(November 18, 2017 at 12:28 pm)Mathilda Wrote: i can imagine if it was a child living in a religious household with parents teaching them about the devil, or someone finding out about different religions because they considering joining, then this would have been the kind of experience that could make someone convert. Instead of D&D influencing the nature of the hallucination it would have been religious imagery. Which makes me wonder, if I had been watching Donald Duck cartoons all day would I then have heard a weird duck voice?
I remember when I was a teenager and I woke up one morning paralysed with the sensation of a void of blackness behind me, between me and the wall. I managed to summon up the courage to get out of bed, switch the light on, turn around and look at it when I woke up properly and realised that it was all a dream. But it did unsettle me at the time because i had never heard of sleep paralysis before. I remember telling my mum and her replying that if there was anything spooky then the dog would be barking. As she was saying that the dog was barking downstairs but she couldn't hear. Then the dog came rushing upstairs and slept on the landing for the first time ever, probably because she could sense that I was unsettled. Dogs are so cool.
I'm going to have to pay attention now to see if anyone claims to have had an experience when wide-awake during the day and not when dozing off to sleep or waking up.
Definitely interesting seeing how my brain compares to everyone else's though.
Edit: Don't worry Brian, I know that it was a hallucination. I never for one moment thought that it was anything else. But I didn't put religious experience in quote marks or anything because I think that all religious experiences are products of the brain as well. The only difference with this is that I realised what was going on.
Bottom line, natural things explain why humans have false perceptions. Misunderstanding is all it takes. It can go further to stress, depression to mental defect and mental illness.
WHAT IS NOT happening in any case is the supernatural. It just means you had a jolting event.
Most humans don't understand that if they are sold superstition long enough, that can bleed into becoming a gap answer because they gap fill, but it is still NOT real event. A real misunderstanding yes, but not a real event.
