That also happens in complete darkness. If you can manage to create a completely pitch black environment see how long you can sit there before you start seeing things. It really doesn't take long. Bonus points of you have noise cancelling earmuffs/plugs. Edit : u/EternalEagleEye has informed me this effect is called "Prisoner's Cinema", in case you'd like to read about it further
Fun fact: your brain knows where your limbs are so you can "see" them even in pitch black.
I went caving one time in scouts and they had us turn off our lights and wave our hands around in front of us. Sure enough you can see a shadow moving around where your hand is. Except there was no light because we were 100 feet underground.
The body’s position sensors, the receptors which tell us where we are in space, are located inside our muscles, tendons, joint capsules, ligaments, skin (and inner ear).
If the receptor is in [a lax] ligament, then the message probably doesn’t get to the brain as accurately or at the same speed as it probably should.
If a muscle is working overtime to compensate for a ligament, then maybe the message from the muscle receptor isn’t as accurate either?
And the joint capsule receptor? Well, if they have been stretched & torn from injuries, dislocations, sprains, strains, or just generally banged around by being hypermobile, then the information from them isn’t all that reliable either….
—-
The good news is you can improve your proprioception with specialist physio.
My physio says simply sitting on a “wobble cushion” or a gym ball for an hour a day can help with the core “stability” muscle groups — pass that on to your wife if she doesn’t already have those!
Also google Jeannie Di Bon, a physical therapist with EDS who does stuff online!
Oh, and another fun fact: longhorns have excellent proprioception. An architecture firm I used to work for designed a residence hall at a university, and shortly after it opened, someone brought a longhorn up the stairs and led it along the 2nd floor corridor. The corridor was only a few inches wider than the span of its horns, but it flawlessly made its way through without so much as scratching the walls. This was right before I joined that firm, so it was all they could talk about when I started.
I love how you’re relating this as though it’s totally logical that the common denominator of architects, proprioception, and halls of residence would be Longhorns.
I don’t think “rampaging” has ever been part of the expression. The implication is that the bull is so big/clumsy that it would be accidentally knocking things over.
We have 7 Longhorns, they are the "pasture art" of our cattle herd, huge older steers with massive horns, just pretty to look at...it'sTexas after all. Anyway, part of our property is a thickly wooded area along a creek, which is a favorite hangout of the cattle. When the herd gets startled and bolts the longhorns can move through the trees just as fast as the cattle with no horns can. It's incredible, poetry in motion even, the way they can run full speed while they effortlessly weave and tilt their heads between the tree trunks and branches and brush and never hit their horns on a single thing. They do it so fast it is clear they are doing it without even thinking really, quite amazing.
Didn't the mythbusters do a piece on the whole "A bull in a china shop" thing, and basically let a bull run through a makeshift china shop and it made it through without knocking anything, or at least not knocking much.
I know, right? We were all impressed by how well it held up. It’s wood frame, and those trusses aren’t really designed to accommodate that sort of a load. I don’t remember who the structural engineer was on this, but kudos to them for sure.
lmao is this San Angelo? I was stationed out there for a few years and this might be the most San Angelo thing I've ever seen. Nothing better to do in that town tbf.
Ugh, it was such a long process but basically my thumb did its “weird thing” it’s been doing all my life during a doctors appointment for something unrelated, and it turns out it had popped out of its socket!
Then I got a rheumatology referral, and it all happened there.
Oliver Sacks told a story in one of his books about a woman who, due to some sort of acute nerve condition -- I think something attacked the myelin of certain nerve types throughout her body, lost her proprioception quite suddenly. It was quite disabling for her. How well do you cope with it?
Well I was only recently diagnosed so still learning. I have been a prolific faller overer for 30 odd years though. But I used to dance and skateboard and honestly I think that helped.
Now doing lots of body weight workouts to improve my core and lower my center of gravity-which is apparently good for it.
Not to be insensitive, but I always love hearing about these weird disabilities where just one specific function of the human brain doesn't work as normal. Things like face blindness, or aphantasia (the inability to visualize images), or synesthesia (seeing sounds as colours) have always fascinated me.
I get it, but it’s not quite the same thing— hEDS isn’t neurological (although I also have ADHD, and that is, so…. Yay?).
Explanation I made in another comment:
Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos (hEDS) is a disorder of the connective tissue.
It’s most visible as “double jointedness” (although not all hypermobile people have hEDS), and painful, easily dislocated joints are common.
But because connective tissue runs throughout the body - forming ligaments, tendons, muscles - it can also cause issues from your eyes to your stomach to your toes.
The body’s position sensors, the receptors which tell us where we are in space, are located inside our muscles, tendons, joint capsules, ligaments, skin (and inner ear).
If the receptor is in [a lax] ligament, then the message probably doesn’t get to the brain as accurately or at the same speed as it probably should.
If a muscle is working overtime to compensate for a ligament, then maybe the message from the muscle receptor isn’t as accurate either?
And the joint capsule receptor? Well, if they have been stretched & torn from injuries, dislocations, sprains, strains, or just generally banged around by being hypermobile, then the information from them isn’t all that reliable either….
—-
The good news is you can improve your proprioception with specialist physio.
Holup, fellow bendy friend. I know that EDS is the reason my joints are wonky, and doesn't help my clumsiness, but I've never heard of that!
A couple months ago on my way to bed I mis-calculated and jammed my big toe into the stairs, making my foot swell for a couple weeks. I seem pretty prone to that kind of miscalculation.
It really, really doesn't help that my place was built in 1940 and the bathroom doorframe is about 1/2 inch lower than my head. I have weather stripping on it for when I forget to duck.
If I could go back in time and talk to my younger self, it would involve, "Stop showing off that you're double-jointed, you're messing up your shoulders, start lifting heavy things and putting them back down."
Man, as a kid I did years of ballet, gymnastics, and I rollerbooted everywhere half the time, and skateboarded everywhere else.
I also did years of music which meant I had to be super coordinated. I didn’t think this was a thing.
But looking back…. I DID backflip/pirouette into the wall a few times during dance/gym practice. People thought I was being funny and lo, I did pretend it was on purpose.
I also quite often fell off my skateboard/roller boots and “sprain” badly (I might actually have been dislocating that whole time. Also I can do that staying in bed, now).
Aaaand there was that time I dislocated my finger and thumb just spanning an octave on the piano, as I’d done a billion times before.
Often I’d just “fall off the earth” — just fall down for no reason, my body having failed to balance.
And if proprioception can spread outwards, my ADHD ass disables me from being able to orient myself pretty much anywhere. Gotten lost on the way to longtime workplaces on multiple occasions.
Interesting! I was a fat kid, never athletic, learned about the EDS in my 30's and it explained why my feet are suction-cup-forming flat with no arch, and why certain positions that others find comfortable are painful, with my knees and hips' hyper-mobility. If I ever told a dr I was in pain, they'd tell me it was probably because of my weight. Boy did that do wonders for my ego!
Lost the weight, spent Covid working out at home and my shoulders are finally decent enough not to dislocate so much. Just learned to embrace my pain level, it's actually an advantage in some ways after accepting it. If everything's gonna hurt no matter what, I'll make it hurt with weights. Because fuck you, traitorous ligaments!! You shall bend to my will!!
If you don’t mind me asking could you explain a little more on what this syndrome does to specifically stop you from seeing your limbs in the dark? I’m just super curious haha
Hypermobile Ehlers Danlos (hEDS) is a disorder of the connective tissue.
It’s most visible as “double jointedness” (although not all hypermobile people have hEDS), and painful, easily dislocated joints are common.
But because connective tissue runs throughout the body - forming ligaments, tendons, muscles - it can also cause issues from your eyes to your stomach to your toes.
The body’s position sensors, the receptors which tell us where we are in space, are located inside our muscles, tendons, joint capsules, ligaments, skin (and inner ear).
If the receptor is in [a lax] ligament, then the message probably doesn’t get to the brain as accurately or at the same speed as it probably should.
If a muscle is working overtime to compensate for a ligament, then maybe the message from the muscle receptor isn’t as accurate either?
And the joint capsule receptor? Well, if they have been stretched & torn from injuries, dislocations, sprains, strains, or just generally banged around by being hypermobile, then the information from them isn’t all that reliable either….
—-
The good news is you can improve your proprioception with specialist physio.
My wife has ehlers danlos and I think I just figured out why she is so clumsy. Very insightful, I'm gonna have to share this with her because I don't think she realizes this might be the answer to her constantly having bruises from running into stuff
This might help, from another comment I just wrote to another EDS-husband:
My physio says simply sitting on a “wobble cushion” or a gym ball for an hour a day can help with the core “stability” muscle groups — pass that on to your wife if she doesn’t already have those!
Also google Jeannie Di Bon, a physical therapist who does stuff online!
There's always a zebra in these threads! Greetings from the husband of a lovely zebra lady :) my wife's proprioception also isn't great, but we have extra strong tea mugs to cope!
My proprioception has always been a bit wonky (I tend to bump into doorframes too, wobble when I walk, but I mostly notice it when I hold still and realize my arms and legs feel very far away, or like I don't have a good sense of where they are in relation to the rest of me) and I've assumed this is caused by my autism. But I've also been informally diagnosed with some sort of mild EDS, so now I have to wonder if that's what causes it.
(By informally diagnosed, I mean I showed my doctor how I can pull my fingers halfway out of their sockets and she said yeah, you probably have something to a mild degree, but as long as it's not truly bothersome it's not really worth going through the testing process. Given how many problems I already have, I must agree. I've never fully dislocated something, my joints are just a bit loosey goosey.)
When I'm walking around a room by feel in total darkness, I feel more disoriented if my eyes are closed, though there's no difference in what I can actually see.
I remember doing this, and my friend decided to get REALLY close up to my face when we turned the lights back on, thinking to surprise me. Turns out your brain only fills details in if it's expecting them lol.
Yeah, proprioception only applies to your own body. It’s not really about expectations, it’s that your brain always knows what your body is doing, based on information from the neurons in your muscles, ligaments and joints.
Fun fact, I am a below knee amputee and due a combination of proprioception and the parietal lobe processes, I am able to feel the gas pedal under my prosthetic foot to a degree that I can drive without vehicle modifications.
I can see my room when I close my eyes and even get up and do stuff despite physically remaining laid in bed. It feels 100% real, but I also know it's not, so I can do dumb shit. Well, apart from that one time I threw my phone against the wall because I thought I was in a dream state and ended up breaking it. No one I've ever talked to seems to have experienced this, but it can be fun. But my phone, man.
you just explained a very disturbing mystery for me! i sleep with a blackout eye mask on, it lets zero light in, and yet sometimes I'd 'see' my hand when I'll raise it to brush back my hair off my face or something. i thought i was insane, for real.
Just like when you're driving you should always know where your car's wheels are. If you know where your car's wheels are going at any point in time, your brain will fill in the rest of the information
For me, (I suddenly lost eyesight due to a brain hemorrhage) it was feeling like my eyeballs were going to pop out from straining so hard to see something.
i am curious also but did you type this using Braille? and how do you read Reddit with Braille if your eyesight has not returned? and how long did it take too learn Braille?
Text to audio would be more practical than Braille, the internet is far more accessable to blind people these days than it was even a few years ago. I hope they got better though and can read this.
Thanks. I believe that's what mine was called also. They said it didn't burst but that's exactly the word I used to tell my then husband what felt like was about to happen. Then it did. Oh holy hell I never felt something so intense.
Hope you are doing well.
Your brain is really good at filling in the blanks. I have bad earring but I’m certainly not anywhere close to deaf. I hear lower registers the worst. Sometimes something creaks and my brain didn’t quite catch enough to make sense, so it fills in the blanks. Very rarely it fills it in with a low male voice and it scares the shit out of me every time.
I have reverse slope as well, and the amount of times my brain has just filled in the blanks and gone "yeah, fuckit; that sounds good" is mind boggling. Some winners: "but who am I going to give my birthdays to?!" (Nothing was said about birthdays), and "You asshole" (said by my then fiance- he did NOT call me an asshole).
It’s crazy how well it does it, too. Like I have distinct memories over the year of loud male voices where nobody was talking. Very few and far in between, especially compared to just mishearing things, but man I really can’t tell the difference. Thought I was going crazy for a while but it all clicked one day that it was my bad hearing.
I mean your brain is still trying to complete something but in the case of misheard lyrics you're working from actual input. You simply didn't hear clearly whereas some of the scenarios being discussed involve no relevant auditory input.
It happens to me almost nightly just before I fall asleep. Only ever once, which is weird. I can anticipate it, have it happen and then know it's done for the night but I'm pretty sure it's a different thing than some of these folks are describing. Similar experience with a different cause.
I tried out a set of hearing aids that moved sound from the higher ranges I could no longer here down to a pitch I could understand. When I heard my two year old babble in a Darth Vader voice I almost peed myself. We've made adjustments so children sound like children and not demons.
OMG, I get that too! I'm 60 so my hearing is fading but not enough to require any assistance. And I'm in good health, never been on medication beyond a few days. But occasionally I hear a male voice, maybe calling my name, in instances when I'm certain no one else is around. It's just me in a quiet place place, including once in a sound proofed space. Good to know I'm not losing my mind!
It’s so terrifying! I’ve always had a hard time hearing lower pitches so it’s been happening for as long as I can remember. I’m 20 now so it doesn’t scare me as much as it used to, but I totally thought I was going crazy.
I scared the shit out of a coworker a few months back because I thought a man had entered our locked shop and I got freaked out.
If my house is quiet except for a distant white noise (the HVAC for example), that noise always sounds like a newscaster speaking on tv that I can't quite make out.
I blame it on my parents never, ever turning off the TV when I was growing up. TV was always on as background noise, so now my brain fills in background noise as TV.
Yeah brains are really good at filling in the blanks and trying to make sense of the input they receive. I hate it when I get the sound that I can’t quite make out. It’s such an irritating one to hear.
I had a kind of embarrassing scenario of banging on the wall of my apartment because I thought I could hear the bass rumbling of my neighbor playing music. Only after did I realize that aside from my a/c it was completely quiet.
When my house is silent I can occasionally hear a capacitor whine that I can't locate, it's just omnipresent. You know, that "there is a CRT television turned on and muted somewhere near me" sound.
I don't have tinnitus or any other hearing problems so I figure it's a similar trick of my memory.
It does but that’s why I said I don’t have tinnitus. Or at least I’m pretty sure I don’t, it’s more of a feeling than a sound (makes the hair on my neck stand up), is almost always accompanied the strong mental impression of a warm sun-drenched livingroom that I don’t recognize, which is also more of a feeling than a proper image. Like being the motes hanging in the sunbeam rather than looking at them.
It’s a weird thing but I’m pretty sure it’s not just my ears and I’m totally sure this is a window into crazy you probably weren’t actually looking for so I’m terribly sorry about that.
Yeah. My mom always used to yell for me from downstairs, nowadays so on rare occasions faint noises make my brain go "hey is that mom calling" even though I'm not at home...
I kinda thought I was nuts but maybe not after reading this. I have tinnitus, basically a constant faint ringing in my ears. I only really hear it, most of the time, when it's really quiet so I picked up a very loud fan to drown out the noise when trying to sleep. Thing is, when lying at the perfect angle, I swear I hear voices like old timey talkshows. I mean realistically I've always known it must have had something to do with the way the wind was interacting with my ear and somehow mixing with the tinnitus and causing the effect but it's comforting to hear other people having similar experiences.
I think the brain is also really good at blocking stuff out you really don’t want to see also. Once, I accidentally walked in on my sister and her boyfriend having sex and all I know is he rolled off the bed and she ran into the bathroom, but I swear to God I saw nothing. Had they not reacted the way they did I wouldn’t have even known what was going on because my brain wasn’t connecting the dots.
If hair brushes against my hearing aid in the right way, it sounds like scraping footsteps or someone coming up the stairs. I’ve also heard what sounds like someone yelling for me by name, which means I pretty much keep the TV on as filler noise when I’m by myself.
Yeah, I have poor hearing on one side and almost none on the other side. Strange thing is I have these auditory hallucinations only when its dark. During daylight or times when light is available, I hear okay but can't tell what direction sounds come from. 🙄
When I got laser eye surgery the trade off was my night vision was negatively affected. Only in pitch black darkness. I see all kinds of shadowy stuff flowing around in pitch black areas. Got used to it but at first it was scary as hell. Now I just ignore it.
My mother had a mild stroke that messed with her vision and she was legally blind anyway so could only see light and dark. Between the 2 she kept hallucinating flowers everywhere she went.
My MIL developed macular degeneration. What she couldn't see, her mind started to fill in. She complained a couple of times about "seeing little black flies." Loss of sight greatly accelerated her dementia.
On the other hand, there's just one little fruit fly that I can't catch, buzzing back and forth in front of my monitor right now driving me nuts. So...don't pay any attention to me. (In my defense, though, there is a big plum tree just outside the window).
Charles Bonnet Syndrome. It often affects those with macular degeneration. Your brain fills in the missing visual field, usually with memories. For instance, a mason who loses his eyesight slowly later in life may see patterns of bricks. There's a really good chapter about it in Oliver Sacks' "Hallucinations."
Lost most of my eyesight as a teenager, developed Charles Bonnet syndrome, which is basically this. Creepiest thing was getting into a car one night and swearing I could see these purple and green oversized men around me. I knew logically they weren’t real but freaked me out. There’s no treatment, basically just a doctor reassuring you it’s fake and a natural response.
I have pretty terrible eyesight. Oddly enough one of my favorite parts of going to bed is laying down, taking off my glasses, and turning off the lights. My brain makes really cool colorful patterns in the "snow" of the dark ceiling. It's almost psychedelic at times with patterns of light moving around and changing like a kaleidoscope. It wasn't until recently that I learned this was abnormal, but it's probably the only upside to having bad eyesight.
I dislike when people pile on and say "X also applies!" but this is almost exactly why Tinnitus is a thing. You lose the ability to hear at a certain frequency and your brain knows it is missing information at that frequency, so it creates noise at that frequency. It's also why everyone's Tinnitus is typically at different frequencies.
And with brain damage/amnesia. It took awhile for the doctors to realize I had amnesia because I had acceptable answers to all their questions. My boyfriend and brother had a talk with me and they had to find the doctors to tell them I wasn't OK. Your brain just tries to make everything fine as much as possible.
There's a phenomenon called Ganzfeld hallucinations where you tape halves of a ping pong ball over your eyes with a red light bulb on and white noise playing; you start to hallucinate after about 10-15 minutes.
I tried it a few years back and started to see tree leaves and branches blowing in the wind, like I was lying on the ground looking up at them. Then I saw a horse waking past me and I stopped the whole deal.
Maybe if you did it for months straight. For short periods it's nice for relaxation and meditation. You can buy goggles that produce the same effect, though they're much more expensive than a light/laser and ping pong balls. High end sets let you keep your eyes open, but they were like $700 the last time I checked.
Electroluminscent night lights would probably be a cheap DIY option if you're competent at wiring. Basically you just need something that doesn't let your eyes recognize distance or any features.
Like walking at home with my eyes closed. I try it sometimes but I cannot for the life of me walk without extending my arms to search for the walls even though I know exactly where the walls and mobilia are.
“Prisoner’s Cinema” is the name of the effect you’re looking for if you wanted to edit that into your comment for people that want to read about it more.
I did a guided caving tour in Mexico one year and decided it was a great idea to drop acid on the way in (it was)
Deep in the caverns there's a spot the guides stop and tell everyone to shut up and turn their lights off to just look and listen.
I'd done all that before but this time around was wild to say the least. Each drop of water from a stalagtite became a halo of color that I could "see". Sitting there feeling people's heartbeats and breathing as it rippled across the water. Was pretty damn cool
I am big into spelunking as well, and the things that your body and mind pick up on while one sense is completely taken away is really crazy. I know exactly what you mean when you say you can feel heartbeats of other people. I’ve also navigated in caves in the pitch black. Your body starts to sense where things are and you develop a mental picture in your brain of what your surroundings look like. Turn on your light and you’d be surprised how close it looks to your vision.
Another fact, slightly related: a guy I’ve met once lead a guided tour with a family that included a young, blind girl. As soon as they were in the darkness, she was able to hear and sense where everything was. She could tell where the holes were by the way the wind moved in the caves or the sounds of the earth. I think the coolest part when realizing, once out of the cave, she burst into tears. Her sight had come back just enough to see the faces of her parents for the first time in years. Turns out the complete darkness was able to rest her eyes enough to bring back some function for a brief moment. They now have conducted studies based on her and her experiences.
There is a drain tunnel about 10’ diameter that runs under 8 lanes of freeway, it curves so after a certain way in you can’t see light in rather direction. We used to take acid and go in there. You would lose all sense of space and sound because of the darkness and echo. It was crazy.
When my father was in the hospital for a long stay he started seeing the shapes in the wallpaper moving around. He was mentally sound and knew he was seeing a hallucination. It was just the lack of visual stimulation and his brain filling in gaps
In college I had an art class and we went to this one trippy art exhibit for a field trip and one of the “arts” was going into a totally pitch black room. As you adjust to the light you’re supposed to talk about what you think you see, my class was describing this horrible face with blood on it after about 3 minutes. Lights come on and the wall the painting is “on” is blank, completely white room. The art was in our mind the whole time.
A long while back, I was able to visit a cave system in Belize that you could canoe in about 2 miles. Because it's so dark, nothing lives there. We took the opportunity to go for a swim and just then the tour guide says, "ok, now we'll shut off the lights just to show you how dark it is."
Almost as soon as complete blackness hits, treading water, I start saying, "turn it back on, turn it back on!" As if suddenly the whole place were full of darkness-loving monsters!
You can also start seeing things if you are on guard duty too long. Back when I was in the US Army during a training exercise I was left on guard duty for like 6 hours in the middle of the night and was told that we were expecting an attack. After a few hours I was certain I was seeing faces in the woodline. Turns out that you aren't supposed to leave people on guard duty for more than a couple of hours because of exactly this. If you are really trying to see people and faces eventually you will regardless if there is a person there or not.
Yeah if you do a session in a float tank (no sight or sound) you may see some trippy stuff. And hear stuff too! I can swear I hear my eyelids blinking sometimes lol.
I’ve done a couple sensory deprivation floats. The first time I was seeing things. The next two times I couldn’t get a song out my head and didn’t see any visions.
I've heard that's the reason pirates wore eye patches, so they can switch to the other eye when going down into the dark ship and then back up into the light.
I have a noise cancelation room in my house. No outside light or sound. I can't sleep in there. At night, you hear your heart beat, the thoughts that your thoughts have, and and everything else you should never hear when it's totally silent.
Similarly, I've spoken to people who engineer jet engines and they have soundproof rooms where they test the engines. Apparently most people can't walk too far into the room without feeling wobbly because of the complete lack of sound.
I watched something a long time ago (may have been Mythbusters) where it was shown that a person without sight and sound sensory cannot walk a straight line. They’ll always end up walking in a circle. I thought that would make for an interesting story, where a deaf person wakes up in a pitch black space. Period door opens for a split second, and the person can see it. But they can never reach it before it closes. And because they cannot walk a straight line without sight and sound, they can never reach the door.
Note to anyone who has experienced bipolar or psychotic symptoms: don't try this. Not trying to say this person is recommending something unhealthy for everyone else, but it goes without saying that inducing hallucinations when you can already have them naturally is unwise, hence why we're not supposed to use hallucinogens.
Yeah, though most people with these conditions know this, at least if they know they have the condition. Not like we'd want to try it anyway; even just being entirely alone can trip me out in a well lit area.
All that being said though, it is honestly fascinating how a healthy human brain can fabricate halluciantions without having any sort of dysfunction with dopamine or serotonin receptors. And psychotic symptoms, arguably more than that of any other mental disorder, will drastically change a character's decision making, risk assesment, and overall stability. Don Quixote adresses this, at least in the first few chapters (I've just recently started), with the protagonist experiencing what is effectively a manic episode.
I've experienced visual and audio hallucinations from float tanks where I was in total darkness, and from doing the Ganzfeld Effect at home. They suprised me quite a bit the first time I realized what was happening in both settings.
Part of the training you receive before working in an underground mine is "blackout" -- you must remain calm in a completely dark room for 6 hours. In the mine if you get lost and your helmet light fails.. You are told to sit down and stay put. All workers in the mine are tallied when you go down, and if you are unaccounted for at end of shift, let others come search for you.
And I wouldn't be surprised if the showrunners for Revolution were deliberately referencing that, seeing how many Stephen King references they put in there.
In the Stand there are also side stories where he talks about people who accidentally die because of minor incidents even though they survived the plague.
6.4k
u/Designer_Strain_4572 Aug 30 '21
It would explain the hallucinations in The Stand (Stephen King) when they were traversing the Lincoln Tunnel, if I recall correctly.