The Ghosts in the Doorway

In an episode of Ghostly Encounters a man told a spooky tale. One night when he was a boy, he laid in bed, waking to see a skeleton rise up out of a dresser drawer. Then across his room he saw a horrible specter cross his bedroom floor. He was terrified when it happened to him as a boy and unnerved in adulthood as he relayed the story on TV.

Aw, big freakn' deal! I grew up in the Bronx. When I was very young my brother Juan and I shared a bedroom. We saw weird stuff floating around the bedroom in the wee hours, all the time. Know what? After all these years I still see things floating around my bedroom. And I guess you think, that sort of thing is supposed to be scary, right?

Uh... no. Really, as a kid what I saw was not ghosts or goblins, but I saw floating bunny rabbits, puppy dogs, toys, and only rarely did I ever spy scary things lurking in the shadow of a closed bedroom door. You know - bedsheet ghosts or the odd spectral spider. But unlike myself, my bro Juan - a big fan of scary movies then as now - frequently saw ghosts, monsters and other spooky beings in our bedroom. The things Juan and I saw were sometimes wavy, shadowy, and at other times they were as solid as the furniture of our unlit room. We never saw the same things, and never saw them at the same time.

An explanation? I can't speak for Juan, who thanks to the Age of Aquairus and weed, he can't remember what happened back then. But for myself, even back then I didn't think I was seeing ghosts. I hadn't a clue what we were seeing but it was obvious to me that we saw the objects only for what amounted to seconds after opening our eyes, even if we were fully awake as we opened them. Shucks, if I opened my eyes and saw something potentially bladder emptying, I would just shut my eyes tight and dunk under my bed sheets for a bit.

Today, as an adult, to this day, I still wake to see things, now and again. Sometimes those things still have bladder emptying potential, but thankfully, not often.

Ages ago I recall reading in a Scientific American magazine, people can wake up before their REM (dream state) sleep finishes. In those few seconds, their brain continues to project dream images even if the person is fully awake and has opened their eyes. That, as far as I'm concerned explains what happened to my brother and to myself all those years ago in the Bronx.

Recently I read a slightly different interpretation of waking and seeing weird stuff, because there is a psychoactive drug the brain normally produces during dream sleep. In some people - like myself - that chemical is over produced and is slow to 'drain' from the mind upon awaking. On waking, an effected person literally continues to dream, or rather, continue seeing dream images on waking for a few seconds, until the psychoactive chemical dissipates.

Cool, eh? Perhaps, but such visions also have the potential to scare the pee out of you if you don't know what is going on. I recently accessed a sleep forum. Pretty much all the people on a sleep forum wake terrified of their visions. Most seem to think they are either psychotic, or worse, that they are being haunted. I was amazed that none of them thought of themselves as weirdly privileged for having their rare dream state experiences, but shucks, that's just me.

The very last two times I had such waking visions were highly memorable for me. One of the two experiences I'm speaking of was just beautiful! I was wide awake in my dark bedroom, in my current house. I lay on my side, watching a glowing, grapefruit sized, 3-dimensional dodecahedron spin slowly, gracefully on its axis.


It looked much like this, and I could see through it

It was beautiful as it glowed, spun and sure as hell wasn't a ghost or paranormal. It was the tail end of a dream I'd was having as I woke. It just continued to be seen by me as a solid object. It lasted at least half a minute after I was fully awake and alert -in my experience - a very long for this sort of thing.

I have to wonder... did that man on Ghostly Encounters who saw the skeleton and spectre as a child- did he experience  the same sort of thing that I do? The poor man's visions were more of the scary sort, than 'fluffy' as are mine. Maybe he just hasn't researched or otherwise looked for explanations for his bizarre visions.

And what about the true identity of the bunnie and unicorns I have seen? Are they more boogie than bunny? Am I am in serious denial? BWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA!