Ruling Out Hallucinations

It’s no question that the human brain can find itself in a number of configurations that cause it to see the world in very different ways.  And furthermore there is no way of completely analyzing just how any one person sees the world.  It has often been speculated by cognitive psychologists and philosophers that it could be entirely possible that each view of the world is in its own way completely unique.  And so it’s with that in mind that we ask ourselves what both children and adults with imaginary friends might be seeing in their own lives.  Are they merely figments of an overactive imagination?  Or could they be something more?

A hallucination is a psychological affliction wherein a person perceives something that is completely out of the ordinary and yet simultaneously seems real, but can only be perceived by that one person.  Features of hallucinations include objects which are out of step with the rest of reality (such as a person dressed in old clothes suddenly appearing and disappearing) and objects which are impossible for others to actually perceive.  These generally occur under fairly specific or controlled circumstances such as when falling into a state of sleep when considerable change happens in the brain or right when they begin waking up or under the influence of a select few psychoactive substances such as LSD.  There are also some conditions such as Peduncular Hallucinosis and Schizophrenia.  But even these are specific ailments that often have a whole field of analysis and explanation that can produce predictive results.

What about when we are young, then?  A number of people have full sensory experiences and even imaginary friends that they claim later in life are as real as anyone they would talk to from day to day and yet they show no signs of any of the known hallucinatory ailments.  In addition, they seem to have similar themes between them, such as the ability to disappear, knowledge of other people the viewer interacts with, a heightened knowledge that seems above the viewer, and the ability to make change in the environment around them that can be viewed later or separately from the actual hallucination itself.

So are these hallucinations or something else?  These imaginary friends are often called ghosts by those open to the possibility.  Bu what if they weren’t merely the images of the dead given temporary manifestation in our world again?  What if there was something else guiding their actions?  Is it possible these beings could come from somewhere else entirely and merely show up in our world in a way we would be able to perceive?

What if ghosts, aliens, and other supernatural creatures weren’t as different as we believed, but rather were different manifestations of the same or a similar type of being beyond our understanding?  If the entities changed form that would likely be sufficient to confound any attempt by us to either categorize them accurately or even necessarily prove they exist.