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I saw something that wasn't there

Cainkane1

Philosopher
Cainkane1
Joined
Jul 16, 2005
Messages
9,011
Location
The great American southeast
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?
 
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.
 
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?
 
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.
 
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.
 
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)
 
Solus said:
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.
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Yep, always an alien never Evagiline Lily :D
 
ksbluesfan said:
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.
Click to expand...
I was relaxed watching TV. My parents were off with friends. This happened 37 years ago and never happened again. I was 23 then.
 
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.
 
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JoeTheJuggler said:
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.
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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.
 
Lisa Simpson said:
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)
Click to expand...

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
 
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.
 
I see things sometimes, but usually I just hear voices. They give me instructions...mostly to kill.
 
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.
 
Minarvia said:
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?
Click to expand...

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!
 
Hokulele said:
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.
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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
 
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Hokulele said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
 
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.
 
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