Have you ever experienced paranormal activities? The black shadow standing in the dark, faint voice calling out for help, seeing your deceased-loved ones…
Source: Google image
Though scary stories are enjoyed by some group of people, the existence of ghosts or spirits are highly debatable topic because of the numerous claims made by number of people that they have seen or heard ghosts.
Ghosts are scientifically impossible to exists because of its ability to do things like passing through the walls or floating in the air, and also because researches that were done on paranormal activities have found no evidence regarding the existence of ghosts.
A study conducted by Baland Jalal found that hallucination and sleep paralysis could play a role in people misunderstanding their experience as paranormal activity. During sleep paralysis, people can feel like they are levitating, having out-of-body experience, and sometimes, they see or hear another figure in the room when they are supposed to be alone. These experiences are hallucination because they are seeing things that are not really not present in reality. Sleep paralysis, on the other hand, are caused by the failure in rapid eye movement cycle. Rapid movement known as the stage of sleep where your eyes literally move rapidly. This eye movement usually happens when people are falling into or coming out of sleep, and to avoid people from acting out their dream in real life, the brain normally paralyze people’s muscles during rapid eye movement sleep. Usually brain turns off the paralysis before you wake up, however in sleep paralysis, you wake up as the paralysis is happening.
What about the case where people heard something?
Megan Fox, an American actress and model, believes in ghost after her first encounter in Mexico. In the interview she did with MTV News, she said that she heard the sound of someone coming into her hotel room and pouring coffee. However, when she decided to go see her breakfast, there was nothing. Since the sound was heard by both Megan and her nanny at the time, she says, “[she] believe[s] in everything.”
A study done by David Smailes considers this as hallucinations. He explains that pareidolia is the cause of this hallucination. Pareidolia is when we try to make sense of a pattern or an image even though there’s no meaning exists. Some examples of this could be seeing a face when looking at the front of the car or seeing a mushroom when looking at the clouds. These images are all result of pareidolia.
Since we are used to relying on our senses, when we experience hallucination, we trust our perceptions and believe it. However, sometimes what you thought you saw or heard could be your brain processing it based on what you captured with the eyes or ears. If this is hard to process, think about the time you misheard that one favorite song of yours. This is a good example of your brain giving an extra information to make sense of things that doesn’t.
-Sara Uzama
