they don’t remember their dreams in the morning.

 

Additional work has shown that two curious things happen to your body when you dream.   First, your genitals become active, with men getting and erection and women exhibiting increased vaginal lubrications.  Although hailed as a breakthrough in the 1960’s some researchers have argued that the effect may have been discovered long before, pointing out, for example, that one of the 17,000 year old cave paintings in Lascaux depicts a dreaming Cro-Magnon hunter with an erect penis (then again, he might just have really enjoyed hunting).  Second, although your brain and genitalia are very active during dreaming, the rest of your body is not.  In fact, your brainstem completely blocks any movement of your limbs and torso in order to prevent you acting out your dreams and possibly hurting yourself.

 

Just as your brain can fool you into seeing an afterimage of a ghost, it can also trick you into thinking that you have encountered and evil entity.  As you move between ‘stage 1’ and the REM state, you brain sometimes becomes confused, causing you to experience the hypnagogic and hypnopompic imagery associated with ‘Stage 1’, but the sexual arousal and paralysis associated with the REM state.  This terrifying combination causes you to feel as if a heavy weight is sitting on your chest and pinning you to the bed, sense (and sometimes see) and evil entity or two, and believe that you are having a rather odd form of intercourse. 

 

For centuries a significant percentage of the public have convinced themselves that they have been attacked by demons, ghosts and aliens.  Not only have sleep researchers revealed the true nature of such experiences, but also uncovered the best way of banishing these entities from your bedroom.  Perhaps not surprisingly, this does not involve extensive chanting, the sprinkling of holy water or an elaborate exorcism.  In fact, it turns out that all you have to do is try your best to wiggle a finger or blink.  Even the smallest of movements will help your brain shift from the REM state to ‘Stage 1’ of sleep, and before you know it you will be wide awake and safely back in the land of the living. 

 

Those who believe in ghosts have now been forced to accept that the incubus experience is not evidence of hell, but rather a clever trick of the mind.  However, rather than jettison their belief in hauntings, they have focused their attention on an altogether trickier problem.  The many ghost sightings that happen when people are far from sleep.

 

(taken from Paranormality by Professor Richard Wiseman)

 

I have myself experienced both Hypnogogic and Hypnopompic hallucinations both being terrifying and feeling very real at the time.

 

One Hypnogogic hallucination happened a few times just after my son was born. 

As all parents know, the first few weeks of a baby’ life is a jumble of exhaustion, sleep deprivation and great highs (and lows) for new parents.  I had taken to going to bed early as James was not very easy to settle after his first night feed so I wanted to try and get in as much sleep as I could before the dreaded 3am feed arrived.  I had just settled into bed and was just drifting off to sleep when I could see (and sense) a shadow come into the room, walk around the bed, stop at James mosses basket, walk back to the foot of the bed and then I felt the dip (and the sensation of the cover being pulled tight) where someone had sat down.  Thinking this was my husband I waiting for him to start getting undressed and get into bed, but that never came.  I opened my eyes and no-one was there.  Until I found out about the hypnogogic phenomena I thought I had experienced something paranormal. Now I am not so sure. 

 

The second experience only last year.  Something had woken me up (which to me sounded like a very loud noise), In my confused state I am aware that there is something in my bedroom and the feeling of terror is immense. I am also aware of this horrible heavy feeling on me (preventing me from moving).  I try to call out to my husband but nothing is coming out.  I am aware in my dream I am screaming but I am also aware that in reality I am making this weird strangled noise. I see Dave get up and walk around the bed (to check on me) though as he walks around I am coming out of this hypnopompic stage and realise I am seeing Duke our dog walking around the bed (to wake me up as he needed a wee) and my hubby is still snoring soundly next to me in bed.  The loud noise was when Duke burst the bedroom door open.  All this happened in seconds but it seemed to last for much longer than that at the time.  Being ever the brave paranormal investigator I threw the covers over my head and refused to peek out until the feeling of terror had gone (even though I knew it was the dog in the room).

 

J Wicheard  ©