This thread is about hallucinations. However, please don't talk about hallucinations you've had in illegal situations. There are a variety of perfectly legal ways to get messed up enough to see/hear/smell/taste/feel stuff that isn't there.

The concept of perceiving things that aren't there has always fascinated me. Salvador Dali, one of my idols, would go without sleep until he was hallucinating, and that's how he'd paint those strange pictures, by painting what he saw while hallucinating. I've always wondered just a little tiny bit about those things and the whole concept, especially when I heard that people can hallucinate even when their minds aren't, you know, screwy. You could be perfectly fine, and see an imaginary lamp on an imaginary desk inside a house that you'll only visit once. And you'll never be able to find out if that table is real or not ever again.

When I was little, I used to hallucinate more than most people who are trying ever will. I'm not even sure why. I used to see things that weren't there, especially in my peripheral vision. Once, I saw what looked like a man made out of sharp fog running through my living room. Another time, I saw, no joke, a monster larger than a mountain (that was actually there) that looked like a stick figure made of sausage, in an Elvis costume. I was slightly confused out of my [censored] mind after I saw that one, but it's excusable; I was running a fever when I saw that, and when I hallucinated I usually wasn't sick at all. Another time, I saw a golden Labrador run past my doorway. Then, there's the ones that are literally just flashes, just out of the corner of your eye. How about how when I was little I used to hear someone, consistent female, calling my name all the time when I was alone?

See, this is made worse by the fact my vision is completely [censored] nowadays. I can't exactly describe how I see the world, but with my glasses, it looks kind of like a normal photograph overlaid with colorful colorless static. Without my glasses, in the dark, I see the same world, only fuzzy, and the static is now definitely colorful and able to make itself into shapes that I can see through. It' s cool, yet it's distracting, especially when I'm trying to get some sleep and it looks like the whole world is made of sparkles that rearrange themselves into patterns. I usually have less hallucinations involving stuff like a Labrador or a sausage monster nowadays, but I'm not sure how to refer to that weird vision problem I have. In the basest sense you could say I'm hallucinating, because I'm seeing flashy magic colors that aren't there, but it's... not.

So, what do you guys think about it? Do you guys have any awesome hallucination stories?

Lucid dreaming count? If not nope, would be quite an experience though.

I guess lucid dreaming could count. Night terrors definitely count, too.

I didn't even know it was possible to hallucinate without using drugs.

Dude, about the staticky vision, I have that a lot after weird dreams or astral experiences. Its not abnormal its supernatural, Dude you might be gifted. I'm not kidding.

It's quite possible, and also quite easy. Get yourself a sensory deprivation chamber, go without food or sleep for a few days, lose your damn mind, accidentally injure your eyes-- the possibilities are endless! I think the safest ones would be getting a sensory deprivation chamber or going without sleep. Losing your mind just isn't as popular an option nowadays, but it's true. Dissociative schizophrenics and others can have hallucinations.

Oh, here's another famous hallucinonaut (don't tell me that's not a word, I looked it up in a lavender dictionary that was bleeding maple syrup): William Blake. He was a famous romantic poet known for his 'Songs of experience' and 'Songs of Innocence,' and his famous song 'The Tyger.' He said he constantly saw angels and demons just lounging around everywhere.

What does one have to do to hallucinate without taking drugs?

Why do people keep telling me this?

It's kinda creepy. You're the third person to have told me this. However, I'm not one hundred percent sure.


Also, betrayer, I outlined some cool ways you can hallucinate sans drugs in my previous post.

Going without water, and like said, going without sleep, come to mind foremost.

I have only one instance of a hallucination that I wouldn't just contribute to weird peripheral vision. It wasn't too long ago, and I was sitting on my computer watching a streaming tv show. I paused the show, went to do something, came back and hit play. It didn't play, and my browser froze. Just then, I heard something along the lines of "I'm coming for you, Helios.". I was right freaked out. To make sure it wasn't the movie, I started watching it again and nothing like that was said. I still don't know why I heard what I heard, and the closest conclusion I've come to is that I'm the reincarnate of the Greek god of the sun, Helios, and something, or someone, is out to get me. I've questioned my sanity a bit more since then :laugh: .

EDIT: @OP: The stuff you see is called visual snow and the shapes you see are visual hallucinations usually caused by eye "trauma" (you can get the same effect by covering your eyes with your arm and making sure your arm presses into your eyeballs a little bit. It can also be caused by some other things, I think medications can cause it as well).

Man... this forum is full of gods. The Sig God, the Lego God, and now the reincarnation of Helios?

Anyway, I wonder how much one has to hallucinate to be considered insane. I imagine it must be alot, given that sane people hallucinate all the time.

Well the only hallucination I had when not running a fever was when I was really sleep deprived. I was sitting in my bed and suddenly I saw decapitated green hand reaching towards me. But it only lasted for a split second until I blinked.

As for when I had a very high fever, well, one night I woke up and heard this deep voice telling me to get out of bed. It was a really clear voice, which would have been disturbing but at the time it was perfectly normal. It told me to get out of bed, and I did, and I walked to the living room and sat down on the couch, perfectly calm. Then the voice told me to talk to the person on the other couch. That person was http://www.funkidslive.com/wp-content/uploads/barney_03-1024x846.jpg (the green one), and we had a conversation about something I can't remember. After a few minutes I got up and went back to bed. Looking back on it, it's disturbing as hell, but it made perfect sense at the time.

Also, I "hallucinate" pretty often whenever I wake up to my alarm clock too early. For example, lets say I went to bed and set my alarm clock to go off in two hours. Well, that's not a lot of sleep, and because I'm a heavy sleeper, I wont "wake up" to the alarm, but rather I'll turn it off subconsciously. But my sub-conscious will make up reasons for why I'm pressing the snooze button. I once pressed the snooze button for two hours straight, thinking that by doing it I was saving the world. Each time I pressed snooze I was vanquishing the evil noise. Only after those two hours did I finally fully wake up and realize what the hell I had just been doing for two hours.

Isn't that also extremely dangerous and ill-advised?

Dude me and some of my close friends also have these same experiences. Trust me dude, you're not alone and you're not crazy.

Yeah but you get to see some really cool stuff before you die, man!

Sounds like a plan to me.

Or... maybe... he just has bad vision?

Sleep, not so much, the water, yeah kinda.

The first ones that come to my mind is certain mental conditions followed by the venoms of certain animals/insects (as in getting bit by them) :shrug:

Never hallucinated, had a few lucid dreams, though.

If you do both at the same time, then yeah.

But just don't go without sleep and you should see what you want to without dying. I never do starvation hallucinations. I've gotten myself chips sometimes while hallucinating.

Yeah, I'm going to start looking into my magic static vision, then. If I start talking about Nyarlathotep, you'll all know something went horribly wrong.

Hmm... hallucinations. Well, I can recall one from one night when I was sick as a child. I thought I heard someone knocking at our front door and no one was answering it, so I wander out of my room and look down the hallway that led to the door, and I saw this thin man dressed in black wearing a hockey mask. Scared the living hell out of me. I only saw him for a moment, too. I suppose it could have been a night terror or something, or some delusion caused by my illness.

EDIT: I've tried to have lucid dreams. Never succeeded, however.

It's just bad vision, man. No harm in researching it I suppose but don't go falling for that kind of stuff.

...The Nyarlathotep reference didn't tip you off to my mostly joking nature? Besides, I've tried looking it up, but I don't even know the medical term for what I'm seeing. My vision isn't bad like normal vision that's just fuzzy. See, I neglected to mention that, like static, the stuff that's overlaid on my normal vision is always moving. But if I move my arm, the static moves around it. If I throw a ball, the static moves around it. This is weird, because there's also static inside everything. It gets trippy. Beyond weird is when all the static, all of it, melds into a labyrinth like pattern, and I'm afraid the Minotaur is coming for me.

I guess not

:shocking: I wish you could take screen shots in real life, that sounds awesome.

Before I was born my parents lovingly decorated my nursery with wacky 60's wallpaper, seeing as it was the 60's at the time. Amongst the cuddly cute toys was a black kitten playing with a ball of wool. Darn cute you might say.
Unfortunately I started hallucinating black cats that slowly grew in size, detail and the ability to menace me, until they were towering over my cot with their evil green eyes. Often they would begin by just showing me their ears before raising themselves up over my ickle baby body.
And so, I would then scream like a baby can until my exhausted parents came in to make them vanish with their god-like power. Poor old parents were at the wits end until I learned to speak, at which point they ripped down the offending wall paper and gave me some soldiers, as my brother was about to be born. That probably explains why I turned out gay too.
And so we all lived happily ever after and I joined the army when i got older to kill evil black cats everywhere. Incidentally I now have a devoted little black cat called Shadow, who guards me loyally every night, so there you are. His eyes are yellow.