I know I've been rattling on about not being very well lately - and this is further to that (please send healing energies, I'll stop boring the pants off you!)

Shortly after I arrived in Rwanda, I had a very vivid and rather disturbing nightmare/visitation. Forgive me quoting from the blog, I've already mentioned this one I think:

...-I- only meant to read a couple of chapters but just couldn’t put it down and eventually had to admit defeat somewhere nearing 2am because I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer.

But the moment I put the book down, turned out the torch and tried to get some kip I found myself incredibly restless. The room was zig-zagy swimming slightly in the way it does when you’re over-tired and should have put the book down an hour ago. I was tossing and turning for ages and huffing and puffing about my mattress, trying to get comfortable (they’re all made from ‘Rwandan Foam tm’ and after a few nights they sag horribly in the middle). Oddly, even at that time of night, there was a congregation of people somewhere nearby singing African songs.

Eventually I guess I must have dozed off.

The next thing I know I’m awake, bolt-upright in my bed – literally I must have sat up and then woken – terrified because there’s someone in my room! I’m not sure what the hell’s going on and as my eyes adjust I see a headless African woman in a red shirt standing at the end of my bed ‘looking’ at me. After a yelp of fright I’m desperately fumbling for the torch whilst shouting ‘WHO ARE YOU? WHO ARE YOU?’ and for want of a weapon, kicking my foot at it. But it didn’t move. Unbelievably I had the presence of mind to glance swiftly behind me to check I wasn't lucid dreaming/OBEing - how the hell that entered my mind in my panic is bizarre, maybe it was wishful thinking? I got the torch on and shone it straight ahead and there was nothing there. My heart was ten to the dozen. I was absolutely swimming in fear. It was the kind of incident, as a kid, I might have been able to attribute to a chair or a coat on the wall, turning it into an intruder in the dark – but there is nothing but a brick wall there – no shape to turn into anything and it was so vivid.

I loosely attributed it to my recent visit to the genocide memorial centre and to having eaten a large dose of tryptophan before bed and staying awake long enough for my dream juices to be flowing before I even closed my eyes.

Then, last night, something similar happened, only this time I was tossing and turning because I'm ill - I haven’t been sleeping so well.

Early morning (I guess) and:

...as vivid and real as the headless woman. It was an African man in a grey shirt and light-brown trousers standing by my curtains staring at me (like the woman would have been if she’d had a head). I wasn’t terrified like last time, I just stared back a little disturbed and then he walked away to the right, out of the light, and disappeared. I was really worried because I thought he was still in my room, then I fell asleep again. Don’t think I was asleep or dreaming it, not an OBE or anything – I really was awake, or about as awake as I was when I saw the spider. It’s all good fun but sure doesn’t do anything for the dark patches under my eyes right now.

Reference to the spider is that the first night I started my meds:

I woke up in the middle of the night and saw a giant spider crawling up the inside of my mossy net. It didn’t scare me at first but then I was convinced it would fall on my face if I went back to sleep and tossed and turned and eventually sat up and scoured the inside of the net – nothing there. I sometimes get that though, if I wake up in the night I see spiders.

It has happened before, most notably in Australia when I woke on the bottom of a bunk and saw a huge one crawling over the ceiling of the bunk above. Also when I've been ill at home I've had spiders visit me. Usually nothing threatening or scary about them other than the fact that they're big hairy spiders lol - actually, usually they're not, they're those type with the bulbous bum and long thin legs. I don't really have much of a problem with spiders - there's definitely something mystical about them. But I've also seen shadow insects (started a thread about them here ages back) - sometimes when I'm pretty awake in the daytime.

Anyway, all this got me thinking. I remember when I was interpreting for a Deaf lady who was interested in visiting a spiritualist church. She had told me about an incident she'd had shortly after a stroke where she'd woken in the night to a hooded figure sitting on her bed - feeling very calm. Similar happened to my mum just after her divorce.

People often talk about waking up and seeing apparitions. I bet a few people in here have stories to tell?

Again, linked in to the discussion on entheogens (endogenous this time) and what that means spiritually - I've always believed that chemicals are the springboard - they are the keys to a thousand rooms, but not the rooms themselves. Is it any wonder these things appear when our brains are filled with strong hallucinogenic drugs? Does it really matter? You can't berate the experience for being a natural by-product of your own biology

Are we naturally built for extra-sensory experiences, which would make them perfectly sensory lol

I believe so anyway.

But these experiences also tend to happen when people are either physically or spiritually low. Not always, but often. I wonder what their relationship to illness is, if any. Is it just a case of our sleep being more disturbed when we're low, thus we're more likely to wake in that headspace? Probably a lot to that I think. As with the link to deliriunts drugs getting their names because they induce visions similar to those when we are in an illness-induced delirium.

I always feel privileged after such a visitation, but I have to admit that mine have always been pretty disturbing. I remember the first ever - and something in a thread in here, I forget what, brought it back to me, I'd forgotten all about it. I must have been about eight, maybe younger. I was in bed at my dad’s house in Leicester and I woke to see a nun in black habit come to the side of my bed and kneel. The next morning there was a glass of water there I swear hadn't been there when I went to sleep. Either I had forgotten the water was there, or I sleep walked or... who knows. Does it matter.

I find the vividness of them disturbing. We talk so much in terms of the intangible when we talk about spiritual matters, but to actually be confronted with a 'ghost', the type that captivates you as a child when people tell you stories - it's tinged with a little fear I think. Whatever you tell yourself about our place in the universe, encounters like that throw you, take away your carefully constructed presence of mind. That's why I feel privileged after the event, in the safe light of day.

But this link between night and visions - for the same reason external entheogens are shamanically taken in the evening or at night, not during the day. Night also lays us at our most vulnerable - to wake to something like that, I was mortally terrified by the woman apparition here. It was there, it was aware - I was barely conscious of who I was or where I was.

Has anyone had paralysis visitations? I studied this for a long time, was fascinated by people's accounts of it - so fascinated that I decided to try and induce one. It worked.

Sleep paralysis is a condition where you wake up, usually in the morning, sometimes suddenly at night, and you are physically paralysed for a few seconds - which feels far more like minutes to the person in that condition. It's a scary thing to happen. Most likely attributed to the switch-off of part of your brain during sleep which stops you physically enacting the things you're dreaming - stops us sleep walking etc. Sometimes it works too well and stops us breathing - SIDs, which can effect men up to their early 20s, but oddly not women.

Anyway, the idea being you wake so suddenly that your brain hasn't kicked back in and so you just lie there for a while like a sack of potatoes. You come out of it quick enough.

But in one or two instances people were reporting something very strange. They were saying that during this temporary paralysis they experienced a hostile visitation - a 'sense' that something else was in the room with them, something that really scared them. These weren't pagan types, weren't particularly spiritually engrossed - just average guys chatting on a dream forum.

This really fascinated me so I immersed myself in these stories and imagined what sleep paralysis would be like to the point where I hit the proverbial jack-pot. It happened to me in my bed at home at the age of 25. Once only.

It was a lazy weekend morning, my partner at the time had got out of bed before me and was pottering downstairs. I awoke feeling that lovely heavenly healthy feeling you get just before your physical body catches up with you. Woke with a smile, sunshine streaming through the curtains. Went to roll over. Couldn't.

Holy shit, I'm thinking - this is it! This is what SP feels like! Wow, fantastic!

Just as I'm thinking that I hear footsteps on the landing outside the open bedroom door. All of these thoughts are happening split seconds after each other - but at first I think it's my partner bringing me a cup of tea in bed. Then I feel cold. I think 'he's not in the house'. I hear the footstep coming along the landing. I feel cold inside, I can't move, I desperately need to move now! Why can't I move!

There's someone in the house, with overriding certainty I’m sure there is an intruder who is about to rape me and I can't move or call for help.

Something is in the room. I can't see it but I know it is there. It isn't human. It's coming towards me - I HAVE to move. I focus on my thumb, if I can just move my arm just the tiniest bit, everything else will follow, the spell will be broken. With a tremendous effort and an audible 'ggggghhhh' I swing my arm over my head and sit up. It took serious physical effort. And just like that everything is perfectly back to normal. No 'presence'. Even the light in the room seems more 'normal', less intense.

I'm going on a bit here aren't I lol But the link between apparitions, circadian rhythms and the type of experience we have... it's just a little bit fascinating, isn't it? I reckon there's so much in it that we haven't touched upon as a race yet. Gods bless the ghostly apparition

Calma, tranquila, chica!
Yes, we all do get these experiences. Cats help, partners help, but sometimes you are on your own with these feelings and you just have to be brave.
Try to project love at the fear. This helps you feel in control.

Ah, Marion. Yes.

No, I haven't done it myself - or not a lot of it. But: yes.

You're in a place with too many ghosts. Is it any surprise they come to visit? The secret is how to block them off.

I don't wanna feel in control lol Project love at it? Well then it wouldn't be fear - it is what it is, I'm not asking for help in nullifying it - but thank you - I'm simply in awe of it. I am always more in awe of the things that inspire raw emotion, whatever that emotion happens to be. The instinctual response, rather than the reasoned one

We do a lot of reasoning in this forum

ah, I'm with you.

Go with the flow.

MH - for a place with so many ghosts, I've only met the two, so I wouldn't say I'm exactly overwhelmed

I use the word 'ghost' loosely. Who knows. There's no point of reference here and imagination can play wild tricks.

But let's make this thread a celebration of sightings eh An exchange of spectral spectacles

Sleep paralysis is most common when you're sleep deprived. People who are particularly prone to it find that sleeping on their front helps prevent it.

It's happened on a few occasions for me. I have very vivid dreams and when I was younger I often found it hard to differentiate between the two. Once I had a dream about a giant spider that was as big as the extension of our kitchen. I was convinced this actually happened, until my sister - who I was sure I'd shown it to - told me it must have been a dream.

The scariest was when I was staying at a hotel - a castle - after my graduation. I wouldn't say I was sleep deprived, but I was certainly stressed, having spent the whole day with my parents, in the same space, with my mum's new boyfriend and all the snideness that followed...Anyway, I have a tendency to lucid dream when I have bad dreams and can force myself to wake up if things start getting out of hand in the dream. I was having just one such episode and forced myself to wake up to find the bed was shaking and there was something in the room. It was very sinister and absolutely terrifying. I finally managed to pull myself out of it; I turned over and told myself it was my imagination and went back to sleep (eventually). The exact same thing happened - I went back into the dream, where I was being attacked again, and forced myself to wake up to find the bed shaking.

I've had other bad dreams where I've woken up to find the bed shaking, but on these occasions I've been more conscious of the fact that it's me, not the bed, that's shaking - like I'm having a fit. After I left my job and destressed my life considerably, I've not had any problems.

I've had some nicer experiences as well. On one occasion I woke up convinced that my granddad was sitting with me on the bed - a benevolent presence. Who knows...

On a similar line to ghosties delivering water...

My epilepsy developed in my late teens, and whenever I had a seizure and I was alone, when I came round I'd feel that someone had been stroking my hair and to the over powering smell of lily of the valley. Now lil of the valley was the scent my grandmother used to wear.

Part of me felt that it was her just popping by when I was alone and vulnerable. Part of me tried to rationalise it all away as my brain projecting scents and sensations to comfort me.

The rationalising worked quite well, until, after a solitary seizure, someone found me and commented on the smell of lily of the valley!

Q

I developed epilepsy in my late teens too. I say epilepsy, it was moreover seizures, spent a few years going to various specialists, but when the drugs didn't help, the specialists generally turned round and said "we can't explain what you've got, now just go away and please don't come back".

I also get night terrors and sleep paralysis too. The worst bout of sleep paralysis I had I awoke in my room and the radio was on. There was a radio broadcast on (I often fall asleep with the radio on) about a tornado that had been shot down durinhg one of the gulf wars. Probably the first one. I looked around my room, and the noticed a black figure standing there watching me. I say black, what I really mean was it was like someone had cut a humanoid figure out of reailty. It was like nothing, completely nothing, complete absence of everything in a humanoid shape. Well, if that didn't scare the crap out of me, then I heard this hideous cackling laughter. I couldn't tell where it was comming from. It was kinda all around me, like I was inside the noise. It slowly came bubbling up around me, and it was so loud. I tried to scream, I was that scared, but no sound came out, it was as if someone had pointed a TV remote control at me and hit the mute button. I was going through the motions, everything seemd to be working, but no sound was comming out.

The border between being awake and being asleep is a very interesting place. A room of doors.

I can't quite get a handle on this thread Marion? Are you just going "YAY, l'm a witch/psychic and I will accept ANYTHING in the name of that!"
I think that is powerful, what I call 'honouring the gift.' And if you truly have that vitality and sense of joy at life including the dark bits then go for it! I also resonate with that lack of fear of fear.
But Honeywitch's simple post reverberated with me, I find that instilling or even projecting a sense of positive energy, call it love, into any situation that has a dark side balances me and that then sometimes leads the events on to a better knowledge or another experience. By that I think I would suggest that the hallucinations, spirits and so on hang around the doorways you speak of so well in other threads. I think in many of these situations whether brought on by epilepsy, sleep paralysis or other things, we wake to awareness at a place where our subconscious brain is trying to make sense and interpret as usual! Calming WITHIN the event can stop that without throwing you out of the experience. I have done that and had conversation with the apparition that I thought was paralysing me and it led, over weeks to identifying another witch, having telepathic communication and much more.
We are so fortunate are we not?

I have been contemplating/cultivating a theory for a little while now that certain situations illness, certain drugs etc, do something (probably of a highly scientific and complicated nature) to the processes within our brains, which opens up the perception to things that are usually beyond our "range".

Whether this is to do with frequencies, ie everything has a frequency in which it "exists" as something that can be percieved, or merely a chemical reaction that causes "phantom" perceptions Ive not entirely reached a conclusion on.

Frequencies would make more sense i think. Imagine several over lapping bands or ranges of frequency, not all over lap all of the others, but some of them do cross. When you are then ill your frequency raises/lowers (depending on illness) to more clearly overlap with the ones above/below your "usual" range. This then grants the perception of the things that exist within that range.

This can ofcourse be done deliberately as well, when we meditate to gain the "altered state" we are actually dropping into the Alpha(?) wave pattern. This being the pattern between full conciusness and sleep where REM occurs. This is a change in the frequency at which the brain is operating and processing, thus an altered perception occurs.

Just some thoughts. No hard and fast evidence as such, plus if I got the brain bit wrong ish please dont shoot me

I've had the sleep paralysis too. And the visitation was a totally black figure in a near totally dark room. I was sharing a room at the time, so thought it was my room-mate.
It was followed by a dream which puzzled me until it was resolved thirty years later.
Too right it's scary. I imagine that people who die in their sleep might have dreams like this.

Did you ever hear the joke:

When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep, just like my grandad.

Not shouting and screaming, like his passengers...

That made me spit my cranberry and tonic all over my keyboard! Very very very very funny Fred nice one, I needed that

And eth, if you look on the internet you can find plenty of freeware software that helps in changing your brainwave patterns, I think if you look up a programme like xaballas flasher (sp?) and no, it's not some dodgy pervert!

Will take a look into that SS ta

Here's my experience also copied from Elsewhere to save time:

I think I saw one once. Summer of 1998 I was in bed in my bedsit which was in a Victorian house. I woke up in the middle of the night and there was a middle-aged man standing beside my bed looking down at me. He had a 30's style quilted silk dressing gown and pyjamas on. He had an old fashioned metal teapot in his hand and he was holding the handle with a pot holder. He said "I'm trying to find the kitchen, but it's not where it used to be. What's going on ?" I totally freaked out and turned my bedside light on and he disappeared. I reckon he was either a dead person who didn't know it, or someone who'd slipped through a rift in time No really, I do. I wish now I hadn't panicked and had asked him some questions but I sh*t myself !! Had to have my friend stay with me for the rest of the week !

I also had a dream that I was part of a group practising Voudou in the back of an abandoned music shop. I went into a trance and they drew designs on my belly with pastel crayons. In the dream I could feel the spirits rushing towards me from other dimensions and begin to speak through my mouth as the others chanted and wrote down what I was saying. I couldn't close my eyes or move at all. When I woke it was morning and I was still paralysed and making the most peculiar low groaning voice, talking a load of gobbledegook. I don't know where that dream came from as I've never even read that much about Voudou, let alone practised it. It was very scary and stayed with me a long time. I don't relish that kind of experience.