You are Not Alone

You might be hesitant to admit it, but you've probably experienced the unsettling feeling that someone is in the room when you were certain you were alone. Perhaps you are glad to share it with others because it was a significant experience. Or, more likely, it was a combination of the two.

Most people find it difficult to comprehend what transpired to them unless they were given an explanation to aid in their processing of the event. Today's study, however, demonstrates that we may use scientific models of the mind, the body, and their interaction to grasp this ethereal experience.

An extensive study of the subject was conducted as early as 1894. More than 17,000 persons in the UK, US, and Europe participated in the Census of Hallucinations, which was released by the Society for Psychical Research (SPR).

The purpose of the poll was to determine the prevalence of seemingly implausible visitations that predicted death. The SPR found that these occurrences were too frequent to be the result of chance (one in every 43 people that were surveyed).

Phantasms of the Living was published in 1886 by the SPR, which counted former British prime minister William Gladstone and poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson among its patrons. There were 701 instances of telepathy, premonitions, and other strange happenings in this collection. For instance, the Reverend P H Newnham of Devonport in Plymouth related a tale of a voyage to New Zealand during which he was advised by a nighttime presence not to board a boat at first light the next morning. Afterwards, he discovered that everyone on board had perished in the sea.

Phantasms was criticized at the time for not being scientific. Less scepticism was expressed towards the census, although response bias persisted (who would bother responding to such a survey except those with something to say). But such events do exist.

Several testimonies gathered by SPR resemble hypnagogia, which are hallucinatory episodes that occur just before sleep. It has been proposed that hypnagogia serves as the foundation for a number of religious experiences described in the 19th century.

Almost 7% of adults have had sleep paralysis at least once in their lives, and there is a strong correlation between presences and this condition. As a result of REM sleep, our muscles stay paralyzed during sleep paralysis, but our mind is awake and alert. More than 50% of persons with sleep paralysis, according to studies, claim to have felt a presence.

Modern instances of presence produced by sleep paralysis typically exude malevolence, in contrast to the Victorian presences recorded by the SPR, which were frequently pleasant or benign. Every society has its own legends about nocturnal visitors, from the Spanish "little friar with the wounded hand who could infiltrate people's dreams" to the Yoruba Ogun Oru in Nigeria, which was thought to be the result of charmed victims.

So why would a condition like paralysis induce a sense of presence? Some studies have concentrated on the distinctive features of waking up in such an unexpected circumstance. Even without hallucinations, sleep paralysis frightens the majority of people. 2007 saw sleep specialists.

Examining the similarities between visitations in sleep paralysis and other forms of sensed presence is another strategy. In addition to being a common occurrence in the hypnagogic landscape, presences have also been recorded in cases of Parkinson's illness, psychosis, near-death experiences, and mourning, according to research conducted over the past 25 years. This indicates that it's unlikely to be a phenomena unique to sleep.

From neurological case studies and brain stimulation trials, we may infer that physical signals can elicit presences. For instance, in 2006, neurosurgeon Shahar Arzy and colleagues were successful in producing a "shadow figure" that a lady experienced while having her left temporoparietal junction electrically activated (TPJ). The figure appeared to reflect the woman's posture, and the TPJ integrates data.

A series of studies conducted in 2014 also shown that some healthy individuals appear to experience a sense of presence when their sensory expectations are disrupted. The technique the researchers utilized works by synchronizing your motions with a robot right behind you, giving the illusion that you are caressing your own back.

By supposing that we are causing that experience, our brains interpret the synchronization. People may then feel as though a ghost in the machine is there when that synchronization is suddenly broken by slightly throwing off the robot touches. Something like to a hallucination is brought on by altering the situation's sensory expectations.

The reasoning may also be applicable to a circumstance like sleep paralysis. It's maybe not surprising that we could get the sensation of having something "other" present with us in such a situation since all our normal information about our body and senses is interrupted. Even if it appears to be another presence, it is actually ourselves.

In 2022, I conducted my own study and attempted to identify patterns in the presences from clinical stories, spiritual practice, and endurance sports (which are well known for producing a range of hallucinatory phenomena, including presence).

Several characteristics of the impression of a presence were extremely similar in all of these instances; for instance, the individual felt as though the presence was standing right behind them. All three groups identified sleep-related presences.

The study of sensed presence has just recently become a field of study, despite its century-old beginnings. In the end, scientific investigation could provide us with one comprehensive explanation or we might require many hypotheses to explain all these instances of presence. Yet, the experiences people in Phantasms of the Living talk about aren't ghosts from the past. You undoubtedly know someone who has had this disturbing experience if you haven't already.